| NTEU Celebrates Black History Month |
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| Message from the National President |
It often is said that the first step in any journey is the most difficult. Consider, then, the difficult journeys that so many African-Americans have taken and the goals they have reached. Black History Month affords us a timely look at some of them.
There are, for example, the two dozen or so federal employees who served as unofficial but influential advisors to President Franklin Roosevelt, helping fashion New Deal policies and laying the groundwork for our nation’s much-needed civil rights movement.
 Or these determined and accomplished women: Constance Baker Motley, the first African-American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and then the first of her race and
gender to become a federal judge; Carrie Saxon Perry, three-term mayor of Hartford, Conn., and the
first black woman to head a major U.S. city; and Hazel Winifred Johnson, the first African-American
female brigadier general.
All were willing to take that first step toward achievement, and for their courage in doing so, we
pause on the occasion of Black History Month to thank and honor them—as we do for so many other
African-Americans who took paths not as celebrated but no less difficult—for their contributions to
our nation.
One lesson springing from their individual efforts to attain goals, and then to turn in part to
the service of others, is to remind us of the importance of belonging to something larger than oneself.
It is a lesson well-learned and practiced by NTEU, now approaching its 72nd year of serving federal
employees.
It is a lesson well-understood and practiced by those who contribute their time, skill and energy working every day in NTEU chapters across the country to protect and advance the rights and interests of those they represent.
It is a lesson teaching that every journey, no matter how difficult, begins with the courage to take a single step. It is a lesson of Black History Month.
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First Steps in Government |
The Black Cabinet, a group of some two dozen unofficial but influencial African-American advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, helped shape the New Deal.
Spotlight on Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune lobbied the National Youth Administration so aggressively for minority involvement that she earned a position as an assistant just one year after the agency was created to help unemployed youth during the Great Depression.
 Bethune was soon promoted to Director of Negro Affairs and charged with releasing funds to help black students through school-based programs.
She also made sure black colleges participated in the Civilian Pilot Training Program, which graduated some of the first African-American pilots.
A noted educator, Bethune started a school for black students in Daytona Beach, Fla., that eventually became Bethune-Cookman University.
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They not only made history as African-Americans, but as women. Read about Constance Baker Motley, Shirley Chisholm, Hazel Winifred Johnson, Carrie Saxon Perry and Carol Moseley Braun. Read about the accomplishments of these remarkable women.
Spotlight on Constance Baker Motley
Constance Baker Motley began her legal career as a law clerk at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she worked with Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg, eventually becoming the LDF's first female attorney.
 Motley wrote the original complaint in the case of Brown v. Board of Education and was the first African-American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in Meredith v. Fair. Motley was successful in nine of the ten cases she argued before the Supreme Court; the tenth decision was eventually overturned in her favor. She was also a key legal strategist in the civil rights movement, helping to desegregate southern schools, buses and lunch counters.
Motley later became the first black woman elected to the New York State Senate and the first woman to serve as Manhattan Borough President. |
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| First Steps in the Courts |
The U.S. Supreme Court has often been the venue where the nation’s laws regarding civil rights have been debated and upheld. Where those rights were affirmed for African-Americans, they were affirmed for all Americans. Download this flier for a few of the milestone decisions or visit the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund for more information about the cases.
Spotlight on Loving vs. Virginia
When Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, a young interracial couple from rural Virginia, decided to get married in 1958, laws banning interracial marriages were common and such a marriage was illegal in Virginia.
After a long and difficult road that included convictions in Virginia, the Supreme Court took up Loving v. Virginia and on June 12, 1967, decided that interracial marriage was legal. The case forced even the most reluctant states to remove miscegenation laws from their books; however Alabama did not repeal its state constitutional ban on interracial marriage until 2000.
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Celebrating MLK
Celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
with fliers carrying the simple message that anyone can serve their country.
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