Ms Ida Mae's College Bound Scholars Fund

Ms. Ida Mae was a beloved mother and grandmother who always placed a high value on the power of education. Ms. Ida Mae’s children lived in a home filled with books and magazines, including a full set (or two) of encyclopedias and an exceptionally strong collection of books by African American writers. In 1956 during the Great Migration out of the Jim Crow segregated South, Ms. Ida Mae left a harvest in Michigan where her family was working and travelled to Seattle to join her older sister Gracie who had migrated there several years earlier. Ms. Ida Mae arrived in Seattle with a ninth-grade education and later in life attended Seattle Central Community College to study for her high school equivalency certificate while raising seven children. Ms. Ida Mae was a community activist in Seattle and participated in numerous political actions for change in Seattle, including the Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP), MiniTran (community transportation), National Welfare Rights Organization, Seattle Opportunities Industrialization Center (SOIC), Model Cities, the Black Panther Party Free Breakfast Program, the Black Community Festival, to name just a few. All of her children completed high school or high school equivalency, including one child who had special needs.