This part of the Collection covers almost a half-century of Ade Bethune's activities, from the late 1950s to her death in 2002. During this time, Bethune was active on the Board or in other leadership positions for many of these community groups. Her involvement with them centered on supporting Newport's citizens; she wanted to ensure they had good homes and neighborhoods. In this effort, Ade Bethune addressed multiple road and redevelopment issues--working for or opposing proposals based on the impact they would have on the community.
At a February, 1970 public hearing regarding a proposed highway that would bisect Ade Bethune's Point neighborhood, she prefaced her questions and comments with the following statement:
"I will speak in the name of families, and children, and mothers, of the elderly, of the poor people, of the pedestrians on both sides of the Point. People who have no advocate to plead their cause and defend their rights. . . People who are not here tonight because they are too young to be here, or too old, like my mother, people who are working tonight and can't come."Through her work, Ade Bethune made sure that everyone in the community would have a voice.
Organization of the Newport Community Organizations Materials and production of a finding aid for them was made possible by a CLIR "Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives" grant with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
