Entering the Fray: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the New South (SOUTHERN WOMEN)

Entering the Fray

Southern Women

A series of books developed from the Southern Conference on Women’s History sponsored by the Southern Association for Women Historians

Series Editors

Betty Brandon Michele Gillespie Nancy A. Hewitt Lu Ann Jones Wilma King Amy McCandless

Entering the Fray Gender, Politics, and Culture in the New South

edited by Jonathan Daniel Wells and Sheila R. Phipps

U n i v e r s i t y o f M i s s o ur i P r e s s C o lum b ia a n d Lond o n

Copyright © 2010 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 14 13 12 11 10

Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8262-1863-6

This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Stephanie Foley Typesetter: FoleyDesign Printer and binder: Integrated Book Technologies, Inc. Typefaces: Century and Minion

Dedicated to Nancy Gutierrez and James P. Whittenburg

Contents

Editors’ Introduction

1

Myth, Memory, and the Making of Lottie Moon R e g i na D . S ull i van

11

“To Do Her Duty Nobly and Well” White Women’s Organizations in Georgia Debate Woman Suffrage, 1910–1920 S t ac e y H o r s t mann G at t i

42

“Consumed with a Ghastly Wasting” Home Demonstration Confronts Disease in Rural Florida, 1920–1945 K e ll y M i n o r

68

Playing with Jim Crow Children’s Challenges to Segregated Recreational Space in New Orleans, 1945–1949 A. Lee Levert 96 A Woman’s Touch Gender at Monticello, 1945–1960 M e gan S t ubb e n d e ck

118

“Women Did Everything Except Run” Black Women’s Participation in the 1959 Volunteer Ticket Campaign in Memphis, Tennessee El i zab e t h G r i t t e r 136 vii

viii

Contents

Organizing Breadmakers Kathryn Dunaway’s ERA Battle and the Roots of Georgia’s Republican Revolution Robin Morris

161

“Look for the Union Label” Organizing Women Workers and Women Consumers in the Southern Apparel Industry M i ch e ll e H ab e r lan d

184

The “Modern-Day Medea” Susan Smith and the National Media K e i r a V. W i ll i ams

203

About the Contributors

227

Index

229

Entering the Fray

Editors’ Introduction

T

he stu dy of t h e N ew S o uth , t he pe r i o d from emanc i pat io n

in 1865 to the modern era, has been greatly enriched by the growing number of studies on gender and society in the past few decades. Works employing gender as a category of analysis have altered and reshaped our historiographical understanding of the struggle for woman suffrage, the conflicted nature of race and class in the South, the complex story of politics, and the role of family and motherhood in black and white society. Building upon the works of scholars such as Anne Firor Scott, Marjorie Spruill, Elna Green, and many others, the essays presented in this volume continue the now-established trends of the historiography toward pushing against racial, class, and sexual boundaries. In addition, the following essays also build on the legacy of high-quality volumes that have sprung forth from the past meetings of the Southern Association of Women Historians. Although much work remains ahead, the SAWH and the University of Missouri Press have added immeasurably to scholarly understanding of the history of southern women through the SAWH series. In this spirit, a fresh round of essays is herein offered, revised and rewritten from their original appearance at the Seventh Conference on Women’s History in Baltimore in 2006. The nine essays, covering a broad range of topics and time periods within the New South, when taken together prove beyond any doubt that the history of southern women is a vibrant and growing field. It is not hard, however, to recall a time when this was not the case. Before the 1970s only a few pioneers ventured into the undeveloped field of southern women’s history, such as Julia Cherry Spruill in her 1938 work Life and Work of Women in the Southern Colonies, which stood for many years as one of the most important pathbreaking examinations of female southerners. Not until the late 1960s and early 1970s would scholars heed the call for greater attention to women as historical subjects. Just as women were demanding and achieving a more active and prominent role in national politics, so too did the field of women’s history begin to assert itself in the decade of the 70s. 1

2

Entering the Fray

Â� Building slowly at first, but then picking up remarkable speed in the 1980s and 1990s, the study of women and gender earned places in the historiography undreamed of in previous decades. And to a great extent this burst of scholarship has fulfilled its promise to change the way we think about the past, and this is as true for the analysis of the New South as it is for American history more broadly. One of the first important works to assert the importance of southern women was Anne Firor Scott’s The Southern Lady (1970).1 Scott examined the struggles of southern women in both the antebellum and postbellum periods, helping to lay foundations for further study of both eras. In examining the pre–Civil War South, Scott found that southern women experienced profound burdens of work and family, even wealthy women residing on plantations. Later scholars, such as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Catherine Clinton, would add greater nuance to our understanding of the plantation mistress. In investigating the New South, Scott discovered a world of female activism in which women formed clubs and associations of all kinds, from reform and temperance groups, to advocates for greater equality, to literary and journalistic organizations. Although her book consisted of scarcely more than two hundred pages of text, Scott’s work provided an important basis for the legitimacy of southern women’s history. At the same time that scholars such as Scott were pointing researchers to new paths of inquiry in the nascent field of gender history, other historians had already begun to emphasize the importance of race and the African American experience as essential historical issues. By the 1960s, an explosion of works by John Blassingame, Eugene Genovese, Richard Wade, Kenneth Stampp, and many others stressed that the neglected history of slavery and of African Americans was ripe for investigation. As important as these studies were for our knowledge of race, slavery, and free blacks, however, few of these studies devoted much attention to African American women. And while slavery moved to the forefront of American historiography in the 1970s and 1980s, the history of southern black women would have to wait for its scholarship, which has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves. In the meantime, the history of white women in the South, especially those living on plantations and those engaged in literary careers, continued to attract significant scholarly attention in the decades following Scott’s landmark work. Catherine Clinton’s study The Plantation Mistress (1982) helped to frame debates about the place of women in the Old South, emphasizing that the “New Englandization” of women’s history had created false impressions of the range of experiences for women in all sections.2 Clinton suggested that the experience of southern women was unique because of the presence of slavery but also because of these women’s contributions to the region’s politi-

Introduction

3

cal economy. Indeed, Clinton found that southern women played a much more prominent economic and cultural role on the plantation than previous observers had credited them with. Like Clinton, Suzanne Lebsock studied white women, but Lebsock elected to take a broader census and included poor and middling women in her important work The Free Women of Petersburg (1984).3 She found that even in an environment hostile to notions of gender equality southern women nonetheless managed to push against traditional boundaries by forming a unique protofeminist subculture. Lebsock and other historians such as Jean E. Friedman also explored the significance of religion and community, finding these themes central to the everyday lives of southern women.4 But it was Elizabeth Fox-Genovese who not only advanced arguments about plantation women but incorporated female slaves into the narrative as well. In Within the Plantation Household (1988), FoxGenovese underscored the cultural and political differences between North and South. In contrast to the urbanizing bourgeois North, the rural South, she claimed, “remained bound by a broad vision of appropriate gender relations.”5 Southern female culture, she argued, was significantly determined by the rural, traditional, and pre-bourgeois nature of southern communities. More recently scholars have taken issue with Fox-Genovese’s characterization of gender in the South, particularly the notion that the separate sphere ideology could not have taken root in a region in which life on the plantation prevented the separation of work and home. New studies have highlighted the fact that societies are influenced not just by the political economy in the surrounding locale, but also by ideologies emanating from outside their own regions.6 As Michael O’Brien has made clear, the South was engaged in a broad dialogue with Western civilization, and southern women read the same novels, magazines, and newspapers read by their northern counterparts.7 If southern women, especially those residing on plantations and those who could afford large numbers of books and periodicals, were reading the same literature as northerners, then the question of whether home and work were separated or not becomes less relevant. Indeed, it is increasingly clear that southerners subscribed to the same separate sphere ideology as northern women, suggesting that such an ideology may have had deeper roots in Western culture. Importantly, the intellectual trends seem to emphasize the similarities, rather than the differences, of the experiences of northern and southern white women in the antebellum era. At the same time, historians have developed a fuller narrative of gender and women in the New South. Much of this work has developed further themes first explored by scholars of the Old South. Education, for example, has received ample attention from historians. Christie Anne Farnham’s The Education of the Southern Belle (1994), building upon earlier work by Â�Clinton,

4

Entering the Fray

found that white middle- and upper-class women often received a substantial education in mathematics, philosophy, literature, and the sciences.8 Writers on the New South have discovered similar themes, stressing the role of middle-class women in the push for expanded educational opportunities. As Rebecca S. Montgomery argues in The Politics of Education in the New South (2006), postwar Georgia women continued to advocate schooling for girls and young women. Such activism in the New South, Montgomery finds, was closely linked to other reform efforts, such as the ending of child labor, improvements in the lives of rural and mountain women, and the expansion of the club movement.9 Scholarly understanding of gender and women in the New South has been enriched significantly by studies of the suffrage movement, civil rights, and other key aspects of women’s experience, such as education. Among the leading scholars on the postbellum South has been Marjorie Spruill, whose works have contributed to a more comprehensive perspective on the cause of women’s rights. For example, Spruill and other scholars note that Tennessee pushed the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment into law as the thirtysixth state to approve women’s suffrage.10 In New Women of the New South (1993), Spruill examines the lives of eleven suffragists and concludes that, like their northern sisters, these southern women were highly critical of male southern politicians, sensitive to the necessity of expanded roles for women in society and weary of the limitations placed upon them, and central to the national movement for suffrage.11 Female activists such as Georgia’s Rebecca Latimer Felton, Kentucky’s Laura Clay, and Tennessee’s Sue Shelton White joined with northern women to champion the right to vote. Such women, scholars have emphasized, worked in every southern state and experienced similar challenges of an intransigent region. Nancy Hewitt and other historians have forged a broader appreciation for the difficulties faced by southern women suffragists.12 Hewitt’s important work on women in Tampa offers exciting new potential paths for research. While Spruill, Hewitt, and others have focused largely upon the lives and careers of white suffragists, more recently scholars have emphasized the centrality of African American women in the cause. Indeed, as Spruill points out, many white suffragists adamantly opposed including black women in their movement, including Laura Clay, who believed that including African American women in the suffrage battle would doom any chances for the support of the movement in the South.13 But as Elsa Barkley Brown, Ann D. Gordon, Darlene Clark Hine, and many others have argued, black women had to struggle for inclusion in the women’s suffrage movement and then again decades later in the Civil Rights movement.14 Thanks to these and other historians, the study of African American women in the New South has broadened

Introduction

5

significantly to create an increasingly multi-faceted understanding of the lived experience. Studies such as Hine’s Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890–1950 (1989) and Christina Greene’s Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina (2005) have opened new paths of inquiry that have resulted in a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the struggles of southern black women. The wide-ranging, sophisticated, and diverse scholarship on black and white women in the New South is too great to be covered in a single introduction or even a single volume. But the essays that follow provide confirmation that the field is vigorous and productive. Authored by younger as well as more established historians, and confronting a number of questions regarding gender, race, politics, and culture, these essays make clear that the history of southern women and gender are thriving fields of study. As the title suggests, Entering the Fray: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the New South is a collection of studies that focus on southern women’s increasing public activities and images in the twentieth century. Women shouldered responsibilities for local, national, and international interests but, just as nineteenth-century women’s status could be at risk from too much public presence, women of the New South stepped gingerly into the pulsing public arena, taking care to work within what they considered their current gender limitations. In the first essay, Regina D. Sullivan offers “Myth, Memory, and the Making of Lottie Moon,” the study of a nineteenth-century woman who became a missionary in China for the Southern Baptist Convention. On the surface, the Convention’s decision to allow a woman to perform mission work in a foreign country did not seem to be a radical break from contemporary gender structure. Women were expected to be the most pious members of society, influencing family and friends to lead moral lives. Since Moon was overseen by male supervisors, the decision seemed sound. But Sullivan points out that Moon lost patience with the strictures that limited her mission field, moved her mission out of reach of male authority, and even persuaded women to form their own missionary organization within the church. Despite Lottie Moon’s courageous and progressive actions, Sullivan argues that members of the Women’s Missionary Union later manipulated Moon’s true accomplishments to make her appear a feminine martyr to the cause they continued into the twentieth century rather than a feminist voice within the church. Sullivan’s purpose in this essay is to correct the historical record to show Moon not only as a dedicated missionary, but also as a pioneer for gender equality in the Southern Baptist Convention. Stacey Horstmann Gatti’s essay is a sophisticated study of the woman’s

