By Jim Knippenberg
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ann Greene cuts to the heart of it: "We're all about service to the community. We do what we do in order to provide consistent and quality service to those in need."

Ms. Greene, elegantly dressed in a crisp, deep green business suit and weighing in at maybe 100 pounds, is a widow, mother of four and retired city of Cincinnati accountant. She's also president of the Ohio Association of Colored Women's Clubs, budget chair of its parent, the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, and a 40-year member of the Cincinnati Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, an umbrella organization for 21 service clubs made up of about 190 African-American women.

Ann Greene (left) and Madeline Moxley are busy planning their group's 100th anniversary. (Tony Jones photo) | ZOOM |

But right now she's thinking less about service and more about tea, sitting in the front parlor of the Federation clubhouse with fellow club spitfires Madeline Moxley, retired from AT&T after 35 years, and Linda McIntyre, retired from IBM. All three decline to discuss age - "don't even think of going there," Ms. Moxley warns.

Their mission today is finalizing details for their Silver Tea Reception.

In one way, the Silver Tea is a party for their clubhouse, a magnificent 17-room 19th century Walnut Hills mansion built by Samuel Hannaford (architect of Cincinnati City Hall and Music Hall), and full of highly polished brass chandeliers, rich woodwork, carved mantels, elaborate crown molding and several fireplaces gussied up with Rookwood accents.

In a larger sense, the Silver Tea is a way of saying "Hey, Cincinnati, look at us. Look at what we're doing."

What the federation and its member clubs are doing - and have been doing since 1903, when Sally Stewart founded the Federation here - is recognizing needs within the community and creating programs to eliminate them. Their motto: "Lifting as we climb. Through deeds, not words."

Just as members of the Madisonville Mothers Club did 90 years ago when they founded and funded a Madisonville day-care center for the children of working mothers.

Still `lifting'

And just as they do now when they hand out annual scholarships. Or run the Clothes Closet for gently used clothing at nearby Douglass School. Or make afghans for Hospice, drive for Meals on Wheels, assemble Thanksgiving baskets for the needy and set up support groups for caregivers "because everyone remembers the ailing, but no one thinks about their caregivers and the stress they're under," Ms. Greene says.

Lifting as she climbs is also something Ms. Moxley is trying to do with her new Young Women Networking for Enrichment (YWNE), a program she designed and piloted early this year and is about to take into hyperdrive.

It's aimed at girls in the fifth through eighth grades. "It's much more than a mentoring program, though that's a component," Ms. Moxley says. "Its goal is to get them life-ready and job-ready, something the schools don't always do, and away from public programs by setting up formal networks for them to learn.

"I choose those ages because an educator at Harvard came up with the theory that girls are strong, self-sufficient and high achievers until the fifth grade when they start dealing with boys. Through that engagement, they lose a sense of self.

"So I developed YWNE as a sort of rite of passage where the girls can shadow us, learn from us and, I hope, use the women here as role models."

Big project in '25

YWNE will probably operate out of the clubhouse, a building in which the women take enormous pride. Ms. Greene explains: "Back in 1925, most organizations here didn't allow blacks to join or use their facilities. So a group of ladies sold $15 shares in the building and bought this place for $18,000. They paid it off, inch by inch by selling those shares, and finally burned the mortgage in 1946.

"Buying it was big news in 1925. The headline in the Enquirer said `Club for Negro Women'."

Today, the newly renovated mansion (thanks to a $230,000 grant from the city in 1998) is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and hosts meetings of member clubs as well as picnics for the neighborhood, baby showers, weddings and, this year, a Silver Tea.

"We've invited all the city dignitaries so they can see what the money did," Ms. Moxley says. "We want to show off the clubhouse, and that's why the Tea is open to the public and why we hope the entire city comes. We want them to see what we're doing."

And maybe they'll learn some history, too. "Can you imagine what it was like for those women who went before us way back when?,'' asks Ms. McIntyre. "There were no buses, no phones, no e-mail; they had to scrub floors to survive and to buy this place. They had no inroads into government or corporate money, but they still did it."

The work and sacrifice of those pioneering women is the reason the Federation refuses to drop the word "colored" from its name and go with something more modern.

"I'm glad you asked that," Ms. Greene says, tackling the issue head-on. "At one time, there was a movement to change it to `Negro Women' when the word was just starting to come into common use. Mrs. Booker T. Washington was our national president at the time, and she said, `No, we are women of color, and we will keep the name. It was colored women who went before and began this. They were colored then, and we are colored now."

Their name may have an antiquated ring, but there's nothing antiquated about their fund-raising. Ms. McIntyre, for example, is busy collecting items for an online rummage sale that will hit eBay in December (no firm date yet). Money will probably go to support her Artistic Queens program, another new venture, which focuses on youth and aims to bridge the generation gap.

The generation gap also has the women occupied in the form of a program they want to bring to Cincinnati. The National Federation tested a Grandparents Academy in Oklahoma, where the older generation was paired with the younger one - not necessarily relatives - for whatever the kids needed, whether tutoring, mentoring, emotional support or an adult shoulder to lean on.

"We'd like to see it here," Ms. Greene says. "It's part of what we do - lifting as we climb, to make ourselves, our families and our community stronger. That's as true now as when it was written in our constitution 100 years ago."

The Silver Tea Reception is 3-5 p.m. next Sunday at the federation clubhouse, 1010 Chapel St., Walnut Hills. It's free and the entire city is invited.