As a young African American born shortly following the abolishment of American slavery, Ada Sophia McKinley engaged in benevolent community work that has gone greatly unnoticed. In the middle of the Reconstruction Era, Ada was born in the southern city of Galveston, Texas, on June 26, 1868. Ada stayed in Texas for the majority of her young adult life. While still a child, she moved to Corpus Christi with her family. Later she graduated from Tillotson Missionary in San Antonio, where she temporarily entered the workforce as a school teacher in Austin, Texas, before marrying her husband, William McKinley, in 1887. Following the tragic Diphtheria epidemic that riddled the communities of many Texas cities and the sad loss of her two children, Ada and her husband moved to Chicago in the 1890s. At this time, Ada’s social service first began as she became embedded in Chicago’s community and started working to better the lives of those around her. 

During the Progressive Era Ada became a member of the Phyllis Wheatley Club, participated in the League of Women Voters as an organizer, and was appointed president of the Citizens Community Center. Additionally, Ada was a volunteer for the “War Camp Community Services” directed by the Chicago Urban League. Here Ada worked as a hostess to African American soldiers. Notably, after the Chicago race riots that took place in 1919, Ada marched with Jane Addams, and white settlement house workers to show that solidarity in social causes was plausible regardless of race. It was this year in 1919 that Ada founded a settlement house to help situate migrating families from the south and Black veterans from World War I. 

Sadly, on August 25, 1952, Ada died at the age of 83. Fortunately, Ada was able to lay the cornerstone at the organization’s first headquarters on 34th Street in Bronzeville just hours before she passed away. As an important figure in Chicago’s history,  her monument is forever at rest next to the first African American Mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington. 

Though Ada is no longer here in person, her valiant efforts still live on in the city of Chicago. The South Side Settlement House was later renamed the Ada S. McKinley Community Services in her honor. Today this organization has expanded to include many facets: mentoring and college placement, foster care, housing opportunities, youth and family counseling, employment training, and head start programs. The agency annually serves over 7,000 people through 70 plus different programs in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Chicago. Standing for more than a hundred years, this agency still works in accordance with its initial goals to “empower, educate, and employ people to change lives and strengthen communities” as stated on its website.