Author: Aaron New

In honor of #WomensHistoryMonth, the Y is honored to commemorate and celebrate female figures within the history of the YMCA movement who were vital to the success and empowerment of all current and future women leaders in the Y. Here, we’re sharing a few of those stories.

ADDIE HUNTON

• As part of the YMCA’s massive World War, I support effort, Addie Hunton was one of only three African American women assigned to serve over 200,000 segregated Black troops stationed in France. Hunton was also YWCA secretary for Black student work and vice president of the NAACP.

ELLEN BROWN

• Ellen Brown was the first female YMCA employee in 1886 when she was hired to serve as the “boys work secretary.” Brown taught a night class at the Y that grew so rapidly, it eventually became a whole department!

WILLIE AVELING

• Wilhelmina “Willie” Aveling began her YMCA career as a physical director in Atlantic City. In 1933, she joined the staff of the Chicago Metropolitan YMCA to find ways to improve programs for women and girls. For the next 28 years, she helped develop policies and recruit women leaders within the YMCA movement. She was the first woman to be inducted into the YMCA National Hall of Fame.

VIOLET P. HENRY

• After holding various executive leadership roles in the Newark and Chicago YMCAs, in 1976, Violet P. Henry became the first woman to be named to a top management position at the Y’s national office. She provided leadership for numerous national and international commissions and committees that worked for the rights of women and people of color.

XINIA BRENES JENKINS

• One of the founding members of the San Jose YMCA, Xinia Brenes Jenkins was deeply involved in the Costa Rican Catholic youth movement. The Latin American Confederation of YMCAs reached out to Jenkins for her assistance in instituting a national Costa Rican YMCA. Jenkins’s work for the Costa Rican YMCA focused on providing programs for refugees, relief for those affected by housing shortages, and offering vocational skills training for women and agricultural skills training for Costa Rican natives.

WINIFRED COLTON

• Fighting to improve the status of women in the YMCA, Winifred Colton began her extensive YMCA career as women’s and girls’ work secretary at the YMCA of Metro Chicago. In 1957, the YMCA’s National Council’s statement of purpose no longer applied to “males only,” and Colton became the first woman professional on the national staff.

MARGUERITE COCKETT

• Marguerite Cockett graduated from Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1905. In 1916 she bought a car and brought it to France where she worked as an ambulance driver under the American Fund for French Wounded. She spent three months in Serbia establishing a French-Serbian hospital and served on a hospital ship in the Mediterranean. In 1917 she established the first canteen under the YMCA American Expeditionary Forces.

SUZANNE MCCORMICK

• In 2021, Suzanne McCormick became the first woman to serve as CEO of the YMCA of the USA.

By Lesli Baker

MARCH is Women’s History Month!

The nation’s first Women’s Day celebration was in New York City in 1909. By the early 1980s, cities and states across the county were marking the occasion and Congress passed a resolution designating March as Women’s History Month in 1987. Since 1995, every president has issued a proclamation declaring March Women’s History Month usually with a statement about its importance.

Here are some important facts to consider during Women’s History Month.

The 2023 Women’s History Month theme is Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories. This year, the National Women’s History Alliance “will encourage the recognition of women, past and present, who have been active in all forms of media and storytelling including print, radio, TV, stage, screen, blogs, podcasts, news, and social media.”

Wyoming Territory was the first place to grant women the right to vote.

The Wyoming Territorial legislature gave every woman the right to vote in 1869. They elected the country’s first female governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, in 1924.

The 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote, was signed into law on August 26, 1920. But at the time, a number of other laws prohibited Native American women, Black women, Asian American women, and Latinx women from voting, among others. It wasn’t until 1924 that Native women born in the United States were granted citizenship, allowing them to vote.

Women couldn’t get credit cards on their own until 1974.

Until Congress passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, women couldn’t get credit cards in their own name. Often, they had to bring a man along to cosign for them, according to Smithsonian Magazine. Legal work done by late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg laid the foundation for the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, as well as many other basic rights women have today, including the ability to attend state-funded schools, protection from pregnancy discrimination at work, and the ability to serve on juries.