6

Entering the Fray

Â� suffrage movement in Georgia. “‘To Do Her Duty Nobly and Well’: White Women’s Organizations in Georgia Debate Woman Suffrage, 1910–1920” reveals an intensive look at the growth of southern women’s political skills as they moved through the century’s second decade. Gatti studied three established women’s organizations relative to their deliberations over woman suffrage: the Georgia Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the Georgia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Additionally, Gatti skillfully weaves the national suffrage movement and the issues raised by Progressivism into her findings about state deliberations. Georgia’s woman suffrage organizations targeted the established women’s groups for recruitment, believing that members would be interested in suffrage as a means to achieving their own reform goals, viewing the franchise’s usefulness in the social housekeeping proposed by Jane Addams, a national spokesperson for progressive reforms. But these particular groups were not necessarily poised to endorse suffrage. Gatti has identified two questions driving their deliberations: would suffrage support their philosophy and identity, and would it help or hinder their work? The answers she finds reveal that, by the second decade of the twentieth century, Georgia women had already developed a high level of political discernment and skill. Kelly Minor’s study offers another glimpse at southern women’s social housekeeping. “‘Consumed with a Ghastly Wasting’: Home Demonstration Confronts Disease in Rural Florida, 1920–1945” focuses on the efforts of Home Demonstration Agents to defeat debilitating diseases that reduced the productive capacities of the rural poor. These female-run agencies, supported by state and federal funding and operated by local women, targeted many aspects of life for their rural clients, but Minor’s study focuses especially on their work against hookworm (usually contracted through bare feet in unsanitary conditions) and pellagra (arising from poor nutrition). Minor argues that the female Home Demonstration Agents she studied in Florida were influenced by Progressivism but, unlike many reforms that seemed to be approached from outside of the targeted communities, these women worked within the communities they called home. While urban reform organizations attempted to clean up slum areas by demanding the development of civil programs to achieve those ends, HDAs educated rural women to attend to their unsanitary conditions themselves. In addition, while other reform groups’ goals were to instill American values into their charges, HDAs’ primary concerns were more practical, attacking the health issues that reduced productivity. Instead of making connections between race and disease, Minor suggests that these agents believed that health issues arose from climate conditions and poverty. According to Minor, the work these agents

Introduction

7

did to help rural women between the two world wars was much more effective than previous studies have revealed. One reform in New Orleans was most decidedly racial. A. Lee Levert’s intriguing essay, “Playing with Jim Crow: Children’s Challenges to Segregated Recreational Space in New Orleans, 1945–1949,” focuses on Kingsley House settlement, the first settlement house in the Deep South. In an effort to reduce juvenile delinquency after World War II, members of the biracial Textile Worker’s Union of America and Kingsley House together designed a program to allow black children to play on the settlement house grounds. Until 1946, only white children had been allowed to use the facility, leaving black children in the neighborhood a thirty-three-block walk to the nearest black playground. Levert argues that the decision to let black and white children share the playground, albeit at different times during the week, reflects changing racial relations taking place on the national level, what she refers to as a “dress rehearsal” for the Civil Rights movement. Her study includes the responses of both white and black children to sharing this semipublic space, especially if white supervisors took a stand against white children when conflict arose between the two groups. In addition, she uses this study to offer more flexible definitions of power and politics, revealing the reflexive responses of black children to white children’s attitudes of privilege. Americans’ internal struggle for civil rights occurred simultaneously with the international tensions known as the Cold War—a time when American society attempted to move gender construction backward, making women’s domestic work equivalent to patriotic duty. Megan Stubbendeck’s “A Woman’s Touch: Gender at Monticello, 1945–1960” provides an example of women’s domestic responsibilities being performed in a public venue. She outlines three different phases of historic preservation: the first led by women at the end of the nineteenth century, the second led exclusively by men by the 1920s, and the third being driven primarily by the government after World War II. Stubbendeck argues, however, that the third phase also increasingly included the work of women, demanding that the trend in historic preservation receive a gender study, which she offers here. During the postwar era, as family vacations became popular, women were often the ones who decided vacation destinations and took responsibility for critiquing their families’ experiences there. At the same time, educating American children more intensely in American history became a tool for defeating infiltration of communist ideology. Stubbendeck’s study of Monticello provides a glimpse into a world where women were assuming again the traditional role of educating their children while becoming more involved publicly and professionally in the field of historic preservation.

8

Entering the Fray

Elizabeth Gritter, in “’Women Did Everything Except Run’: Black Women’s Participation in the 1959 Volunteer Ticket Campaign in Memphis, Tennessee,” offers a close look at black women’s political efforts to fight Jim Crow by getting black men elected to office. Memphis remained fiercely Jim Crow, even after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. But black Memphians joined political forces in 1959 under the “Volunteer Ticket” to integrate the administrative leadership of Memphis, mostly through the work of black women. She argues that, although the Volunteer Ticket Campaign was led by men, without the work of black women, the campaign could not have succeeded. Some black women became “formal leaders,” lending a public voice to the campaign, but more women were “bridge leaders,” connecting candidates to voters, or grassroots activists who did the hard work of following the strategies planned from the top. Women held fundraisers, planned “Coca Cola parties,” helped register new voters, and brought in youth to support black candidates. According to Gritter, black women’s work not only turned the racial corner for Memphis but also for the South. In “’Organizing Breadmakers”: Kathryn Dunaway’s ERA Battle and the Roots of Georgia’s Republican Revolution,” Robin Morris takes the collection again to Georgia. In this essay, Morris describes the work of Kathryn Â�Dunaway, Georgia’s state leader against the Equal Rights Amendment and friend of national STOP ERA chairman Phyllis Schlafly. Dunaway’s story in the ERA fight is Morris’s way of linking national and grassroots efforts through state strategies. She takes her title from one of Dunaway’s tactics, that of sending state legislators small loaves of bread to encourage them to vote against ratification of the ERA, suggesting in their notes that the male legislators would be protecting the traditional place of women at home producing nutritious foods for the family, a positive contrast to the pro-ERA feminists they viewed as opponents of the traditional American family. Morris also uses Dunaway’s ERA fight to exemplify the growth of the Republican Party in Georgia during the 1960s. As national Democratic leaders continued to push for integration and civil rights, formerly faithful southern Democrats began moving into the Republican Party and Dunaway did so with enthusiasm, becoming first a charter member of the North Fulton County Federation of Republican Women then ultimately serving as an officer at the state level. According to Morris, Dunaway’s organization of bread makers to defeat state ratification of the ERA exemplified her dedication to keeping a traditional home by fighting national—and international—change. Michelle Haberland’s “Look for the Union Label: Organizing Women Workers and Women Consumers in the Southern Apparel Industry” is a study of industrial advertising that targeted traditional family consumers:

Introduction

9

women. The “Look for the Union Label” advertisement that began in 1975 included the familiar jingle sung by women workers, and it was the first time that union label advertising actually reflected the female majority of workers in the industry. Prior to that, according to Haberland, advertisements made no mention of the women who made the garments, while targeting female consumers who supposedly did not work for a living, but were traditional housekeepers. The union label movement also implied boycotting as a means of maintaining standards for workers. Just prior to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union campaign, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America had begun an advertising campaign to boycott a southern nonunion company. This, Haberland argues, was just one attempt to organize southern workers who often worked for “runaway” companies that had fled the unionized North for the South, where wage demands were lower. In the process, advertising campaigns not only targeted female consumers to purchase union label products, but to do so as a political statement, an economic vote against rightto-work laws that prevented southern workers from unionizing. The last essay in this collection is “The ‘Modern-Day Medea’: Susan Smith and the National Media” by Keira V. Williams. In this interesting study, Williams examines the uses made of Susan Smith by the media and public leaders at the beginning of her ordeal, when the public believed her two young sons had been kidnapped by a black man, through to the end when she finally confessed to drowning them in a lake. Williams argues that Smith herself ultimately did not matter to the public, but her story and the images played up by the media fit into the national dialogue about traditional family values. Although “Modern-Day Medea” fits chronologically at the end of this collection, it is also fitting to close with the essay because Williams points to the conservative reactions against feminism and women’s efforts toward economic and political equality covered in the other essays. Deftly describing the sad events in Susan Smith’s life, Williams argues that Smith’s story represents what has been called a “backlash” against women’s advances in the twentieth century, a disenchantment and fatigue with social movements that began with Progressivism and culminated in the second wave of feminism. The image of Smith as a racist southerner was also played up in the media when she fashioned a black male as the culprit as if that would make sense to everyone involved, making her story a regional as well as national image. In sum, each essay in this collection is distinctly and interestingly different from the others, yet all of them fit into the picture of women’s increasing movement into political and economic life, while still, on some level, maintaining their gendered place as determined by society. The authors of this

10

Entering the Fray

Â� collection have built upon the works that came before, but they have used new sources and new perspectives to tease out a more detailed view of twentieth-century southern women “entering the fray.” Â�—Â�— 1. Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). 2. Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South (New York: Pantheon, 1982). 3. Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784– 1860 (New York: Norton, 1984). 4. Friedman, The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830– 1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 5. Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 203. 6. Wells, The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800–1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 7. O’Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 8. Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Old South (New York: New York University Press, 1994). 9. Montgomery, The Politics of Education in the New South: Women and Reform in Georgia, 1890–1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006). 10. Wheeler, Votes for Women! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995). 11. Wheeler, New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), xx–xxi. 12. Hewitt, Southern Discomfort: Women’s Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 13. Ibid., 124–25. 14. Gordon et al., eds., African American Women and the Vote, 1837–1965 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997).

Myth, Memory, and the Making of Lottie Moon R e g i na D . S ull i van

W

hat women have a right to demand is perfect equality,”

wrote Charlotte Digges “Lottie” Moon in 1883 from her post in northern China.1 Angry that many female missionaries were not allowed to vote on policy matters at their stations, Moon made her feelings clear to her constituents in the United States and her colleagues in China. The words she penned may sound more like those of a suffragist than a religious worker, but Lottie Moon was then and remains today the Southern Baptist Convention’s most popular missionary. Her article, “The Woman Question Again,” in which she demanded “perfect equality,” was her first public stand against discriminatory policies. Two years after writing these words, tired of negotiations and appeals, she made an even more radical move for her era and her culture. She openly defied her employer, the Foreign Mission Board2 of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), by relocating 150 miles from any male authority in order to prosecute her work as she saw fit. In the rural Pingtu district she conducted her work alone, without board approval, and publicized her efforts to her supporters across the South. Moon called for women to make the cause of foreign missions their own. She urged them to break with tradition and risk disapproval, as she had, by forming an overarching female organization within their denomination—the Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU). Today Lottie Moon lives on in the popular imagination of Southern Baptists across the United States and around the world. Yet the story that is repeated annually and reinforced in a multitude of denominational publications and Web sites differs from the historical details of her life.3 Instead of celebrating Moon as a pathbreaking southern woman who had a profound influence on millions of Baptist men and women during her lifetime, the denomination has marketed Lottie Moon as a martyr to the mission cause. Moon is portrayed as protesting board policies by starving herself to death rather than 11

12

R e g i n a D . S u l l i va n

having sparked a women’s movement within the denomination that brought about the creation of the Woman’s Missionary Union itself and effected permanent change to gendered power relationships within the Southern Baptist Convention. This essay aims to correct these distortions and to place Moon within her historical context and within the broader historiography of southern and American women’s history. In the nineteenth century hagiographic public discourse celebrated the lives of pioneer missionaries, but in our postcolonial era they are no longer prominent fixtures in American popular culture.4 Lottie Moon remains an exception within the largest Protestant denomination in North America because of a critical convergence of events. Her life intersected an emerging women’s movement within the Southern Baptist Convention and became the catalyst for an organization that would both become and create her legacy— the Woman’s Missionary Union. Without the continual efforts of the WMU, Moon would have certainly passed into obscurity along with her colleagues. Five years after her death, the WMU attached Moon’s name to their annual denomination-wide Christmas fundraiser for foreign missions, which it had launched at her suggestion in 1889. A few years later, the WMU began publicizing the offering with a pamphlet that recounted Moon’s life story. This proved an effective promotional device and donations increased that year over 600 percent.5 Capitalizing on their success, the WMU began building a fundraising industry around this narrative. The Woman’s Missionary Union and the denomination gained much from creating this “Lottie Moon Story.” Since 1889 they have raised over two billion dollars through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.6 As a result, Moon has become the quintessential symbol of foreign missions, which is no small feat since Southern Baptists have sixteen million members worldwide and support over five thousand missionaries.7 The denomination exerts a strong influence on American culture in the twenty-first century through its conservative social and political agenda. Evangelism defines the Southern Baptist Convention’s self-concept and, from its start in 1845, has been the primary reason for maintaining an overarching denominational structure. Over the years, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering has played a vital role in the denomination’s success at missions. The Woman’s Missionary Union—creators and promoters of the offering—have made Moon the centerpiece of their missions studies program, producing cookbooks, picture books, dramatic scripts, videos, and two full-length biographies.8 Indeed, Lottie Moon remains the most regularly remembered of all nineteenth-century, white southern women. The irony is that while women have maintained Moon’s memory for generations, historians of women have overlooked her. The result has been that Moon’s life has been interpreted primarily by her denomination, and her memory used to serve its institutional

Myth, Memory, and the Making of Lottie Moon

13

purposes. Despite a recent flourishing of scholarship on southern women and female missionaries, Moon has received only brief treatments or none at all.9 This may be due, in part, to a tendency to use northern source materials in studies of female missionaries, but there seems no clear answer as to why someone of Moon’s signal cultural importance has gone unnoticed in studies of southern women. Her life offers an interesting counterpoint to scholarship that stresses elite southern women’s conservative nature and unwillingness to challenge male authority. Lottie Moon did not fit the mold. She understood the social limitations that she faced, took action against them, and inspired women to follow her lead. That this fight for female power took place within a religious denomination only confirms what scholars have long posited—that women took their first moves toward fighting gender inequality in churches, just as Moon and the women of the Southern Baptist Convention did.10 A central aspect of the “Lottie Moon Story” has been the casting of Moon into the role not only of missionary icon but also of stereotypical southern “belle”—Virginia planter aristocracy. It is no accident that the original narrative was created in the mid-1920s when white southerners began to re-imagine their past with a gusto that rendered everyone’s maternal ancestor a plantation mistress. This glorification of the Old South and its “Lost Cause” dimmed a realistic view of the past. Poor whites—the majority of southerners—simply disappeared, and African Americans were portrayed as willing servants rather than chattel.11 The first biography, completed in 1927, opens with a fictionalized depiction of slaves, speaking in dialect and praising Moon’s special qualities. The author seems to have created these slave characters, who do not reappear in the text, in order to celebrate Moon’s status as a slaveholder’s daughter—a theme that reverberates through the first chapter of the 1980 biography as well.12 Moon was, indeed, a daughter of wealthy slaveholders, but her experience growing up in Albemarle County, Virginia was unusual. While the denomination has emphasized Moon’s plantation background, it has not considered that her experience questions the very stereotype that the hagiographies have perpetuated. Lottie Moon grew to adulthood in a southern household where progressive ideas on female education were valued and where daughters were encouraged to seek independent courses rather than marriage.13 This remarkable upbringing shaped Moon into a woman who would become an advocate for a woman’s right to serve God as she saw fit and, importantly, for women to organize to do “God’s work.” Moon’s denominational biographers were correct when they emphasized her family’s wealth and prominent social standing in antebellum Virginia. Born in 1840, Moon spent her childhood on a plantation, Viewmont, in rural Albemarle County about ten miles from Monticello. Her family’s extensive land holdings can be traced to the 1700s when European settlers received

