National Council of the Young Men's Christian Associations of the United States of America. Colored Work Department

Description

YMCA work with and by blacks began in 1853 when Anthony Bowen established the first ""colored"" association in Washington D.C. As Anthony Bowen's work in the 1850s indicates, African Americans embraced the YMCA early on. In the YMCA, black leaders saw not only a means of providing a wholesome, Christian, environment for young men, but through educational and leadership opportunities, a means for racial advancement. Social and financial conditions for black people made it difficult for the movement to grow very quickly. Nevertheless, by the late 1860s, the YMCA found a firm foothold in the community with associations established in New York City, Philadelphia, Charleston, S.C., and Harrisburg, Pa. In 1867, E. V. C. Eato of New York City became the first black delegate to attend the YMCA's annual convention. There were 36 black associations (two-thirds of which were in black academic institutions) in 1890 when a national Colored Work Department was created under the leadership of William Hunton. Jesse Moorland and Channing Tobias later succeeded him as senior secretaries of the department. In 1910, the black YMCA movement was given a boost when philanthropist Julius Rosenwald offered financial help to black communities wanting to build YMCAs. Black leaders in 24 cities took advantage of the offer and constructed buildings in the 1910s and 1920s. The black work program suffered some financial difficulties during the depression, but the number of local associations decreased only slightly, and by 1945, the last year that African American associations were reported as a separate...

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