HistoricSiteMarkers
Progressive & Modern Era

Myra Lillian Davis Hemmings

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Marker Inscription

(August 30, 1895 - December 8, 1968) African American educator, actress, and community activist Myra Hemmings was born in Gonzales, Texas to Henry and Susan (Dement) Davis. The family moved to San Antonio, where Myra graduated from Riverside High School in 1909. She attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., where on Jan. 13, 1913 she became one of 22 founders of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, the primary goals of which were to use their collective strength to promote educational excellence and to provide assistance to those in need. Their first public act was to participate in the women's suffrage procession down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on Mar. 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's presidential inauguration. Hemmings graduated from Howard in May 1913 and returned to begin her teaching career with the San Antonio Independent School District. She taught English and drama at Frederick Douglass and Phyllis Wheatley high schools for more than fifty years, influencing countless students to love performing arts and literature. Hemmings organized the San Antonio chapter of Delta Sigma Theta on Aug. 16, 1933 and served as its first president. Today there are more than 950 chapters and more than 250,000 members worldwide. Myra loved the theater and acting. In 1922, she married John (Pop) Hemmings, a former Broadway actor. Together they organized the Phyllis Wheatley Dramatic Guild Players. Their productions, in which she often acted, shaped the cultural life of Black San Antonioans. She directed more than twenty dramatic plays and appeared in three feature films: "Marching On!" (1943), "Go Down, Death!" (1944) and "The Girl in Room 20" (1946). Hemmings received her Master of Arts degree in Drama from Northwestern University in 1937. Myra Hemmings' prolific achievements continue to influence and inspire the community and the world. (2012)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Born in Gonzales and raised in San Antonio, Myra Hemmings became one of 22 founders of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority at Howard University in 1913, and days later marched in the women's suffrage procession in Washington. Returning home, she taught English and drama in San Antonio's Black high schools for more than fifty years while founding the city's Delta Sigma Theta chapter and, with her husband, a dramatic guild. She also acted in stage productions and several feature films, shaping the cultural life of Black San Antonio.

Why it matters

Hemmings links the founding of a landmark Black sorority, the women's suffrage movement, and decades of African American arts education into one remarkable life.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

Myra Lillian Davis Hemmings was born in 1895 in Gonzales, Texas, and came of age in San Antonio, graduating from Riverside High School in 1909. She entered adulthood in the Progressive era, a time of reform, rising ambition, and hard limits — especially for a young Black woman in the segregated South, where doors to higher education and public life were narrow and often closed.

That she made her way to Howard University in Washington, D.C. placed her at the heart of Black intellectual and cultural life in America. Howard was a gathering point for talented young African Americans determined to lead, and it was there, in early 1913, that Myra's life intersected with a movement that would outlast her by generations.

When she returned to Texas, she stepped into the world of segregated public education, teaching in schools built for Black students in an era of legally enforced separation. Across a career spanning more than five decades, she would help shape the cultural and intellectual life of Black San Antonio from within those classrooms and stages.

People & events

In January 1913, at Howard University, Myra became one of the twenty-two founders of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority — an organization created to harness collective strength for educational excellence and service to those in need. Its founders wasted no time making that mission public: their first act was to join the great women's suffrage procession down Pennsylvania Avenue on March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. To march for the vote as a young Black woman that day was to claim a place in a movement that did not always make room for her.

Myra graduated from Howard that May and returned home to teach for the San Antonio Independent School District, carrying English and drama to students at Frederick Douglass and Phyllis Wheatley high schools for more than fifty years. In 1933 she organized the city's own chapter of Delta Sigma Theta and became its first president — planting locally the seed she had helped sow nationally.

Her life was also the theater. In 1922 she married John "Pop" Hemmings, a former Broadway actor, and together they founded the Phyllis Wheatley Dramatic Guild Players, staging productions that shaped the cultural life of Black San Antonio. She directed more than twenty plays, often appeared in them herself, earned a master's degree in drama from Northwestern in 1937, and acted in three feature films in the 1940s.

Its place in the American story

Myra Hemmings's life gathers several great American currents into a single biography. She helped found what would grow into a nationwide institution — a sorority that today counts more than 950 chapters and a quarter of a million members worldwide — and she did so as part of a generation of Black women who insisted on building their own vehicles for education and service when existing ones excluded them.

Her presence in the 1913 suffrage procession ties her to one of the defining struggles of American democracy, and to the too-often-overlooked truth that Black women were there in that fight, marching for a vote that many would still be denied for decades. Her story enlarges the familiar suffrage narrative rather than merely joining it.

And through more than fifty years of teaching, she embodied the quiet, cumulative power of education. The students she taught to love literature and the stage, the local institutions she built, the films and productions she brought to life — all of it is a reminder that national history is often carried forward one classroom, one performance, one determined teacher at a time.

If you visit

A memorial marker to a single remarkable person invites a different kind of visit than a battlefield or an old house. Stand before it and let the sheer range of one life register — founder, teacher, actress, director, community builder — compressed into a few lines of text and a span of dates from 1895 to 1968.

Let the places in her story orient you. This is San Antonio, the city where she taught for over half a century at schools named for Frederick Douglass and Phillis Wheatley, and where she and her husband built a dramatic guild that gave Black audiences and performers a stage of their own. Imagine those classrooms and those productions as you read.

If you're building a road trip around the people who shaped American life rather than only its famous events, a stop like this belongs on it. Bring the wider story with you — the founding of a landmark sorority, the suffrage march of 1913, the long arc of African American arts education — and you'll leave understanding how one teacher from Gonzales, Texas helped carry all of it forward.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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Related people

  • · Myra Lillian Davis Hemmings
  • · John Hemmings

Related events

  • · Founding of Delta Sigma Theta
  • · Woman Suffrage Procession of 1913

Themes & tags

African American HistoryWomen's HistoryEducationMemorial

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