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large land grants in the region.14 On the surface, the contours of Moon’s childhood reveal similarities with those of other elite plantation children.15 She formed close friendships with her nearby cousins, and she and her siblings were part of a bustling, active household with large extended kin and social networks.16 Her mother gave birth every two or three years over a twenty-year period, with seven children surviving to adulthood.17 The children received their early education from tutors and enjoyed an extensive home library provided by their father. In 1850 the eldest daughter, Orianna, experienced an intellectual “awakening” and resolved to follow her older brother’s path and study medicine.18 Both her uncle and brother had earned medical degrees in Philadelphia, so when it was announced that a Female Medical College would open that year, Orianna made a decision.19 The sixteen-year-old quit the South and enrolled in Troy Female Seminary in upstate New York where she could prepare to enter medical school.20 In 1850 the Moons could have chosen from a number of prominent boarding schools in the South, but Troy had a national reputation.21 Additionally, Orianna had assumed attitudes that put her at odds with her society. She developed a critique not just of female roles but also of the economic system that brought her wealth and privilege. Although it is not clear when her opinions achieved their full form, Orianna took pride in her lack of religion, her belief in women’s rights, and her opposition to slavery.22 She was aware that these opinions could bring dishonor, even violence, to her family. She reportedly said to her brother’s fiancée, “My dear, I think you are a very, very brave girl! To be willing to marry Isaac, knowing I am his sister!”23 In 1854, the year Orianna enrolled in medical school, Lottie Moon also left home. She was sent to Hollins Institute, a girls’ boarding school that followed the preparatory coursework of the University of Virginia.24 Here Moon left her first written record, and her actions reveal that, like her older sister, she did not feel the need to conform to the gender norms of the antebellum South. Her academic strength was in languages, and she gained a reputation for studying hard. Moon helped form a literary club on campus and edited its paper, but the young Moon also gained a reputation as a high-spirited troublemaker.25 Head of the school, George B. Taylor, recalled that she once climbed the bell tower and wrapped towels around the bell so it could not ring, delaying morning classes.26 In spite of her antics, the teenager finished her studies in 1856, taking a diploma in French.27 She continued her education a year later in Charlottesville at Baptist-sponsored Albemarle Female Institute, which also allowed students to follow the University of Virginia curriculum.28 Her classmates recalled that Moon remained openly skeptical of religion despite her Baptist-influenced surroundings.29 Ever the prankster, she teased new students, telling them that they would be forced to join the

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Baptist church, upsetting many. She even signed a friend’s autograph album as “Deville” to emphasize her non-belief.30 By 1858 Moon had earned a diploma in Latin and remained for further study.31 A year earlier, Orianna had become the first woman in Virginia and only the second southern woman to earn a medical degree.32 Upon her return to Virginia, however, Dr. Moon did not set up practice. Instead, she accompanied her missionary uncle, James Barclay, and his family when they left for the Middle East in the spring of 1858.33 During the two-month sea voyage, the lifelong skeptic converted to Christianity. It is likely that Moon learned of her sister’s change of heart and this had an impact. Although she had grown up with a devoutly Baptist mother and grandmother, Moon had remained resistant and defiant.34 A few months after Orianna’s conversion, Moon began to reconsider her own longheld position on religion during a series of revival meetings.35 Moon’s conversion in December 1858 came not in an emotional evangelical convulsion but rather through a rational decision to open her mind to a new intellectual pursuit. Her newfound devotion to Christianity did not dampen her curiosity or diminish her commitment to her studies.36 In 1860 she presented a paper “much superior . . . to anything we had ever had,” according to the Institute’s principal, John Hart.37 But the looming regional conflict had already begun to affect even the wealthiest AFI students. Moon was nearly forced to leave school early, but Hart insisted that she stay on.38 So she remained enrolled through the months of uncertainty and secession. On June 18, 1861, barely a month before the first shots were fired in northern Virginia, she completed her formal education. Moon had remained at AFI for a full year beyond the standard three, following the exact requirements of the University of Virginia’s master’s program. While she was not conferred an official graduate degree, the professors, students, and trustees alike recognized her accomplishment by noting this at her commencement.39 Recent studies of female education in the antebellum South have stressed that boarding schools and seminaries provided an elite group with space to develop a consciousness of themselves as women and establish critical, lifelong relationships with their fellow students.40 Most significantly, Moon’s education prepared her to contribute to public life by providing her with what Mary Kelley has called “the values and vocabularies of civil society,” which proved critical as Moon assumed a leadership role as a missionary and as a public voice for Southern Baptist women.41 Yet as a southerner, Moon proved exceptional. Unlike other young women who resisted marriage by continuing their studies and delaying their courtships, Moon did not move from a “culture of resistance” to one of “resignation” by marrying and accepting subordination to a husband.42 She never succumbed because she did not feel the need or the pressure. Wealthy and supported by their mother, Orianna and

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Lottie Moon were freed from the usual patriarchal restraints to pursue their own courses. And unlike other southern daughters who might have wanted to speak out against the cruelty of slavery or against the suffocating limitations on women’s lives, Orianna and Lottie were able to do so because of their unusual upbringing, shot through as it was with privilege, piety, and progressive views on gender and education. The Civil War brought social and economic dislocation in the South. With her family’s financial circumstances diminished, Moon—like many educated women—took employment as a teacher and later started her own school.43 But Moon’s true desire was to combine her religious commitment with paid work. After her graduation in 1861, she had hoped to go abroad as a missionary, but her denomination discouraged single women from applying for such positions.44 There was no justification for sending single women into the mission field since, properly, only men could engage in public speaking and evangelism. Such activities were deemed outside of women’s proper sphere.45 After the Civil War, however, Baptist men began to question the proper conduct and place of southern women in light of the difficult economic conditions in the postwar South.46 In 1871 the SBC Foreign Mission Board (FMB) changed its policy and began allowing single women to receive appointments. The justification for this change was a policy known as “woman’s work for woman,” which argued that single women, unburdened by family responsibilities, could visit Asian women in their homes and teach school.47 While this policy opened mission work to women like Moon, it also limited their influence specifically to women and children. Female missionaries were not to move into the male domain of preaching or open evangelism of both sexes. Soon after Moon arrived in Tengchow, China, in 1873, she began making trips outside the city walls with her two female colleagues.48 The women would travel to a village, wait for a crowd to gather, and then speak to them about Christianity. Made curious by their strange appearance, crowds quickly formed. The missionaries did not separate the villagers by sex before beginning to talk with them. Instead, they simply started speaking or preaching, as they termed it themselves—something no Southern Baptist woman would have done in the United States.49 Moon immediately sensed how their behavior blurred the boundaries of what was considered proper for women, but she was overwhelmed by her responsibility for the souls of all those she met—not simply the souls of women. Missionaries were few, and male missionaries were fewer still. In her earliest reports to the Foreign Mission Board secretary, Moon appealed for more workers, especially men who were authorized to speak to both sexes.50 Finally, after two years in China and many such appeals, Moon wrote that she had recently been invited to a nearby village to speak to a hall

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overflowing with potential converts. She described her dilemma: “I hope you won’t think me desperately unfeminine, but I spoke to them all, men, women and children . . .”51 Moon had decided to break with Baptist tradition. While on evangelistic tours, she now spoke to men whenever the situation presented itself. She openly rejected the “woman’s work for woman” policy that had been used to justify sending out unmarried women. In 1883 she wrote, “Can we wonder at the mortal weariness and disgust, the sense of wasted powers and the conviction that her life is a failure, that comes over a woman when, instead of the ever broadening activities she had planned, she finds herself tied down to the petty work of teaching a few girls?”52 Moon now began to argue that the restrictions placed on single women were simply impractical and, in many cases, unjust. Her openness brought criticism for moving beyond “woman’s sphere.” To her critics, she replied, “What women have a right to demand is perfect equality.”53 Two years later Moon made her final break with the “woman’s work for woman” policy by moving 150 miles into the interior of Shantung province to live alone and engage in direct evangelism. Moon’s decision to perform independent mission work represented a distinct break with both her culture and the very policies that had allowed her to work in China. Proper southern “ladies” simply did not venture out alone in foreign countries to live among the “natives.” Southern Baptist policies on single women, in fact, emphasized that they should live with a missionary family, headed by a man. Women were not to live or work outside direct male authority, and they were to work only with women and children. This was the essential justification for sending single women as missionaries—to reach those whom men could not. Moon had already broadened the scope of “woman’s work” by speaking to men on her evangelistic trips, but her move to the rural district of Pingtu made her solely responsible for all the Chinese in that area, men and women alike. She was now behaving like a pioneering evangelist that, according to societal conventions and board rules, only male missionaries could be. A world away, Moon operated by her own rules of appropriate behavior. For her, only the parameters of her conscience could define a woman’s proper sphere. In late 1885 Moon relocated to the Pingtu district, hoping that rural folk might find her teachings more appealing than the city dwellers of Tengchow, where the main mission station was located. Her reports were so promising that the missionaries voted to establish a permanent station there, and they asked the Foreign Mission Board to appoint two new men for that purpose. Until the Board could approve the new station, Moon wrote to the FMB secretary, Henry Tupper, that she had taken up residence in Pingtu.54 When she heard back from the board months later, it had decided against funding the new station, but it was too late. Moon was already settled and would not

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Â� abandon her post. During the next five years, she would make her home there, returning to Tengchow only for vacations. At age forty-five, Moon had accomplished a complete reconstruction of her life, carving out a degree of independence unusual for a woman in the nineteenth century, especially a Southern Baptist. Clearly, though, the feminine models of piety and independence that she had received during her childhood influenced her actions and decisions. Moon drew upon both these models to explain her choices and recreate her life. She used the language of rights to force the respect she felt she deserved as a woman and as a professional religious worker, and she relied upon her personal interpretation of “God’s will” and proper female behavior to justify moving beyond the gendered boundaries she encountered. Despite her disagreements with the Foreign Mission Board, Moon never left the field. Instead, at a moment when she was struggling to find fulfilling work, she stumbled upon Pingtu. In the years that followed, she used the freedom this isolated village afforded to build an independent work and create a personal mission in a place where she could, finally, be “responsible to God and not to man.”55 After the mission board declined to fund the Pingtu station, Moon began a public campaign for financial assistance by publishing articles in the Foreign Mission Journal and state Baptist newspapers.56 Moon first directed her appeals at the FMB and Southern Baptist men. When she received no response, Moon turned away from the men and appealed instead to the women of the missionary societies. She urged the women to move beyond the constraints of social expectations and denominational policy and organize to provide her with support. White Southern Baptist women had been trying for years to form an overarching organization for their local societies and had so far failed due to opposition from the male leadership. A women’s organization, even if it functioned only to raise funds for the home and foreign mission boards, would exist outside formal control of Baptist men and would thus be “irregular.”57 Baptist women had continued their struggle by holding separate, female-only meetings during the annual Southern Baptist Convention proceedings, but they had no success until Moon’s call for organization. In Moon the female leadership found both a model for action and a compelling reason to try again. They asked the Southern Baptist leadership for assistance and permission but made it clear that they were bound by their beliefs to defy male authority if necessary. And, like Lottie Moon, they did. In 1887 Moon published an article in the Foreign Mission Journal in which she openly advocated female organization. To chide the Baptists into action, she compared their efforts with those of their closest denominational rival, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The Methodists’ efficiency in appointments and fundraising was due to the women’s strong organization. Moon wrote,

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The Southern Methodist women manifest an intense enthusiasm for foreign missions. They give freely and cheerfully. Now the painful question arises: What is the matter, that we Baptists give so little? Whose the fault? Is it a fact that our women are lacking in the enthusiasm, the organizing power, and the executive ability that so conspicuously distinguishes our Methodist sisters? It is certain that women can be found willing and glad to come and work for God in China. The lack is not of women who would come but of money to send and sustain them.58

