■ The Daughters of the American Revolution will install an African-American on its governing board.

Incoming president of group cites ‘awakening’

NEW YORK — When Wilhelmena Rhodes Kelly hit a roadblock while researching her family history, a chance encounter at a conference with members of the Daughters of the American Revolution got her the help she needed to keep going.

Now, Kelly is helping the DAR have its own breakthrough moment. On Sunday, the lineage-based group, with a reputation as a bastion of white privilege, will install Kelly as the head of its New York state group and the first African-American woman on its national governing board.

The milestone, Kelly and others say, reflects the efforts the organization has made in recent decades to encourage women of color to get involved after a history of exclusion.

The Daughters of the American Revolution was founded in 1890. The first black woman to join in modern times became a member of the organization in 1977.

Kelly, 72, who lives in New York City, joined the DAR in 2004 after tracing her own lineage to a white Virginian who donated supplies to the Revolutionary War efforts.

“The push is largely to encourage people to realize their own foundations and contributions to American history,” Kelly said.

Denise VanBuren, who becomes the DAR’s president on Sunday, said, “We’ve had a real awakening here that we have an obligation to try and tell the stories of some of those folk who history has left out of the history books.”

The Daughters of the American Revolution has around 185,000 members today. It doesn’t ask new members about their race, and there is no firm count on how many women of color are affiliated.

The DAR is open to women who can show they are descended from someone who helped the revolutionary cause between the Battle of Lexington in 1775 and the withdrawal of British troops in 1783.

An estimated 5,000 black soldiers fought on the American side during the war, but for most of its history, the Daughters of the American Revolution was entirely white.

The organization has included some of America’s most notable women among its ranks, including Eleanor Roosevelt. But she gave up her membership in 1939 after the DAR refused to allow a black singer, Marian Anderson, to perform at its Constitution Hall.

Evan Vucci The Associated Press Wilhelmina Rhodes Kelly, the first African-American woman to be installed on the national board of the Daughters of the American Revolution, traced her lineage to a white Virginian who donated supplies to the Revolutionary War efforts.