Victorine Q. Adams
I should be regarded not only as the wife of Willie Adams but as a woman who has used her influence and affluence to better the community in which she lives.
- Victorine Q. Adams, Baltimore Civil Rights Leader
Born in Baltimore, Maryland to parents Joseph C. and Estelle Tate Quille, Victorine graduated from Frederick Douglass High School and later attended Coppin Teachers College, as well as Morgan State College. After graduating, Ms. Adams worked as a teacher in Baltimore City for fourteen years.
Ms. Adams pursued politics after founding a women's political club called turned her eye towards politics when she founded a women's political club called the Colored Democratic Women's Campaign Committee in 1946. Ms. Adams, along with her group members, was determined to focus efforts on the election of African-American politicians citywide and statewide. In 1966, she was successfully elected to the Maryland House of Delegates. Following this, she left the state legislature to run for a seat on the Baltimore City Council, representing the 4th District.
Unfortunately, while Ms. Adams was serving the 4th district, an older couple in this district froze to death in their home due to not having heat. Ms. Adams took it upon herself to ensure something like this would never happen again under her tenure. In 1979, she partnered with the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company to establish the Baltimore Fuel Fund, which was designed to help local families with their heating bills. The fund was then renamed the Victorine Q. Adams Fuel Fund, and later became the Fuel Fund of Maryland, a recent member of the Governance Board of Directors of NEUAC.
Woman of the Year Award
Maryland Women's Hall of Fame
Victorine Q. Adams: Speaking Truth to Power - An Archival Collection
Victorine Adams Biography
The Davis Room located in the Earl S. Richardson Library at Morgan State University documents the African American experience in Maryland through the contributions of the Morgan State University community. Since its creation, the Davis Room now includes a growing section of manuscripts, University Archives, rare books, and artifacts. Davis Room stores many archived files on Mrs. Adams life, activism, political career, and creation of the Fuel Fund.
It is there that this handwritten note by Mrs. Victorine Q. Adams is stored where she deems herself as "the mother of fuel funds".