VIVIAN CARTER MASON: MID-CAREER

In 1925, Mason graduated from the University of Chicago imbued with a reformist zeal for racial upliftment and an intellect prepared to battle racism and sexism. Shortly after leaving school, Mason honed her skills as a social worker at the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Baltimore , Maryland , and Brooklyn , New York . While working in New York , Mason married William T. Mason Sr., on July 16, 1925 . The two had previously met while Vivian Carter Mason was attending the University of Chicago . After marriage the Masons moved to Norfolk , Virginia , Mr. William T. Mason Sr., hometown where they later welcomed the birth of their only child William T. Mason Jr., on July 27, 1926 . While residing in Norfolk , Mrs. Mason worked at the local YWCA because at that time in the late 1920s, Blacks with a formal education were limited in the opportunities for city, state, or private sector jobs. Mostly, Blacks were restricted to working among their own kind if they were employed by the city, state or private sector because of the codification of Jim Crow by Virginia 's White politicians back in 1902 that legally re-created a racial hierarchical society where Blacks were assigned to a subordinate role with circumscribed opportunities politically, economically, and educationally. So at the Black branch of the YWCA in Norfolk , Vivian Carter Mason used her specialized skills as program director, and acted as a role model embodying the professionalism of an educated Black woman to the flood of new poor immigrants to the city.[1]

After living in Norfolk for six years the pernicious method of Jim Crow; its violence, racial segregation, and separate but equal educational system became too suffocating for Vivian Carter Mason. So she and her husband amicably agreed that it was in their best interests that she removes her son from Virginia 's segregated environment and take him to New York for his schooling. Fortunately Vivian Carter Mason and her husband had an equitable domestic partnership and she was encouraged and supported emotionally and financially by him to acquire the best education for their child and for her to continue her activist pursuits. So in 1931, Vivian Carter Mason and her five year old son departed for New York , while her husband remained in Norfolk working as insurance, real estate broker, and one of the founding member and administrator of Norfolk Community Hospital.[2]

Upon arrival in New York , Mason enrolled her son in a private school, and embarked on a career employed as a social worker with the New York City Department of Welfare. After several years, Mason became the first Black director of New York City Administrative Division in the Department of Welfare. In addition to her job as a social worker, Mason took advantage of the opportunity to further her study while in New York City by getting a master degree in Psychiatry, and Physiology and Psychology at Fordham University and Hinter College respectively. Mason also resumed her activity in the NAACP and served on the NACW executive board in New York . She also sat on the national board of the YWCA, and established the Committee of 100 Women, an organization that enabled disadvantaged children in New York to attend summer camp. Mason viewed her participation in these organizations as essential in forwarding her passion for education and civil rights activism. Especially since the NAACP and the NACW in the mid 1930s initiated new aggressive agendas to destroy the obstacles to racial justice and barriers to equal opportunity for Blacks, the NAACP reoriented their goals of achieving for Blacks their constitutional rights denied them by pursuing their causes in the courts rather than through Congress. Meanwhile the NACW was incorporated into the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in 1935, thus becoming a super organization that acted as a cohesive umbrella for most of the Black women's groups in existence. The NCNW new objectives were “to serve as a clearing house for the dissemination of activities concerning women, to educate, encourage and effect the participation of Black women in civic, political, economic and educational activities, and to plan initiate and carry out projects which develop, benefit and integrate Blacks and the nation.” So Mason felt empowered to personally challenged the most egregious aspects of Jim Crow by tirelessly working within the NAACP and NCNW.[3]

