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And Still I Rise: Black Women and Reform, Buffalo, New York, 1900-1940
No Negro woman can afford to be an indifferent spectator of the social, moral, religious, economic, and uplift problems that are agitated around [her].(1)
Mary Burnett Talbert
Mary Burnett Talbert, Oberlin College graduate and Buffalo social activist, in her vice presidential address to the biennial convention of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1916 in Baltimore, told assembled delegates that they should "take an active personal interest in everything that concerns the welfare of home, church, community, state,...[and] country, for once [they] have struck out in this great work [they] are doing the work of God."2 Black women engaged in a persistent struggle for change. Yet these reformers embodied a protest tradition that had manifested itself in the secular and religious organizations of Buffalo's black community during the nineteenth century.(3)The private sphere for these women was inextricably intertwined with the public sphere. Indeed, they felt that their activism was "ordained" by God. They thus held offices in their churches, as well as in political and social clubs. They sometimes operated in gender exclusive organizations and at other times in mixed groups. These reformers were womanists.(4) They embraced an ideology somewhat like that articulated by contemporary black feminists, such as Barbara Smith, who contend that black women confront daily a "simultaneity of oppressions."(5) Yet most of these women's reform activities addressed the subordinate status to which blacks, especially women and children, had been consigned and so they worked with black men to redress their grievances as blacks and women. These women saw themselves as critical links in a social movement designed to liberate the black community from second class citizenship. Their participation in community liberation struggles was a means of empowerment for them as individuals.(6)
This study will examine the extent to which Buffalo black women were involved in the process of social, political, and economic change and the extent to which they were successful. It also will explore the social and economic characteristics of these reformers and their relationship to black men. In the process it will explore the nature of black women's culture and will suggest that such an analysis is a viable way to address the historical experiences of...