Founded
by Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune
in 1935, the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
played an important role in the struggle for human
and civil rights. As the largest and most enduring
organization of and for African American women, the
NCNW organized a nationwide network of African American
women's organizations and pushed them "to collect,
interpret, and disseminate information" about African
American women's activities. Frustrated by the glut
of comparable organizations that were either allwhite
or predominantly white, Bethune sought a larger voice
for herself and her associates in the national discussion.
She encouraged NCNW members "to develop competent
and courageous leadership among Negro women and effect
their integration and that of all Negro people into
the . . . life of their communities."
(1)
The NCNW rapidly emerged as a politically potent
force. NCNW's magazine, African Woman's Journal,
urged members to organize to support "the outlawing
of the Poll Tax, the development of a Public Health
Program, an Anti-lynching Bill, the end of discrimination
in the Armed Forces, Defense Plants, Government
Housing
Plans and finally that Negro History be taught in
the Public Schools."(2)
Under Bethune's deft leadership, the NCNW joined
with other major civil rights organizations to address
racial and gender discrimination in New Deal and
wartime policies and press for the establishment
of the Fair
Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). In 1944
the organization presented the White House with
a
list of African American women qualified to represent
the U.S. at international conferences. In 1945,
Dr.
Bethune, as a delegate to the international conference
charged with designing the United
Nations, assisted in drafting the UN charter.
The following year, the UN approved the NCNW's
application
to become an official non- governmental organization
(NGO) member.
By 1960, the NCNW had shifted its primary focus
to housing. Under the leadership of Dr. Dorothy
Height,
it helped integrate public housing in the Northeast
and sponsored several home-ownership programs for
low-income families in the South. As the calls for
civil rights grew louder through the 1960s, the
NCNW
remained actively engaged in voter registration,
education campaigns, lobbying efforts, as well as
in a variety
of programs to provide social services and economic
relief. The NCNW remains an important center for
research
and advocacy on behalf of black women to this day.
ER and Bethune became close friends; as ER once
wrote, the NCNW leader was "the closest friend in
my own age group."(3) From
the NCNW's birth until ER's death, ER lent her
unqualified, heartfelt support to the NCNW
as fundraiser, public spokesperson, lobbyist and
as honorary chair of the council.
Notes:
- The Reader's Companion
to American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1991), 97.
- Ibid., 97.
- Eleanor Roosevelt, "Some of
My Best Friends are Negro." Ebony 8 (February 1953),