The National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) is an American organization that was formed in July 1896 at the First Annual Convention of the National Federation of Afro-American Women in Washington, D.C., United States, by a merger of the National Federation of Afro-American Women, the Woman's Era Club of Boston, and the Colored Women's League of Washington, DC, at the call of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. From 1896 to 1904 it was known as the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). It adopted the motto "Lifting as we climb", to demonstrate to "an ignorant and suspicious world that our aims and interests are identical with those of all good aspiring women." When incorporated in 1904, NACW became known as the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC).
Frances Barrier Williams was an American educator, civil rights, and women's rights activist, and the first black woman to gain membership to the Chicago Woman's Club. She became well known for her efforts to have black people officially represented on the Board of Control of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. She was also a musician, a portraitist and studied foreign languages.
Lucy Craft Laney was an American educator who in 1883 founded the first school for black children in Augusta, Georgia. She was principal for 50 years of the Haines Institute for Industrial and Normal Education.
African-American women began to agitate for political rights in the 1830s, creating the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, and New York Female Anti-Slavery Society. These interracial groups were radical expressions of women's political ideals, and they led directly to voting rights activism before and after the Civil War. Throughout the 19th century, African-American women such as Harriet Forten Purvis, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper worked on two fronts simultaneously: reminding African-American men and white women that Black women needed legal rights, especially the right to vote.
Elizabeth Beatrice Cooke Fouse was a woman from Kentucky, dedicated to gaining equality for African American women on both local and national levels. She founded as well as became the head of many organizations, with the ultimate goal of ending discrimination. Her Christian faith was critical to her activities in social and church-related clubs.
Alice Woodby McKane was the first woman to work as a medical doctor in Savannah, Georgia. She was not only known as a physician but also as a politician and an author. She and her husband Cornelius McKane contributed an important part in medical history. She opened the first school of nurse training for black people in Savannah. She also helped her husband to make his dream which was opening the Hospital in Liberia come true. After returning from Liberia, they established the MCKane Hospital for Women and Children and later was known as Charity Hospital to treat for all people in Savannah, especially for African American people.
Viola Ross Napier (1881–1962) was one of the first two women, along with Bessie Kempton, to be elected into the House of Representatives in the U.S. state of Georgia following the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which gave women the right to vote. Napier was also the first female lawyer to argue in front of the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Georgia Supreme Court. In 1993 she was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement.
Rebecca Stiles Taylor was a journalist, social worker, and educator from Savannah, Georgia. She was best known for her contributions to the community as the founder of several charitable outlets in the area and as an activist for women's and civil rights.
Victoria Clay Haley, later Victoria Clay Roland, was an American suffragist, clubwoman, bank executive, and fundraiser based in St. Louis, Missouri and later in Chicago.
Adella Hunt Logan was an African-American writer, educator, administrator and suffragist. Born during the Civil War, she earned her teaching credentials at Atlanta University, an historically black college founded by the American Missionary Association. She became a teacher at the Tuskegee Institute and became an activist for education and suffrage for women of color. As part of her advocacy, she published articles in some of the most noted black periodicals of her time.
Georgianna Eliza Hopley (1858–1944) was an American journalist, political figure, and temperance advocate. A member of a prominent Ohio publishing family, she was the first woman reporter in Columbus, and editor of several publications. She served as a correspondent and representative at the 1900 Paris Exposition and the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. She was active in state and national politics, serving as vice-president of the Woman's Republican Club of Ohio and directing publicity for Warren G. Harding's presidential campaign.
Mamie Garvin Fields was a teacher, civil rights and religious activist, and memoirist. In 1909, she became one of the first African-American teachers to be hired in a Charleston County, South Carolina, public school. She was also a co-founder of the Modern Priscilla Club of Charleston in 1927.
Maude E. Craig Sampson Williams was an American suffragist, teacher, civil rights leader, and community activist in El Paso, Texas. In June 1918, she formed the El Paso Negro Woman's Civic and Equal Franchise League and requested membership in the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) through the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA), but was denied. Williams organized African-American women to register and vote in the Texas Democratic Party primary in July 1918. She was one of the founders and a charter member of the El Paso chapter of the NAACP, which was the first chapter in the state of Texas. Williams served as the vice president of the El Paso chapter from 1917 to 1924 and remained active in the NAACP until her death. Williams played a significant role in the desegregation of Texas Western College in 1955, which was the first undergraduate college in Texas to be desegregated by a court order other than that of the Supreme Court of the United States. Midwestern University (now known as Midwestern State University was previously ordered to desegregate in 1954 by the SCOTUS immediately following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
Madrid Loyd Williams was an American executive who, despite never finishing high school or attending college, served as executive director of the Georgia Bar Association. She was known as the "first lady" of the State Bar.
Bertha Grant Higgins was an American suffragist, civil rights activist and clubwoman. She was involved in supporting women's suffrage in Rhode Island. She strongly supported the Dyer Anti-Lynching bill and worked towards equal rights for African Americans.
Mamie Bynes Reese was an American clubwoman, college professor, and Georgia state official.
The first women's suffrage group in Georgia, the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association (GWSA), was formed in 1892 by Helen Augusta Howard. Over time, the group, which focused on "taxation without representation" grew and earned the support of both men and women. Howard convinced the National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to hold their first convention outside of Washington, D.C., in 1895. The convention, held in Atlanta, was the first large women's rights gathering in the Southern United States. GWSA continued to hold conventions and raise awareness over the next years. Suffragists in Georgia agitated for suffrage amendments, for political parties to support white women's suffrage and for municipal suffrage. In the 1910s, more organizations were formed in Georgia and the number of suffragists grew. In addition, the Georgia Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage also formed an organized anti-suffrage campaign. Suffragists participated in parades, supported bills in the legislature and helped in the war effort during World War I. In 1917 and 1919, women earned the right to vote in primary elections in Waycross, Georgia and in Atlanta respectively. In 1919, after the Nineteenth Amendment went out to the states for ratification, Georgia became the first state to reject the amendment. When the Nineteenth Amendment became the law of the land, women still had to wait to vote because of rules regarding voter registration. White Georgia women would vote statewide in 1922. Native American women and African-American women had to wait longer to vote. Black women were actively excluded from the women's suffrage movement in the state and had their own organizations. Despite their work to vote, Black women faced discrimination at the polls in many different forms. Georgia finally ratified the Nineteenth Amendment on February 20, 1970.
Bessie Brown Mention (1873–1946) was an American suffragist and activist for women of color and migrant workers. She focused her attention mainly on welfare for migrant workers, and overall helped to monitor the working conditions of African American migrant women in the state of New Jersey. Bessie Brown Mention also took part in numerous organizations to aid in the suffragist movement. These organizations included: the Migrant Welfare Committee, the Colored Women's Republican Club (CWRC), and the New Jersey Colored Republican Women Voters (NJCRWV). She also took part in politics during her career, focusing her work at the Republican National Convention in 1928.
Mary J. Johnson Woodlen (1870-1933) was an influential suffragist in Wilmington, Delaware. She was vice president of the Wilmington chapter of NAACP, a founding member of the Wilmington Equal Suffrage Study Club, and a major religious speaker at Methodist churches in the area.
Addie E. Dillard Hutto was an American educator. She was involved in several of the Pan African Congresses and was a member of Women's Clubs. She served as principal of Hutto School in Bainbridge, Georgia for 52 years.
