Brown Beginnings

Chapter 1 explores the life of Elise Johnson McDougald, a Harlem educator, essayist, and social investigator. It studies her public and private writings, including a scrapbook she maintained as a record of her accomplishments. As a prominent educator and as a middle-aged woman, McDougald was a figure transitioning between the “woman’s era” and that of the “new woman.” For this and other reasons that emerge in the chapter, this chapter questions why she came to embody the “brown beauty” of the New Negro woman.