Excerpt from "National Youth Administration:
Proceedings of the Second National Youth
Administration Advisory Committee Meeting"

Delivered by Mary McLeod Bethune in 1936
Reprinted from Mary McLeod Bethune:
Building a Better World, Essays and Selected Documents
Edited by Audrey Thomas McCluskey and Elaine M. Smith
Published in 1999

"The Negro views with deep interest the national program for all youth and approves most highly its objectives."

Mary McLeod Bethune

The National Youth Administration (NYA), part of the massive Works Progress Administration (WPA) established in 1935, was designed to meet the educational and employment needs of young Americans between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. To keep youths off the rails and in schools, the agency provided cash aid to high school, college, and graduate school students. Students worked part-time, generally on school-related jobs (such...