Organized White Women and the Challenge of Racial Integration, 1945-1965 by Helen Laville

Author:Helen Laville
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

AAUW President Althea Hottel also wrote to reassure Blair that the national association, while insisting on its authority over membership by-laws, was not seeking to impose a hasty top-down programme of racial integration. In a mealy-mouthed letter which never once used the words “Negro,” “racial” or “integration” Hottel posited a policy of gradualism, suggesting, “In those states where there are public laws which prevent certain associations of different groups, it seems reasonable to expect that the branches could develop educational programs which would help them with the issues at stake. They could also associate themselves with the good forces in the community to help solve some of the inter-cultural problems. These things they could do without violating the laws of their state and ultimately they may find it possible in the years to come to be instrumental in changing some of those laws.”

While seeking to reassure southern branches that the AAUW did not intend to launch an active and high-profile campaign of integration, national leadership was nonetheless insistent that the issue of membership policy was in the jurisdiction of the national Board, not regional branches. Without such an approach, they argued, the very existence of the AAUW as a public institution was fatally undermined. Hottel explained, “The national Board of directors must take leadership in the matter which refers to the very fundamentals of the Association; its membership. It seems reasonable to expect the branches to have their by-laws in conformity with those of the national by-laws.” 50 Like branch membership, national leadership shied away from addressing the racial politics at the centre of the crisis and instead focused on the question of national authority and branch autonomy. A letter from the AAUW Board of Directors explaining the issue to state and branch directors on 12 August 1948 hardly mentioned the issue of race at all, other than a one line reference to the question whether the Washington DC branch had been “lawfully expelled for its refusal to admit Negroes to its membership.” 51 The national Board focused instead on the importance of the issue to the authority and influence of the AAUW, arguing, “If we adopt a selective policy with reference to the admission of those who are eligible, the association is indicating to member colleges that some of their graduates are unsatisfactory and that we are a social rather than an educational organization” 52

The national Board hoped that their tough position towards the Washington DC branch and their request that all branches re-examine their by-laws to ensure they were in harmony with the national position would settle the issue and put an end to the unfortunate publicity and bad feeling that the controversy was engendering. The Washington branch was in no mood to accept their dismissal without a fight, however, and was still less minded to cede the substantial property rights of the branch to the minority integrationists. The majority group took their case to District County for the US District of Columbia, where the appropriately named Judge

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