The comparison to the Methodists was close enough to make Baptists take notice. Northern Baptists, they might argue, differed because their women were not sufficiently genteel and thus had a native tendency to move out of their “place.” But here were southern women in similar economic and cultural circumstances who were outdoing the Baptists at home and, as a result, on the mission field. In the December 1887 issue of the Foreign Mission Journal, Moon spoke out again in favor of organization, but this time she included more detail and even stronger language. She explained how Methodist women had designated the week before Christmas for prayer and self-denial in preparation for a special offering for missions. She reminded her readers that, until the Methodist women organized, their work in China had reached its nadir. Despite continuing opposition from many Baptist men, in 1888 the women—using Moon’s arguments—formed the Executive Committee, which would become the Woman’s Missionary Union. The committee’s precarious position was evident from the start. While they claimed to have organized the white Baptist women of the South into a region-wide association, in reality, approximately thirty women had voted to form a committee of nine that now claimed to speak for all Southern Baptist women.59 To engage these local societies, the Executive Committee would need a special project related to foreign missions. This fact was not lost on the FMB secretary, Henry Tupper, the women’s longtime supporter. In July 1888, he wrote to the Executive Committee and suggested that the women take on a campaign for one of their own—Lottie Moon.60 Tupper’s recommendation appealed to the Executive Committee, and they decided to do as Moon herself had mentioned in her articles on organization. They would use the Methodist model and lead Southern Baptist women in a fundraising campaign centered around the Christmas holiday—an offering designated to help Moon in Pingtu. Moon was due for a year-long furlough, yet she refused to return until replacement missionaries could be sent. But no additional workers could be appointed due to the board’s precarious finances.61 The Christmas offering campaign captured the imagination of Southern

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Baptist women as no other fundraising effort previously had. It was an object around which they could rally, and that, in turn, led to a more cohesive regional structure. In total, 29,075 Christmas envelopes were mailed to the state committees, and approximately $3,500 was raised to pay for Moon’s helpers—$1,500 more than the original goal.62 This allowed the women to fund not two, but three, female missionaries. As a result, by July 1889 the Executive Committee was earning kudos where a year earlier they had heard only criticism. There had been only thirty-five women at the organizational meeting in 1888, but in 1889 latecomers found standing room only at the First Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee, where the women’s meeting was held. Among the many speakers on the lengthy agenda were two who spoke about Lottie Moon. The first was a recently returned missionary who gave the women a firsthand account of the situation Moon faced in Pingtu. Then Moon’s former classmate, Julia Toy Johnson, recounted a letter she had recently received from Moon asking once again for help. At that point a woman rose to remind the delegates of their success with the Christmas offering and expressed concern that other fields might be neglected if everyone remained so intensely focused on Moon and China.63 The women of the Southern Baptist Convention, though, would not soon be turned away from Moon and her work. Annual Christmas offerings continued with Moon and Pingtu as their special object for three more years.64 Unlike the first Christmas offering, which was publicized mainly through the women’s missionary societies’ journals, later campaigns increased in scope and spread to the state Baptist newspapers, intensifying as Moon continued to postpone her furlough.65 When the first two single women missionaries were sent in 1889, Moon stayed on to train them. Then, as the Foreign Mission Board’s finances faltered precariously in 1890 and 1891, Moon declined to leave.66 She remained in China where the yearly Christmas offerings she inspired guaranteed that her station would not suffer from lack of funding as the board struggled to stabilize its financial situation. It was not until 1892 that Moon finally agreed to leave for her furlough. Her campaign for Pingtu, begun in 1887, had brought change both in China and in her denomination, and the results were significant, tangible, and widespread. Not only had she saved her Pingtu station, she had caused it to flourish. Her advocacy of Southern Baptist women had helped launch them into a permanent organization, now known as the Woman’s Missionary Union, which would forever change the balance of power within the denomination. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, these women moved from primarily holding local society meetings to regularly organizing large gatherings at the state and regional level, just as the men did. Since women were barred from participating in official SBC business, the WMU afforded them

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an alternate means of creating and exerting power within their denomination.67 During its first ten years, strengthened organization and successful fundraising increased the women’s power and assured the WMU’s legitimacy. By the end of the nineteenth century, Southern Baptist women had moved firmly into the public realm.68 As a result of her efforts, Moon was lauded as no other missionary had ever been. Women regularly paid tribute to her in their woman’s work columns and with special articles. But perhaps the most telling measure of Moon’s stature in her denomination came in 1890 when, at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting, a delegate, after hearing the report of Moon’s work for the year, remarked that it had often been said of her: “She is the greatest man among our missionaries.”69 Scholars have noted that a combination of factors are required before women are able to form a consciousness of themselves as a group and begin the process of challenging the patriarchal structures that limit their lives. In a rare household that prized female education and independence, Moon grew to adulthood in a situation where women exerted power and took action. Her older sister brought the ideology and language of rights into the home and continually rejected the restrictions she faced as a woman in antebellum Virginia. Notably, even after Moon became a Baptist, she did not discard her understanding of herself and her place in the world. From China, Moon publicly argued that all women should be treated equally in terms of mission policy, and she did not shrink from the criticism she received. When female organization served her own needs and those of Southern Baptist women, she published forceful articles in favor of defying male authority. Her role in the establishment of the WMU changed the very nature of civil society in the South as it provided white Baptist women with an alternate means of gaining and asserting power within a denomination that has come to dominate the southern cultural landscape. Historians have noted that female organizations, and women’s missionary societies specifically, afforded women the opportunity to learn leadership skills, and some moved into new areas of social engagement, such as local reform activities and the anti-lynching campaign of the early twentieth century. Indeed, it was in religious organizations that historians find women making their initial struggle toward eroding patriarchal power and engaging the public sphere. This is clearly the case with Southern Baptist women—inspired as they were by Lottie Moon.70 It is not this compelling story, however, that the Woman’s Missionary Union has perpetuated about Lottie Moon. In the materials the WMU has produced, her vital role in the organization’s formation is downplayed or not mentioned at all. Her use of rights language and her willingness to defy male authority are not highlighted.71 Instead, the WMU re-characterized her life,

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flattening it into the stereotypical images of the southern “lady” and missionary martyr. The irony is that Moon’s experience fits neither stereotype. She never played the “belle” role in her youth. Instead, she studied, pursued a profession, and became an advocate for female equality and organization. As a missionary, she again broke the mold, refusing to speak only to women or to confine her work to a prescribed area where she was under male control. Moon ignored policies designed to restrict her activities and became a pioneering evangelist on her own in Pingtu. Her solitary accomplishments there led her to argue that all Southern Baptist women should abandon their fear and trust that defying male authority was proper—even necessary—when following the Gospel imperative. Moon remained engaged in an active schedule of mission work until she suddenly fell ill in August 1912. In fact, when the Chinese Civil War brought fighting to the region in late spring, she refused to follow the U.S. consul’s order to remove to the port city of Chefoo for protection. Instead, the intrepid seventy-two-year-old traveled alone to the city under bombardment to volunteer with the Red Cross. After she returned to her Tengchow home in late summer, Moon developed a boil on her neck, which caused a serious infection that eventually affected her spinal cord. The illness caused mental deterioration and physical wasting, but she was under the constant care of medical professionals and did not die from starvation.72 Throughout the twentieth century, denominational accounts of Moon’s life remained relatively close to the historical record except when relating the details of her death.73 The main components of the legend are as follows: Moon sacrificed her life for the Chinese on the mission field and, most symbolically, at her death. Overwhelmed by the Foreign Mission Board’s indebtedness and inability to help with famine relief, Moon stopped eating as a protest and in order to send all of her own money to those suffering. If the Pingtu Christians were starving as a result of the FMB’s neglect, then she would share their fate. Ultimately, Moon starved herself to death to save Chinese Christians and to bring attention to Southern Baptists’ lack of financial commitment to the FMB. Una Lawrence’s 1927 biography, Lottie Moon, first put this story into wide circulation, but the death narrative did not become a standard feature in other promotional materials until the mid1960s. By the 1970s Moon’s sacrificial death had become a key component of the “Lottie Moon Story.”74 This narrative of martyrdom has proven an amazingly successful fundraising tool, and it continues to have profound significance for Southern Baptist adherents. At the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention proceedings, a keynote speaker invoked Moon as the model for Southern Baptists in the twenty-first century. He challenged them by asking rhetorically, “What Would Lottie Do?” and suggested that the denomination

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produce WWLD bracelets for congregants to wear as a reminder of Moon’s ultimate sacrifice: giving her all on the mission field to the point of starvation and death.75 However, this tale of Christ-like sacrifice might have never come into being if Moon had not been placed in the care of missionary nurse Cynthia Miller during her final trip to the United States. Moon’s colleagues hoped that she might receive effective treatment and recover her health, so they made the difficult decision to send her to the United States.76 However, the missionary died only a few days after boarding the steamer that was to take her home. Her remains were cremated and transported to Virginia for burial. There had been some confusion among her co-workers as to what exactly caused Moon’s illness. “Melancholia” was the initial diagnosis.77 Since the boil on Moon’s neck seemed to heal, doctors were at first uncertain as to the cause of her mental and physical decline. Moon’s delusional preoccupation with board finances led some to believe she had suffered a mental breakdown as a result of her worry about the debt and her concern over the famine that had reached Pingtu. The facts do not support this conclusion. Moon had weathered nearly four decades of the board’s financial uncertainty, and her letters from 1912 do not reveal a distraught woman headed for a nervous breakdown. The change in Moon’s mood manifested only after illness had begun to alter her mental processes. Dr. James Gaston, who treated her, concluded that the infection had caused her condition, but it was Cynthia Miller who alone accompanied Moon in the days immediately preceding her death.78 So her account had great force for its hearers—one of whom was Moon’s former classmate, Virginia Snead Hatcher. During the voyage from Asia to San Francisco, the steamer Manchuria, carrying Miller and Moon’s ashes, stopped in Honolulu to refuel. Hatcher, who was residing in Hawaii at the time, had heard about her friend’s death and went out the harbor to meet Miller. There Miller told Hatcher of Moon’s illness and passing, and Hatcher used these details to write a full-page remembrance published in the Virginia Baptist newspaper.79 The piece, entitled “Miss Lottie Moon. She Being Dead, Yet Speaketh.” contains the seeds of what would later bloom into legend. Hatcher wrote: But the pity and the tragedy of it all lay in the fact that this learned and brilliant woman and devoted Christian had her sympathies so overtaxed by witnessing the ravages of the famine and her body equally overtaxed by ministering, often unsuccessfully, to the sufferers, that after months of heroic exertion and unexampled self-sacrifice, she broke down and sank into a melancholy state, refusing food that the hungry might be fed. The indebtedness of the Board also preyed upon her mind until the very last.80

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Foreshadowing its later use, Hatcher then turned her memorial into a fundraising opportunity: Will not her Southern sisters arouse to the conviction that it is for them to liquidate the debt that brought one of the noblest of them all to the grave? This sad closing of the forty years of service on the foreign field stirs our sympathies and brings the tears to our eyes, but this is not enough. What are we going to do about it? Why did Miss Moon work alone? Why were not more helpers sent out? Can anyone of us say, “I have prayed without ceasing for our missionaries; I have given all I could of my time, my personality, and my money?” Is there not some shame mingled with our sorrow? Shall we not, as a fitting tribute to her memory, lift at once the debt from the Foreign Mission Board, the debt that weighed so heavily on the mind of this faithful worker? Is it not the memorial she herself would choose?81

It is clear that Cynthia Miller was the source for Hatcher’s interpretation of Moon’s final days, although she changed some details and conflated others. Most significantly, Hatcher wrote that Moon’s concern about the famine led her to stop eating, but Miller herself wrote that the suffering from the Chinese Civil War, not the famine, had caused Moon not to eat. Interestingly, none of Moon’s obituaries contain this version of events, and, indeed, this mythic aspect of Moon’s legacy, too, might have faded had it not been for the efforts of Annie Armstrong and the WMU.82 In the fall of 1913 WMU President Fannie Heck suggested that the year’s Christmas offering be taken as a memorial to Moon.83 After this, the missionary fades from public view and does not resurface for five years. Then in 1917, Annie Armstrong, WMU organizer and the first corresponding secretary, suggested that the annual fundraiser be named for Moon. In May 1918 her recommendation was taken to the thirtieth anniversary meeting where it passed.84 Six years later, in 1924, the first pamphlet was produced that joined Moon’s narrative to the Christmas offering promotion, and this brought additional force to the WMU’s fundraising ability. Offering totals rose 600 percent, from $48,677 in 1924 to $306,376 in 1925. This increase was due in part to a denominationwide campaign to rid itself of debt as well as a fundamental change in the way the SBC raised and allocated funds. But the vehicle through which these funds entered the coffers in 1925 was the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.85 In 1919 Una Roberts Lawrence began work on her biography, compiling letters, articles, and eyewitness accounts of the missionary’s life. When Lottie Moon was published in 1927, it became the central component of the Christmas offering promotion. By the mid-1960s the volume had sold nearly fifty thousand copies and gone through twenty-three reprints.86 Lawrence’s

