The paper analyzes the participation of African-American delegation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people to the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco (1945), and especially the leadership role played by Mary McLeod Bethune, President of the National Council of Negro Women. At the conference Bethune focused her activities on some key issues: the worlwide protection of human rigjts; the end of colonialism and the attainment of self-government by colonized peoples, a close alliance with all the "darker races" to create a black global community and the guarantee of civil rights to African americans in their own country.
