Document 25A: Jane Olcott, "Information from War Work Centers Indicating Industries in which Colored Women are Employed and those in which Y.W.C.A. Club Membership is Represented," excerpt from table bound in The Work of Colored Women (New York: Colored Work Committee War Work Council, 1919), inside back cover.
Introduction
Multi-racial work within the National Y.W.C.A. movement got a boost during World War I when the Y national board received $4 million from the federal government "to supervise war-work activities among women." Of this amount, $400,000 was set aside by the Y for work among Black women.[18] These funds permitted the national board to employ eleven African-American women on their national staff and another 187 war workers to staff hostess houses at fourteen military bases and recreation or industrial centers in forty-nine cities.[19] The Work of Colored Women provides the most thorough description of this Y.W.C.A. work among African-American women during the war. Here we reprint from that book a portion of a table presenting a tabulation of this work among urban Black women and then an account of the appointment by the national board of Miss Emma Sawyer as an industrial secretary for the Colored Y.W.C.A. in Baltimore (see Document 25B).