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hagiography proved a persuasive fundraising tool, and it also single-handedly put into wide circulation the story of Moon’s sacrificial death. Relying on Virginia Hatcher’s 1913 account of Moon’s final days, Lawrence shaped the story to shame Southern Baptists into giving and to criticize the Foreign Mission Board tacitly for its continuing financial troubles. She wrote that when Dr. James Gaston examined Moon, he found her “[S]tarving to death! . . . If her Pingtu Christians were starving, then she would eat no more! If the debt on the Board could not be lifted, then she would live no more on borrowed money. And she was starving to death.”87 Lawrence also wrote that Moon had given all of her savings to famine relief and died destitute.88 For her part, Lawrence consciously made the decision to use Hatcher’s version of events over those supplied by missionaries who were with Moon in the days and weeks before her death. Shantung missionaries responded to Lawrence’s queries with information and anecdotes. Notably, none mentioned that she had starved herself to death.89 The executor of Moon’s estate and her close colleague, W. W. Adams, even sent Lawrence his notes from Moon’s bankbook, which revealed that she had not given any money to famine relief after May 1912.90 After Lottie Moon was published, Adams wrote to the WMU, explaining that “[Moon] did not give all her money to the famine relief work. I never heard a missionary say that she starved to death to help with relief.”91 Adams knew that Moon had not given away all of her funds. He had withdrawn “hundreds of dollars” from her account in Shanghai to send to her will’s beneficiary.92 It seems clear why Lawrence would characterize Moon’s death in such an appealing manner, yet none of Moon’s contemporaries ever repeated her version of events in the materials they submitted to promote the Christmas offering from the 1920s to the 1940s.93 The starvation story remained in the public realm through the subsequent reprintings of Lottie Moon, but it did not feature in the materials produced annually to promote the offering until the 1960s. Except for a reference in a children’s program in 1956, Moon’s sacrificial death is not highlighted until 1964 when it appears in two dramatic scripts based on Lawrence’s biography.94 By the early 1970s, Moon’s death by starvation had become a standard part of the WMU’s promotional press releases. When Catherine B. Allen published her updated biography in 1980, she admitted that some Southern Baptists hoped for a more factually based interpretation. In the forward to the first edition of her book, Allen noted that many had asked her not to perpetuate “that myth about [Moon] starving to death in a famine” while others advised her not to “tamper with that precious story.”95 In the end, Allen chose to continue the legend. She writes that in the fall of 1912 Moon “had ceased to eat so that her impoverished Chinese might be fed.”96 While Allen never directly states that Moon starved herself, the implication is clear, and

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the story continues to play a vital role in the offering’s promotion. Perhaps its most dramatic use came in 1988. On the centennial of the WMU’s founding and the first Christmas offering, posters designed to publicize the event proclaimed, “Lottie Moon Is Starving Again.” The text reads: Just 76 years ago, foreign missionary Lottie Moon literally starved to death. She refused to see the Chinese people she loved go spiritually or physically hungry. So she gave all she had to give—from her food to her last ounce of strength. . . . This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. It’s been six years since we’ve met the offering goal. Lottie Moon is starving again. The 1988 goal is $84 million. If each Southern Baptist gives $10, we will not only reach, but surpass the goal. But if we don’t, what happened to Lottie Moon could happen to foreign missions. How much will you give to keep foreign missions alive?97

The use of Moon’s death as a means to make Southern Baptists feel guilty about their financial neglect of the Foreign Mission Board proved as effective in the latter half of the twentieth century as it had been in the early decades. Moon’s remarkable life ended in 1912, but her memory has lived on, taking shape in a new narrative—one with such power and flexibility that it has changed Moon from a historical figure into a legendary symbol for Southern Baptists. After her death, the “Lottie Moon Story” became for the WMU and the SBC a site where memory is created to serve the needs of a community.98 Viewing this narrative as a site where Southern Baptists have come together to reinterpret and refashion their own identity allows analysis not simply of “what actually happened” but also the “reuse and misuse” of Moon’s biography.99 The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering brings this story into forty-two thousand Southern Baptist churches across the nation and around the world each December during the Week of Prayer for Foreign Missions. Annually, the WMU and the Foreign Mission Board produce new materials to teach sixteen million congregants about the SBC’s commitment to overseas evangelism, and for eighty-two years Moon’s life has provided the centerpiece to this study program and fundraising effort.100 In a religious tradition dominated by men, Southern Baptist women gained power by creating a gripping account of female piety and sacrifice—one that has brought the denomination over two billion dollars and ensured the survival of Southern Baptist mission efforts. Since its inception, the Woman’s Missionary Union has existed as an independent female organization with its own officers and budget, free from the control of the male leadership. The WMU has approximately one million in official membership, but all Southern Baptist women are considered part of the organization.101 To raise money, the WMU needed an appealing discourse but, even more importantly, they needed one that would downplay

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their struggles with the Southern Baptist leadership. They created the “Lottie Moon Story” not simply as a fundraising tool but also as a discourse to question and test their place within the denomination. Moon’s role as instigator of the WMU and rebellious pioneer missionary are, therefore, overlooked in favor of Moon as a martyr to the mission cause. Moon protests board policies by starving herself—not by organizing women. Thus her memory has served the institutional purposes of the denomination, which has subsumed her active life to their own need for an effective promotion. In the end, a tension remains. An actually remembered Moon would be a female activist who preached, argued for female equality, and helped bring the WMU into existence. Yet such activities conflict with the traditional understanding of the female role for Southern Baptists. So Moon remains a female saint who evinced Christ-like qualities by ending her own life—refusing to take food so that famine sufferers might have more and so that she would not increase the Foreign Mission Board debt. That this story of martyrdom is not true has not prevented it from achieving a deep resonance for Southern Baptists over nearly a century. In 1979 a highly organized group of Southern Baptist conservatives— characterized generally as believing in the inerrancy of the scriptures, the subordination of women, and politically conservative social issues such as the antiabortion movement—began a campaign to take control of the denomination’s agencies and institutions. Beginning with a successful bid to place their candidate in the presidency, the faction spent the next ten years gaining control of the denomination’s seminaries, presses, boards, and publishing house.102 The controversy reached the Woman’s Missionary Union in early 1995 when the conservative leadership released its report on the restructuring of the denomination’s agencies. In an endnote, the SBC Executive Committee removed the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering from the WMU and assigned its promotion to the Foreign Mission Board. The WMU’s role in creating and promoting the offering were ignored in the study’s report.103 WMU Executive Director Dellana O’Brien responded, “[Y]ou have stripped us of all our work, which happens to be ministries to women, missions education and the support and promotion of the [Lottie Moon Christmas Offering] we began over 100 years ago.”104 Although the Foreign Mission Board president responded that he anticipated no change in the relationship between the agency and the WMU, the meaning of the proposal could not be obscured.105 Letters protesting the plan “flooded” O’Brien’s office in Birmingham, Alabama as the explosive potential of the decision rippled through the denomination.106 In March WMU directors drafted a resolution opposing the restructuring plan and prepared their members and supporters for an open fight on the

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Â� convention floor when the SBC met in June.107 Two months later the controversy strengthened when an attorney working for the Virginia WMU discovered, during a routine database search, that the Foreign Mission Board had submitted an application in 1994 to trademark the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for its exclusive use. The Virginia WMU immediately contacted O’Brien and asked her to investigate.108 Stunned, O’Brien responded that the Foreign Mission Board’s actions and their failure to inform the WMU was a “betrayal” of the historic partnership between the two agencies.109 FMB president Jerry Rankin explained that the Board was concerned that funds churches had raised through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering were being diverted to other mission agencies not affiliated with the SBC. They sought to trademark the offering to ensure that the FMB would receive all Christmas offering funds. Rankin also said that the board had discussed the need for legal protection of the name with the WMU five years earlier so they should not have been surprised by the board’s actions.110 But Rankin’s argument held little sway. Only seven days after its plans were made public, the Foreign Mission Board withdrew its trademark application. Afterward, the WMU and FMB leadership met and affirmed that the offering would continue to benefit only the SBC Foreign Mission Board.111 At the meeting Rankin admitted the insensitivity of the Board’s actions “to the [WMU’s] historic identification with the offering.”112 At the WMU’s annual meeting a few weeks later, Executive Director O’Brien openly challenged the restructuring plan to standing ovations. She told the press that even if the denomination refused to modify its resolution, the WMU would not back down. Defiantly, she reminded the SBC, “We were not born by vote of this convention, nor will we die by it.”113 In the end, the denominational leadership bowed to overwhelming grassroots pressure. They agreed to add an amendment to the restructuring report affirming the SBC’s relationship to the WMU and the organization’s role in the promotion of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.114 A few weeks later, the WMU began negotiations with the FMB over the trademark issue. The two entities decided to apply jointly for a trademark but found that patent laws did not allow it. So the Woman’s Missionary Union registered the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and licensed its use to the Foreign Mission Board. This arrangement ensured that the offering’s promotion remained primarily with the WMU, as it had in the past, and prevented the distribution of these funds to any nonSBC mission agency.115 Throughout this dispute, the significance of the “Lottie Moon Story” and the funds the offering provides to the SBC Foreign Mission Board came through clearly. Certainly anxiety over the control of this essential funding stream led to the leaderships’ actions. Since 1961 the Christmas offering has

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consistently provided the largest single source of foreign mission funds for the denomination.116 But this conflict also revealed a gendered tension within the Southern Baptist Convention. The conservative leadership—like its nineteenth-century counterpart—held that women must be submissive to men and wanted to create a denomination where men had complete dominance, both theologically and financially. To do so, they attempted to wrest power from the WMU and assume control of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. At no time in the denomination’s recent history have the fault lines of money, gender, power, and control become so visible. That this controversy centered on Moon confirms her symbolic and historic importance for the denomination. In 1995 the “Lottie Moon Story” became, quite visibly, the site where the Southern Baptist Convention debated and ultimately constructed its own future. —— 1. Lottie Moon, “The Woman Question Again,” Woman’s Work in China (November 1883): 54. 2. In 1997 the Foreign Mission Board’s name was changed to the International Mission Board (IMB). For consistency, I use the original name throughout this essay. In citations, I refer to the IMB. See “FMB Trustees Approve Restructure Principles,” Baptist Press, April 10, 1997. 3. An exhaustive list of denominational publications is too lengthy to be included here. The most recent treatments include Catherine B. Allen, The New Lottie Moon Story (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1980; first paperback edition, 1997), and Jerry Rankin, A Journey of Faith and Sacrifice: Retracing the Steps of Lottie Moon (Birmingham: New Hope Press, 1996). In his edited volume of Moon’s letters, Keith Harper, Send the Light: Lottie Moon’s Letters and Other Writings (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2002), 445, maintains the mythology, writing that Moon became ill because she gave all her food to famine sufferers. The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention maintains a biographical Web site with links to additional information about Moon and the Christmas offering: http://www.imb.org/main/give/page.asp ?StoryID=5524&LanguageID=1709, accessed July 17, 2007. Recently, the board set up a searchable online database of Moon’s letters and articles: https://solomon.imb.org/public/ws/lmcorr/ www2/lmcorrp/SimpleSearch, accessed August 8, 2007. The Woman’s Missionary Union includes a biography on their website: http://www.wmu.com/resources/library/personalities_LottieMoon.asp, accessed August 8, 2007. To promote the Christmas offering, the WMU maintains this page: http://www.wmu.com/resources/library/history_offerings.asp#lottie, accessed August 8, 2007. An internet search will reveal sites sponsored by the denomination, local Southern Baptist churches, and individuals. Most include a celebratory version of her life story. For Southern Baptists, generally, see Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990); John Lee Eighmy and Samuel Hill, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Attitudes of Southern Baptists (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987); Rufus B. Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865–1900 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967); and Robert Andrew Baker, The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People, 1607–1972 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1974). 4. The most famously celebrated were the Judsons; see Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Mission for

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Life: The Story of the Family of Adoniram Judson (New York: Free Press, 1980). Scholars concerned with the interplay of gender, empire, and postcolonial theory include Philippa Levine, ed., Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Laura Wexler, Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly, eds., Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Ruth Roach Pierson, Nupur Chaudhuri, and Beth McAuley, eds., Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Clare Midgley, “Gender and Imperialism: Mapping the Connections,” in Clare Midgely, ed., Gender and Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); Amy Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity,” American Literature 70, no. 3 (1998): 581–606; Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat, eds., Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); and Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, eds., Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). For studies that address cultural imperialism, see Ryan Dunch, “Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Cultural Theory, Christian Missions, and Global Modernity,” History and Theory 41 (2002): 301–25; Peter Van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, “Shame on US? Academics, Cultural Transfer, and the Cold War—A Critical Review,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 3 (2000): 465–94; Rob Kroes, “American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End,” in Thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002): 295–313; John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); and Paul W. Harris, “Cultural Imperialism and American Protestant Missionaries: Collaboration and Dependency in Mid–Nineteenth-Century China,” Pacific Historical Review 40, no. 3 (1991): 309–38. 5. “Miss Lottie Moon—As I Knew Her,” leaflet by Dr. T. W. Ayers, 1924, Lottie Moon Christmas Offering promotional file, Hunt Library, Woman’s Missionary Union, Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention, Birmingham, Alabama; William R. Estep, Whole Gospel Whole World: The Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention 1845–1995 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 207–8; Jesse C. Fletcher, The Southern Baptist Convention: A Sesquicentennial History (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 144–45. 6. In 1918 the offering was officially named for Moon. See Minutes of the Woman’s Missionary Union, 1918, 30th Annual Meeting, 13, WMU. For a list of Christmas offering totals, see Estep, Whole Gospel Whole World, 393. For the 2005 and 2006 Christmas offering goals and statistics, see http://www.imb.org/main/page.asp?StoryID=4452&LanguageID=1709, accessed July 17, 2007. 7. For the latest statistics, see the denomination’s main website: http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/default.asp, accessed July 17, 2007. For the International Mission Board’s statistics, see http://www.imb.org/main; Internet; accessed July 17, 2007. 8. Allen, New Lottie Moon, and Una Roberts Lawrence, Lottie Moon (Nashville: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1927). 9. Moon is not included in any broad study of southern women or female missionaries to China. The only significant treatment from a professional historian can be found in Irwin Hyatt, Jr., Our Ordered Lives Confess: Three Nineteenth-Century American Missionaries in East Shantung (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 65–136. Moon is discussed briefly in the following: Suzanne Lebsock, “A Share of Honour:” Virginia Women, 1600–1945 (Richmond: Virginia Women’s Cultural History Project, 1984); Barbara Welter, “‘She Hath Done What She

