The History Channel original podcast.
History this week, October 24th, 1945.
I'm Alana Casanova Burgess.
On this day. building in Washington, DC, the charter of the United Nations finally becomes official.
But four months earlier, its fate was much less certain.
The world has filled with golden sunshine and fresh and invigorating air from the Pacific.
This is in contrast to the cities in ruin that many of the delegates are coming from.
World War II has just ended in Europe and is still raging in the Pacific.
Yet world leaders have decided that, even before the fighting has come to an end, they need to do something to stop this.
A world war from happening again.
That's why 50 countries have sent representatives to California.
They meet in San Francisco's Opera House, converted into a meeting space just for this conference.
The main hall features more than 3000 red plush seats for the delegates and other attendees, facing a stage adorned with four golden pillars linked by olive branches, representing the four freedoms promised four years earlier by former President Franklin Roosevelt freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
These countries have come together to form a world peacemaking organization, already called the United Nations.
How would this new organization work?
That's the task in front of them.
For two months, delegates meet and debate, pontificate and negotiate.
And while 50 countries have a voice, there are really five, the big five that dominate the discussion.
The Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, China, and the United States.
There are thousands of Americans in attendance, counting media and support staff.
But the delegation itself is made up of seven official delegates and 126 consultants, 133 people in total.
Of those 133 Americans, 128 are white.
The other three are black. all there representing the NAACP.
W.E.B.
Du Bois.
Scholar and co-founder of the organization Walter White, the executive secretary and the only Black woman representing the United States in this process, Mary McLeod Bethune.
Bethune has been an education activist for nearly half a century.
She was an advisor to FDR and remains a close confidant of Eleanor Roosevelt.
And her attendance at this UN conference was anything but a sure thing.
But now that she's here, she's going to make her voice heard.
Bethune warns her colleagues that the UN Charter must include some key points if it's going to actually achieve its stated goal of world peace.
It must deal with colonialism and racism around the world.
Of course the thought is, with the UN setting the standard, maybe life for Black Americans, especially in the Jim Crow South, could improve.
If these ideas can get into the UN Charter which will go into effect on October 24 1945, then maybe, just maybe, true freedom can be achieved.
Bethune is the only African-American woman in the US delegation in 1945, but she won't be the only one to have an impact on the UN.
Today two Black women who had a part in the earliest days of the United Nations, activist Mary McLeod Bethune and journalist Marguerite Cartwright.
Why did they believe the UN was so important when their own country continued to deny them equality?
And how can their work reframe the way we view the struggle for civil rights beyond US borders for all nations?
The story is useful for, I think, helping us think about leadership, how we conceptualize leadership.
Professor Keisha Blain argues.
If we look to some of the people that might be considered in the margins of the UN's early history women like Mary McLeod Bethune we might be able to capture what the United Nations could be a more respected version of a world organization that so many criticize today.
Who is the leader?
Is it the person that's visible, the person holding a particular title?
Or could it also be the person who is invisible in the story, who might be moving quietly behind the scenes, but they're saying something that could in fact, shape the narrative.
Mary McLeod is born in 1875 in South Carolina.
Her parents had both been formerly enslaved and had continued working after the Civil War for their former enslavers on the same plantation until they could save enough money to buy their own land.
Mary is expected to pick cotton as well, even as a young girl.
One day when she's nine or 10, she's with her mother at the farm owner's home.
While her mother cooks, Mary wanders over to the daughter's playhouse outside.
The daughter is there and lets her in.
Mary notices a book on the shelf, picks it up.
The daughter shouts, put that book down.
You can't read.
And that was true.
She couldn't.
But the insult sticks with her.
Shortly after this incident, a Presbyterian mission opens a school 10 miles from the farm.
Mary enrolls, making that 10-mile round trip there and back every day.
Within two years, she's reading the family's Bible.
This childhood experience becomes her life's work, especially after a Supreme Court decision.
Plessy versus Ferguson enshrines the disparity between educational opportunities for white and black children.
Even as Plessy versus Ferguson establishes the notion of separate but equal, what we know is on the ground the opportunities for Black children are certainly separate, but they're by no means equal.
Mary McLeod Bethune, she had gotten married, moves to Florida.
In Daytona, she rents a small house.
With just 150 and some furniture made from old crates, Bethune tries to address this issue of education head on.
Mary McLeod Bethune established Daytona Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro girls.
And she's really committed to creating a space for Black children to have quality education, to have access to quality education.
She starts with six students, five girls and her son.
She truly creates the school from nothing.
She's using elderberries to make ink for writing, burnt splinters of wood for pencils.
But within two years.
