The National Council of Negro Women and the Power of Black Women’s Political Organizing

In recognition of the centennial of the 19th amendment, the BWSA blog is publishing a series on Black women’s relationship to voting from the nineteenth century to the present. The second segment in this series is “The National Council of Negro Women and the Power of Black Women’s Political Organizing” by Ashley J. Finigan, PhD Candidate in American History at the University of Chicago.

From the earliest days of organizing a representative family vote after the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, to marching in favor of the Nineteenth Amendment, to organizing for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to their current iteration as one of the largest and most reliable voting blocs, Black women have a long legacy of laboring to broaden the franchise and marshaling marginalized communities to understand their rights and access the vote. They have done so since before Black women were even able to access the voting booth and continue to fight fiercely for voter protection and access to full political representation.

After the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, the work of Black women voting rights activists was not done. Rather, groups such as the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) continued the work of trailblazing Black suffragists, such as Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Nannie Helen Burroughs in the previous generation. These women founded socially aware, civic organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACW). Founded in 1896, the NACW placed a deep emphasis on racial uplift to provide for their own communities through education, childcare, labor reform, and anti-lynching campaigns.

Later, in 1935, during the depths of the Great Depression in 1935, educator and activist (and past president of the NACW herself), Mary McLeod Bethune would go on to establish the NCNW. Unlike her predecessors, Bethune and her cohorts would place a greater emphasis on political power, along with lobbying for fair access to the ballot. Women had the right to vote, but Black people were still kept from voting booths across the nation. Bethune heeded the call of previous generations of Black suffragists, fundraised to cover the costs of poll taxes, and helped to educate scores of would-be African American voters at what would eventually become Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, so they could pass mercurial literacy tests to vote. Through her shrewd political organizing, Bethune became a member of what was known as “The Black Cabinet” in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration and campaigned tirelessly on his behalf, becoming a trusted friend and collaborator of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.  

Later, as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s gained steam, the NCNW remained at the forefront of pushing for Black voting rights, and sometimes quite literally. As Black women were often pushed to the margins of mainstream civil rights organizations and kept out of leadership positions in favor of their male counterparts, Dorothy Height, Council president at the time, famously pushed herself into the foreground on the dais of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom for posterity. Under Height’s leadership, the NCNW continued their relentless pursuit of equal rights. In 1964, the Council established their group, Wednesdays in Mississippi (WIMS), wherein they sent interracial teams of Black and White women to the state to learn of the on-the-ground concerns of Black women across Mississippi, from Jackson to the rural towns in the Delta. Along with establishing a pig bank and volunteering at Head Start projects, the NCNW, under the auspices of WIMS, threw their formidable support behind the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. 

The women of the Council, along with countless unsung Black women activists, have labored for their access to the ballot. While these communities no longer rely on a single representative “family vote” cast by their male family members, Black women still recognize the power and linked fate represented by the right to vote. Broader access to these freedoms means that Black women can continue to take their rightful place in our politics.

Ashley J. Finigan

PhD Candidate, American History

University of Chicago

Twitter: @ashfinny