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Could:’ Protestant Women’s Missionary Careers in Nineteenth-Century America,” American Quarterly 30, no. 5 (Winter 1987): 634–35; Susan Hill Lindley, “You have Stept out of Your Place:” A History of Women and Religion in America (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 80; Wayne Flynt and Gerald W. Berkley, Taking Christianity to China: Alabama Missionaries in the Middle Kingdom 1850–1950 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997), 233–34, 339; Dana Robert, “The Influence of American Missionary Women on the World Back Home,” Religion and American Culture 12, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 64–65; Nancy A. Hardesty, “Southern Women and Religion,” in Melissa Walker et al., eds., Southern Women at the Millennium: A Historical Perspective (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 210–11; C. Lynn Lyerly, “Women and Southern Religion,” in Beth Schweiger and Donald G. Mathews, eds., Religion in the American South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 251; and Cynthia Lynn Lylerly, “In Service, Silence, and Strength: Women in Southern Churches,” in Charles Wilson Reagan and Mark Silk, eds., Religion and Public Life in the South: In the Evangelical Mode (Walnut Creek, Ca.: AltaMira Press, 2005), 103, 117, 120. 10. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to EighteenSeventy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 11, 274–83. 11. Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 480–82. 12. Lawrence, Lottie Moon, 23–4; Allen, New Lottie Moon, 11. The biographies have similar titles for their first chapters. Lawrence uses “A Girl of the Old South,” and Allen “She Was a Daughter of Old Virginia.” Lawrence’s original hagiography, written in 1927, perpetuates the mythology of the “Southern Lady” that was popularized in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (New York: Macmillan, 1936; reprint, 1937), published a decade later. Anne Firor Scott debunked this mythology in The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830 to 1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970; reprint, Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1995). Studies of elite plantation women initially focused on the married, but recent studies include the unmarried and the young. For plantation mistresses from differing perspectives, see Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Jean E. Friedman, The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830– 1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Joan E. Cashin, ed., Our Common Affairs: Texts from Women in the Old South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); and Joan E. Cashin, Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). For single and young women, see Michael O’Brien, ed., An Evening When Alone: Four Journals of Single Women in the South, 1827–67 (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1993); Christine Jacobson Carter, Southern Single Blessedness: Unmarried Women in the Urban South, 1800–1865 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Anya Jabour, Scarlett’s Sisters: Young Women in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Giselle Roberts, The Confederate Belle (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003); and Steven M. Stowe, “Growing Up Female in the Planter Class,” Helicon Nine 17 (1987): 194–205. 13. Regarding financial independence, Moon’s mother wrote to her daughter, “[T]he insurance of one’s life is about the best thing a person can do.” Anna Moon to Lottie Moon, January 7, 1869, Lottie Moon Correspondence File, Southern Baptist Historical Library & Archive, Nashville, Tenn. 14. Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 133; Alan Kulikoff, Tobacco & Slaves: The Development of Southern Culture in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 240, 265; Charles Wilder Watts, “Colonial Albemarle: The Social and Economic History of a Piedmont Virginia County, 1727–1775” (Master’s thesis, University of Virginia, 1948), 49.

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15. Edward and Anna Barclay Moon were part of an elite slaveholding community in Albemarle County. By 1860 Anna Moon listed her combined personal (largely slaves) and land holdings as worth $69,000, placing her solidly among the wealthiest in the community. In 1860, only 107 out of 12,103 whites owned property (personal and real estate) in excess of $50,000. Only fifty slaveholders out of 1,795 owned more than fifty slaves; Anna owned fifty-eight. There were few in the county with more wealth than Anna Barclay Moon. See The Seventh Census of the United States: 1860 (Washington: GPO, 1964; reprint, New York: Norman Ross Publishing, 1990). 16. Although they lived in a rural part of the county, evidence reveals that the Moons had active social involvement with their relatives, neighbors, and coreligionists. Close relatives lived nearby, and the family helped establish the local Baptist church. They also had social networks in Scottsville and Charlottesville. Evidence suggests that these women do not fit into the “enclosed garden” model but instead confirm the findings of historians who have noted the importance of extensive kin networks to planter life. See Friedman, The Enclosed Garden, and Joan E. Cashin, “The Structure of Antebellum Planter Families: ‘The Ties that Bound us was Strong,’” The Journal of Southern History 56, no. 1 (February, 1990): 55–70. Recently, historians have confirmed that even in rural areas elite women had extensive social networks and involvement in benevolent activities that usually centered in churches. See Cashin, Our Common Affairs, 16; Charlene Boyer Lewis, Ladies & Gentlemen on Display: Planter Society at the Virginia Springs, 1790–1860 (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2001), 124–25; Carter, Southern Single Blessedness, 119–23; and Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand & Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 30. Donald G. Mathews finds that southern white women were more likely than men to be involved in church activities, and Anne Braude argues that women were always the majority in American churches. See Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 47–48, and Braude, “Women’s History Is American Religious History,” in Thomas Tweed, ed., Retelling U.S. Religious History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 17. The children were Thomas, b. 1831; Orianna (Orie) b. 1834; Isaac, b. 1836; Charlotte (Lottie) b. 1840; Sarah Coleman (Colie) b. 1843; Mary (Molly), b. 1848; Edmonia (Eddie), b. 1851. See Allen, Lottie Moon, 8–9, for a family tree. Jane Censer finds that elite planters did not try to limit family size and highly valued their children. See North Carolina Planters and Their Children, 1800–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 24. Anne Firor Scott notes that by the 1850s elite southern women were increasingly frustrated with their inability to limit their childbearing. See Scott, “Women’s Perspective on the Patriarchy in the 1850s,” The Journal of American History 61, no. 1 (June 1974): 52–64. 18. According to her son, William Luther Andrews, unpublished manuscript, Orianna Moon Andrews Folder, Catherine B. Allen Papers, WMU. 19. See the First Annual Announcement of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, session 1850–1851 (Philadelphia: Clarkson & Scattergood, Prs. 1850), Archives and Special Collections, MCP Hahnemann University, Philadelphia, Penn. See also the Christian Standard, March 20, 1875; Anna Mary Moon, Sketches of the Moon and Barclay Families (Not listed: privately published, 1939), 40; “The Barclay Family,” pamphlet, Disciples of Christ Historical Society, Nashville, Tennessee; and Daniel Kilbride, “Southern Medical Students in Philadelphia, 1800– 1861: Science and Sociability in the ‘Republic of Medicine,’” The Journal of Southern History 65, no. 4 (November 1999): 697–732. Research into the family of Thomas Barclay (Moon’s maternal great-grandfather) supports Kilbride’s findings regarding the relationships that developed between planters and the Philadelphia elite. Barclay was a Philadelphia merchant, but all his children married into prominent Virginia families. Family correspondence can be found in the Harrison Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia. Additionally, the extended Barclay-Moon family fits well into Kilbride’s description of elite planters as cosmopolitan and urbane and supports his point on the limits of sectionalism in the 1850s.

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20. Troy Female Seminary opened in 1821 as the first academic secondary school for young women. See Alma Lutz, Emma Willard: Daughter of Democracy (Washington: Zenger Publishing Co., 1975); John Lord, The Life of Emma Willard (New York: Appleton and Company, 1973); Alma Lutz, Emma Willard, Pioneer Educator of American Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964); and Mary Mason Fairbanks and Russell Sage, Emma Willard and her Pupils (New York: Mrs. R. Sage, 1898). For the influence of Troy-trained tutors and teachers in the southern states, see Anne Firor Scott, “The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary 1822–1872,” History of Education Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 3–25. On science education in the antebellum period, see Kim Tolley, “Science for Ladies, Classics for Gentlemen: A Comparative Analysis of Scientific Subjects in the Curricula of Boys’ and Girls’ Secondary Schools in the United States, 1794–1850,” History of Education Quarterly 36, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 129–53. 21. For the influence of sectionalism on institution building, see John S. Ezell, “A Southern Education for Southrons,” The Journal of Southern History 17, no. 3 (August 1951): 303–27. On female education in the antebellum South, Kelley, Learning to Stand & Speak, chaps. 2 & 3; Jabour, Scarlett’s Sisters, chap. 2; Christie Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York: New York University Press, 1994); Anya Jabour, “Resisting the Altar: A Case Study of Conversion and Courtship in the Antebellum South,” Maryland Historical Magazine 96 (Spring 2001): 29–51; Trey Berry, “A History of Women’s Higher Education in Mississippi, 1819–1882,” Journal of Mississippi History 53 (November 1991): 303–20; Julia Huston Ngyuen, “The Value of Learning: Education and Class in Antebellum Natchez,” Journal of Mississippi History 61 (1991): 237–63; Sheldon Hanft, “Mordecai’s Female Academy,” American Jewish History 79 (Autumn 1989): 72–93; Stowe, “Growing Up Female”; Anne Firor Scott, “Almira Lincoln Phelps: The Self-Made Woman in the Nineteenth Century,” Maryland Historical Magazine 75 (September 1980): 203– 17; and Fletcher Melvin Green, “Higher Education of Women in the South Prior to 1860,” in J. Isaac Copeland, ed., Democracy in the Old South and Other Essays by Fletcher Melvin Green (Kingsport, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1969). 22. Mary Williams to My dear Sister Campbell, August 4, 1859, Millenial Harbinger. See “Mother of Late W. L. Andrews Was Surgeon of Confederacy,” Roanoke World News, July 12, 1940, Andrews Folder, CBAP, WMU. See also Margaret Fife to Herndon Fife, February 11, 1859, Fife Family Papers, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. 23. As quoted by Moon, Sketches, 40–41. Cashin notes that those who spoke out against slavery could be threatened with violence and suggests that this very real threat may have constrained white women who wanted to voice their opposition. See Our Common Affairs, 7, 12–13. 24. Moon’s male relatives attended the University of Virginia. See Christian Standard, March 20, 1875; Virginia Advocate, June 7, 1828; Catalogue of the University of Virginia, session of 1850–51 (Richmond: H. K. Ellyson, 1851), 8; and Catalogue of the University of Virginia, session of 1855–56 (Richmond: H. K. Ellyson, 1856), 14. For Hollins and its curriculum, see Frances J. Niederer, Hollins College: An Illustrated History (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1974), 10–11; and Catalogue of the Female Seminary at Botetourt Springs, Virginia, session 1854–5 (Richmond: H. K. Ellyson’s Steam Presses, 1858), 7. 25. For the literary society, see Lawrence, Lottie Moon, 41. See her records from Hollins Institute, 1854–1856, Lottie Moon Collection/Una Roberts Lawrence Papers, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. The name of this collection has recently changed from the Una Roberts Lawrence Papers to the Lottie Moon Collection. 26. George B. Taylor to Una Roberts Lawrence, Hollins, Virginia, February 12, 1927, LMC/ URLP, SBTS. 27. Catalogue of Hollins Institute, session 1856–8, 9. 28. Catalogue of the Albemarle Female Institute, located at Charlottesville, Virginia, session

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1858–9 (Richmond: Ellyson’s Steam Presses, 1859), 11, 13; Catalogue of the Albemarle Female Institute, located at Charlottesville, Virginia, session 1857–8 (Richmond: Ellyson’s Steam Presses, 1858), 8. See also Religious Herald (Va.), July 3, 1856. Catherine Clinton and Anya Jabour have argued that the postrevolutionary flowering of female academic institutions began to wane in the 1830s over concerns about the appropriateness of such training for young women destined for marriage. See Clinton, Plantation Mistress, chap. 7, and Jabour, “Grown Girls, Highly Cultivated”: Female Education in an Antebellum Southern Family,” The Journal of Southern History 63, no. 1 (February 1998): 23–64. Recently, Mary Kelley has questioned if this decline actually occurred; see Learning to Stand & Speak, 68, n. 3. See also her discussion of the similarity in curricula at male and female institutions, Learning to Stand & Speak, chap. 7, esp. 87–92, 108. 29. Butts to Lawrence, September 13, 1925, LMC/URLP, SBTS; Heathen Helper, May 1888; and Nannie Hill’s recollections, LMC/URLP, SBTS. 30. Lawrence, Lottie Moon, 44. Lawrence continues that Moon “held in scorn those who had been swept unthinkingly into their parents’ beliefs without any especial convictions of their own, independently arrived at.” Quotation is from the autograph album of Mollie Hill Meador, Troutville, Virginia, as quoted by Allen, Lottie Moon, 34. Anya Jabour describes the significance of these albums in “Albums of Affection: Female Friendship and Coming of Age in Antebellum Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History & Biography 107, issue 2 (Spring 1999): 125–59. 31. Religious Herald (Va.), July 15, 1858. 32. Orianna’s graduation made her part of a small cohort of trained female physicians in the United States; only thirty-eight women had received medical degrees by 1857. A list of the graduates of the Female Medical College can be found in each of its Annual Announcements from the 1853–54 session to the 1857–58 session, ASCHU. 33. After his mother’s death in 1847, James Barclay began preparing to go abroad as a missionary. He was appointed to Jerusalem on October 23, 1850, as the first Disciples missionary, see the 1851 Proceedings of the General Convention of the Churches of Christ, 31–34, DCHS. Barclay and his family returned to Virginia in 1854 because of the Russian-Turkish War and lack of funding. See the 1854 Proceedings of the General Convention of the Churches of Christ, 48, DCHS. See also Christian Standard, March 20, 1875, and “The Barclay Family,” DCHS. For Sarah Barclay Harris’s obituary, see Religious Herald (Va.), June 24, 1847. 34. Lawrence, Lottie Moon, 26. Moon’s grandmother, Sarah Barclay Harris, was a devoted Baptist from her youth; see Christian Standard, March 20, 1875. Her mother, Anna Moon, housed the local minister; see The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington: R. Armstrong, 1853; reprint, New York: Norman Ross Publishing, 1990). She also held church services in her home; see Eliza Broadus, “The Life of Miss Lottie Moon,” unpublished manuscript, LMC/URLP, SBTS. For more on nineteenth-century women taking prominent roles in Christian home rituals, see Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). 35. For Orianna’s conversion, see Millenial Harbinger, August 4, 1859, and Margaret Fife to Herndon Fife, February 11, 1859, Fife Family Papers, UVA. Jabour notes that it was not unusual for schools to encourage attendance at revival meetings or for students to convert. See Scarlett’s Sisters, 42. 36. For Moon’s conversion, see Julia Toy Johnson’s account, Heathen Helper, May 1888; Butts to Lawrence, September 13, 1925, LMC/URLP, SBTS; Margaret Fife to her son Herndon, February 11, 1859, Fife Family Papers, UVA; and First Baptist Church Records, First Baptist Church, Charlottesville, Virginia, Roll Book from 1831–69, 32, UVA; and Church Records, 1851–1869, vol. 7, 130, First Baptist Church Records, Charlottesville, Virginia, UVA. There is no documentation that Dr. Thomas Moon, who died in 1855, converted. Isaac joined the Scottsville Baptist church in 1856 when he was twenty. See Isaac Moon to John Broadus, November 5, 1856, Broadus Papers, SBTS. The girls did not convert until after

