“When the history of the nineteenth century comes to be written, women will appear as organizers, and leaders of great organized movements among their own sex for the first time in the history of the world,” wrote journalist Jane Cunningham Croly in her circa-1898 book The History of the Women’s Club Movement in America. Though Croly’s words were referring to the white women’s clubs enjoying rapid expansion at the time, the emerging African American women’s club movement would offer further testament to their truth.

Throughout the 1890s, African American bellwether Ida B. Wells journeyed around the United States documenting and speaking out against lynching. In many of the towns she visited, she helped establish the first African American women’s clubs. Taking her cue, women everywhere began creating local clubs of their own, transforming a fledgling idea into a nationwide movement. Like other women’s clubs, these organizations sought to secure women’s suffrage and to empower women in their communities. However, combating racism was also a key issue for many, given the prevalence of Jim Crow laws at the time. Many clubs joined together in 1896 to create the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), the oldest secular African American organization still in existence.

Not every club fulfilled precisely the same purpose. Some, like Los Angeles’ Wilfandel Club featured in the Winter 2019 issue of Preservation magazine, provided a glamorous space for female black community members to gather and celebrate. Others chose to champion specific issues, such as improving methods of waste disposal. Here are four more African American women’s clubs that helped write the history books.

Phyllis Wheatley YWCA—Washington, D.C. (pictured above)

The oldest YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) building in the nation’s capital sits just a few blocks south of Howard University, whose Founders Library is a National Treasure of the National Trust. Washington’s chapter of the YWCA was organized in 1905 by several African American women who shared membership in a booklover’s club. They held their first meetings in the old Miner Institution Building before their present Colonial Revival-style headquarters could be constructed in 1920, financed in part with funds appropriated by the national YWCA’s War Work Council.

Since then, the chapter has been a powerful, positive force in the city despite receiving much less financial support from its parent organization in its earliest years than white YWCAs. Its members provided shelter and food for African American women newly arrived in Washington from the South seeking employment. In 1923, it protested a U.S. Senate-approved statue that would have glorified the “Mammy” caricature of enslaved African Americans, and helped prevent its construction. Later, it functioned as a recreational and entertainment space during World War II for African American soldiers barred from entering United Service Organizations locations.

As author and academic historian Shirley Ann Wilson Moore writes, the club was “part of the ongoing African American struggle to address an array of social and economic community needs and to challenge the barriers of segregation and sexism.” It helped spur the development of African American women’s clubs across California in the ensuing years, and remains an influential local organization today.

Detroit Study Club—Detroit

The Detroit Study Club began modestly in 1898, when six learned African American women gathered at the home of music teacher Gabrielle Pelham to read works by British poet Robert Browning and further educate themselves on cultural and social issues of the time. Soon the scope of the club’s meetings expanded, and not just in terms of its reading list.

Together, the members of the Detroit Study Club created an organization motivated by a desire for self-betterment and to improve their community. They engaged nationally prominent speakers and brought some of them to Detroit to share their thoughts on how African American interests could best be advanced. This included Booker T. Washington, perhaps the country’s most significant African American leader at the time, whose speaking engagement drew 22 other women’s organizations to attend. Detroit Study Club members also helped fund the educations of underprivileged youth, created the Phyllis Wheatley Home for Aged Colored Ladies (unrelated to the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA), and worked to preserve Frederick Douglass’ home and estate—now the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. Their dedication to community welfare continues today, but they still make time for an annual discussion of Browning that honors their roots.

While the club never had a central location, instead gathering in various members’ homes and hotels for larger events, the main Detroit Public Library building is the closest thing it has to one. The library’s Burton Historical Collection contains its archives from 1898 until today, and a public display case puts the club’s illustrious past in the spotlight.

The Grand Old Lady—Washington, D.C.

As the first permanent headquarters of the NACWC, the five-story “Grand Old Lady” is both a guardian of the past and a steward of the future for a storied organization. It was constructed in 1910 and served the Knights of Columbus before the NACWC’s purchase in 1954. Today it houses records, artifacts, and more that document the NACWC’s history since its establishment in 1896, while also maintaining its use as administrative offices and meeting spaces.