They Saw What the United Nations Couldn’t

HISTORY This Week

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4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

October 24, 1945. The Charter of the United Nations is signed, promising to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Back when the charter was drafted a few months earlier in San Francisco, delegates from around the world gathered to build a new era of peace and human rights. Among them is Mary McLeod Bethune, the only Black woman in the U.S. delegation, and she already sees the contradictions beneath the moment: colonial powers writing freedom into a document that excludes millions. Years later, journalist Marguerite Cartwright will carry that insight forward, holding the UN to the ideals it claimed to represent. Why did these two Black women believe the UN was so important, when their own country continued to deny them equality? And how can their work reframe the way we view the struggle for Civil Rights beyond U.S. borders, for all nations? Special thank you to Keisha Blain, professor of Africana Studies and History at Brown University and author of Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights. -- Get in touch: [email protected] Follow on Instagram: @historythisweek Follow on Facebook: ⁠HISTORY This Week Podcast⁠ To stay updated: http://historythisweekpodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:04.6	History this week, October 24th, 1945.
0:10.6	I'm Alana Casanova Burgess.
0:13.7	On this day, at the State Department building in Washington, D.C.,
0:18.4	the Charter of the United Nations finally becomes official.
0:22.6	But four months earlier, its fate was much less certain.
0:27.6	The world has gathered in San Francisco.
0:32.6	Delegates remark that the city is dazzling, filled with golden sunshine and fresh and invigorating air from the Pacific.
0:42.3	This is in contrast to the cities in ruin that many of the delegates are coming from.
0:48.3	World War II has just ended in Europe and is still raging in the Pacific.
0:53.3	Yet, world leaders have decided that even before the fighting has come to an end,
0:58.4	they need to do something to stop this.
1:01.2	A world war from happening again.
1:04.4	That's why 50 countries have sent representatives to California.
1:10.4	They meet in San Francisco's Opera House,
1:12.6	converted into a meeting space just for this conference.
1:16.6	The main hall features more than 3,000 red plush seats
1:20.6	for the delegates and other attendees,
1:23.6	facing a stage adorned with four golden pillars linked by olive branches, representing the four freedoms promised four years earlier by former president Franklin Roosevelt.
1:34.7	Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
1:41.0	These countries have come together to form a world peacemaking organization, already called
1:47.0	the United Nations.
	...

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