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Orianna did in the summer of 1858. Through the influence of a music instructor, Colie and Molly became Catholics, which greatly disturbed their mother. See Anna Moon to Lottie Moon, December 29, 1869, LMCF, SBHLA. Edmonia converted while a teenager. See entry for “2d Sunday Nov. 1870,” Hardware Baptist Church minute book, 1858–73, Virginia Baptist Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia. 37. Hart to Broadus, March 3, 1860, Broadus Papers, SBTS. 38. Kate Fife to Herndon Fife, February 3, 1861, and February 12, 1861, Fife Family Papers, UVA. 39. I would like to thank Kay Butterfield, the historian at St. Anne’s-Belfield School (which began as Albemarle Female Institute), for her sharing her thoughts and research on this topic. Sources confirm that Moon earned the equivalent of a master’s degree, but the catalogs do not list it. See Mrs. W. S. Harkin to Una Lawrence, December 18, 1923, LMC/URLP, SBTS, and Margaret & Kate Fife to James Fife, June 18, 1861, Fife Family Papers, UVA. 40. Southern schoolgirls formed close relationships with their peers. Recent scholarship notes that these relationships sustained women throughout their lives, providing emotional support. Mary Kelley has observed that these relationships also formed the basis of a female network that aided women moving into positions of influence in the public sphere; see Learning to Stand & Speak, chaps. 1 and 3. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg pioneered this subject in “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1 (September 1973): 1–29. See also Carol Lasser, “Let Us Be Sisters Forever: The Sororal Model of Nineteenth-Century Female Friendship,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14 (August 1988): 158–81; and Steven M. Stowe, “‘The Thing Not Its Vision’: A Woman’s Courtship and Her Sphere in the Southern Planter Class,” Feminist Studies 9 (Spring 1983): 113–30. For studies that focus on school relationships, see Jabour, Scarlett’s Sisters, 64–76; Farnham, Education of the Southern Belle, chap. 7; and Steven M. Stowe, “The Not-So-Cloistered Academy: Elite Women’s Education and Family Feeling in the Old South,” in The Web of Southern Social Relations: Women, Family, and Education, ed. Walter Fraser et al. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987). 41. Kelley, Learning to Stand & Speak, for quotation, 32, 34; for literary societies at schools, 117–19. Gerda Lerner has noted that overcoming educational disadvantaging is a key step for women attaining feminist consciousness. See Creation of Feminist Consciousness, 10–12, 18–19, chap. 2. 42. In Scarlett’s Sisters, 12–15, chap. 2, Jabour identifies a “culture of resistance” among young women who postponed marriage and domestic responsibilities. For the “culture of resignation” that pushed women to accept marriage and subordination, see Cashin, Our Common Affairs, 2. 43. Lottie Moon to Kate Fife, Viewmont, April 3 and May 29, 1862, Fife Family Papers, UVA; Y. M. Barnsdale to Broadus, October 24, 1863, Selph to Broadus, March 21, 1866, Broadus Papers, SBTS; Emma Cook Bethune to Una Roberts Lawrence, February 1, 1924, Danville, Kentucky, LMC/URL, SBTS; and Lottie Moon to Tupper, Cartersville, Georgia, January 13, 1873, LMCF, SBHLA. 44. Emma Cook Bethune to Una Roberts Lawrence, February 1, 1924, Danville Kentucky, LMC/URLP, SBTS; Lottie Moon to Tupper, Cartersville, Georgia, January 13, 1873, LMCF, SBHLA. 45. The language of “spheres” has a historiographic history largely centered on northeastern women and connected to the economic changes brought by industrialization. In this essay, I have taken the “spheres” language from my subjects, who used the term to refer to the prescribed areas of domestic and public space nineteenth-century southern women could properly inhabit. The boundaries of “women’s sphere” clearly shifted after the Civil War when elite southern women were forced by economic circumstances to take employment outside of the home. For the development of the domestic sphere model in the Northeast, see Nancy F. Cott,

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The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); and Linda Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” in Toward an Intellectual History of Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Jacquelyn Dowd Hall argues that the application of this model to southern women’s history is limited; see “Partial Truths: Writing Southern Women’s History,” in Virginia Bernhard et al., eds., Southern Women: Histories and Identities (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992). For white women during the Civil War, see Laura Edwards, Scarlett Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000); Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Edward Campbell and Kym Rice, eds., A Woman’s War: Southern Women, Civil War and the Confederate Legacy (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996); Catherine Clinton, Tara Revisited: Women, War, and the Plantation Legend (New York: Abbeville Press, 1995); and LeeAnn Whites, The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860–1890 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995). 46. See “Sphere of Woman’s Usefulness,” Religious Herald (Va.), May 14, 1868; and “Employment of Women,” Religious Herald (Va.), February 9, 1871, as examples. 47. Estep, Whole Gospel, Whole World, 65–66, 90–91. An unmarried woman, Harriet Baker, had been appointed in 1849, but no additional single women were hired until 1872 when Moon’s youngest sister, Edmonia, and Lula Whilden received appointments. See the Foreign Mission Board minutes, July 4, 1859, International Mission Board Library, Richmond, Virginia; Foreign Mission Board Secretary James Taylor’s report to the Southern Baptist Convention on single women missionaries, Biblical Recorder (N.C.), July 27, 1870; and the SBC report on Edmonia Moon, Biblical Recorder (N.C.), May 15, 1872. For the evolution of policy toward women missionaries, see Patricia Grimshaw, “‘Christian Woman, Pious Wife, Faithful Mother, Devoted Missionary:’ Conflicts in Roles of American Missionary Women in NineteenthCentury Hawaii,” Feminist Studies 9, no. 3 (Fall 1983): 487–519; and Dana Robert, “Evangelist or Homemaker?: Mission Strategies of Early Nineteenth-Century Missionary Wives in Burma and Hawaii,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (January 1983): 4–12. 48. Scholars have noted that a missionary career could offer women opportunities for professional work and self-fulfillment that they could not find in the nineteenth-century United States. As a result, American women volunteered as missionaries in great numbers. See Patricia Ruth Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman’s Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920 (University of Michigan Press, 1985); Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); Barbara Welter, “Protestant Women’s Missionary Careers”; Penina Migdal Glazer and Miriam Slater, Unequal Colleagues: The Entrance of Women into the Professions, 1890–1940 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987); and Joan Jacobs Brumberg, “Zenanas and Girlless Villages: The Ethnology of American Evangelical Women, 1870–1910,” Journal of American History 69, no. 2 (Sept. 1982): 347–71. For studies of the interactions between American and Chinese women, see Carol C. Chin, “Beneficent Imperialists: American Women Missionaries in China at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Diplomatic History 27, no. 3 (June 2003): 327–52; and Kwok Pui-lan, Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860–1927 (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1992). Broad studies of American missionaries in China include John K. Fairbank, ed., The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974); Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Russell & Russell, [1929] 1967); and Paul Varg, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats: The American Protestant Missionary Movement in China, 1890–1952 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958). For missionaries in Shantung (Shandong) province, see Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess; John J. Heerren, On the Shantung Front: A History of the Shantung Mission of the Presbyterian Church in the USA 1861–1940 in its Historical, Economic,

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and Political Setting (New York: Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 1940); and Martha Crawford, “History of Missions in Tung Chow for the First 13 Years,” LMC/URLP, SBTS. 49. Moon wrote, “When I say preach, I include in it talking by the wayside to one or more.” L. Moon to Tupper, September 19, 1876, LMCF, SBHLA. Catherine A. Brekus outlines the changes in policy that occurred regarding southern women speaking in Baptist churches from the colonial period to the nineteenth century in Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740–1845 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 61–67. Brekus notes, “If white women were given the liberty to speak publicly, rejecting their subordinate position on the grounds that they were obeying God, then slave men and women might be tempted to do the same. By the end of the eighteenth century, the revolutionary experiment of the Separate Baptists had ended, and throughout the South, as in the North, women were once again instructed to keep silence in the churches.” See Strangers and Pilgrims, 66. 50. L. Moon’s letter in the Foreign Mission Journal, June 29, 1874. See also her letters to Tupper, June 29, 1874, and November 4, 1875, LMCF, SBHLA. 51. L. Moon to Tupper, April 14, 1876, LMCF, SBHLA. 52. Moon, “The Woman Question Again,” Woman’s Work in China (November 1883): 48. Also quoted by Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 104. 53. Moon, “The Woman Question Again,” Woman’s Work in China (November 1883): 54. 54. L. Moon to Tupper, November 11, 1885, LMCF, SBHLA. 55. “Lottie Moon’s Diary,” Western Recorder (Ky.), November 20, 1879. 56. For a study of Protestant churches’ financial policies, see James Hudnut-Beumler, In Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). 57. The Religious Herald (Va.), April 26, 1888. See the following issues of the Religious Herald (Va.) for the debate: November 10, 1887 (for the Virginia state convention meeting), January 26, 1888, February 2, 1888, March 8, 1888, March 15, 1888, March 22, 1888, March 29, 1888, April 12, 1888, April 19, 1888, April 26, 1888, May 10, 1888, May 17, 1888, and May 24, 1888. After the women formed the Executive Committee, the debate continued; see Religious Herald (Va.): June 7, 1888, June 21, 1888, July 12, 1888, and November 1, 1888. 58. Foreign Mission Journal, August 1887, or her letter to Tupper, May 4, 1887, LMCF, SBHLA. 59. Minutes of the Woman’s Meeting in Richmond, Virginia, May 11, 1888, WMU; Baptist Basket, June 1888. 60. Tupper to Annie Armstrong, July 24, 1888, H. A. Tupper Correspondence File, IMBL. 61. The Minutes of the Executive Committee of Woman’s Societies of Southern Baptist Convention, October 11, 1888, SBHLA. This was only the second meeting of the committee. See also the Executive Committee column, December 1888, Foreign Mission Journal. 62. Foreign Mission Journal, July 1889. New societies formed as a result of the campaign; see the Baptist Basket, March 1889, May 1889, and October 1889, and the Baptist Chronicle (La.), March 14, 1889. When societies were prevented from forming due to opposition from local male leadership, individual contributions were sent directly to the Baptist Basket. See Baptist Basket, April 1889. 63. Baptist Basket, June 1889. 64. For more detail on the later campaigns, see the Executive Committee Minutes from 1889 to 1892, SBHLA. 65. For the first campaign, see the Baptist Basket, from December 1888 through 1889. For the expansion of the Christmas offering campaign in 1890, see the following: Arkansas Baptist, January 2, 1890, January 23, 1890, January 30, 1890; Alabama Baptist, January 23, 1890, January 30, 1890, February 20, 1890; Baltimore Baptist, February 13, 1890; Baptist Chronicle (La.), September 25, 1890, February 12, 1891; Baptist Courier (S.C.), February 27, 1890; Florida Baptist Witness, January 1, 1890, February 12, 1890; Mississippi Baptist Record, January 2, 1890.

