Helen J. Claytor, 98; Pioneer Civil Rights Leader at YWCA

Helen J. Claytor, the first African American woman to head the YWCA’s national board of directors and a civil rights leader in Grand Rapids, Mich., died Tuesday in Grand Rapids. She was 98.

A native of Minneapolis, Claytor joined the YWCA as a girl and after attending the University of Minnesota, joined the Y staff. She turned to volunteer work at the YWCA when she moved to Grand Rapids after being widowed by Earl Wilkins -- the brother of civil rights activist and NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins. Claytor’s second husband, Dr. Robert Claytor, was a physician in Grand Rapids.

She was elected president of the Grand Rapids YWCA in 1949 -- triggering the resignation of three white board members -- and national president in 1967. She served on the World Council until 1973.

As a YWCA employee and volunteer, Claytor focused on race relations because “it was just part of my blood and bones,” she told the Grand Rapids Press in 1995. She told the newspaper in 1997: “God made us diverse, and we have to live in harmony.”

Claytor was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.

In 2003, Coretta Scott King, speaking at a Grand Rapids Community Relations Commission dinner, saluted Claytor, saying she was an “eloquent testament to the great things an individual can accomplish.”

Claytor’s husband died in 1991. Among her survivors is her son, Roger Wilkins, a journalist and professor of history at George Mason University.

Wilkins was the first African American to serve on the New York Times’ editorial board and the first African American to serve as chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board.