With her son's graduation from high school in New York in 1942, Mason made the decision to return back to Norfolk to live. But before she finalized her resignation with the New York City Social Service Department, Mason made a visit to Norfolk for the Labor Day holiday and on her returned trip to New York , she arrived late in Washington DC by air and elected to conclude her trip to New York by train. This decision nearly cost her life. As the train she was traveling in derailed near Philadelphia , resulting in a serious back injury. While convalescing in Norfolk , from 1942-45, Mason was appalled by the poverty and substantial erosion in the quality of life of Blacks in Norfolk caused by a combination of the Depression and the corrosive effect of Jim Crow that mandated segregation, discrimination, and limited access to city services. Subsequently, the majority of Blacks were unemployed, and living in dwellings that were decrepit, overcrowded, and unsanitary. Conditions were so deplorable that a federal official described Norfolk 's slums as the worst in the country. Under those social conditions Mason theorized that radical changes were imperative in order to equalized opportunities for Blacks. With her expertise as a social worker and educator, Mason understood that the social depravation of Blacks and women were as a result of discrimination by an economic system that was predicated on individualism, whereby a few-White males-dominate and control the national wealth. Thus, they would always have the necessary influence to secure and enforce laws which protect their economic interests. So Mason reasoned that it would be advantageous to form a women's interracial council in the area to foster racial harmony, and at the same time try to extract some political, economical, and educational services for Blacks by getting the White female participants to use their indirect mode of influence to obtain some of the services from their husbands, brothers, or sons who controlled the political and economical institutions. With this goal in mind, Mason began canvassing and recruiting potential White and Black women from the community of political, economical, and educational means that exhibited any signs of compassion and desire to eradicate prejudice and injustice towards Blacks and women. On April 17, 1945 , Mason invited seven Black and eleven White women to consider forming an interracial council. All the women invited were active in civic organizations and came from different backgrounds. The women decided that their organization should be called the Women's Council for Interracial Cooperation (WCIC), and should be autonomous and not affiliated with any other organizations, but working in cooperation with them. Mason was appointed chairwoman, and under her leadership the organization established a constitution and announced its goals. Which were to improve city facilities for education, recreation, employment, and health; to improve interracial attitudes; to seek equality of opportunity for everyone; and to work towards full citizenship privileges for all. [4]

Besides her involvement with the (WCIC), Mason recognized that political changes locally, nationally, and internationally were underway as a result of the end of World War II, and America 's emergent as the world's most dominant nation with the Soviet Union as its main rival. The intense rivalry between the two nations became known as the Cold War, whereas America 's capitalist ideology was pitted against the Soviet Union 's ideology of communism. In America this rivalry gave activists like Mason and protest organizations such as the NAACP and the NCNW the opportunity to canvas world organizations for help in the solution for political, economical and racial equality at home. Nationally, the NAACP brought political pressure on America by bringing a petition to the United Nations for hearing entitled “An Appeal to the World, a Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nation for Redress.” The petition charged that the discrimination practices in the America could not continue without infringing upon the rights of the peoples of the world, and especially upon the ideals and the work of the United Nations. The NAACP knew that the petition would not be given full consideration by the United Nations, but its intent was to pressure the American government into taking positive action on the problem of civil, political and economic rights for its Black population. Internationally, Mason personally contributed to applying pressure to the United States Government for justice for its Black citizens while traveling abroad during November, 1945 as one of the NCNW delegates to the inaugural meeting of the International Women's Democratic Federation Meeting in Paris France. The meeting concerned itself with peace after World War II, fascism, the need of children, and questions of democracy. At the meeting, Mason took the opportunity to internationalize her activism for Blacks and women rights by bringing to the delegates' attention the glaring and embarrassing contradiction amid the American government rhetoric about ensuring rights and liberties throughout the world but denying those basic guarantees to its Black citizens. In addition to her conference in Paris , Mason visited other European countries advocating solidarity among the women of the world in order to obtain laws giving them equal legal rights to men. Mason even visited the Pope in the Vatican and conversed with him.[5]

Locally, Mason recognized political changes were possible with the victory by the “silk-stocking ticket” in 1946, Norfolk City Council elections. The silk-stocking ticket candidates were three progressive business leaders who ran as political outsiders against the fiscally conservative incumbent political machinery. With the businessmen winning the election and assuming leadership in City Hall, Mason championed the WCIC to undertake studies of the slum conditions in the city in order to have pertinent information to lobby effectively for future changes that could be beneficial for Blacks and women. The readily available information from the studies was instrumental in Mason's organization getting several concessions from City Hall that contributed to the WCIC achieving some of its goals. The first major concession was the City Council agreeing to improve housing by using the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority to expedite applications for funds under the 1949 Federal Act. This resulted in clearance of the forty-seven-block Black slum area bounded by Brambleton and Monticello avenues, Broad Creek Road and Lincoln Street, and replaced it with Young Park, and Tidewater Park Housing. The second concession was getting Blacks and women opportunities to be employed in fields in which they were qualified instead of being relegated to menial jobs only. The hiring of Blacks as policemen in Norfolk was the first step in that direction and subsequently gradual employment in the city and private sector.[6]

Encouraged by the gradual positive changes, Mason began to focus her attention on efforts to influence electoral politics during the late 1940s. She understood that participation in the electoral process could result in securing rights for Blacks that had not been visible prior to that time. So with the NAACP and the Virginia Voter's League post World War II voter's registration drive resulting in an increase of voter's registration in Norfolk , from 3,964 to 6390 from 1945 to 1949. In 1946 Mason supported Black candidate Victor J. Ashe, a Norfolk native and Villanova, educated lawyer to run for City Council. Since there were eight White candidates in the race and only three council seats available. The NAACP and several Norfolk Black leaders proposed using the “single shot” ploy, whereas if Blacks voted for Ashe only and not the other two candidates, his chance of being elected would be considerably increased. This was a good strategy, but unfortunately it did not work because Ashe received less than 3,200 votes. Following Ashe's defeat, Mason in the 1950s personally got involved in the political process by serving on the City Democratic Committee as a precinct leader, and as a member of Concern Citizens which was instrumental in increasing Black civic involvement and political strength through the “Goldenrod Ballot,” a voter registration initiative. Then in 1952, Vivian earned the distinction of being the first Black woman candidate to run for Norfolk City Council.[7]

