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[[written at the top of the clipping, S.F. NEWS-MONDAY, OCT. 1, 1956]]

WOMEN In The NEWS
Getting Out Voters Is Their Project
Council of Negro Women Going Strong With New Registrations
BY JANET HENDERSON

Painted and shining and filled with well-wishers' flowers is a new headquarters at 1914 Fillmore-st. It is populated by alert, hard-working and enthusiastic women who are delighted and inspired by their success in their fist project. The headquarters is one of four pilot projects in the nation for citizenship education, sponsored by a grant from the National Urban League and carried out by the National Council of Negro Women.

[[underlined]]The San Francisco chapter of the Council began working Aug. 27[[//underlined]] to get people registered to vote before the Sept. 13 deadline. And work they did!

Organized Motorcades
They organized motorcades, sidewalk loudspeaker interviews, "picket-lines" of marching women with placards, door-to-door neighborhood canvasses. They sent representatives to bus transfer points, supermarkets and dime stores, to recreation centers where about-to-be-21-year-olds could be found.

They pointed out to "shy" 21-year-olds that their registration would be welcomed-and that those whose birthday falls on or before election day can register before they are 21.

They escorted people to registration points. They told newcomers from parts of the nation where taxes, threats, or trumped up educational tests had kept them from voting, that no such interference exists here.

Every Vote Counts
They urged the complacent to remember that "a voteless people is a hopeless people" and that every vote does count. They informed people that registration is not permanent if they move, change their name or fail to vote in the previous election.

Results? They signed up 1500 voters who otherwise would have let the registration deadline slip by. Mrs. Floyd Green Allen, lively co-ordinator of the project, estimates 600 of these were "complacency persons."

About 200 were new 21-year-olds. For them a "Birthright Party" is planned next month.

Definitely set are two meetings: Oct. 12, Columbus Day, will be marked by a session at the Fillmore-st headquarters at 8 p.m., when pros and cons of city and state ballot propositions will be discussed by political scientists from Stanford, and the University of California and San Francisco State; politicians from both major parties; members for the League of Women Voters; and school department specialists in citizenship education.

Sponsor Forum
[[underlined]]Oct.14, the Council will be one of the sponsors of[[//underlined]] a 3:30 p.m. forum in Nourse Auditorium, Board of Education Building, at which the speakers will be [[underlined]]J. Ernest Wilkins,[[//underlined]] assistant secretary of labor; and [[underlined]]Charles Diggs, Democratic congressman from Michigan.[[//underlined]]

There also will be beginning next week, a voting machine in the Fillmore-st office, so that any voter may come in and get instruction on how to work the gadget.

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