The National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) is an American organization that was formed in July 1896 at the First Annual Convention of the National Federation of Afro-American Women in Washington, D.C., United States, by a merger of the National Federation of Afro-American Women, the Woman's Era Club of Boston, and the Colored Women's League of Washington, DC, at the call of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. From 1896 to 1904 it was known as the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). It adopted the motto "Lifting as we climb", to demonstrate to "an ignorant and suspicious world that our aims and interests are identical with those of all good aspiring women." When incorporated in 1904, NACW became known as the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC). History The National Association of Colored Women (later National Association of Colored Women's Clubs) was established in Washington, D.C., on July 21, 1896. This first of what would later become biennial convention meetings of the association was held at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church. The organizations attending this convention included the National Federation of Afro-American Women, the Woman's Era Club of Boston, and the National League of Colored Women of Washington, DC, the Women's Loyal Union as well as smaller organizations that had arisen from the African-American women's club movement. These organizations and later others across the country merged to form the National Association of Colored Women. The organization helped all African-Americans through its work on issues of civil rights and injustice, such as women’s suffrage, lynching, and Jim Crow laws. Foundation Two of NACWC's leading members were Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell, who organized their regional women's clubs at the July 1896 convention to resist negative representations of Black Women. To defend their respectability, they refuted a letter written by James Jacks, then president of the Missouri Press Association because Jacks' letter referred to them as thieves and prostitutes. Mrs. Booker T. Washington, Margaret Murray Washington, convened the meeting. Founders of the NACWC included Harriet Tubman, Margaret Murray Washington, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Victoria Earle Matthews, Josephine Silone Yates, and Mary Church Terrell. Mission The organization defined its first year agenda through multiple issues inhibiting the social mobility of black people. These included: "Chain Gang System of the South, the Separate Car Law of the South, the Plantation Mother and Child, Rescue Work in the