C. DeLores Tucker, First Black Secretary of State in the Nation

C. DeLores Tucker lived in this house for forty-seven years and from it waged some of the most consequential civil rights and women's rights campaigns in Pennsylvania history. Born in Philadelphia in nineteen twenty-seven, she became the first African American Secretary of State in the United States, a milestone she reached in nineteen seventy-one under Governor Milton Shapp.

She championed the Pennsylvania Equal Rights Amendment, affirmative action policies, voter registration by mail, and lowering the voting age to eighteen. She also led a nationally prominent crusade against rap lyrics that degraded women, African Americans, and children, taking on major record labels and their investors directly. Tucker was equally active in Democratic Party politics and remained a force in civic life for decades.

She died in two thousand five, and the marker here honors both the home she kept and the battles she fought from it.