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April, 1980 - New National BLACK MONITOR
The National Council of Negro Women
Strategic Framework for Power for Black America
Collective Potential
There are more than 9 million black
women in America. In the areas of income,
education, and occupation, black women
occupy the lowest rungs of the nation’s lad
der. This has been true throughout our na
tional history.
But there is another—and vastly more
significant—side of the picture. Black
women are more closely knit than any
similar segment of the U.S. population.
“We have always been held together by the
simple force of a common oppression,” so
Dorothy Height, President of the National
Council of Negro Women, notes.
Miss Height explains: “The long
standing conditions of being forced
together at the bottom of every ladder in
our nation’s life, ironically, has provided us
with what increasing numbers among us see
as potentially the most solid base for action,
social outreach and economic power of any
similar group in America. We are like a
sleeping giant; we are America’s greatest
unused asset. Our purpose is, and always
has been, to organize black women in such
away that our collective power may be used
not only for the benefit —and freedom —of
black families, but for the good and
greatness of our nation as a whole.”
Like a secure and thoughtfully proud
prime minister who presides over a com
monwealth reflecting almost unlimited
assets, Miss Height, who has been named
by President Carter to serve on a
50-member Commission on the National
Agenda for the 80’s, continues to remind all
with whom she works that the potential of
black women, when harnessed properly,
can turn our nation around —and even do
much to change our world.
Vision and Power
The National Council of Negro Women,
Inc. represents the nation’s most substan
tial step toward the harnessing of black
women’s power. This has been the principal
work of the National Council of Negro
Women (NCNW) since its founding in
1935.
i ll I
f* I '' M y - ■- P " s
Dorothy I. Height speaks in support of the Equal Rights Amendment at "National Conference on a Black Agenda for the 80's”
held in Richmond, Virginia.
NCNW’s founder was the legendary
Mary McLeod Bethune (please see
MONITOR, October 1979), a woman of
immense vision and imagination, who
recognized the need for black women to
unite for power. At the time of NCNW’s
founding, Mrs. Bethune noted that black
women, “the trained and untrained alike,
stood outside the mainstream of American
opportunity, influence and power.” Mrs.
Bethune added: “The National Council of
Negro Women must provide vision and
organized power.”
The two themes of vision—ever-shifting
and adjusting appropriately to the changing
perceptions of the times —and power, are
woven into the total life, into every activity,
of the National Council of Negro Women.
Miss Height explains: “Sometimes our
vision has been infinitely more clear than at
other times, but always we have had to be
dreamers —a visionary or far-seeing and im
aginative group of women —who knew that
the key to our destiny was to be found in the
very fact of our solidarity—in what may be
understood as our collective power.”
It was Mary McLeod Bethune’s emphasis
Pulling Ourselves Up By Our Own Bootstraps
upon power which has inspired Miss
Dorothy Height, who has served as the
president of the National Council of Negro
Women since 1958.
Cooperation Essential
Miss Height states: “Mrs. Bethune had a
profound effect on me. She was always
urging others to have a sense of their own
power, and of the power of their collective
numbers. I think it was ingenious of Mrs.
Bethune to have given us an instrument like
NCNW. It is not perfect; it leaves a lot to be
desired; but it is an instrument and mech
anism for black women to simultaneously
serve our people’s urgent needs and to build
for long-range and enduring power.
“When we as black women—in all of our
organizations throughout the country, both
large and small, begin to relate to the Na
tional Council of Negro Women as a na
tional framework for power and service,
then we shall see ourselves and our people
in a vastly different and a far brighter light.
Then we begin to get an understanding of
the difference between just working on in
terpersonal relations and in trying to change
power relations.”
Demonstrating her rare understanding of
the concern for power as a “first principle
and priority” for every activity of black
people, Miss Height continues: “Until
black people are able to work together in
the broadest kind of unity, we are never
going to exercise our full power.
“In the National Council of Negro
Women, our dream is to have every black
women’s organization in America see its
own immediate operations as a part of our
overall work—to see what they each do as a
local expression of our total concern and
collective effort—working together as we
should and must.
Focus on Youth
From its inception, the National Council
of Negro Women has had a concern for
young people. Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune
organized NCNW in 1935 when she was
Director of Minority Affairs in the National
Youth Administration. In her legacy, she
says very clearly, “I leave you, finally, a
responsibility to our young people. ”
NCNW continues to be concerned about
providing opportunities for the young as
part of its historical background.
“But the plight of black and other
minority youth is so critical today that we
have to be especially concerned at this time.
Minority youth have the highest rate of
unemployment, and the highest number of
those who are out of school and out of
work. The ones who are in the worst posi
tion are the teenaged girls. The tragedy is
that the gap is widening, because one in
creasingly needs more training, and more
skills, to get the jobs that are available.
“NCNW feels that a program like our
Youth Career Development Project offers
an opportunity for us to get even more in
volved in trying to help in the present
critical situation. Through this program, we
are trying to help young people understand
what is happening in the world of work
today, what skills are required by various
••■••••••••••• (Continued on page 18.)