The gender pay gap persists.

Despite the ever-growing number of women getting degrees, the gender pay gap has narrowed by less than half a cent per year since the Equal Pay Act was signed in 1963. In 2020, women earned 84% of what men earned, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of both full- and part-time workers. The U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent analysis of only full-time workers (2019) found that women earned 82% of what their male counterparts earned. And, while women are paid 82 cents for every dollar that a man makes, that gap widens even more for women of color, according to 2020 data by the National Women’s Law Center.

Kamala Harris is the first woman and woman of color to serve as Vice President.

After winning the 2020 presidential election with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris is making history as the first woman, first Black woman, and first Asian American vice president in U.S. history.

The history of the YMCA – like the history of the United States – is a story of incremental progress toward greater inclusion and equity for all. As we celebrate #BlackHistoryMonth, we are honoring the stories of Black leaders who helped move the Y – and America – forward.

Anthony Bowen

A former enslaved person and the first Black American to become a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, Anthony Bowen founded the first YMCA for the Black community in Washington, D.C., in 1853, eight years before the Civil War. Additional Black Ys and college chapters were established in the following decades, with membership reaching 28,000 nationwide by the mid-1920s.

William Hunton

The son a freed enslaved person from Canada, William Hunton began his Y work in 1888 as the first employed YMCA secretary at a “Colored YMCA” in Norfolk, VA. Hunton worked among the soldiers in the Army camps during the Spanish-American War and in developing Student YMCAs on Black campuses throughout the South. He helped communities meet Julius Rosenwald’s challenge grant to build YMCAs for Black communities, and then helped recruit and train the staff and volunteers to lead those associations.

Carter Woodson

In 1915, at the Wabash Avenue YMCA in Chicago, Carter Woodson organized the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which researched and celebrated the achievements of Black Americans. This led to his starting Negro History Week, the precursor to Black History Month.

Madam C.J. Walker

An entrepreneur, philanthropist and social activist, Madam C.J. Walker was one of the first self-made female American millionaires. She escaped poverty and built a company selling hair care products, which also gave her sales agents an income of their own. Walker was a philanthropic supporter of the YMCA and participated in and financially supported the NAACP’s anti-lynching movement.

Jackie Robinson

In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and became the first Black major league baseball player. This same year he also became a volunteer boys coach at the Harlem YMCA with fellow coach and teammate Roy Campanella.

Leo B. Marsh

In 1954, Dr. Leo B. Marsh became the first Black president of the Association of YMCA Secretaries. In 1971, Marsh brought the Black Achievers program (created by Quentin R. Mease at the South Central YMCA of Houston) to the Harlem YMCA. With the help of volunteer adult mentors, the Achievers program helps youth of color succeed in school and develop a positive sense of self.

Jesse Alexander

After starting his YMCA career an outreach worker with youth, in 1969, Jesse Alexander joined the National Council of YMCAs as where he helped organize the National Conference of Black and Non-White Laymen and Staff, which dealt with supporting efforts to overcome racism in the YMCA and ensuring that YMCA organizations existed where communities of color wanted them.

Violet P. Henry

After holding various executive leadership roles in the Newark and Chicago YMCAs, in 1976, Violet P. Henry became the first woman to be named to a top management position at the Y’s national office. She provided leadership for numerous national and international commissions and committees that worked for the rights of women and people of color.

Kevin Washington

In 2015, Kevin Washington became the first African American – and the first person of color – to serve as CEO of the YMCA of the USA. Besides reimagining a new service delivery system across the Y movement, Washington was a leading national voice for relief from federal government for nonprofits devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. He spearheaded the highly successful #Relief4Charities effort, put Y-USA on a path to become an anti-racist, multicultural organization and engaged young people as changemakers in their communities.

Visit the YMCA Archives to learn more about the history of Black leadership in the YMCA.