With the Civil Rights movement in full swing in the fermenting years of the early 1960s, then followed by the tragic deaths of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, black women across the United States found themselves trying to gain and maintain acceptance into the Civil and Women’s Rights Movements. At the same time, students, who participated in sit-ins that were being adopted through-out the Deep South to protest against policies of not serving black people, were being sent to Northern cities for rest and relaxation after many agonizing months of verbal and physical assault, which more times than not, were unprovoked and resulted in cruel incarceration.

Drawn together by the vision of one, a meeting was held (the first of many), at the home of Judge Andrew Tyler, and his wife, Founder Tracy Tyler. Also present, were Founders Evelyn Payne Davis, who would subsequently and unanimously become the first president, Muriel B. Kellogg, Dorothy Orr, Elizabeth Peacock, Anne Roberts, and Arden Shelton – with Edna Beach leading the charge.

Obsessed with the need to methodize around an idea of active participation, conscious of the dearth of Black presence at state capitol levels throughout the United States, and the fact that there were so few Black women who played a meaningful role in New York State government, within a couple of years, the number of Founders grew by 17, to include: Mary Burke Nicholas, Cathy Chance Connors, Evelyn Cunningham, Corinne Drew, T. Elaine Etheridge, Dorothy Gordon, Lovette W. Harper, Hermenia Jackson Salmon, Yvonne Jones Reed, Martha S. Lewis, Janis Simms Norton, Juanita H. Sleet, Virginia E. Smit, LaVergin D. Young Usry, Joyce A. Wein and Delores V. Wright. These women came together with a sense of purpose and became an awesome and formidable force with clear focus and unwavering commitment to identify innovative ways to address the political issues of racism and poverty.