Document 31: Cordella A. Winn to Mary Day, 3 October 1922, unprocessed collection of YWCA of Greater Baltimore, 128 W. Franklin Street, Annual Reports.

Document 31: Cordella A. Winn to Mary Day, 3 October 1922, unprocessed collection of YWCA of Greater Baltimore, 128 W. Franklin Street, Annual Reports.

Introduction

       In this letter, Cordella Winn, a staff person at the Y's National Board in New York City, continues her correspondence with a white Baltimore Y officer, Mary Day, discussing the breakdown in cooperation and communication that appears to have left the Black branch, Druid Hill Avenue, "a Branch in name only." In fact, the Druid Hill Avenue branch closed its doors for a two and a half year period, beginning in mid-1923, due to lack of leadership and funds.

NATIONAL BOARD
of
The Young Women's Christian Associations
of the United States of America
600 Lexington Avenue
New York City

Telephone Plaza 4700-18
Cable Address Outpost New York

October 3, 1922

Miss Mary Frances Day
Young Women's Christian Association
Franklin and Park Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland

My dear Miss Day:

       Your letter received and I am quite interested in all that you said:

       We realize more and more that there is not the relationship in Baltimore that there should be and until there is a better understanding with the Central Association and the Branch, the work cannot grow. Your not knowing that Miss Carter was leaving, shows that there is no particular interest on either side, for she had been planning to do so since June. Druid Hill seems to be a Branch in name only. The Board seems to feel that all the Colored people want is for them to assume financial responsibility. We who know relationship, know that this is not the only responsibility, but if a branch is to be a part of the whole, there should be a secretarial and program responsibility and a desire to see that the branch has back of it, interest in committees that are functioning.

       When Mrs. Love’s recommendations were sent to you by the personnel Division, they should have been sent both to the Board of Directors, through you, and to the Chairman of the Committee of Management. If Mrs. Hitchens did not get it, there was a slip in that department. In our branch work throughout the country, the branch secretary is a part of the staff of the Association and is employed by the Board of Directors in consultation with the Committee of Management.

       I am saying all this quite frankly, so that you may know that I cannot conceive of much progress in Baltimore until we can have this understanding, and this education cannot be begun until we are able to find a white woman in whom both the white and Colored women can believe to bring about this understanding between both groups. Associations both North and South do have this understanding, but they must be able to feel a responsibility for all groups and to have these groups interpreted to them.

       Baltimore is suffering from the fact that something already started was taken over with neither group understanding responsibility. It seems as though the Colored women will have to drift for awhile until we can get a Committee on Colored Work to begin to function. I would be glad to know about the progress of this at any time.

	Sincerely yours,
	(Mrs) Cordella A. Winn
	Secretary, Colored Work, Cities

CAW/CMJ