National Council Of Negro Women Essay

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National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), National Negro Congress, (NNC) and The American Negro Academy (ANA) are all African-American organizations that were founded to improve the conditions of the black community and people. Each organization faced obstacles, but overcame them to accomplish great feats. Without these organizations black people would still be in a state of distress. These organizations gave black people an outlet, support, and connections to desegregation, job opportunities and information that was being suppressed. The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) is an organization that was founded on December 5, 1935, by Mary McLeod Bethune and the leaders of twenty-nine of the most notable black organizations in New York City, …show more content…

After the formation of the National Council of Negro Women, black women “became visible as political actors in national politics” (Ford). A prime example of NCNW’s success with African-American women through Bethune is the 1938 Conference on Governmental Cooperation in the Approach to the Problems of Negro Women and Children held at the White House. For the conference, Bethune collaborated with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and labor unions in order to monitor the racial practices of the New Deal agencies. They collected, analyzed and distributed data about African-Americans employed by New Deal agencies and publicized the exclusion of blacks from the government training programs in local communities and brought it to the conference. The conference ridiculed the exclusion of black women from management, administration, and policy making positions in social welfare programs. The NCNW members, including Bethune, endorsed the placement of African-American women in upper-level governmental positions, which placed NCNW in the limelight, beginning the annual White House visits. These visits gave NCNW a chance to denounce the racial and gender discrimination going on in the nation. The annual visits soon blossomed into a permanent headquarters for the NCNW after they were welcomed into the Women’s Interest Section, “an advisory council of the United States War Department’s Bureau of Public Relations” started by Eleanor Roosevelt (Mjagkij). The NCNW and this council worked together to “discuss the role of black women in the war effort and the need for child-care facilities”

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