Jennie B. Moton was an influential educator and the wife of Robert Russa Moton. As a special field agent for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) in the 1930s and 40s, she worked to improve the lives of rural African Americans in the South. She directed the department of Women’s Industries at the Tuskegee Institute, presided over the Tuskegee Woman’s Club, and was a two-term president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). In 1941, she was one of several influential black leaders who helped persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 8802, prohibiting ethnic or racial discrimination in the nation’s defense industry.
