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A highlight of one local woman’s summer was connecting with peers she’d met during her tenure as the 25th president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.
Patricia Fletcher of Steubenville said being the keynote speaker at the Southwest Region of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and Youth Affiliates’ 39th-biennial convention held in late July through early August in Los Angeles reaffirmed friendships she fostered during her presidency of the NACWC from 1996 through 2002.
“When I had been the national president, I had traveled through all these different states, and it was great to see all these ladies. It was just a wonderful experience,” Fletcher said.
The Southwest region of the NACWC encompasses California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.
The convention theme was “A Call to Action to Ensure the Legacy of ‘Sisterhood’ Continues through Service Lifting as We Climb (Reclaiming, Recruiting, Retaining, Rebuilding, Recommitting).”
The NACWC was formed in July 1896 at the first annual convention of the National Federation of Afro-American Women in Washington, D.C., by a merger of the National Federation of African-American Women, the Women’s Era Club of Boston and the National League of Colored Women of Washington, D.C. at the call of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. From 1896 to 1954 it was known as the National Association of Colored Women.
At the banquet held Aug. 4 at the Hilton Los Angeles, Fletcher told the audience members that the women need the organization as much today as when it was founded more than 115 years ago.
Fletcher reviewed the organization’s legacy, noting the NACWC is the oldest women of color organization in the United States – an organization that helped all women on issues such as civil rights and injustice. Its founders included Harriett Tubman, Frances Harper, Ida Wells and Mary Church Terrell, who adopted the motto “Lifting as We Climb.”
The organization paid the mortgage on the Fredrick Douglass home in 1916; established the Hallie Q. Brown Scholarships in 1924; and purchased the national headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1954.
“Just to refer back to our legacy, what motivated 250,000 women from around the world to join our sisterhood?” she asked her peers. “I think the motivating factor was individual fulfillment. Are you ready to act? Members, I need you to be courageous, be willing to change, and the heed the words of our mission ‘come alive, lifting as we climb,'” she said.
Fletcher said the organization’s challenges include retaining its foundational membership while recruiting younger members to meet the needs of the present and future.
An educator and administrator in Steubenville City Schools, Fletcher retired in 1996 to lead the NACWC, the oldest African-American secular organization in existence today. During her tenure the club developed Grandparents Academies that seek to recapture the moral values of earlier generations and expanded NACWC’s youth clubs.
Active in the community in various capacities, Fletcher and her husband, Lawrence, have one son, Anthony, a cardiologist in Little Rock, Ark.