At their 1926 meeting, the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs adopted the song, “Lifting as We Climb.” Composed by Wichita clubwoman Mollie Fines, the song drew on the organization’s motto in stressing education and racial uplift for African American women. Fines
served as the NACWC’s music director, and after her tenure, she remained an important musical force in African American communities in Kansas into the 1940s. The NACWC’s early leadership was largely upper class; yet like ca. 40% of African American women employed in the 1920s, Fines was a domestic worker. Through her club and church affiliations, Fines promoted the music of African American composers, organizing state music contests and directing choral performances and pageants on racial and religious themes. Fines’s musical activities in Kansas helped subsidize educational and social initiatives, such as funding scholarships and childcare facilities. Her engagement with the NACWC reveals how the music making of Black women’s groups was deeply entwined with philanthropic efforts to meet the pressing needs of African American communities.

Marian Wilson Kimber is Professor of Musicology at the University of Iowa. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters about the composers Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, and women’s roles in musical life. Wilson Kimber’s book, The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word (from University of Illinois Press), received the Society for American Music’s H. Earle Johnson Publication Subvention. As part of the duo, Red Vespa, with Natalie Landowski, Wilson Kimber has been performing the compositions she
explores in her book since 2017.