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TO THE OFFICERS, DELEGATES AND FRIENDS OF THE
THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE NEW JERSEY
STATE FEDERATION OF COLORED WOMEN’S CLUBS
Greetings: Dear Co-Workers:
We praise our dear Heavenly Father that our lives
have been spared and that we are permitted to meet in this our
Third Annual Meeting under such pleasant circumstances.
Thirty-three months ago, we met in the City of
Trenton on what was called a conference to consider the
advisability of forming ourselves into an organized body; the
success and enthusiasm of that meeting went beyond our most
sanguine expectations. Because of our desire to join hands with
that galaxy of 100,000 noble women who determined to "Lift as
they climb," we changed the month of our annual meeting,
therefore on the 28th of July 1916, we met in the town
of Englewood, N.J., in a record breaking convention. In nine
months we had enrolled 33 clubs. We held our second annual meeting
in July 1917 in the City of Plainfield. According to Mrs. Mary B.
Talbert, National President of Colored Women’s Clubs, Mrs. A. W.
Hunton, and Miss Eva Bowls of the National Y. W. C. A., and other
women of national character, this was one of the greatest meetings
ever held by the women of the race. During the year we more than
doubled our club membership.
Today, we greet you as your humble servant, for
the third time, with greater confidence in your loyalty, your
ability and determination to "work and serve the hour."
And what an hour it is; marvelous, appalling, far-reaching ---
when we selected as our motto, three years ago, "Work and
serve the hour," we little dreamed of its significance,
little dreamed of this day of service; service to the world and to
the nation as well as service to the race. We are face to face
today with tremendous problems which must be met and solved;
problems that require brain, thought, contact, loyalty,
consideration and prayer to succeed. Divided it would be
impossible. Today, as a race of people, we are entering into new
and untried paths: how well this scripture applies, "Ye have
not passed this way heretofore." As a race we have passed
through the grind and gall of slavery, through the bitter
struggles of the Civil War and acquitted ourselves like men and
women. We enter upon the activities of a new life hampered on
every side, but thank God we have made good.
But today is a new day. Not only a new day for the
Negro Race, but a new day for peoples of the world. Men and Women
alike aroused to thought, to action, to prayer as never before.
It can plainly be seen that this is preeminently
Woman’s Age, and she is steadily coming into her own. The call
to Woman is loud and long. To women of great ability and to women
who fee that they have no ability at all. To women trained and
untrained.. God is calling woman to come to a knowledge of Him
"Whom to know aright is life eternal," and then to go
into the cities and towns and help struggling humanity. Calling us
because of our relationship with Him, because we are the
homemakers, the wives, the mothers, the great fountain from which
purity must spring, yea, the very salt of the earth; and He is
saying to us in the language of the poet, "Awake, Awake, put
on thy strength, thy beautiful array; the day of freedom dawns at
length, the Lord’s appointed day."
The close of this dreadful war will usher in a new
era for the Negro people of this country. Are we preparing
ourselves? Much of the responsibility of preparedness rests with
the womanhood of the race. There are enough of us, we have
ability, intelligence, loyalty and love; but we are still too
divided. The only way we can ever hope to succeed is by banding
ourselves together as a unit. Every State in the Union ought to be
organized and become a part of the national body.
The educated, trained Negro woman, whether trained
in the school house or by personal effort, owes it to her less
fortunate sister to join hands with her in the struggle for a
better womanhood, better homes, a better community life, -- a
united struggle for equality before the law, to down race
discrimination, segregation, jimcrowism, mob violence, and lynch
law. But it must be pull one, pull all, pull long and all together
and it is certainly worth the struggle.
OUR LOYALTY AS AMERICANS
America is now into one of the most dreadful wars
the world has ever known. The attempt has been made to brand the
Negro. But no honest person white or black, could possibly doubt
the loyalty of the Negro in the present war. "Actions speak
louder than words," hence epochs in the past history of the
Negro speak for themselves. He has been true in every crisis, even
when the struggle was to keep him in bondage, he acquitted himself
as I believe no other race could have done under the
circumstances. In the Spanish American War he was among the first
to shed his blood, and in the recent struggle with Mexico his
blood first soaked the soil. Yes, the first day Crispus Attucks
fell on Boston Common up to the present war, the Negro has proven
himself a true American, a lover of freedom and true democracy. Do
you ask me why he suffers and dies for America when America offers
him such poor protection? My answer is, because it is his home, he
knows no other country, no other flag. Our quarrel with America as
one has expressed it is a family quarrel and must be settled at
home. No German, no other race need try to help in the settlement
of our differences. We are determined to forget, to bury every
injustice done us until the war is over; and then we shall keep up
the old struggle of Right against Wrong.
WAR WORK IN OUR STATE
We have been trying to ascertain, and still hope
in some way to be able to keep a record of all war work as near
as possible being done by the women of our own state; to that
end we sent several cards to women throughout the state to
report to us their findings. Cranford, N.J. was the first to
report the work of two organizations: 8000 various kinds of
surgical dressing, 12 pairs of hospital bed socks, 4 suits of
pajamas, 6 hospital bed shirts, 6 scarfs, 6 sweaters, 12
wash-cloths, assisted Red Cross Benefit that netted $181.00.
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