Lugenia Burns Hope

Brief

     Hope (1871-1947) was a "race woman", life-long activist, community organizer, and lecturer who established programs and worked with institutions that advanced racial and social justice in the Black community.  She worked tirelessly to improve the lives of Black families, women, and children in Atlanta through the Neighborhood Union, an organization she founded with either other women in 1908. During World War I, as Chair of the Women's Committee of the YWCA war work council (1917-1919), she worked with Black soldiers and their families at Camp Gordon, providing support and recreational services that they were denied by the United Services Organization (USO).

     Her leadership in the YWCA, where she served on the National Board, extended her influence nationally. In 1922, she collaborated with Mary McLeod Bethune and other powerful women as a founding member of the International Council of Women of the Darker Races, which united women of color activists across racial, national, and cultural boundaries. Later, she assisted Mary McLeod Bethune during Bethune's leadership of the Negro Affairs Division of the National Youth Administration.

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     The Neighborhood Union     

     The Neighborhood Union's motto was “Neighbor as thyself” and its objective was the “moral, social, intellectual, and religious uplift of the community and the neighborhood”. It was one of the first women-led private social welfare agencies for Black people in Atlanta. They started by dividing the city into zones and further subdividing it into Districts, assigning one Director to oversee each District. Through house-to-house visits they surveyed neighborhood needs then implemented their initiatives.  

     Some of their initiatives included: improvement of sanitation, road conditions, sewage/trash, waterways, health, housing, and recreation for youth. Eventually, they bought property where they established lecture courses, conducted health classes, clinics, home economic classes, literary societies, boys’ and girls’ activities, after school programs, and citizenship groups. They worked with orphanages for Black children and established a free medical clinic at a neighborhood house in Summerhill where doctors, dentists, and nurses volunteered their services to address community needs. This was one of several clinics they established.

     During World War I, Hope was appointed Special War Work Secretary for the Young Women's Christian Association's (YWCA) Atlanta War Work Council.  She and the Neighborhood Union ran the Council which served Black soldiers who were not permitted to participate in recreational activities provided to White soldiers by the United Service Organization (USO). This work led to her appointment to the position of national supervisor of the YWCA’s Black Hostess House program where she organized services for returning Black and Jewish soldiers and their families.

     The Neighborhood Union was such an established and integral part of the community that in 1927, Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, called on the group to help in the relief efforts of the devastating Mississippi River flood of 1927.

     In, 1932, as the First Vice President of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP, she established citizenship schools - six week sessions on voting, democracy, the role of government, and the Constitution.

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