Atlanta Daily World

Mrs. Bethune Speaks Here Jan. 23 For Human Welfare Conference.

MRS. MARY McLEOD BETHUNE, noted educator, civic leader, and president of the National Council of Negro Women will speak at a mass meeting at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Wednesday evening, January 23. Her visit to Atlanta comes during a southern speaking tour she is making for the purpose of extending the work of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. The Conference is a southwide social action agency with headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. Mrs. Bethune is a member of its Executive Board.

Mrs. W. A. Scott, Sr., is the chairman of the Committee on Arrangements for the meeting, and Rev. M. L. King has extended the hospitality of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

FDR SPONSORSHIP
It might be said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was indirectly responsible for the organization of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, for it came into being as an outgrowth of the famous "Report to the President on the Economic Conditions of the South."

In 1938 President Roosevelt requested the National Emergency Council to prepare for him a report on the problems and needs of this region. Among the prominent southerners who participated in the report were Judge Blanton Fortson of Athens, Miss Lucy Randolph Mason of Atlanta, Dr. B. F. Ashe of Miami, and Dr. Frank P. Graham, President of the University of North Carolina. The report was issued in July 1938 and the South became known as "the Nation's Economic Problem Number One."

In November, 1938, about 1500 southerners met for four days in Birmingham, Alabama, to consider things which southerners might do to meet some of the problems brought to light in the President's report. It was at this meeting that the Southern Conference for Human Welfare was formed.

Mrs. Bethune, Dr. Frank Graham, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dr. Charles Johnson, Clark Howell Foreman and many other nationally known leaders participated in the formation of the Southern Conference and have remained active members throughout its existence.

DRIVE ON POLL TAX
The Southern Conference for Human Welfare initiated the south wide drive for the elimination of the poll tax as a voting restriction and has continued to work to that end. It has worked unceasingly for elimination of the white primary and other suffrage reforms. It has been active in civil rights cases, on labor legislation, and has worked vigorously for the establishment of a permanent FEPC. It is widely known as the "friend and champion of the common man."

State committees affiliated with the Southern Conference have been organized in a number of southern states. Among them is the Committee for Georgia, with offices in the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Building. The Committee for Georgia was organized in January, 1945 and has members in 87 counties in the state. It's pamphlet YOUR PART IN GEORGIA'S POLITICS

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