Lifting as We Climb : Early Black Women Organizers
A Tribute to Women Who Dared to Organize, Write, and Campaign for Civil Rights.
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More of Newport's Women's League
Editorial in the Providence Journal about the state's black community: “…The progress and self-helpfulness of all the Rhode Island colored people of to-day (sic) is thus due to an inherited interest in social questions and a racial spirit and pride ...This is disclosed anew by the conference of the Rhode Island Union of Colored Women’s Clubs...strong elements of good are at work in the race here and that the energy of its interest in Rhode Island life has not been sapped by modern things.
The Great Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) founded the National Council of Negro Women (1935) after already establishing the Daytona Literary and Industrial Training Institute for Negro Girls (1904); the training school would become Bethune Cookman College. She maintained great influence throughout her life—her keen organizing raised $55,000 in 1945! Bethune also had the ear of presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Bethune’s likeness will stand in the U. S. Capital representing Florida.
Mary McLeod Bethune Council House
The Mary McCleod Bethune Council House is on the National Register of Historic Places and administered by the National Park Service(NPS). A Teaching with Historic Places NPS curriculum has been developed, and stakeholders of Bethune’s legacy maintain an important archive of her writing on site. The house is closed during the Covid 19 response but is well worth a visit once open. The house is located at 1318 Vermont Ave NW, Washington, DC 20005.
Platform Adopted by the National Negro Committee(NAACP), 1909
"We denounce the ever-growing oppression of our 10,000,000 colored fellow citizens as the greatest menace that threatens the country...The systematic persecution of law-abiding citizens and their disfranchisement on account of their race alone is a crime that will ultimately drag down to an infamous end any nation that allows it to be practiced..." Signatories: Ida Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell
Distinguished Members of the Women's League of Newport, Rhode Island
This photograph of early black club women from Newport, Rhode Island's Women's League is one of many displayed by W.E.B. Dubois at the 1900 Paris Exhibition. Dubois used photographs and illustrative charts to document the progress of black life in the United States since slavery, as well as to dispel widely held disbelief in the black people's self-determination and capicty to contribute to society.
Most women's clubs were located in the Northeast, but this photograph documents organization in the West. The title, Montana Federation of COlored Women;s Clubs" suggests layers of organizing, perhaps local organizations with delegated to a regional or state federation. Such strong networks would have been needed to adress isolation in small communities.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett Residence
One can only imagine the tremendous work accomplished here. Wells-Barnett(1862-1931) lived here from 1919-1929. Although a National Historic Landmark, sadly, Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s home is not open to the public. Located at 3624 S. Martin Luther King Drive in Chicago, Illinois, the House is a private residence, according to the National Park Service.
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This profile portrait of Mary Church Terrell (1909) was taken at midlife when she had already accomplished so much. The NAACP had recently been founded; she had helped to found and served as president of the National Colored Women’s Association; she had advocated for suffrage alongside Susan B. Anthony and served as a college professor at Wilberforce College.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
Mary Ann Shadd Cary(1823-1893) was born in Delaware to active abolitionists. She was educated in Philadelphia where she began a teaching career. Fearing the consequences of breaking fugitive slave laws, the Shadd family moved to Canada where she published the anti-slavery newspaper, The Provincial Freeman and booklet, A Plea for Emigration; or, Notes of Canada West(1852). Later in Washington, D.C., she earned a law degree from Howard University(1883), one of the first black women to do so.
