[From the minutes book of the Women's Circle of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Port Hume. Meeting of 11 May 1922. Recorded by Miss Odelia Thorogood, secretary, in her schoolmistress's clear hand.]

WOMEN'S CIRCLE, BETHEL A.M.E. — MINUTES Regular monthly meeting, the 11th of May, 1922.

ATTENDANCE. Present: Mrs. Mae Fleming (presiding); Mrs. Ruth Tallant; Mrs. Lena Whitworth; Mrs. Corinne Mabry; Mrs. Estelle Battle; Mrs. Theodora Redding; Mrs. Lucy Berryman; Miss Odelia Thorogood (secretary); Mrs. Dr. A. Somers (of the Ward; visiting); Mrs. Felicia DuBose. Absent with regrets: Mrs. Ida Pennsinger (confinement of daughter); Mrs. Laretta Knox (attending Mrs. K's mother in Cleveland).

OPENING. Mrs. Fleming led the opening prayer. Mrs. DuBose read from Proverbs 31. Hymn: "Balm in Gilead."

MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING. Read by the Secretary; approved as read.

TREASURER'S REPORT (Mrs. Mabry). Balance at the last meeting: $58.40. Collections for the month: $22.15. Disbursements: $14.00 to the Church altar guild for the Easter linens (final installment on the 1921 commitment); $8.50 to Mrs. Pennsinger for medicine and midwife's fee in the confinement of her daughter Mattie (Mrs. Redding kindly delivered); $2.00 general aid to Mrs. Simmons at the Ward in her present difficulties. Balance to carry: $56.05. (Approved as reported.)

PASTOR'S REPORT (conveyed through Mrs. Fleming, as Rev. Fleming was at the Bethel AME connection meeting in Wilberforce the present week). Rev. Fleming sends his regards. Rev. Fleming asks the Circle to note his view, reiterated from his Palm Sunday sermon, that the Circle's charitable work is the living limb of the Church in the body of the city, and that the Circle's discretion in its giving is the limb's joint without which the limb is lame. (The Circle received the communication with thanks.)

OLD BUSINESS.

(1) The pamphlet matter. The Circle has, at its previous meeting, approved Miss Thorogood's request that her forthcoming pamphlet on the history of the Colored community in Port Hume — which Miss Thorogood has been drafting for three years and proposes to publish in the autumn of 1923 — be excerpted in the Port Hume Clarion as a two-part serial prior to its publication. Mrs. Corine Harriss, the Clarion's editor, has now responded to Miss Thorogood's letter of the 3rd ultimo with a cordial acceptance, terms proposed at $25 per installment plus the twelve author's copies Miss Thorogood had requested. Miss Thorogood thanked the Circle for its support of this small civic endeavor. (The Circle noted the matter concluded and expressed its collective best wishes.)

(2) The summer picnic. Arrangements for the Fourth of July picnic at Hawthorne Grove are progressing. Mrs. Battle reports that the cartage has been contracted with Mr. Jameson for $6.00 (two wagons). Mrs. Tallant reports that the food committee has secured the chicken and the corn; the pie committee under Mrs. Whitworth is in arrangements. A motion was made (Mrs. Mabry) and seconded (Mrs. DuBose) to invite the families of the Hannibal Street A.M.E. Zion congregation to join the picnic, as they did in 1921, as an act of extended fellowship. (Motion carried unanimously. Mrs. Berryman to communicate with the Hannibal Street sisters.)

NEW BUSINESS.

(3) The matter at Blackwell Iron. Mrs. Fleming raised, under "new business," the matter of the six-week-ongoing strike at the Blackwell Iron Works, in which — as members will be aware — a number of our own congregation's families are affected, either as families of striking workers at the Works or as families whose breadwinners' employers in other firms have been under pressure to contribute to strike-breaking funds. The Circle has been quietly distributing relief through our own channels since the beginning of the strike; total to date, $47.50 to eight families, including three that are not of the Bethel congregation but are families of our neighbors. Mrs. Fleming asked whether the Circle wished to make a further allocation, and whether the Circle wished to make its support of the striking families publicly known. The Circle's sense, after considerable discussion, was: yes to the further allocation ($25 moved from the general fund to the strike-relief fund, motion Mrs. Whitworth, second Mrs. DuBose, carried); and no to public announcement of our position — as Mrs. Fleming observed, "our public positions cost us more than they yield; our private positions feed the mouths we know." (Motion carried; allocation approved.)

(4) Visit from Mrs. Somers. Mrs. Dr. Ada Somers of the Ward attended as a visitor this evening and conveyed the greetings of the Ward Street Settlement House (Mrs. Applegate, director) to our Circle. Mrs. Somers reported that the Settlement House has had recent increased contact with our Hannibal Street Zion sisters, and would welcome a joint discussion of possible cooperation on the question of the Ward's maternal and infant health — a matter in which our two communities' women's efforts, though presently separate, are directed at the same set of conditions. The Circle thanked Mrs. Somers for her call and asked Mrs. Fleming to carry the matter forward with Mrs. Applegate at her convenience.

CLOSING. Hymn: "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Benediction by Mrs. Fleming.

Next meeting: the 8th of June, 1922, at the home of Mrs. Tallant.

Respectfully submitted, Odelia Thorogood Secretary, Women's Circle, Bethel A.M.E.