Mapping Black Women's Local and National Politics in 1920s Washington, D.C.

Between 1917 and 1930, the number of African American women's national political organizations surged—with the founding of the Negro Women's Republican League (1921), the National Association of Wage Earners (1921), the Anti-Lynching Crusaders (1922), the Women's Political Study Club (1923), the National League of Republican Colored Women (1924), and the National Legislative Council of Colored Women (1924). All of these organizations—with the exception of the Anti-Lynching Crusaders—were founded and established a headquarters in Washington, D.C. within a few city blocks of each other, which was not a coincidence. Rather, these national organizations emerged—in a shared space within the span of a few years—partially because of the strength of black women's local organizing in Washington, D.C., centered in churches, mutual benefit associations, and the Phyllis Wheatley Y.W.C.A. The 1920s marked a watershed moment in the periodization of black women's politics because of the tremendous growth of black women's national organizing. But equally important in this decade, black women's national politics became institutionally anchored to a place—a northwest corridor of Washington, D.C. By the end of this decade, black women across the country could visit D.C. and interact with these organizations to meet fellow members, acquire documents and pamphlets, and obtain information on activities and issues. Black women across the country labored tirelessly in the founding, growth, and institutional development of these political organizations. But black women in D.C. also offered steady streams of local activism, whether it was furnishing meeting spaces, offering organized constituencies of grassroots activism, or supplying a range of political strategies and tactics. This paper, then, maps black women's national politics in Washington, D.C., illuminating the ways that African American women's local activism and organizing traditions—based in churches, mutual benefit associations, and political groups—flowed into these organizations.