Mason's activism became national and international in 1953, with her election as the third President of the NCNW. Mason was now responsible for addressing issues concerning the quality of life for Black American women, their families, and communities. During her two terms tenure as President, Mason moved from Norfolk , Virginia to reside in Washington D C, where the headquarters for the NCNW was located. While in Washington D C, Mason's husband remained in Norfolk tending to his real estate business and fully supporting his wife's career endeavors. The two kept in touch through letters and visiting each other when their scheduled permitted. As President of the NCNW, Mason introduced a tighter and more sophisticated administration because by 1953 the organization had grown in stature, membership, and influence and it was important that the NCNW's constitution be amended to ensure it operated effectively and efficiently. Mason amended the NCNW constitution to include additional membership categories and incorporated specific items aimed at curtailing the free-wheeling activities of some local council not sanctioned by the national office. This ended some questionable activities by some local councils and individuals who were acquiring property, soliciting funds, and engaging in partisan political activities not sanctioned by the national office. Most importantly, as President, Mason emphasized interracial coalition building and support for grassroots efforts to bring about racial justice. In 1954, she joined with the NAACP and other national organizations to help devised strategies to work toward implementation of the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that rendered segregation in public schools as unconstitutional. Mason also worked to get national recognition for the NCNW by suggesting in a letter to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that he sponsor a conference for all the nation women organizations in order for them to have a better understanding of the government's perspective on the problem of race relationship in the country. But President Eisenhower refused to agree with Mason's suggestion, and instead he suggested that it would be more effective if the women organizations sponsored their own conferences. Finally as President, Mason presided over the organization twenty-first annual convention which was its first interracial conference of women that explored how women of all colors and all persuasions could work to surmount barriers to human and civil rights. In 1957 at the end of her tenure as the President of NCNW, Mason returned to Norfolk , and continued her activism locally.[8]

[1] Vivian Carter Mason, interview II by Zelda Silverman; John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, Volume II (New York: McGraw Hill, 1998), 290-291.

[2] Virginia-Pilot ( Norfolk ), 24 September 1971 , sec. B, B2; Journal and Guide ( Norfolk ), 24 November 1945 , 1.

[3] Virginia-Pilot ( Norfolk ), 16 February 1969 , sec. C, C4; Darlene Clark Hine, Editor, Elsa Barkley Brown, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Associate Editors, Black Women in America : An Historical Encyclopedia (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing Inc, 1993), 755; Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter , 213.

[4] U.S. Bureau of Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1945), vol. 2, pt. 5, Housing, 1940, p. 619; Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 121; Journal and Guide (Norfolk), 31 January 1959, 8; Vivian Carter Mason, interview by Zelda Silverman, 29 March 1978. Interview I. Transcript. Special Collection MG-53. Old Dominion University ; Report of Membership Meeting, Women Council for Interracial Cooperation, June 1945. Women Council for Interracial Cooperation Papers, folder I, MG-54 Special Collection, Old Dominion University .

[5] Journal and Guide ( Norfolk ), 18 January 1947 , p. 9; Virginia-Pilot ( Norfolk ), 26 January 1946 , p. 2.

[6] Forest R. White , School Desegregation and Urban Renewal in Norfolk , 1950-1959 (Ph.D. diss., Old Dominion University, 1991), 54-69; Report at Membership Meeting, Women Council for Interracial Cooperation, October 1949 . Women Council for Interracial Cooperation Papers, Box I, Folder J; Thomas Parramore, et. al., Norfolk: The First Four Centuries (University Press of Virginia, 1994), 348-353; This is It (Norfolk: Norfolk Housing and Redevelopment Authority, 1946), 11.

[7] Andrew Buni, The Negro in Virginia Politics, 1902-1965 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967), 152-153; Parramore, Norfolk , 347; Virginia-Pilot (Norfolk), 12 May 1982, sec. C, CI; Vivian Carter Mason, Interview I by Zelda Silverman.

[8] Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in America , 859-860; Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission. The President Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower. Available from http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidentialpapers/secondterm/document/418.cfm ; Internet; accessed 29 January 2005 .