About Mary Mostert






Mary Mostert was involved in politics before she was old enough to vote and was writing articles for national magazines at the age of nineteen. She organized one of the first interracial youth groups in Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1940s as a teenager, and was involved nationally and internationally in the civil rights movement and the peace movement.

As executive director of the Independent Political Forum, she was one of 52 American Women, including Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., who met hundreds of women from other nations, including the Soviet Union, in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962 to petition delegates at the Disarmament Conference to sign the first Nuclear Test-ban treaty. At the time, almost the entire Senate and President John F. Kennedy were opposed to halting the testing of nuclear bombs. However, the small ad hoc "Mother's Lobby" helped change public opinion. In approximately six months, the Senate approved the treaty with six dissenting votes and, after they picketed the White House, JFK signed it.

She was the first, or one of the first, female political commentators published in a major metropolitan newspaper in the 1960s and one of the first women building contractors running her own construction company in the 1960s-1970s repairing, building, and managing innercity properties. She served on redevelopment boards in the inner city of Rochester, New York, implementing President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty programs. Over the years, she won three architectural awards for the restoration of historic buildings, served on committees in the inner city, and received annual awards for her work in civil rights. However, after years of first hand experience with the War on Poverty entitlement programs, she concluded that they were doing irreparable harm to the black families they were meant to assist and she became a registered Republican.

During those years, she was also a wife and mother of six young children. Her children grew up working with her, learning to clean, paint, and repair on her various projects. She ran, unsuccessfully, for the New York State Senate and became campaign manager for a number of candidates.

In 1991-92, she served a mission as Public Affairs Director for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was responsible for public affairs for the Church's Africa Area, which included 44 Sub-Sahara nations. In that capacity, she met with most of the women leaders of South Africa as secretary of "Positive Action NOW!"—a national woman's group which sought to reduce the hostility among the nation's various racial, religious, and political groups. She and her companion, Julia Mavimbela of Soweto, and other women met with then President F.W. de Klerk, the current President Nelson Mandela and most of the leaders of the nation's 22 political parties which were writing the new South African Constitution. They gave each leader a "constitution packet" which included a video on the writing of the U.S. Constitution, More Perfect Union, a copy of the U.S. Constitution, and other material designed to help them solve disagreements and write a freedom-protecting constitution.

In recent years, she has researched, written, and edited articles for national talk show host Michael Reagan's Information Interchange on the Internet, and for The REAGAN MONITOR, a monthly newsletter that provides in depth information on key issues. Her book, COMING HOME - Families Can Stop the Unraveling of America," was published in 1996 by Gold Leaf Press.



They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. —Isaiah 40:31