What's now known in the neighborhood as the Bethune School has 250 students, teachers and expanding the curriculum to include academics and vocational training.
She recognizes that this is going to be perhaps one of the most important avenues for Black people to improve their socioeconomic status.
In 1923, the school merges with a local college to create what would become Bethune-Cookman University, which is still operating today.
As the school grows, so does Bethune's profile.
She's traveling extensively.
She's speaking across the globe.
In 1924 she becomes president of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, which she seeks to make international.
She travels to London, Paris, Geneva, Rome.
Bethune argues that the problems Black people face in America Racism here quote And given her commitments to civil rights and human rights and women's rights, she says forges a number of relationships that are quite significant, and one being the relationship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Eleanor Roosevelt first invites Bethune to a luncheon in 1927, well before she and her husband would ascend to the White House.
It's an event for the presidents of women's organizations across the country.
Bethune is the only Black woman in attendance, and some of the other women refuse to sit near her.
But Sarah Roosevelt, Franklin's mother, invites Bethune to join her side.
This is the beginning of a lasting friendship and collaboration between Bethune and the Roosevelt family.
In particular Eleanor, granted her access to a new level of influence, especially after the Roosevelt's arrival in Washington in 1933.
She is able to move in very prominent circles.
She has access to a number of spaces that are generally not as open for others.
In 1936, FDR appoints Bethune as head of the Office of Minority Affairs within the National Youth Administration.
This makes her the first Black person to ever lead a federal division and the highest paid Black American in the US government at the time.
She's considered a member of Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, his unofficial group of advisors on issues of race.
Bethune would later say of FDR, he will be proclaimed the greatest humanitarian of his time.
In the late days of World War II, when rumors start swirling about a conference to establish a partnership among nations, the United Nations.
Bethune, now 69 years old, knows that she has to be there.
Bethune is part of a transnational network of activists who are really thinking about the 1940s as a moment of transformation, as one in which The conversation might be shifted to not only talk about peace and security in the context of war, but also talk about freedom, and freedom for all people, especially those who are living under colonialism in various parts of the globe.
Bethune's advocacy has given her a unique lens into oppression in the US and abroad.
In her mind.
There is an undeniable link between the struggle for Black people in the US and people of color globally.
And Bethune believes that if she can prove this link at the UN conference, it might promote freedom on a global scale.
The nation might move in the right direction as the world moves in the right direction.
Franklin Roosevelt had died just weeks before the conference was set to begin and Bethune appeals directly to the new American president, Harry Truman, who says no, you cannot join the US delegation.
He didn't see a reason for her to be there.
There's outcry in the Black press maybe articles encouraged by Bethune herself.
One paper called her treatment shabby.
But when that's not enough, Bethune calls in a favor from an old friend.
Eleanor Roosevelt then becomes an important advocate for Bethune as conversations are taking place about who will represent the United States.
Right before the conference begins, Bethune is added to the list of official consultants in the American delegation.
The press release literally says she's included at the last moment.
Now the question becomes, will anyone listen to her?
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She needs no introduction.
The ever-present autograph seeker.
And Mary McLeod Bethune is gracious.
A 1945 newsreel shows Mary McLeod Bethune signing autographs at a train station.
Mrs. Bethune is off to the San Francisco conference as a special consultant.
She received the appointment from the State Department.
Seeing the clip of Mary McLeod Bethune signing autographs and just greeting people on her way to San Francisco really encapsulates her impact on the nation.
It really is something to behold, and it helps demonstrate just how influential she was at the time.
When Bethune arrives in San Francisco, optimism is in the air.
Feeling a sense of hope that perhaps in the aftermath of this war, things might actually begin to change.
Delegates from around the world have gathered in California to write the fundamental charter of this new organization establishing a framework to maintain peace.
A quote solid structure to build a better world.
Entering the conference as the only Black woman there in an official capacity, Bethune was definitely feeling the weight of her responsibility.
She knows that all eyes are on her.
She knows that whatever she says will be reflecting on other Black women and other Black people.
In and around the San Francisco Opera House.
The delegates discuss abstract definitions of human rights and collective security.
Bethune is with them, hammering home what they're not addressing.
I think she points out the inconsistencies, one might say the hypocrisy too, because she's essentially moving beyond the buzzwords.
It's not enough to talk about human dignity.
It's not enough to talk about equality.
All of these terms are meaningful, but they don't actually materialize if you're not willing to confront very real problems.
For her, there was no attempt to call for human rights without directly confronting colonialism.
And at one point she's saying if you don't actually talk about colonialism, if you don't talk about imperialism, than what you're essentially doing is saying that it's about human rights for some groups and not for others.
Remember, this is still a time when the big five countries still maintain colonies across the world.
