Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. examines the expressive culture of African American women in Washington, D.C. during the early twentieth century. Honing in on the intellectual and cultural strivings of African American women communities in New Negro era Washington, I unveil a city in which African American women sought to configure themselves as authorial subjects. Between 1860 and 1930, the population of black women in Washington increased from 8.402 to 69,843. Over the course of seventy years of African American women’s migration to the nation’s capital, numerous institutions, organizations, and political, social, and cultural arenas emerged in Washington that catered to the specific needs, desires, and interests of a rapidly growing population of black women. African American women established spaces for contesting political, social and cultural currents and conventions that limited black women’s participation in the public sphere. Many of these women defiantly entered into public cultures such as higher education, literary activism, and local and interstate commerce. New Negro women challenged racial, gender, and sexual ideologies and norms that often relegated African American women to subordinate political, social, and cultural statuses. Colored No More reveals the significance of Washington, D.C. as a New Negro city. The African American women who inhabited the nation’s capital were integral to African American freedom and equality struggles of the early twentieth century.
American Fashions for American Women: Early Twentieth Century Efforts to Develop an American Fashion Identity
