National Council of Negro Women

The National Council of Negro Women is a coalition comprised of 200 community-based sections in 32 states and 38 national organizational affiliates that works to enlighten and inspire more than 3,000,000 women and men. Its mission is to lead, advocate for and empower women of African descent, their families and communities. NCNW was founded in 1935 by Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, influential educator and activist. For more than fifty years, the iconic Dr. Dorothy Height was president of NCNW. Today, under the leadership of Dr Johnnetta Betsch Cole, NCNW’s programs are grounded on a foundation of critical concerns known as “Four for the Future”. NCNW promotes education with a concentrated focus on science, technology, engineering, art and math; encourages entrepreneurship, financial literacy and economic stability; educates women about good mental and physical health practices; promotes civic engagement and advocates for sound public policy consistent with traditional values.

1896 National Association of Colored Women Founded; 1st national balck orgnizazation in US; Leaders: Josephine Pierre Ruffin, Margaret Murray Washington, Mary Church Terrell; Mary McLeod Bethune: Presidnet, 1924-1928, Dec 5, 1935 - NCNW founded in Harlem, Vision: Active public affairs role for black women, pushed NCNW into lobbying, help get black women into the military, sponsered SS Harriett Tubman,

The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) is a non-profit organization founded in 1935 with the mission to advance the opportunities and the quality of life for African American women, their families, and communities; The NCNW was founded on December 5, 1935 by Mary McLeod Bethune, a distinguished educator, and government consultant whose parents were born into slavery. Mary McLeod Bethune saw the need for harnessing the power and extending the leadership of African-American women through a national organization. The organization comes to after a couple of years after World War I and stems from the National Association of Colored Women, which also saw a purpose in supporting black women's rights in political and economical say. During the 1930s there were many organizations formed for the rights of African Africans, but few specifically for African American women. Mary branched off the ideas of the NACW and began the start of the NCNW to help African American women and their families. She felt that the programs were ineffective to the main problems that women faced every day, and wanted NCNW to have deep solid roots. In the early years of NCNW, the small volunteer staff operated out of Bethune's living room in Washington D.C. The first four decades of the organization was spent fulfilling Bethune's ideas of a unified women's movement capable of addressing economic, political, and social issues affecting women and their families. The support of the NCNW was considered to be so important to the women's organizations as opposed to the amendment. The activism of Bethune and the NCNW in the area of women's rights was unusual for the time, as black female leaders were conspicuously absent from organizations fighting for female equality from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s. Part of the reason for their inactivity in this area was the racism of the white suffragists which black women had experienced during the struggle for the 19th Amendment; Although Bethune and the NCNW were very much involved in the struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment, especially in the late 1940s, even she was careful to keep her organization on the conservative side of the issue and refused to support the amendment; From 1936 to 1942, Bethune was simultaneously the president of Bethune-Cookman College (Founded by her for black students in Daytona, Florida), the first president and founder of the NCNW and the special Roosevelt as Director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration. Her plans were to plan, initiate, and carry out the dreams of African-American women who felt unheard and mistreated; Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder, worked to get African American women their own institution that contained records and history of other black women to support the uplift of women's empowerment. She used the NCNW to help create the National Archives of Negro Women's History by establishing a committee specifically to find information about different African American women so they could feel just as educated; NCNW organizes the National Black Family Reunion, a two-day cultural event celebrating the enduring strengths and traditional values of the African American fathers; National Chairs of NCNW: Mary McLeod Bethune (1935-1949), Dorothy Boulding Ferebee (1949-1953), Vivian Carter Mason (1953-1957), Dorothy Height (1957-1997), Barbara L. Shaw (2010-2012), Ingrid Saunders Jones (2012-2018), Johnnetta B. Cole (2018–Present); Executive Directors of NCNW: Alfreda Davis, Avis Jones-DeWeever (2010-2012), Janice L. Mathis (2016–present)