Marie A. D. Madre Marshall

Marie A.D. Madre, born in 1865, wore many hats. Educated in Washington DC schools, in 1892, she was hired as an elementary school teacher in the D.C. Colored School system, where she would remain for most of the next forty-five years of her life. In 1897 and 1898, Marie attained law degrees ---- a bachelor's and a master's from Howard University. Up to this point, she was only the third known woman of color to have graduated from Howard Law School. She was the only woman in her graduating class of thirty-one, and she was the valedictorian.

She was the first woman elected president of the prestigious Bethel Literary and Historical Society, a position she held for several terms. A consummate club woman, she also served in the leadership of several organizations where she shared the spotlight with other female luminarie such as Nannie Helen Burroughs, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Mary Church Terrell and Mary McLeod Bethune.

In 1918, she married James H. Marshall, a minister who pastored many prominent churches in the area which included Shiloh Baptist in Alexandria, Virginia, First Baptist in SW, DC and St. John Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia.

She passed away after a brief illness on March 8, 1938, in Freedman's Hospital (now Howard University Hospital) in Washington, D.C., She was interred at Harmony Cemetery in the District. Graves were later relocated to National Harmony Memorial Park in Hyattasville, Maryland.

Sources: Centennial of the Encyclopedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, by Richard R. Wright, Jr., (1916); Historically African American Leisure Destinations Around Washington, D.C. by Patsy Mose Fletcher (2015)