Th e National Council of Negro Women, Human Rights, and the Cold War

Abstract

In May 1945 Mary McLeod Bethune, founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), wrote to Council members from San Francisco where she was attending the landmark conference called to establish the United Nations. When, in the course of her lengthy and informative letter Bethune remarked that, “I have been wonderfully received as the only Negro woman consultant to the International Conference,” she spoke volumes about the way the international community and the United States valued women of color in planning the post-war world.1 Th e reality behind the comment, that the world’s leaders did not think these women’s voices mattered, served as the basis for one of the NCNW’s most signifi cant goals in the post-war era. Th ey endeavored through a variety of approaches to ensure that African American women and women of color from around the world, especially those living under the yoke of colonial oppression, had a say in shaping the new world order and had an opportunity to experience the full fl owering of human rights that had been promised in the United Nations Charter. Th e NCNW, founded just ten years earlier to advocate for African American women’s economic and social concerns within the United States, was now determined to serve an integral role in building a new global order grounded in the principles of economic and social justice, racial and gender equality, and respect for human rights. Leaders of the organization did this by advocating for blackwomen’s inclusion, and where appropriate, leadership in discussions about peace and justice taking place in international women’s organizations, in the U.S. State Department, and the United Nations.