Digital Extra

3/20/97
Deborah McCrea: Carring on the spirit of activism

By KAREN A. DAVIS
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

In 1990, after 30 years of working for the U.S. Postal Service, Deborah McCrea decided she would pay more attention to her health. She would retire, stay home, relax.

It turned out that the Pawtucket native "did everything but," answering a nagging urge to continue a lifetime of community service and church involvement.

McCrea spent her early years as an active member of a Pawtucket church. But after she married John McCrea 47 years ago and moved to Providence, she joined him at the Congdon Street Church.

The match was perfect. Congdon Street had a rich history as the oldest black congregation in Rhode Island, formerly named the African Union Meeting House, and McCrea had a consistent love for history, especially church history.

"I don't know why I love it -- I didn't like it so well in school," said McCrea, who graduated from Pawtucket East (now Tolman) High. "My mother insisted we know history, (including) Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois."

In her spare time, McCrea has spent much of the last 47 years saving bits of church history, organizing the Congdon Street archives and piecing together the diaries and journals left by leaders and members of the 164-year-old church.

But McCrea has not had much time to spare.

In 1960, she went to work at the newly built main branch of the U.S. Postal Service on Corliss, marking the first time women had been hired as mail handlers.

"They brought 23 women in and we were only supposed to work six months, but I was there 30 years," McCrea said, recounting how women were hired to replace men who were on leave to undergo training for the new mail slotting machines. McCrea was also trained on the machines and became a machine clerk -- a job she hated every minute of, in all its technicolored, monotonized glory.

When the opportunity arose to take a supervisory test in 1967, she and another woman won promotions by snaring the highest scores.

Some of their male counterparts scoffed at the promotions, attributing them to newly passed equal opportunity laws. The female supervisors worked nights as mail handlers on the docks from December to June, McCrea recalls: "It was cold, but we were determined we wouldn't quit."

Working the night shift allowed McCrea to send sons Glenn and John III off to school and to have time for community service.

McCrea was a member of the League of Women Voters; the now-defunct Opportunities Industrialization Corporation (O.I.C), which focused on job training; and the Urban League of Rhode Island, where she served as president of the board and the NAACP.

Like her "idol," Roberta J. Dunbar (see accompanying story), McCrea was also superintendent of her Sunday School for nearly 20 years. Dunbar, a social reformer, was involved in several social organizations with McCrea's mother, Gertrude Allison, who worked as a housekeeper and dressmaker. Her father, James Allison, Jr., worked as a stationary engineer and artist and painted many of the gold-leaf signs in Pawtucket.

"I get involved (in organizations) because we were brought up that way," McCrea said. "We learned by example that we needed to be involved."

McCrea has been active in the Constantine Court #8 Daughters of Isis, a sister organization to the fraternal Prince Hall Masons. She currently serves as Imperial Deputy of the Desert of Rhode Island.

By 1981, McCrea was promoted to manager of the U.S. Postal Service's Elmwood station, one of the highest-ranking station managers in the state.

In 1990, she retired from the post office and several boards, but stayed active in Bible Class and the flower guild. She currently sits on the board of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society.

And, four years ago, she took on the volunteer position as coordinator for a Children's Crusade for Higher Education site at Congdon Street Baptist Church.

The state-run program, for students in grades three through 12, aims to inspire young people to reach their goals by promising funding for their college education.

"I think it's a terrific program," said McCrea, explaining how she oversees activities for East Side students in third through fifth grades. "It started out with high ideals and the goal of pushing students toward excellence."

And, though her commitment to young crusaders is tiring, McCrea, a grandmother of five, does not speak of giving it up.

More Women in R.I. history