“The Half Has Never Been Told”: Maritcha Lyons’ Community, Black Women Educators, the Woman’s Loyal Union, and “the Color Line” in Progressive Era Brooklyn and New York

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 835-861
Author(s):  
Val Marie Johnson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Women Educators ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Young Women's Christian Association ◽  
Black Resistance

Schoolteacher Maritcha Lyons was among the pioneering African American women who, in 1892, built one of the first women’s rights and racial justice organizations in the United States, the Woman’s Loyal Union of New York and Brooklyn (WLU). The WLU is recognized for its antilynching work in alliance with Ida B. Wells, and as an organizational springboard to the National Association of Colored Women. This essay examines struggles on “the color line” by Lyons, other WLU members, and women educators, through their community’s engagement in 1880s and 1890s Brooklyn and New York contention over school integration, and a 1903 debate on the founding of the Brooklyn Colored Young Women’s Christian Association. These women’s and their community’s battles against segregation and for separate institutions reveal lesser known aspects of WLU women’s activism, and the complexities of urban racism and Black resistance in the “Progressive Era” that witnessed Reconstruction’s dismantling, lynching, and “Jim Crow.”

Black Women and Politics in New York City

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie A. Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
York City ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Grassroots Activism

This book documents six decades of politically active black women, between the 1910s and the 1970s, in New York City who waged struggles for justice, rights, and equality not through grassroots activism but through formal politics. In tracing the paths of black women activists from women's clubs and civic organizations to national politics—including appointments to presidential commissions, congressional offices, and even a presidential candidacy—the book also articulates the vision of politics the women developed and its influence on the Democratic Party and its policies. Deftly examining how race, gender, and the structure of the state itself shape outcomes, the book exposes the layers of power and discrimination at work in all sectors of U.S. society. The book covers the fights for economic, social, and political rights of black activists, such as Anna Arnold Hedgeman, Irene Moorman Blackstone, Ruth Whitehead Whaley, and Shirley Chisholm. It analyses the great strides made by African American women in the United States during this period and discusses the progress of black activists in more recent years, such as the breaking down of racialized and gendered barriers to political power.

Determinants of Racial Disparities in Female Incarceration Rates, 2000–2018

2021 ◽  
pp. 003464462110510
Author(s):  
Samuel L. Myers ◽  
William J. Sabol ◽  
Man Xu
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
African American Women ◽  
White Women ◽  
National Research Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Female ◽  
Opioid Use ◽  
Incarceration Rate ◽  
Women In Prison

In The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, the National Research Council documents the large and persistent racial disparities in imprisonment that accompanied the more than quadrupling of the U.S. incarceration rate since the 1980s. Largely unnoticed by policy makers and opinion leaders in recent years is an unprecedented decrease in the number of African American women incarcerated at the same time that the number of white women in prison has grown to new heights. The result of these recent changes is a near convergence in black-white female incarceration rates from 2000 to 2016. In some states, the changes occurred abruptly and almost instantaneously. In other states, the convergence has been gradual. We find that changes in the population composition—the fraction of the population that is black—was the major contributor to the decline in the disparity among women. We also find that race-specific differences in drug overdose deaths stemming from the recent increases in opioid use lowered the disparity by increasing the white female imprisonment rate and lowering it for black women.

West of Jim Crow

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn M. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
White Schools ◽  
Black Bodies

This book follows California’s history of segregation from statehood to the beginning of the long civil rights movement, arguing that the state innovated methods to control and contain African Americans and other people of color. While celebrated in popular discourse for its forward-thinking culture, politics, and science, California also pioneered new ways to keep citizenship white. Schools, streetcars, restaurants, theaters, parks, beaches, and pools were places of contestation where the presence of black bodies elicited forceful responses from segregationists. Black Californians employed innovative measures to dismantle segregation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they borrowed some tactics from race rebels in the South, others they improvised. West of Jim Crow uses California to highlight the significance of African American resistance to racial restrictions in places often deemed marginal to mainstream civil rights histories. Examining segregation in the state sheds light on the primacy of gender and sexuality in the minds of segregationists and the significance of black women, black bodies, and racial science, in the years preceding the modern civil rights struggle. California has much to teach us about the lives of African Americans who crossed the color line and the variety of tactics and strategies employed by freedom fighters across the United States.

scholarly journals African American Women and Domestic Violence: Addressing their Voice of Silence

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernice Kennedy ◽  
Chalice Rhodes (Former Jenkins)
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Domestic Violence ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
White Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Slave Owner ◽  
American Women ◽  
Strong Black Women

Abstract Historically, during slavery, the international slave trade promoted normalization of violence against African American women. During slavery, African American women endured inhuman conditions because of the majority race views of them as being over-sexualized, physically strong, and immoral. This perception of the African American women as being highly sexual and more sexual than white women results in slave owner justifying their sexual violation and degrading of the African American women. The stereotypical representations of African American women as strong, controlling, dangerous, fearless, and invulnerable may interfere with the African American women receiving the needed services for domestic violence in the community. The Strong Black Women Archetype has been dated back to slavery describing their coping mechanism in dealing with oppression by developing a strong, less traditionally female role. The authors developed a model: The Multidimensional Perspectives of Factors Contributing to Domestic Violence of African American Women in the United States. This model depicts historically, the factors contributing to domestic violence of African American women in the United States. Also, this model addressed the African American women subscribing to the Strong Black Women Archetype to cope with domestic violence. Despite the increase in domestic violence in African American women, they focused more on the issue of racism instead of sexism in America. African American women have experienced the two obstacles of racism and sexism in America. However, African American women and men believe racism is more critical than sexism. Therefore, domestic violence in the African American population may remain silent because of cultural loyalty. However, the voice of silence of African American females is gradually changing with the upcoming generations.

