Jewell R. Mazique

Jewell R. Mazique (1913–2007) was an activist who helped found the Capital Transit campaign with United Federal Workers to integrate Washington D.C.'s bus operators. Mazique wrote extensively for The Washington Afro-American newspaper on topics such as the United Nations position on African Nations, and how black children were being educated in DC schools.  She served on the National Council for the Southern Negro Youth Congress in 1945, a group claimed to be a Communist front organization.

She was the subject of a U.S. Government Office of War Information documentary photo series in 1943 while she was a clerk at the Library of Congress. The photos, taken by John Collier, were supposedly depicting a day in the life of a typical black Washingtonian, but critics argued that the photos were "less picturesque and less a credit to freedom's national seat" than a typical day of an average black woman in Washington D.C.

Mazique graduated from Spelman College and received a master's degree in African Studies from Howard University, where she wrote her thesis on the development of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.  Mazique argued her own acrimonious divorce case despite the court's requests to take legal counsel. She kept her children, but lost her case for personal financial support.

Jewell Mazique preferred to be involved with social causes more than having a social life, stating in an interview: "The frills of social life hold no charms for me, I am more concerned for instance with what the political leaders of Paris decided to do about their colonial possessions than what the Paris designers decide about what women will wear".