Before there was the Urban League and the NAACP were created, there were black women who created clubs and organizations. Groups like the Bethel Literary and Historical Association in Washington D.C.. Their main concern was cultural , religious and social issues. The women in the groups were middle class not concerned with gossip but more concerned with community problems. The National Federation of Women and the National Association of Colored Woman's League merged in 1896 and formed the National Association Of Colored Women (NACW). Their motto was "Lifting as We Climb". By 1914 the NACW had fifty thousand members in one thousand clubs nationwide.Margaret Murray Washington, the wife of Booker T. Washington served as president for the NACW form 1912 to 1916 and the clubs National Notes was published at Tuskegee until 1922. Not all members were happy about Tuskegee publishing the notes due to some members such as Ida B. Wells, who claimed that Tuskegee Machine censored the publication. The NAWC also worked to help do away with poverty and racial discrimination and promote education. Clubs were formed across the nation named Phillis Wheatley clubs, an eighteenth century poet . These clubs helped single black working women where as other clubs refused to allow them in. Also in 1938 members of the Frances Harper Women's Club established a community center in Ithaca New York which Eleanor Roosevelt applauded. In her words, this club "realized a community need and went to work in a practical way to solve the problem." The community center gave black women in this city a forum to express themselves and allowed for them exercise their beliefs in racial equality and interracial civil rights.
^The African American Odyssey--Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, Stanley Harrold ^Conference Papers -- Association for the Study of African American Life & History. 2006 Annual Meeting, p1. 0p