The first Black graduate from Moravian College for Women in 1952, Zora Martin Felton died March 11, at the age of 91. Family, friends and colleagues said she was a trailblazer and force for positive change in her community, both while growing up in the Lehigh Valley and during her career in Washington, D.C., as a museum curator.
No matter what Zora Martin Felton accomplished, she always shifted the spotlight off herself, aiming to elevate the achievements of others.
“She was a very kind person,” said Martin Felton’s niece, Darlene Carnes. “If there were other people that had accomplishments, where they were making headway with their lives or doing bigger things with their lives, she would shine the light on them and she would acknowledge them.”
The first Black woman to graduate from Moravian College for Women in 1952, Martin Felton died March 11, at the age of 91. Family, friends and colleagues said she was a trailblazer and force for positive change in her community, both while growing up in the Lehigh Valley and during her career in Washington as a museum curator.
“I felt it was a great honor,” said Carnes, 63, of Easton. “And it’s something that I instilled in my children. I always bragged about how she was the first Black graduate from Moravian College and then moved on and became co-director of the Anacostia Museum. I felt very honored, and I thought it was great.”
‘Often that these institutions weren’t really intended for, built for people of color’
G. Christopher Hunt, vice president and dean for equity and inclusion at Moravian University in Bethlehem, met Martin Felton in the spring of 2016 during an alumni networking event through the university’s Black Student Union. Martin Felton was in her mid-80s at the time.
“She was as gracious and classy in person as you read about her,” Hunt said. “She was delighted and really moved to hear about the progress and all the different opportunities there were for Black students. And she was also, at the same time, disheartened to know that some of the experiences that she had as a student, or some of the experiences that our current students at the time were having.”
During her time at Moravian, Martin Felton was president of the senior class and student body. She was also recipient of the president’s prize for outstanding senior, according to the university’s archives. She played on the field hockey team, the women’s basketball team, was a member of Phi Mu Epsilon and a student leader.
She also worked as an elevator operator at Hotel Bethlehem for four years.
“I would venture to guess that much of that activism, or the spirit of that, maybe got its roots here as she was going through her own journey,” Hunt said. “But then, when she got to graduate school, I’m thinking that’s when she really saw the opportunities to tell the story of Black people.”
She graduated from Moravian with her bachelor’s degree in social science. She then went on to attain her master’s degree in education from Howard University in 1980.
“I think it’s not something that people think about very often that these institutions weren’t really intended for, built for people of color, built for Black students,” Hunt said. “And so the fact that she was able to persevere and get through four years of college at a place that wasn’t intended for her is pretty remarkable, I think.”
‘Her legacy is all over this museum’
More than a decade after graduating from Moravian, Martin Felton went on to become one of the founders of the Anacostia Community Museum in Washington. She worked at the museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution, from 1967 to ‘94.
While Melanie Adams, director of the Anacostia Community Museum, didn’t work with Martin Felton, she said “her legacy is all over this museum.”
“And similar to its founder, John Kinard, she was a community activist in the sense that she was working in the community to improve the conditions for people living east of the river,” Adams said. “It’s not only telling them about the issues, but then, How can we work together as a community and solve them? So, I think she really saw the museum as a place of education, which anyone you talk to about her, they’ll tell you, that’s what she emphasized — education.”
For an exhibit called “Rat: Man’s Invited Affliction,” Martin Felton brought rats to live in the museum to teach how to manage the community’s excessive rat population. In “Lorton Reformatory: Beyond Time,” she provided a platform for incarcerated men to tell their stories through song and drama.
“The reason why that was innovative, not only because there were live rats, but more because it was really one of the first times especially within the Smithsonian where the museum was relevant to its community,” Adams said. “She was able to look and figure out what the community needs.”
She also created in the early to mid-1970s the museum’s Youth Council, working with teens and young adults in the area and taking them on trips outside the U.S.
“Just because you live in Anacostia doesn’t mean you can’t learn about the world,” Adams said. “So she was very intentional in nature in terms of exposing neighborhood kids to the world beyond Anacostia. And I think she was doing it the way it still made them proud to be from Anacostia.”
But Martin Felton’s impact wasn’t only felt at the Anacostia Museum and the surrounding community, Adams said. Her work influenced museums all over.
