Colored Women's League

The Colored Women's League was a coalition of 113 organizations, and the goal of national unity was at the forefront of the club's objectives.

[3] In a letter written in 1894 to The Woman's Era, the first national newspaper published by and for African American women, Cook reported a few accomplishments of the league.

These included: hosting a series of public lectures for girls at local high schools and Howard University, raising $1,935 towards a home for the league, creating classes for German, English Literature, and hygiene, and establishing a sewing school and mending bureau with 88 students and ten teachers.

[4] According to historian Fannie Barrier Williams, this organization had the largest membership of any African American women's club in the country.

[7] However, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin's appeal to protect the reputation of black women influenced the political agenda of the CWL.

Ruffin's appeal was composed in response to an editorial published by a Southern white journalist, in which the author ridiculed the moral character of black women.

Eventually, at the age of thirty-three and pregnant, Mary Church Terrell of the Colored Women's League was named the first president of the NACW.