Mar-Saline Branch NAACP

11/27/2025

11/13/2025

Colorado USMC veteran Jim Blane, almost 101 years old, sat down with CPR News to detail his experience in one of the most pivotal WWII battles, 80 years later.

11/12/2025

09/15/2025

Hispanic Heritage Month is a month-long celebration of Hispanic and Latino history and culture. Sharing a link in comments

07/22/2025

NACW's motto, "lifting as we climb," was coined by the organization's co-founder and first president Mary Church Terrell, a prominent suffragist and civil rights activist.

The National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the first secular national organization dedicated to the improving the livelihoods of Black women, was founded in 1896. NACW's motto, "lifting as we climb," was coined by the organization's co-founder and first president Mary Church Terrell, a prominent suffragist and civil rights activist.

Unlike predominantly white suffrage organizations, the NACW advocated for a wide range of reforms to "uplift" and improve life for all African Americans, as Jim Crow laws enforced segregation in the South and imposed barriers that prevented Black men from casting their ballots as well. NACW suffragists wanted the vote for women to ensure that Black men could vote too.

As NACW president, Terrell campaigned tirelessly among Black organizations and mainstream white organizations, and fought for women's suffrage and civil rights because she realized that she belonged “to the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount…both s*x and race.”

Terrell declined a third-term re-election and was named honorary president of NACW in 1901. Eight years later, she was among the founders and charter members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

07/21/2025

Born in 1875 to formerly enslaved parents, Mary McLeod Bethune became one of the most important Black educators, civil and women’s rights leaders, and government officials of the 20th century. The college she founded set educational standards for today’s Black colleges, and her role as an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave Black Americans an advocate in government.

A champion of racial and gender equality, Bethune founded many organizations and led voter registration drives after women gained the vote in 1920, risking racist attacks. In 1924, she was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and in 1935, she became the founding president of the National Council of Negro Women.

Bethune was also friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, and became the highest ranking Black woman in government when President Franklin Roosevelt named her director of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration, where she remained until 1944.

In 1940, she became vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP), a position she held for the rest of her life. As a member of the advisory board that created the Women’s Army Corps in 1942, Bethune ensured it was racially integrated. Appointed by President Harry S. Truman, Bethune was the only woman of color at the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945.

On July 13, 2022, Bethune became the first African American to be represented with a state statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol.

Learn more about this trailblazer: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune