Daisy Lloyd

(Oct. 15, 1923-May 15, 2019). Daisy Dorothy Riley Lloyd was born in Lawrence, Kansas, to Hiram and Nettie Henrie Riley. Her parents raised her on a large farm where her family had lived for 150 years. She attended the Lawrence public schools before moving to Washington D.C., to attend Howard University. She worked as a researcher at the Library of Congress to fund her education. Lloyd graduated with a B.S. in economics and sociology in 1950.

She met Frank P. Lloyd, an intern at Howard Medical School, while in D.C. They married in 1949 and moved to Nuremberg, Germany, when the U.S. Army assigned Lloyd to work there as an obstetrician/gynecologist in 1951. The following year the couple moved to Indianapolis.

Initially, Daisy Lloyd spent her time raising the couple’s four children. She, however, also became involved in the civil rights movement. In a 2010 interview with the Indianapolis Recorder, she remembered protesting against the segregationist policies of the Indiana State Fairgrounds with other concerned mothers as a defining moment. She became active with the Indianapolis chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the League of Women Voters.

Within a decade, members of the Democratic Party asked Lloyd to run for office in the General Assembly in 1964. Her election marked the first time an African American woman would serve in any state or federally elected office in Indiana. Within days of the start of the 1965 session, Lloyd received a diagnosis of breast cancer. She invited newspeople to the hospital very early in her treatment to reassure her constituents of her return to work. She, indeed, finished her term. While in the Indiana House of Representatives, Lloyd served on many committees, including the Public Affairs Committee, the Committee on Affairs of Marion County, and the Governor’s Committee on Legislative Reform.

Instead of seeking reelection, Lloyd detoured from politics to work in real estate. She worked for the firm of civic leader William Theodore (W.T.) Ray  and then founded Northside Realty in 1968, with the aim of providing “true equality among Blacks and whites in the housing market.” Through her agency, she opened the multiple listing services organization (see MIBOR Realtor® AssocIation) to Black realtors, removing obstacles to home ownership among Black buyers.

Northside Realty broke ground by providing multi-language services to its minority homebuyers in 1972. Lloyd hired educator and civil rights advocate Andrew W. Ramsey to serve as the firm’s multi-language consultant.

In 1979, Lloyd earned an M.A. in psychology and religion from the Christian Theological Seminary at Butler University. She earned her Ph.D. in human development and family studies from Purdue University in 1985, going on to teach family sociology at Indiana University Purdue-University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Her education allowed her to better counsel divorced and widowed female homebuyers who came to her firm seeking advice when considering buying and selling homes. Lloyd’s ad hoc counseling turned into a new profession when she opened her own counseling practice focused on helping women cope with life transitions. Lloyd went on to earn a D.Min. from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, in 2002.

Lloyd was a founding member of the Butler-Tarkington Neighborhood Association and the Center for Leadership Development. She served on the Commission for Higher Education and was a commissioner of the Public Housing Authority. She was a life member of the NAACP, a platinum member of the Indianapolis chapter of Links, and countless community-based boards  She received the Sagamore of the Wabash Award three times.

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