May Childs Nerney | |
|---|---|
| Executive Secretary of the NAACP | |
| In office 1912–1916 | |
| Preceded by | Mary White Ovington |
| Succeeded by | Mary White Ovington |
| Personal details | |
| Born | October 26, 1876 Troy, New York, U.S. |
| Died | December 17, 1959 (aged 83) West Orange, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Education | Cornell University (BA) Columbia University (BLS) |
May Childs Nerney (also known as Mary;[a] 1876/1877 – December 17, 1959) was an American civil rights activist and librarian. She was the secretary of the NAACP from 1912 to 1916, overseeing a large increase in the organization's size. She led protests against the segregation of federal government employees in Washington, D.C., and against the film The Birth of a Nation (1915). Nerney came into conflict with several members of the organization and resigned in 1916. She later worked on cataloging Thomas Edison's papers and published a 1934 biography on him, Thomas A. Edison, A Modern Olympian. She also worked with the League of Women Voters, the board of the Young Women's Christian Association, the Consumers Cooperative Services, and the New York Philharmonic Society.
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