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Women'S Clubs are voluntary organizations that were originally formed by women who had been denied access to the major institutions of America's democratic civil society.

Working women formed working girls' clubs and small-town women formed civic improvement associations. In bigger cities, women organized citywide and neighborhood women's clubs and women's educational and industrial unions. Ethnic, church-based, African American, and settlement house women's clubs were founded across the country.

Although women continued to belong to literary, social, and charitable clubs, the majority of women's clubs organized after the Civil War had specific civic and political agendas. The specific purposes of each club differed according to the type of club and its stated purpose.

Visible, but unsung But scan historic

Visible, but unsung But scan historical images of the most dramatic moments of the civil rights movement — protesters blasted by fire hoses and dogs lunging at blacks — and women and girls are everywhere.

There is a 1964 image of Mississippi beautician Vera Piggy styling hair and educating her customers on voter registration.

une was a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader. Born Mary Jane McLeod on July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina, the daughter of former slaves, Bethune won scholarships to attend Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina (now Barber-Scotia College), and the Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Institute). In 1904, she moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, to found her own school. Her one-room school house became the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls before merging with Cookman Institute for Boys in 1923. The merged school later affiliated with the United Methodist Church and became the historically-black college named in her honor, Bethune-Cookman College (now Bethune-Cookman University). In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Bethune the director of the National Youth Administration's Division of Negro Affairs, making her the first black woman to head a federal agency. She also founded the National Council of Negro Women and was an active member of the National Association of Colored Women until her death in May 1955. Date Created Around 1905 Place North America > United States of America > Florida > Daytona Beach Time 1900 AD - 1949 AD Topic Social sciences > Political science > Civil & political rights Social sciences > Education > Schools & their activities; special education Additional Subjects African American girls ; African Americans--Segregation ; Bethune, Mary McLeod, 1875-1955 ; Women ; Women's history Type of Item Prints, Photographs Physical Description 1 negative: black and white; 4 x 5 inches Institution State Library and Archives of Florida External Resource http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.wdl/ftasa.4013

Mary McLeod Bethune was a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader.

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Bethune the director of the National Youth Administration's Division of Negro Affairs, making her the first black woman to head a federal agency.

Beginning in the late 19th century, women's clubs organized in the United States, and were critical in identifying the need for libraries, as well as organizing for their construction and long-term financial support through fundraising and lobbying government bodies.[1] Women's clubs were instrumental in the founding of 75-80 percent of the libraries in the United States.[2] Carnegie's grants were catalysts for library construction based on organizing by women's clubs.

Under segregation black people were generally denied access to public libraries in the Southern United States. Rather than insisting on his libraries being racially integrated, he funded separate libraries for African Americans. For example, at Houston he funded a separate Colored Carnegie Library because black people were prohibited from using the "white" Carnegie Library there.[4]

This coincided with the rise of women's clubs in the post-Civil War period, which were most responsible for organizing efforts to establish libraries, including long-term fundraising and lobbying within their communities to support operations and collections.[6] They led the establishment of 75-80 percent of the libraries in communities across the country.[7]

The second wave of feminism <script src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1371336/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;grp=550;key=false;kvqsegs=D:T:2886:1362:1359:1357:1346:1341;kvtopicid=724633;kvchannel=HISTORY;misc=1291082559495"></script> The women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s, the so-called “second wave” of feminism, represented a seemingly abrupt break with the tranquil suburban life pictured in American popular culture. Yet the roots of the new rebellion were buried in the frustrations of college-educated mothers whose discontent impelled their daughters in a new direction. If first-wave feminists were inspired by the abolition movement, their great-granddaughters were swept into feminism by the civil rights movement, the attendant discussion of principles such as equality and justice, and the revolutionary ferment caused by protests against the Vietnam War. Women’s concerns were on Pres. John F. Kennedy’s agenda even before this public discussion began. In 1961 he created the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and<script src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1388674/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;grp=550;key=false;kvqsegs=D:T:2886:1362:1359:1357:1346:1341;kvtopicid=724633;kvchannel=HISTORY;misc=1291082559533"></script> appointed Eleanor Roosevelt to lead it. Its report, issued in 1963, firmly supported the nuclear family and preparing women for motherhood. But it also documented a national pattern of employment discrimination, unequal pay, legal inequality, and meagre support services for working women that needed to be corrected through legislative guarantees of equal pay for equal work, equal job opportunities, and expanded child-care services. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 offered the first guarantee, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was amended to bar employers from discriminating on the basis of sex. Some deemed these measures insufficient in a country where classified advertisements still segregated job openings by sex, where state laws restricted women’s access to contraception, and where incidences of rape and domestic violence remained undisclosed. In the late 1960s, then, the notion of a women’s rights movement took root at the same time as the civil rights movement, and women of all ages and circumstances were swept up in debates about gender, discrimination, and the nature of equality.