Elizabeth Crawford ("Bettye") Tate (June 22, 1906 – September 11, 1999) was a civil rights advocate during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s that desegregated African-Americans across the United States of America.
Tate graduated from Fairfield High School, Iowa, in 1926. Tate worked at the cardiovascular lab at the University of Iowa hospital; she retired in 1976.[1]
In 1938 Tate bought a house for $3,300[2] that would later[3] become a boarding house in Iowa City for African-American students who were not allowed to use the normal university accommodation.[4][5] In the house Tate did the cooking while the boys staying at the house cleaned up.[2] The house, Tate Arms,[6] was named an historic landmark in 2014[7] and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.[8] Tate Arms started housing black students in 1938,[7] and created a "home away from home" for the people who lived there.[9] Tate sold the building in 1979.[10]
In 2005, Iowa City named its alternative high school, Tate High School, in honor of Tate.[10]