National Council of Negro Women  The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) is a non-profit organization founded in 1935 with the mission to advance the opportunities and the quality of life for African American women, their families, and communities. Mary McLeod Bethune was the founder of NCNW and wanted to encourage the participation of Negro Women in civic, political, economic and educational activities and institutions. The organization was considered as a cleaning house for the dissemination of activities concerning women but wanted to work alongside a group who supported civil rights rather than go to actual protests. Women on the council fought more towards political and economic successes of black women to uplift them in society. NCNW fulfills this mission through research, advocacy, national and community-based services and programs in the United States and Africa. NCNW serves as a super organization which acts as a cohesive umbrella for the other African American groups that already existed. With its 28 national affiliate organizations and its more than 200 community-based sections, NCNW has an outreach to nearly four million women, all contributing to the peaceful solutions to the problems of human welfare and rights. The national headquarters that act as a central source for program planning, is based in Washington, D.C., on Pennsylvania Avenue, located between the White House and the U.S. Capitol. NCNW also has two field offices. The NCNW was founded on December 5, 1935 by Mary McLeod Bethune, a distinguished educator, and government consultant whose parents were born into slavery. Mary McLeod Bethune saw the need for harnessing the power and extending the leadership of African-American women through a national organization. The organization comes to after a couple of years after World War I and stems from the National Association of Colored Women, which also saw a purpose in supporting black women's rights in political and economical say. During the 1930s there were many organizations formed for the rights of African Africans, but few specifically for African American women. Mary branched off the ideas of the NACW and began the start of the NCNW to help African American women and their families. She felt that the programs were ineffective to the main problems that women faced every day, and wanted NCNW to have deep solid roots. In the early years of NCNW, the small volunteer staff operated out of Bethune's living room in Washington D.C. The first four decades of the organization was spent fulfilling Bethune's ideas of a unified women's movement capable of addressing economic, political, and social issues affecting women and their families.