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A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
11 Striving for Equality
This building was the headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women from 1943 to 1966. Political activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) founded NCNW in 1935 in her nearby apartment. She moved the organization here eight years later. The building, a National Historic Site, now houses a museum and archive of African American women's history. During the tenure of Dorothy Height, the Council's fourth president (1957-1998), NCNW moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
Trained as a teacher, Bethune founded a school for African American girls in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1904. (It eventually became Bethune-Cookman University.) Her advocacy work on behalf of women and children brought her national attention in the 1920s and led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to name her to the National Youth Administration in 1936. As a member of FDR's "Black Cabinet" -- prominent African Americans who helped ensure equal access to New Deal jobs, training, and economic assistance -- Bethune promoted black federal employment. During World War II she successfully lobbied President Roosevelt to allow African Americans into the Women's Army Corps. And under her leadership the NCNW led blood drives and sold bonds to demonstrate support for U.S. war efforts.
Ironically, from 1908 until 2005, Confederate Memorial Hall including a veterans' retirement home, operated quietly in 1322 Vermont Avenue, two doors down from the NCNW.
The unusually small house at 1341 Vermont Avenue predates the development of Logan Circle. Such modest structures dotted the landscape before Boss Shepherd's modernizations of the 1970s, which promoted construction of large, fashionable rowhouses. |