The American Association of University Women

Abstract

Like the League of Women Voters (LWV), the history of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) demonstrates the extent to which national leadership and local branches, particularly those in the South, differed on the issue of racial integration. The AAUW faced a crisis within its association when African-American activist Mary Church Terrell sought membership of the Washington DC branch. This chapter explores the response of the national Board to that crisis, arguing that, like the LWV, the AAUW struggled to balance the need to repudiate racial segregation in order to maintain their credibility as a national institution, with the unwillingness of some of their branches to cede the principle of local control and choice on branch membership. It explores the way in which branches who were reluctant to accept racial integration articulated their position as part of a resistance to national leadership which they saw as dominating and insensitive to local autonomy.