Y. W. C. A. - 1915

Waite's remarks from "Votes for Women: A Symposium by Leading Thinkers of Colored Women" held in Washington, D.C., as published in the August 1915 issue of The Crisis. Waites was a former adviser to the National Board of Directors of the Y.W.C.A..

A membership of more than a half million, representing some seventeen nationalities, makes the Young Women's Christian Association a world movement.

In the United States three hundred tho11sand members, distributed in 979 college, city and county associations have as their objective the advancement of the "physical, social, intellectual, moral and spiritual interests of young women."

One of the most unique and wonderful characteristics of the association is the adaptability to meet the needs of all types of women, so that its membership is as diversified as women's lives and interests. This diversified membership, constituting at once the governing and sustaining force of the association, is its strongest barrier to any creed save that upon which the movement is founded.

However difficult it is to express any relation between the association and the suffrage movement, it is not difficult to understand that the association spirit dominating womanhood would count for righteousness in the solution of this important question.

Acutely suffering from the wrongs and humiliations of an unjustly restricted suffrage, it is but natural that the colored woman should feel deeply and keenly wherever the question of suffrage arises. But the colored woman within the association, in common with thousands of her sisters who have been touched by other spiritual forces, is animated by a fine spirit of idealism—an idealism not too far removed from everyday existence to find expression in service. Hence she is giving her energy largely to the development of the highest qualities of mind and soul—for these alone can give to the nation the best there is in citizenship.

Hunton, A. W. 1915. "Y. W. C. A." The Crisis 10(4).