Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race

Abstract

In restoring Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944) to her rightful place as one of the leading black women activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wanda Hendricks enriches our knowledge of the period in myriad ways, useful to scholars in the study of women, African Americans, religion, and history. A new synthesis of compensatory and social history, this fine biography taps into our twenty-first century desire to trace networks, to interweave race, class, and gender, and to understand an outstanding woman both as her own person and as part of extensive cultural systems.

Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race Wanda A. Hendricks. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014.

This compelling biography of a long-neglected historical figure meets the challenge of fulfilling the interdisciplinary and intersectional mandates of our time. In restoring Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944) to her rightful place as one of the leading black women activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wanda Hendricks enriches our knowledge of the period in myriad ways, useful to scholars in the study of women, African Americans, religion, and history.

Barrier Williams was born in Brockport, New York to parents who were themselves of mixed race, so her very existence challenged rigid racial categories. After graduating from normal school, she went south to teach blacks in postwar Missouri. Here she was shocked by the painful "contradictions" that created "such warmth of welcome on the one hand and so many repelling prejudices on the other" (30). She left the region in a few years for Washington, DC, where she became part of the black elite, recommencing an association with family friend Frederick Douglass.

She married black lawyer S. Laing Williams in 1887. They relocated to Chicago, where Barrier Williams's involvement in women's clubs and conventions brought her to national prominence. Hendricks's feminist understanding of Barrier Williams runs through her book like an unseen aquifer. She focuses on Barrier Williams's cultivation of professionalism, both for herself (through teaching, music, and her public career) and by creating professional opportunities for other black women. Conversely, Hendricks gives little direct attention to her marriage or to the fact that they remained childless. It is refreshing to read a biography of a woman that does not dwell on personal details which do not affect the story that has to be told.

Hendricks highlights Barrier Williams's wideranging geographic experiences, which impart a cosmopolitan air to her life, but also reveal class differences within the black community. Barrier Williams stood staunchly for middle-class values. From literary societies to a stated preference for decorous forms of religious worship, members of the black elite positioned themselves as exemplars to their benighted brethren - a situation exacerbated with mass migration of blacks from the South in the early twentieth century. Hendricks does not shy away from the tensions created by Barrier Williams's sense of superiority, but neither does she refrain from underscoring how many of Barrier Williams's projects sought to provide aid while also promoting skills.

Eventually, though, class tensions did land Barrier Williams in controversy, when she allied herself with Booker T. Washington in his famous debates with W. E. B. DuBois. She contributed an article on Black women to Washington's A New Negro for a New Century. While Hendricks documents how Barrier Williams lost prestige and some friends as the controversy raged on, her account also sheds new light on this debate. For instance, Barrier Williams was aware of what modern scholarship has confirmed: Booker T. Washington did use his influence behind the scenes to address civil rights issues (146). Her partnership with Booker T. Washington adds gendered complexity to this familiar narrative.

Hendricks skillfully weaves Barrier Williams's life into the warp of history. One can trace her interactions with generations of black male leadership, for instance, from John Jones in Chicago to national figures like Francis Grirnke, Douglass, and Washington, to the Urban League. The continuity of memory in the black community forms an especially rich vein in this book, as women like Phyllis Wheatley (114), Prudence Crandall (56), and even Barrier Williams herself (174), are memorialized in club names. However, it is sobering and maddening to read of black women's activism then, as now, against police abuse and murder of Black men (98).

Barrier Williams was committed to fostering interracial cooperation, even when it led her into a long and scarring struggle to become the first black woman admitted to the Chicago Woman's Club. Yet, she also expressed frustration and doubt about the "sincerity" of white women who would offer no material assistance to their sisters of color (101). Her alliances across racial lines, though, helped Barrier Williams during her years in Chicago, particularly in pushing for more black participation in the Columbian Exhibition World's Fair, including a speech at the World's Parliament of Religions (1893).

Hendricks writes smoothly, in an understated style that leaves a reader to draw her own connections and conclusions. The index, citations, and bibliography are thorough. A new synthesis of compensatory and social history, this fine biography taps into our twenty-first century desire to trace networks, to interweave race, class, and gender, and to understand an outstanding woman both as her own person and as part of extensive cultural systems.