Senator Verda Welcome
December 1950
Paul S. Henderson (1899—1988)
4x5 inch black and white negative
Henderson Collection, Maryland Historical Society
HEN.00.B1-054
Verda Freeman Welcome (1907-1990) was a teacher, Civil Rights leader, and the first African American woman to be elected to the state senate. Welcome moved to Baltimore in 1929 and graduated from Coppin State Teachers College. Welcome was elected to the Maryland State Senate in 1962 and survived an assassination attempt in 1964, after which two men were convicted.