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The Politics of Education in the New South: Women and Reform in Georgia, 1890-1930. By Rebecca S. Montgomery. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Pp. [viii], 263. $49.95, ISBN 0-8071-3108-3.)
Recent scholarship considering the roles played by women in the Progressive-era South has advanced our understanding of the gender-, race-, and class-specific nature of reform movements. Rebecca S. Montgomery's The Politics of Education in the New South: Women and Reform in Georgia, 1890-1930 furthers this development by posing questions about why white club women in Georgia embraced greater government involvement in social welfare and why education was central to their concerns. Her answers to these questions provide insight into the complex nature of southern society and women's educational reform efforts.
Montgomery's study begins with the struggle to expand post-Civil War educational opportunities for women. The obstacles to...