Beatrice Morrow Cannady draft speech for NAACP convention, 1928

Beatrice Morrow Cannady (later Beatrice Cannady-Franklin and then Beatrice Cannady Taylor) was born in 1889 in Littig, Texas. She studied at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and then at the University of Chicago in Illinois. In 1912, she came to Portland, Oregon, where she married Edward Daniel Cannady (1878-1941), founder of the Black newspaper The Advocate. Beatrice Morrow Cannady became assistant editor of The Advocate; following her divorce from Edward Cannady in 1930, she became the newspaper's owner and editor.

Cannady was a founding member of the Portland chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She and other community leaders protested against the anti-Black film "Birth of a Nation" and campaigned to limit its showings in Portland. In 1922, she was the first Black woman to graduate from the Northwestern College of Law in Portland. In 1928, she spoke at the NAACP convention in Los Angeles, California, following a keynote address by W. E. B. DuBois. Cannady used her position as editor of The Advocate to protest racial discrimination in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. She also collected more than 300 volumes on Black American history and literature and made her living room a reading and lending library. She was a member of the Oregon Prison Association, the Near East Relief Organization, the Oregon Committee on the Cause and Cure of War, and the Pan African Congress. In 1932, she ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Oregon House of Representatives. In 1938, she moved to Los Angeles, California, where she resided for the rest of her life.

Beatrice Morrow Cannady and Edward Cannady had four children: George Cannady (1914-1968), Ivan Cannady (1915-1987), Prince Cannady (born and died 1916), and Aran Cannady (born circa 1916). After her divorce from Edward Cannady, Beatrice Morrow Cannady married two more times: First to Jerome Y. Franklin (also known as Yancy Jerome Franklin, 1908-1983), and then to Reuben A. Taylor (1900-1972). Beatrice Morrow Cannady died in 1974.

Sources: "Beatrice Morrow Cannady (1889-1974)," by Quintard Taylor, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/cannady_beatrice_morrow/; vital and family tree records via Ancestry.com; article in the Oregonian, "Advocate Editor Weds," September 7, 1931.