The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) and South Africa: Global Black Motherhood during the Early Cold War

Constructions of motherhood have provided black women with an important platform from which to address both race and gender oppression. In the decades following the Second World War, African American women regularly embraced their identity as mothers in order to forge international connections with black women overseas. Focusing on the work of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in South Africa, this paper explores how African American women used maternalist ideas, such as the importance of the home and the care of black children, to develop a series of mutual concerns with black women in Africa. The NCNW’s work with the African Children’s Feeding Scheme– a church based program that aimed to tackle the widespread malnourishment of African children in Johannesburg in the 1950s – mirrored many of the local race concerns of NCNW members in this period. Adopting a transnational focus, the paper examines how the NCNW’s involvement with the provision of food and care for black South African children was based around a global understanding of black motherhood. By investing in the image of a healthy and self-sufficient black family globally, the NCNW directly challenged white racist stereotypes of black inferiority. Instead, by extending their ideals of black motherhood to South Africa, the NCNW promoted a global image of black independence and self- sufficiency that shaped movements for black self-determination in the 1950s. This paper brings documents on the international activities of the NCNW, housed at the National Archives of Black Women’s History in Washington D.C., into conversation with South African government records and materials relating to black South African organizations such as the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) and the National Council of African Women (NCAW). This multi-archival approach enables a truly transnational analysis of black women’s activism during the early Cold War.