NAACP Telegram Regarding Forced Labor of Women, 1918

This Association is confident that your high sense of justice will insure prompt condemnation of efforts to apply compulsory work laws to women’s labor and that you will regard it as insidious and un-American to apply compulsory work principle to Negro women alone.
Wrightsville, Georgia, is reported to be enforcing against colored women only an ordinance requiring both sexes to work at least fifty hours per week.

NAACP Telegram Regarding Forced Labor of Women 1918

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an active African American civil rights organization formed in 1909. The organization’s mission is to fight for equality of rights on many fronts. This letter calls on President Wilson’s “high sense of justice” to condemn the application of compulsory work laws to black women only.

National Archives, General Records of the Department of Justice