It's a long list, but for example, the U.S. rules the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.
The U.K. still controls India, Nigeria and Palestine.
Then there's French Indochina and Southeast Asia.
Bethune and her NAACP co-consultants see this pattern of colonial domination as an existential threat to freedom and send out a memo to the other delegates.
The colonial system of government, however deeply rooted in history and custom, is today undemocratic, socially dangerous and a main cause of wars.
They send a telegram to the U.S.
Secretary of State, which is made public.
She was not afraid to confront these things, which naturally meant that some people did not appreciate her.
She tells a reporter, a lot of people are discouraged about what's going on at that conference.
They see the United States talking about trusteeships and mandates instead of talking about freedom for all people, no matter where they live.
I wish I could have had those people with me sitting in a chair beside me at those meetings, seeing what I saw.
When the UN Charter is signed, set to go in effect October 1945, there is no mention of colonialism.
And Jim Crow segregation, or segregation in any country, is essentially allowed to continue.
I think she felt frustrated By the time Mary McLeod Bethune leaves San Francisco.
I think it's quite clear that she's not going to actually accomplish everything that she set out to accomplish.
It's clear to her that everything that she's calling for, that these things are likely not to happen.
But it also means that she has to keep doing the work.
While her goals aren't met, Bethune's participation in the conference does raise her international profile.
Her advocacy continues to expand outside of the United States.
She soon visits Haiti and Liberia, where she's welcomed as a hero.
She also succeeds in inspiring other Black leaders to turn to the United Nations as a way to potentially lead the way on issues of racism and segregation.
Again, if this international organization takes a stance, it stood to reason that the US would have to follow.
The most famous of these attempts comes in 1951.
William Patterson and several other activists come together, put forth a petition.
We charge genocide.
We charge genocide.
It is a petition prepared by William Patterson and W.E.B.
Du Bois, signed by nearly 100 other American intellectuals.
It charges the United States with genocide for its treatment of its own black citizens.
It's making an appeal saying, look at how Black people are being treated in the U.S.
Based on your definition of genocide, we believe you should do something about it.
The petition, 237 pages long, cites lynchings and mob violence, as well as segregation laws and practices that promote voter disenfranchisement across US history, all to argue that America had been carrying out a long and violent genocide against a segment of its population.
Internationally, We Charge Genocide is hailed as a monumental achievement.
Not at home.
Even other Black activists distance themselves from the petition.
US officials are against the idea and pressure the UN not to consider it.
Eleanor Roosevelt calls it ridiculous.
The press calls it communist propaganda.
And so the UN never brings it forward for debate.
Their stance?
You know, thank you for sharing that, but you don't represent a nation state.
It's a very bizarre response, but it amounts to we can't help you.
This incident is later blamed for truly damaging the perception of the U.N. among Black Americans.
And yet that very same year, a black journalist gets her UN press credentials and decides she is going to bring the United Nations to her community in a way they've never seen before.
Marguerite Cartwright was one of the brightest students at Boston University in the 1920s.
She graduated with a master's degree at just 19 years old.
She wrote her thesis on the African origins of drama, having been raised on stories of her pre diaspora ancestors.
And after she completes her master's thesis, she simply could not find a job.
Cartwright spends a little time as a schoolteacher but with slim opportunities available for a Black woman in the middle of the Great Depression, she enters show business.
It was not necessarily what she intended to do, but it was an opportunity that opened up and she took it.
Cartwright ends up as a dancer at the Cotton Club in Harlem, in front of acts like Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway.
She appears in a couple of Broadway shows, and even some movies too, but she soon finds herself wanting something more.
She goes from job to job and she's constantly trying to figure out a place where she could utilize all of these skills and knowledge that she has.
In 1939 she ends up working at the New York City welfare department, which is doing good work under FDR's New Deal policies.
And Cartwright is a fan.
She was so excited about his campaign, she was constantly talking about it.
She really saw that he had a vision that would improve the socioeconomic conditions of Black people.
Apparently, she's almost as much a fan of FDR as Mary McLeod Bethune was.
But when you work in government, FDR in the office, which is a no-no.
They gave her a warning and they said you can resign or you can end your campaign. she resigns.
But it actually was a silver lining there.
Because she lost her job.
She ended up enrolling as a doctoral student in the School of Education at New York University.
Cartwright is back in academia.
This is where she discrimination legislation and gets her doctorate in 1948, one of the few Black women in America to achieve that level of education at the time.
Then she returns to teaching at Hunter College, also in New York City.
But she also starts to write.
In 1950, she's approached by the editors of the Negro History Bulletin.
They want her to pen a response to an anthropologist who had argued enslaved people had not been quote ready for freedom after the Civil War.
