Articles

Paris Meeting Report Made to Racial Chapter
Virginia-Pilot, 26 January, 1946

Featuring the report of Mrs. Vivian Carter Mason, who was appointed by the National Council of Negro Women as one of the 12 U. S. delegates to the International Women's Democratic Federation meeting held in Paris last November. The Norfolk chapter of the Women's Council for Interracial Cooperation, of which Mrs. Mason id president, held a business meeting at the Freemason Street Baptist Church yesterday afternoon.

The Paris meeting according to Mrs. Mason, concerned itself principally with Fascism, the needs of children and questions of democracy and peace. Attended by women representing 39 countries, the federation heard vivid eye witness accounts of planned oppression and skillful mind poisoning on the part of ruthless Fascist conquerors.

Fundamental to the success of Nazi truth-distortion, Mrs. Mason pointed out, was the destruction of schools and the dispersal of all liberal learning-a situation which she compared to the Negro's plight in America , where two-thirds of all Negro children leave school before completing the third grade.

Foreign delegates to the convention were shocked to learn that in friendly, democratic America racial and other intolerances exist to so great a degree the speaker observed, warning that bigotry and racial discrimination are the acorn of Fascism.

Following Mrs. Mason's talk, the meeting heard Mrs. Herbert G. Cochran report that of 14 Norfolk Negro schools visited, only two had adequate sidewalk, which can only be provided at city expense, forces the children to walk in the streets, in inclement weather, at no little safety hazard.