ALBANY, Ga. (WALB) — Clad in crimson and cream, members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. gathered on the historic streets of Albany on Saturday morning to ensure a legendary local daughter is never forgotten.

A Georgia historical marker was officially dedicated at the corner of West Highland Avenue and South Jackson Street—the exact ground where sorority co-founder Osceola Macarthy Adams was born in 1890.

The project, spearheaded by the Albany Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, honors a woman who went from South Georgia to the national stage, breaking racial barriers in the arts, academia, and civil rights.

“To be a part of a sisterhood—that we’re gonna always have its back, that we’re gonna always be in the community taking action,” said Yolanda Fields, President of the Albany Alumnae Chapter. “We stand fast on social action and making a difference.”

The dedication also received congressional recognition. U.S. Representative Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (D-GA-02) entered an official extension of remarks into the Congressional Record, honoring Adams’ lifetime of service and the historic landscape of South Georgia.

“There is something almost unbearably tender about the geography of this woman’s life,” Congressman Bishop stated in the Congressional Record. “She was born in the Harlem District of Albany, Georgia—and she made her name in Harlem, New York. She carried the name of her neighborhood a thousand miles and gave it back to the world as art.”

From South Georgia to Howard University

Born on June 13, 1890, to Julia Ann and Charles Hannibal Macarthy—a life insurance executive—Adams grew up in a household where education was paramount.

According to Bishop’s congressional remarks, her father believed “a child’s mind was the only inheritance a Black family in South Georgia could not be dispossessed of.”

Adams was schooled locally at the Albany Normal School, the foundational institution that would ultimately grow into modern-day Albany State University. She completed preparatory school at Fisk University before enrolling at Howard University.

It was on the campus of Howard on January 13, 1913, that Adams and 21 of her peers founded Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. The organization has since grown to include more than 1,000 chapters across four continents.

Only seven weeks after the sorority’s founding, Adams and her sisters took a stand on the national stage, marching in the historic March 3, 1913, Woman Suffrage Procession down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Congressman Bishop highlighted the gravity of that moment, calling her “a twenty-two-year-old Black woman from Albany, Georgia, demanding a ballot that her own hometown would not honestly hand her for another fifty-two years.”

A Trailblazer on Broadway and Behind the Scenes

Adams later married Dr. Numa P. G. Adams, who would make history as the first African American dean of the Howard University College of Medicine.

But her own career was marked by trailblazing triumphs in the theater world. Under her stage name, Osceola Archer, she became one of the very first Black actresses to appear on a Broadway stage when she starred in the 1934 production of Between Two Worlds.

Beyond her own performances, Adams shaped the future of American entertainment. As director of the Studio Theatre School at the American Negro Theatre, she personally mentored and trained legendary performers who changed the landscape of stage and screen, including:

• Sidney Poitier
• Harry Belafonte
• Ruby Dee

She was believed to be the first Black director in American summer stock, directing canonical American masterpieces like The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Diary of Anne Frank.

In 1978, Delta Sigma Theta established “The Osceola” award in her honor to recognize distinguished achievement in the arts. She passed away on November 11, 1983, at the age of 93.

Family and Community Legacy Restored

Cliff McCarthy, Adams’ cousin and closest living relative, drove three days from Massachusetts to attend Saturday’s unveiling in Albany.

“How many people get to go to the unveiling of a historical marker for a family member?” McCarthy said. “As somebody who’s mixed race and whose family considers itself—most of my family considers itself white—it inspires me to remember the parts of my family that others have chosen to forget.”

For the community and the sisters of Delta Sigma Theta, the marker is more than just a historical placeholder. It is a monument meant to inspire the future.

In his congressional remarks, Bishop noted that the marker serves as a beacon for the next generation of Albany’s youth.

“We set them for the living, and for the ones not yet born, so that no child of Albany ever again has to be told what she can become—she can go read it for herself, on the corner of South Jackson and West Highland,” Bishop said.

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