Ellie Alma Walls Mims Montgomery: Pioneer Educator and Advocate for African American Education (1889–1974)
By: Tiana Wilson and Russell Stites
Published: April 22, 2024
Updated: April 30, 2024
Ellie Alma Walls Mims Montgomery, pioneering African American educator and the first woman president of the Colored Teachers State Association of Texas, was born on December 12, 1889, in San Antonio. She was the fourth child of Louis and Mary Olivia (Wilson) Walls, attended public schools in San Antonio and Austin, completed one year of grammar school in Chicago, and in 1907 graduated with distinction from the Colored High School (later Booker T. Washington High School) in Houston. In 1911 she earned her bachelor of arts degree from Fisk University (a historically Black college in Nashville, Tennessee). That year Walls became one of the first fellows of the National Urban League, which paid her tuition to the New York School of Philanthropy (later the Columbia University School of Social Work). As a student she lived at the Lincoln Settlement House in Brooklyn and did field work as a caseworker for the United Charities Organization. In 1912 Walls earned a certificate in social work from the school. That same year she completed a master of arts degree from Columbia University. Walls wrote her master’s thesis on the institutional care needs of New York’s delinquent Black girls. The Urban League used the data she collected for her thesis to inform its advocacy and to lobby for improved care for delinquent girls in New York state. In this way Walls contributed to the creation of the Urban League’s Sojourner Truth Home in New York City. In 1912 she returned to Fisk University as an assistant to George Edmund Haynes, head of the recently-established Department of Social Science. Walls’s duties included instructing classes and supervising field work at the Bethlehem Center in Nashville. After a year at Fisk she worked as the girls’ work secretary for New York’s Urban League chapter and as a special investigator for the organization in Baltimore.
Walls helped found the Dorcas Home for Colored Girls, a juvenile training school in Houston, in 1914. About 1915 she began teaching at the Colored High School to support her disabled mother. Walls taught at the school for two years then spent three years in Kansas, where she taught in Bonner Springs and Lawrence. In Bonner Springs she also organized a night school. Walls returned to Houston, where she continued to teach until her retirement in 1960. In addition to Booker T. Washington High School, she taught at Phillis Wheatley High School and Jack Yates High School and was a member of the first faculty of the Houston Colored Junior College (later Texas Southern University), where she taught for twelve years. In addition to her regular teaching responsibilities, Walls also taught night classes for sixteen years at Union Baptist Theological seminary. She continued her education with graduate work at the University of Minnesota, Columbia University, North Carolina College for Negroes (later North Carolina Central University), and the University of New Mexico. At the latter university, she joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which awarded her a foreign fellowship in 1938. From 1943 to 1945 Walls was the president of Alpha Kappa Alpha’s graduate chapter in Houston, Alpha Kappa Omega. She also received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Union Baptist Theological Seminary in 1950.
Between 1927 and 1934 Walls wrote two columns for the Houston Informer, “Tested Truths” and “Facts and Figures.” In 1936 she published studies on school drop-outs and juvenile delinquency among Black youths in Houston. From 1926 to 1938 Walls served as the secretary-treasurer of the Colored Teachers State Association of Texas (CTSAT). She documented the organization’s history when she wrote The Sixty Year History of the Association. She was nominated for president of the association in 1930 but declined the honor and instead nominated Andrew Webster Jackson, who was unanimously elected. In 1948 Walls became the first woman president of CTSAT. Throughout her time with the association, she promoted the integration of the Teachers State Association of Texas and the National Education Association and out-of-state aid to Black students pursuing graduate and professional studies. She sought equal pay for Black and White teachers in Texas and to equalize educational opportunities. Acknowledging and honoring her efforts, in 1949 the CTSAT dedicated their sixty-fifth annual convention to Walls. In 1957 the association awarded her a bronze plaque for meritorious service.
Walls was a longtime member of the Wesley Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church in Houston and was the superintendent of the Sunday school there for thirty-two years. The church dedicated a plaque to her in 1958. She was also a member of the Torch Bearers Club at Wesley A.M.E. and the Heroines of Jericho. In the early 1940s she chaired a committee to investigate school health and sanitation conditions for the newly-formed Houston Negro Volunteer Health League. For six summers, Walls served as a playground director for Black parks in Houston. She served as president of the Houston Fisk Club and raised money for a scholarship fund. In the early 1960s Walls visited Africa and saw schools and missions supported by her church.
Walls married twice. On May 16, 1917, she married Leonard Hassan Mims, whom she later divorced, in Galveston County. On June 26, 1932, she married Leroy J. Montgomery at Wesley A.M.E. They divorced in 1938. Ellie Alma Walls died at the age of eighty-four on March 31, 1974. Her funeral was conducted at Wesley A.M.E., and she was buried at Golden Gate Cemetery in Houston.
Bibliography:
Willie Lee Gay Collection, African American Library at the Gregory School, Houston. Andrew Webster Jackson, A Sure Foundation: A Sketch of Negro Life in Texas (Houston: Yates Publishing Co., 1940). Naomi W. Ledé, Precious Memories of a Black Socialite: A Narrative of the Life and Times of Constance Houston Thompson (Houston: D. Armstrong, 1991). Dorothy C. Salem, To Better Our World: Black Women in Organized Reform, 1890–1920 (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1990). Nancy J. Weiss, The National Urban League, 1910–1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974). Ruthe Winegarten, ed. Black Texan Women: A Source Book (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996).
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Tiana Wilson and Russell Stites, “Montgomery, Ellie Alma Walls Mims,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/montgomery-ellie-alma-walls-mims.
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