“You can’t talk about [the Anacostia Community Museum] without talking about that rat exhibit — that’s what everyone knows,” she said. “And so I think she has a legacy in museum education in general, in terms of being innovative and being relevant. I think she’s the one who’s really brought that to the forefront by coming to ACM and doing the programs and working with the community.
“So as a community-based museum, she was figuring it out as she was going along, and it’s really become a model for the field,” she said.
‘She clearly was someone who was very kind and caring’
A. Reed Raymond was one of the organizers for the 2016 alumni event at Moravian, aiming to bring graduates back to offer support and advice to students, especially Black students.
A Moravian graduate in the 1970s, Raymond was the president of the college’s first African American organization, the Society for Black Initiative. He met Martin Felton at the 2016 event.
“My interactions with her, our conversations and observations were that she clearly was someone who was very kind and caring, provided a lot of support, and just shared experiences with all of us, but particularly with the African American women students that were attending Moravian now,” he said. “But clearly, knowing that she was the first, it just brought to me what a first has to endure. And observing her interacting and mingling with the students who were probably clearly over 50 years her junior, it didn’t matter. And you can just see the type of person she was, in my view, based on just being able to observe those interactions.”
Alexis Wiggley, one of the co-founders of the university’s Black Student Union, also got to meet Martin Felton during the alumni event.
Wiggley, 26, of southern Illinois, said Martin Felton was welcoming, but she only got to speak with her briefly.
“Now looking at what she’s done for the community, it’s pretty inspiring. And sometimes you look back and you kind of wish you asked the right questions, asked better questions,” she said. “If I would have known a little bit more about her, going into it, I could have really asked her questions and really kind of dove into her brilliant mind and just her experiences being one of the first, like, major Black student leaders on campus, and then taking that from campus and going out into the world and become a leader in that aspect as well.”
Wiggley, who graduated from Moravian in 2017, said looking back on Martin Felton’s time at Moravian, she saw commonalities, especially as both were active on campus.
“She just seemed like she was super involved on campus,” Wiggley said. “And at that time, I was too, so, in a way, I just kind of felt like I wasn’t walking in her footsteps, but kind of following her lead without knowing it, and just being involved and super active on campus.
“At the event, I didn’t necessarily know those things. But after, in retrospect, looking at all the things she’s done, it’s inspiring,” she said.
‘She was our family’
Martin Felton was adopted by Carnes’ grandmother when she was 9 years old, Carnes said, after her parents died. In that family, she had eight siblings, including Alfred, Arthur, Elmer, Leroy and James Smith, Dorothy Hall, Lillian Taylor and Olive M. Carnes.
“She wasn’t an adopted child; she was our family,” Carnes said. “She was my mother’s sister — that’s how they knew her. They made no difference. Zora was a go-getter. She never sat still. She was always eager to learn more, you know? She was truly a blessed person. She was a trailblazer.”
Carnes was very close to her aunt, traveling from the Valley to Washington to help her heal through surgeries for cataracts and a pacemaker.
“And then in 2006, I had open heart surgery,” Carnes recalled. “I had told her I was going for surgery. And she said, ‘I want to come up and spend a couple of weeks with you until you get back on your feet.’ And she did.”
In 1975, Martin Felton married Edward P. Felton Jr. and became stepmom to three teenagers.
Her stepson, Edward Felton, said “her way of rearing children was through lessons that would allow us to go and seek information.”
“When she was home, she was just a bonus mom,” Felton said. “She did not mash down her accomplishments. She always played down on her success, and allowed folks to shine much more brightly. I’ve learned so much more about her after her passing, that I lived through with her. She was a great, humble person and spiritual.”
Her life was already filled through awards and acknowledgements, Felton said, and helping others was part of her mission.
“When I look at her entire life: the things she said, the places she’s gone, the things she’s done, her being the last to receive, so others can be the first to receive and the light shining,” Felton said. “She did everything for everyone, and didn’t really care to have the light shined on herself.”
Photo credit: Moravian University
Morning Call reporter Molly Bilinski can be reached at mbilinski@mcall.com.
©2022 The Morning Call. Visit mcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.