She tears the argument apart as backwards and racist.
Slaves were not dogs or pianos, but human beings.
This pushes her writing career forward and she soon becomes a fixture in Black newspapers across the country.
She's a columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier and also the New York Amsterdam News.
And what is remarkable about her is how determined she is to draw the connections between what's taking place in the US context and what's happening globally.
Cartwright had already traveled extensively throughout her academic career and armed with her entire lived experience and a PhD in sociology, she starts to embrace a similar philosophy as Mary McLeod Bethune that Black Americans are directly affected by what happens on the world stage.
Especially what happens at the UN.
So she's already interested in what's happening globally.
And at some point she recognizes that the UN has to be the avenue through which to do this kind of work.
She starts a weekly column for the Pittsburgh Courier around the United Nations.
We oftentimes talk about this notion of having a seat at the table.
In the case of Margaret Cartwright, she didn't have a seat at the table, but she was in the room.
She's attending UN General Assemblies, peace summits, UNESCO conferences.
She could listen in.
She could take notes.
She could digest, sort of process what's happening.
And then she could reflect on it and go back and write about them for the public.
And in so doing, attempt to shape the dialogue properly. from outside of the space.
Cartwright is not your traditional journalist.
She blurs the lines between news and opinion, keeping her readers informed while also telling them what she thinks.
Her first column in the series starts.
The UN, where history is made, geography carved out, continents destroyed, where the defenses of peace must be established.
This is my beat.
Cartwright is very direct.
She's a very bold thinker and a bold writer, the kind of person who's not afraid to call people out.
In 1955, she reports from a UNESCO meeting in Milwaukee.
She writes about William O Walker, a Black representative from the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
Who she says is not really paying attention and is falling asleep.
She confronts another delegate about why UNESCO hadn't taken up desegregation or human rights.
He responded that if Americans wanted to take that position, they'd need approval from the US Congress.
She writes If this were true, it would make the very existence of the body meaning UNESCO the biggest and most useless fraud of all time.
And I can only imagine the kinds of attentions that she had to deal with at the interpersonal level because she's naming names.
But ultimately, in her brutal honesty, Cartwright explains to her readers that the UN isn't perfect, but it's what we've got.
Quote the United Nations, with all its faults, is the only international organization for the fulfillment of our hopes for collective security freedom, justice and peace in the world.
She's saying we have the power to bring about the change, rather than say oh, the UN isn't doing what we want, so we'll move on.
She's saying, no, stay with it, stay with it and bring about the changes you want to see.
Marguerite Cartwright continues to travel the world, report on international affairs and teach sociology until her death in 1986.
She hasn't become well-known until recently.
Keisha Blaine is one of the first to have access to her personal archives.
But looking at her life it becomes clear that Cartwright and Mary McLeod Bethune both leave a legacy of international consciousness.
That's something that often isn't a part of the conversation when we talk about the history of civil rights in the United States.
I think when we write about Black Americans it is often through the lens of Certainly thinking about slavery as a period, but then emancipation reconstruction, the question of citizenship.
And to be clear, that is very significant and it is very much a part of the history.
But what that means is that a lot of the books that we write about Black Americans tend to be within that particular vein the effort to move from second-class citizenship to equal citizenship.
And because of the overemphasis, I think, on that particular narrative, It means that we have not paid as much attention to the story that really connects what's happening in the US to what's happening across the globe.
This is the core of Keisha Blain's perspective the link between the national and international, which is the same belief that Bethune and Cartwright both shared.
Some argue that link is too strong, that the United States has disproportionate influence over UN decision-making.
But still, like Cartwright wrote, the UN is basically our best option.
The challenge, Blaine says, is turning it into something more.
For many people, they do see the UN as espousing very important, powerful ideas that have great possibility.
But the question is, how do we make that real?
How do we make that real on the ground?
How do we make that real for all people everywhere?
It's not an easy process, but it has to happen, because we can't just continue talking about dreams and concepts.
At some point we do need to see them materialize within our lifetime, within our lives and in our communities.
Thanks for listening to History This Week.
A Back Pocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel.
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And if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an email at historythisweekathistory.com.
Special thanks to our guest, Keisha Blain, Professor of Africana Studies and History at Brown University and author of Without Fear Black Women and the Making of Human Rights.
This episode was produced by Ben Dickstein, sound designed by Dan Rosato and hosted by me, Alana Casanova-Burgess.
For Back Pocket Studios, our executive producer is Ben Dickstein.
From the History Channel, our executive producers are Eli Lehr and Liv Fidler.
Don't forget to follow, rate and review History This Week wherever you get your podcasts.
And we'll see you next week.