Spiritual Recognition of Empire

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Azaransky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Travel ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
Political Responses ◽  
Black Christians ◽  
Howard Thurman

This chapter examines how international travel influenced a network of black Christian activists and intellectuals who developed theological and political responses to Jim Crow in the mid-1930s. Chief among them was Howard Thurman, who led a delegation of black Christians on a five-month speaking tour of India. The chapter explores how India challenged Thurman to articulate a black Christian theological perspective in light of colonialism and segregation in the United States. The chapter also investigates the importance of the YWCA for black women developing international solidarities with peoples of color. It considers lesser known thinkers who were theologically and politically astute, like Celestine Smith, Juliette Derricotte, and Sue Bailey Thurman.

Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
LaShawn Harris
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Informal Economy ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Financial Stability ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Labor Patterns

During the early twentieth century, a diverse group of African American women carved out unique niches for themselves within New York City's expansive informal economy. This book illuminates the labor patterns and economic activity of three perennials within this kaleidoscope of underground industry: sex work, numbers running for gambling enterprises, and the supernatural consulting business. Mining police and prison records, newspaper accounts, and period literature, the book teases out answers to essential questions about these women and their working lives. It also offers a surprising revelation, arguing that the burgeoning underground economy served as a catalyst in working-class black women's creation of the employment opportunities, occupational identities, and survival strategies that provided them with financial stability and a sense of labor autonomy and mobility. At the same time, urban black women, all striving for economic and social prospects and pleasures, experienced the conspicuous and hidden dangers associated with newfound labor opportunities.

Irvin S. Cobb

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Subtle Racism ◽  
American Memory ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
Jim Crow South ◽  
Insight Into

Born and raised in Paducah, Kentucky, Irvin S. Cobb rose from his humble beginnings to national renown as one of America’s most celebrated writers during the early twentieth century. Shortly after leaving Kentucky for New York, Cobb earned a job at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and became one of the highest paid staff reporters in the United States. Soon he was writing articles and short stories for magazines as well. Today, Cobb is remembered best for his sharp wit expressed through his fiction. As a product of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow South, Cobb’s subtle racism has largely denied him prominence in American memory, but his work provides a unique insight into the prevailing mind-set of his time. In Irvin S. Cobb: The Rise and Fall of an American Humorist, historian William E. Ellis examines the life of this significant writer, contextualizing his humor within the “Lost Cause” narrative. The son of a Confederate soldier and nephew of a famous Confederate artillery officer, Cobb was ensnared by southernracism, often bemoaning the North’s treatment of the South and creating stereotypical African American characters in his work. Even though he left Kentucky for the financially greener pastures of New York, Cobb never forgot his southern roots. His native Paducah molded him into a great storyteller, an engaging humorist, anobservant reporter, and a racist. Despite his flaws, Cobb’s vivid and humorous portrayals of Kentucky won him fame, wealth, and influence for decades.

“A Hindu is white although he is black”: Hindu Alterity and the Performativity of Religion and Race between the United States and the Caribbean

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-210
Author(s):  
Alexander Rocklin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Passing ◽  
East Indian ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Religion And Race ◽  
Self Formation

AbstractThis essay uses the controversies surrounding the enigmatic Ismet Ali, a yogi working in Chicago and New York in the 1920s, to illuminate the complexities of how the performativity of religion and race are interrelated. I examine several moments in which Ali's “authenticity” as Indian is brought into doubt to open up larger questions regarding the global flows of colonial knowledge, racial tropes, and groups of people between India, the United States, and the Caribbean. I explore the ways in which, in the early twentieth-century United States, East Indian “authenticity” only became legible via identificatory practices that engaged with and adapted orientalized stereotypes. The practices of the yogi persona and its sartorial stylings meant to signify “East Indianness” in the United States, particularly the donning of a turban and beard, were one mode through which both South Asian and African Americans repurposed “Hindoo” stereotypes as models for self-formation. By taking on “Hindoo” identities, peoples of color could circumvent the U.S. black/white racial binary and the violence of Jim Crow. This act of racial passing was also an act of religious passing. However, the ways in which identities had to and could be performed changed with context as individuals moved across national and colonial boundaries.

“These Women Really Did the Work”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lucander
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Food Service ◽  
Black Workers ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Color Line ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Access To Food

This chapter describes a series of sit-ins during 1944. Led by largely forgotten African American women, this interracial direct-action campaign sought to challenge the color line at department-store lunch counters. Integrating, or at least improving, access to food service at major downtown retailers was an important step in the process of breaking down elements of Jim Crow segregation in St. Louis. That same year, the March on Washington Movement (MOWM) shifted its attention toward obtaining and retaining jobs for black workers in publicly funded workplaces. Gaining access to jobs operating switchboards and in the local administration of Southwestern Bell Telephone offices was presented as a stride toward securing sustainable employment for a largely female contingent of working-class African Americans who wanted long-term white- and pink-collar employment. This sort of local women's activism, juxtaposed against national men's leadership, is consistent with a gendered pattern of activism in civil rights campaigns that persisted through the 1960s.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document