By Norma Adams-Wade and Cheryl Smith
Many younger Dallas activists stood on the shoulders of Eva Partee McMillan, who died Sept. 23. She had celebrated her 100th birthday in May.
The former preacher’s wife became a street activist and community organizer some 80 years ago when, as a young mother, she could no longer ignore civil rights inequities all around her.
“I was what was known as the ‘first lady’ of several churches,” said McMillan, whom many called “Mama Mac.”
Jacqueline McMillan Hill, one of McMillan’s four children, said people in the civil rights movement gave her mother the nickname. It’s a shortened version of “Mama McMilitant,” a nickname acquired for her aggressive stance on issues.
“She easily could have been a socialite,” McMillan Hill said.
McMillan had four children — Katherine, Marion Ernest Jr., Jacqueline and Karen. She also had 10 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
Before her birthday celebration this year, the McMillan children recalled how their mother was in a hurry to set things right in the world as they were growing up in the late 1940s and beyond. Instead of joining social groups, she worked on registering new Black voters and collecting poll taxes to prove that suppression tactics would not stop the Black vote.
After she and her preacher husband, Marion Ernest McMillan Sr., separated, she worked as a bank bookkeeper and joined groups that fought to end Jim Crow laws and various forms of discrimination. She served in various state and national civil rights groups, and she organized some groups on her own.
“I still see her from my childhood view, resting at her feet, gaining knowledge and strength. I still do,” her daughter Kathy said earlier this year.
Ernie McMillan said before his mother’s 100th birthday that beyond the family and Dallas community, the integrity with which his mother has lived holds lessons for the entire nation.
“She practices what she preaches,” he said. “She leads by example. She speaks up and stands up for justice … and she still votes!”
Muhammad, the president of the National Black United Front-Dallas who knew McMillan growing up in Dallas during the 1960s, remembered her as “articulate, passionate and always humble.”
“That woman and her son, Ernie, are who turned me into who I am today,” he told Texas Metro News. “I learned from the best and so did so many others.
“She showed raw courage and she was not afraid to step up and stand up,” Muhammad continued. “She showed me how to stand up and speak out. And she was beautiful, too!”
Her activism expanded after Ernie McMillan became one of Dallas’ more prominent civil rights activists and fugitives. During his 1960s college years, he got deeply involved in civil rights work and anti-war protests.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for breaking a bottle of milk during a 1968 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee demonstration. He helped lead the protest at a Black supermarket in South Dallas that demonstrators said served inferior merchandise. While appealing his sentence, he became a fugitive for two-and-a-half years, was captured, served three years, became a legislative aide, and later embarked on a career organizing community and youth service activities. Today, he’s an environmental advocate.
Meanwhile, his mother was a fiery, driven community organizer. She joined various civil rights and anti-war protests — some that her son had helped put together, others that were demonstrations against his prison sentence. She called courthouse authorities, warning them not to harm her son, and organized phone banks to tie up lines on his behalf.
McMillan was born Eva Partee on May 7, 1921, in Bradford Tenn. Her mother died soon after delivering her and her twin, leaving her husband to raise them and five siblings alone.
In the 1930s, the family moved to Dallas’ White Rock community, where they owned a large farm — eventually losing it in an alleged swindle that the family fought over unsuccessfully for years. They moved to the historic Freedman’s Town just north of downtown Dallas and became a prominent household there.
McMillan’s granddaughter Anyika McMillan-Herod wrote on Facebook that McMillan was her favorite person, calling her “one tough cookie with a righteous bite, who also oozed extraordinary sweetness.”
The writer, actress and co-founder of Soul Rep Theatre Company wrote that the family witnessed McMillan’s activism and compassion “propel her onto frontlines and into courtrooms, church pews, boardrooms, soup kitchens, voting booths, and messy streets to raise HELL & HOPE!”
Black and Clark Funeral Home will be handling services, with information to come.
Information in this story was originally published in Texas Metro News as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and TMN. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in Southern Dallas.
