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Black and White Women in Interaction and Confrontation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Gerda Lerner
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Extract

The parallels in the status of women and of Blacks have been noted by social scientists and historians, and recently, by theoreticians of the women's liberation movement. It is obvious that there are similarities in the status and history of the two groups, but these are offset by important differences. The analogy between Blacks in general and women is valid and useful as long as it is confined to the psychological effect of inferior status, but not when it is extended to a general comparison between the two groups.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 2 , October 1977 , pp. 193 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

NOTES

1. Chesnut, Mary Boykin, A Diary from Dixie, ed. Williams, Ben A. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

2. For a fuller discussion of this theme, see Smith, Lillian, The Killers of the Dream (New York: W. W. Norton, 1949) I, I, 2Google Scholar; II, 1–4; III, 1–4: Cash, W. J., The Mind of the South (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1941), pp. 87–89Google Scholar; Jordan, Winthrop D., White over Black: American Altitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1968). chap.Google Scholar

3. Kemble, Frances Ann, Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838–1839, ed. Scott, John A. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), pp. 224–41.Google Scholar

4. For childhood and youth of the Grimké sisters see Lerner, Gerda, The Grimké Sisters from South Carolma: Rebels against Slavery (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967)Google Scholar, chaps. 1–5: citation from Grinké, Angelina E., An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States … (New York: W. S. Dorr, 1837), p. 62.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., p. 63.

6. Proceedings, Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women … 1837 (New York: W. S. Dorr, 1837).

7. Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Battle Creek: Review and Herald Office, 1884), p. 135.Google Scholar

8. Sarah and Angelina Grimké to Sarah Douglass (undated), Mss, Weld-Grimké Papers, Wm. L. Clements Library, the University of Michigan.

9. Provincial Freeman, I, No. 39, 12 16, 1854.Google Scholar

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Frederick Douglass, speech before Equal Rights Association, New York City, May 1869, as cited in The Revolution, 05 20, 1869.Google Scholar

13. Woman's Journal, 09 27, 1890.Google Scholar

14. Kraditer, Aileen, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement: 1890–1920 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1965), chap. 7.Google Scholar

15. Letters by Daisy Lampkin to Heywood Broun (August 28, 1924) and to Walter White (August 18, 1924) describe several incidents of discrimination in the years 1913–24. NAACP Mss., Library of Congress.

16. The generalizations concerning the teachers of the freedmen are based on the study of manuscript sources, particularly those of the American Missionary Association; Amistad Research Center, Dillard University; Freedmen's Aid Commission, Papers, Cornell University; and the Freedmen's Record. Also, diaries and letters of Charlotte Forten, Lucy Chase, Susie King Taylor, Frances E. W. Harper, Virginia Randolph, Laura Mobley, and others.

17. Undated letter fragment, Charlotte Hawkins Brown Mss., Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. Also letters by Mary McLeod Bethune in the Rosenwald Fund Papers, Fisk University.

18. Washington, Margaret M. to Cheney, Edna D., 11 23, 1896, Cheney Papers, Boston Public Library.Google Scholar

19. Information on Negro women's clubs comes from a study of the organizational records of the National Association of Colored Women, the Atlanta Neighborhood Union, the Tuskegee Woman's Club, the Boston New Era Club, and others.

20. MrsWashington, Booker T., “Club Movement among Negro Women,” in Nichols, J. L. and Crogman, W. H., eds., Progress of the Race (Naperville, Ga.: J. L. Nichols Co., 1929), pp. 220–26.Google Scholar

21. The Willard incident is described in several issues of the Woman's Era (02 1895–07 1895).Google Scholar

22. The foregoing is based on manuscript materials, chiefly: YWCA organizational files, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College; Neighborhood Union papers, Commission on Interracial Cooperation papers and the files of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, all at Atlanta University.