Southern Conference Educational Fund
The Southern Conference Educational Fund began as the education fund arm of Southern Conference for Human Welfare.
Southern Conference Educational Fund
Financial woes forced the cancellation of the 1939 meeting, and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare continually struggled to pay the modest salaries of its small staff. Not until the months after World War II, when the organization held a series of fundraisers that often featured celebrities such as Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles, did its finances begin to improve significantly. Bolstered by their success, the officers voted in 1946 to create the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), which would be the educational arm of the SCHW. James Dombrowski of the Highlander Folk School became director of the SCEF and edited its newspaper, the Southern Patriot. The following year, the SCEF became a separate organization and actually survived the SCHW by a number of years; it was particularly active during the civil rights movement. The SCEF differed from the SCHW primarily in that it was nonpolitical; whereas the SCHW tended to work through political channels, the SCEF worked largely through teaching and publishing. The main thrust of its work was to eradicate segregation in the South's schools and colleges.[1]
Communist influence
- In March, 1954, the SISS held hearings in New Orleans on Southern Conference Educational Fund. Former communists Paul Crouch and John Butler accused Aubrey W. Williams, then SCEF president, and former head of the National Youth Administration under Franklin D. Roosevelt, of being a member of the Communist Party USA in the forties.[2]
- Judi Simmons of Southern Conference Educational Fund was named as a sponsor of the Communist Party USA dominated National Anti-Imperialist Conference in Solidarity With African Liberation held at Dunbar Vocational High School, Martin Luther King Drive, Chicago, October 19 to 21 1973.[3]
Board members
Southern Conference Educational Fund board members included;
- Virginia Durr - Southern Conference for Human Welfare, NCAPT
- Mary McLeod Bethune
- Rufus E. Clement
- Benjamin Mays
- Charles S. Johnson - Fisk
- Helen H. Fuller - New Republic
- Lucy Randolph Mason - CIO
- Paul R. Christopher - CIO
- Lillian Smith
- George S. Mitchell - Southern Regional Council
- Myles Horton - Highlander Folk School
- Louis Burnham - Southern Negro Youth Conference
- Frank Graham - University of North Carolina[4]
References
- ↑ Encyclopedia Alabama, Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW) Rebecca Woodham, Wallace Community College, Dothan
- ↑ [http://www.crmvet.org/docs/63_scef_attack.pdf THE ATTACK ON SOUTHERN CONFERENCE EDUCATIONAL FUND by Student Civil Liberties Coordinating Committee]
- ↑ http://www.historicalvoices.org/pbuilder/pbfiles/Project39/Scheme361/african_activist_archive-a0b1x6-a_12419.pdf
- ↑ [Reform, Red Scare, and Ruin: Virginia Durr, Prophet of the New South By James Smallwood page 93]