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For the 1891 effort: Arkansas Baptist, July 31, 1890, December 11, 1890, December 18, 1890; Alabama Baptist, November 27, 1890, December 18, 1890, January 1, 1891; Baptist Courier (S.C.), September 25, 1890, November 27, 1890, December 4, 1890; Biblical Recorder (N.C.), November 25, 1891, December 2, 1891, December 9, 1891; Florida Baptist Witness, July 16, 1890, August 20, 1890, December 10, 1890, December 17, 1890, December 24, 1890, January 14, 1891, January 28, 1891, February 11, 1891; Mississippi Baptist Record, April 17, 1890, July 31, 1890, January 29, 1891. For the 1892 effort: Arkansas Baptist, November 12, 1891, December 10, 1891, December 17, 1891, December 24, 1891, January 21, 1892, February 4, 1892; Alabama Baptist, July 16, 1891, December 3, 1891, December 10, 1891, December 24, 1891; Baptist Chronicle (La.), January 7, 1892, January 14, 1892; Mississippi Baptist Record, August 6, 1891, November 26, 1891, December 24, 1891, December 24, 1891. 66. By January 1890, the FMB was already $26,000 in debt for the conventional year ending in April. A similar crisis occurred in 1891. See the following for the board’s financial situation in 1890 and 1891: Arkansas Baptist, January 23, 1890; Baptist Courier (S.C.), January 30, 1890, August 7, 1890; Baltimore Baptist, March 27, 1890; Alabama Baptist, February 19, 1891; Biblical Recorder (N.C.), April 1, 1891; Baptist Chronicle (La.), April 2, 1891; Mississippi Baptist, April 9, 1891. 67. Literary critic Raymond Williams argues that the creation of alternate organizations is a form of resistance to hegemony in Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.) See also Lerner, Creation of Feminist Consciousness, chap. 10, and Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850–1920 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), 7–8. Women were not allowed to participate in Southern Baptist Convention meetings as full voting delegates, called “messengers,” until 1919. See Leon McBeth, “The Role of Women in Southern Baptist History,” Baptist History & Heritage 22 (January 1977): 11–15. As for female participation in church governance, Susan Juster finds that in the 1700s Baptist women were allowed to vote on church matters. But in the postRevolutionary period, evangelical churches “masculinized” over concerns about “disorderly” women and, by the end of the century, women were no longer voting in Baptist churches. See Juster, Sexual Politics and Evangelism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 2, 4–5, 12. For an overview of the status of Southern Baptist women, see David T. Morgan, Southern Baptist Sisters: In Search of Status, 1845–2000 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2003), 7–30, 58–69. For more on the history of Southern Baptist women from the perspective of those within the denomination, see McBeth, “The Role of Women,” 3–25, and Norman H. Letsinger, “The Status of Women in the Southern Baptist Convention in Historical Perspective,” Baptist History & Heritage 31 (January 1977): 37–44, 51. 68. Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989); Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–90; Fraser, “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender,” New German Critique 35 (Spring/Summer 1985): 97–131; Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham argues that a similar struggle occurred within the black Baptist church; see Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993). For the cultural dominance of the denomination in the South, see Eighmy, Churches in Cultural Captivity, and Edward L. Queen, In the South the Baptists are the Center of Gravity (Brooklyn: Carlson, 1991). 69. 1890 Southern Baptist Convention proceedings, SBHLA. 70. Lerner, Creation of Feminist Consciousness, 11, chap. 10. As an elite, educated woman who published and advocated for female organization and female equality, Moon fits well into the model of women moving into civil society identified by Kelley in Learning to Stand & Speak, 5–15. See also Scott, Natural Allies, 86–93, and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women’s Campaign Against Lynching (New York: Columbia

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University Press, 1976; rev. ed., 1993), 109, 163, 174–80, 231–36. Hall concludes that the antilynching campaign “was rooted firmly in a tradition of evangelical reform.” 71. Lawrence and Allen, the two denominational biographers, do not skirt the fact that Orianna Moon was a woman’s rights advocate. But their discussion of Moon’s use of rights language is limited. See Lawrence, Lottie Moon, 135–37, and Allen, New Lottie Moon, 141–43. 72. For the war and her response, see J. A. G. Roberts, A Concise History of China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 209–14, and Moon to Mattie, May 2, 1912, LMCF, SBHLA. For her activities in the summer and fall of 1912, see Moon to My dear Cary, June 13, 1912, LMC/URLP, SBTS, and Moon to Willingham, July 24, 1912, Moon to Willingham, August 27, 1912, Moon to Gwathney, October 28, 1912, all in LMCF, SBHLA. For accounts of her illness: Pettigrew to Gaston, October 28, 1912, Gaston to Willingham, November 10, 1912, James Gaston Correspondence File, SBHLA; Cynthia Miller to Willingham, November 16, 1912, Cynthia Miller Correspondence File, SBHLA; Ayers to Willingham, December 3, 1912, T. W. Ayers Correspondence File, SBHLA; and Morgan to Gwathney, December 3, 1912, E. Morgan Correspondence File, SBHLA; Gaston’s recollection, LMC/URLP, SBTS; and W. W. Adams to [no name given], December 1, 1947, CBAP, WMU. For Moon’s final days, see Miller to Willingham, December 14, 1912, and January 5, 1913, CMCF, SHBLA; and Hearn to Willingham, December 22, 1912, T. O. Hearn Correspondence File, SBHLA. 73. Lawrence’s hagiography served as the main source for these materials until it was updated by Catherine B. Allen in 1980. Celebratory promotional materials often employ invented dialogue and sometimes stray from the historical record. Moon never led a campaign against footbinding, for example. Most recently, this claim was repeated in an article by Erich Bridges, “WorldView: ‘Amazing Grace’: the power of a single life,” dated February 22, 2007, and posted on the IMB Web site: http://www.imb.org/main/news/details.asp?LanguageID=1709&Story ID=5276, accessed October 25, 2007. See also the Web site of the First Baptist Church, Woodruff, South Carolina: http://www.woodruff1st.org/newsletters/December%2013/December13.htm, accessed October 25, 2007. 74. Lottie Moon Christmas Offering promotional files, 1918 to 1994, WMU; Miriam Robinson, Faithful unto Death (Birmingham: WMU, 1964); Lucy Hamilton Howard, Her Lengthened Shadow (Birmingham: WMU, 1964). 75. Dr. Ed Stetzer gave this sermon on June 13, 2007, at the 2007 SBC meeting. For a video clip, see http://sbcvoices.blogspot.com/2007/06/dr-stetzer-missional-church-Â�planting.html, accessed October 25, 2007. The sermon text is posted at http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:QNGzGO_ IpysJ:blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/SBC%2520Convention%2520Message.doc+%22what+would+lottie+do%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&client=firefox-a, accessed October 25, 2007. 76. For the missionaries’ decision, see Hearn to Willingham, December 11, 1912, TOHCF, SBHLA; Gaston to Willingham, November 10, 1912, JGCF, SBHLA; Sears to Willingham, December 2, 1912, W. Sears Correspondence File, SBHLA; and Pruitt to Willingham, December 6, 1912 and January 4, 1913, C. W. Pruitt Correspondence File, SBHLA. Willingham contacted Moon’s relatives in early December, informing them of her illness. Arrangements were made to place her in a mental hospital in Baltimore once she reached the east coast. See the following: Hearn’s telegram to Willingham, TOHCF, SBHLA; I. M. Andrews to Willingham, December 4, 1912; Smith to I. M. Andrews, December 5, 1912; Joshua Levering to Willingham, January 9, 1913, LMCF, SBHLA. 77. Gaston to Willingham, November 10, 1912, JGCF, SBHLA. 78. Gaston’s recollection, LMC/URLP, SBTS. Annie Gaston confirmed her husband’s assessment of the primary cause of Moon’s illness. See Adams to [no name given], December 1, 1947, CBAP, WMU. 79. Religious Herald (Va.), March 6, 1913. 80. Ibid.

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81. Ibid. 82. For Miller’s account, see Western Recorder (Ky.), February 13, 1913. For obituaries, see Foreign Mission Journal, February 1913, and Religious Herald (Va.), January 23, 1913 and March 6, 1913. 83. Western Recorder (Ky.), December 18, 1913. 84. Minutes of the WMU 1918, 30th Annual meeting, 13, WMU. 85. “Miss Lottie Moon—As I Knew Her,” leaflet by Dr. T.W. Ayers, 1924 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering promotional file, WMU; Estep, Whole Gospel Whole World, 393, 207–8. On the change in SBC financing, see Fletcher, The Southern Baptist Convention, 144–45. 86. Noted by Hyatt, Our Ordered Lives Confess, 127. No updated figures were available. Allen’s biography, published in 1980 and reprinted in 1997, sold approximately five thousand copies, according to Broadman & Holman, but it is now out of print. 87. Lawrence, Lottie Moon, 309. 88. Ibid., 306. 89. Gaston’s recollection; Adams to Lawrence, July 21, 1925; A. Pruitt to Lawrence, April 22, 1925; C. Miller to Lawrence, May 21, 1923; LMC/URLP, SBTS. In her letter to Lawrence, Miller does not mention Moon starving. She writes only that “She loved the Chinese and their sorrow was her sorrow. She divided her all with them, then gave up.” 90. Adams to Lawrence, July 21, 1925, LMC/URLP, SBTS. 91. Adams to WMU, December 1, 1947, CBAP, WMU. 92. Ibid. 93. The missionaries chose instead to focus their writings on Moon’s accomplishments as a missionary. The closest any comes to Lawrence’s version is an interview with Lelah Morgan conducted in the 1970s and published in a press release to promote the 1976 offering. But even in this interview, Morgan does not say that Moon starved, only that she did not want to eat. See the press release in the 1976 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering promotional file, WMU. Other materials written by Moon’s contemporaries can be found in the files for the following years: 1924, a leaflet by Dr. T. W. Ayers, “Miss Lottie Moon—As I Knew Her”; 1934, a pamphlet by Bonnie Jean Ray, “In Lottie Moon’s Field”; 1942, a pamphlet by Bonnie Jean Ray, “Miss Lottie Moon”; and 1943, a pamphlet by Floyd Adams, Anna Pruitt, W. W. Adams, and Anna Gaston, “Miss Moon as We Knew Her.” 94. Robinson, Faithful unto Death, and Howard, Her Lengthened Shadow. 95. Allen, New Lottie Moon, 4. 96. Ibid., 276. 97. 1988 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering promotional file, WMU. 98. Pierre Nora, dir., Conflicts and Divisions, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, vol. 1, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), xvii–xviii. The scholarly literature on southerners considering their past is deep. For recent works, see W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2005,); Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” The Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (March 2005): 1233–63; W. Scott Poole, Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004); Karen L. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003); Cynthia Mill and Pamela H. Simpson, eds., Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and Landscapes of Southern Memory (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003); David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed., Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Southern Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Cita Cook, “Women’s Role in the Transformation of Winnie Davis into the Daughter of the Confederacy,” in Thomas H. Appleton, Jr. and Angela Boswell,

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eds., Searching for Their Places: Women in the South Across Four Centuries (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003); Darlene O’Dell, Sites of Southern Memory: The Autobiography of Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, Lillian Smith, and Pauli Murray (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2001); Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “Open Secrets: Memory, Imagination, and the Refashioning of Southern Identity,” American Quarterly 50, no. 1 (1998): 109–24; Cheryl Thurber, “The Development of the Mammy Image and Mythology,” in Bernhard, Southern Women: Histories and Identities; and Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). For a national perspective, see David Thelen, “Memory and American History,” The Journal of American History 75, no. 4 (March 1989): 1117–29, and Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991). 99. To use Nora’s terms, see Conflicts and Divisions, xxiv. 100. For statistics, see http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/default.asp, accessed August 9, 2007. For a brief history of the week of prayer for foreign missions and its place in the promotion of the Christmas offering, see Bobbie Sorrill, “The History of the Week of Prayer for Foreign Missions,” Baptist History and Heritage 15, no. 4 (October 1980): 28–35. 101. See the WMU website for information and statistics: http://www.wmu.com/about/ whatisWMU.asp, accessed August 8, 2007. 102. Fletcher, Southern Baptist Convention, 253–55, 262–63, 265, 279–289, 298–305. For a sociological study of the leadership change, see Ammerman, Baptist Battles. 103. See “Executive Committee embraces ‘covenant,’ change for SBC,” Baptist Press, February 22, 1995, and “SBC panel proposes reduction in denominational agencies,” Baptist Press, February 20, 1995. See also Houston Chronicle, February 22, 1995. 104. As quoted in “SBC Executives post questions related to proposed changes,” Baptist Press, February 20, 1995. 105. “Brister committee turns down WMU request to amend proposal,” Baptist Press, May 11, 1995; Courier-Journal (Atlanta), June 20, 1995; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 19, 1995. 106. As quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 19, 1995. 107. Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C.), May 27, 1995. 108. “FMB Lottie Moon trademark questioned by Virginia WMU,” Baptist Press, May 16, 1995. 109. As quoted in the Baptist Press, May 16, 1995. 110. Ibid. 111. Religious Herald (Va.), May 25, 1995; “FMB drops application for Lottie Moon Christmas Offering,” Baptist Press, June 6, 1995. 112. “FMB drops application for Lottie Moon Christmas Offering,” Baptist Press, June 6, 1995. 113. As quoted in the Courier-Journal (Atlanta), June 20, 1995. 114. The 1995 Southern Baptist Convention Annual (Nashville: Executive Committee, Southern Baptist Convention, 1995); Roanoke Times & World News, June 25, 1995; Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C.), May 27, 1995. 115. “Trademarks, national training top WMU executive board meeting,” Baptist Press, January 20, 1997. The SBC leadership and the International Mission Board did not want Christmas offering funds to be disbursed to agencies of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which formed in 1991 when some moderate Southern Baptists left the denomination to protest the conservative takeover. For a brief history, see their website: http://www.thefellowship.info/ About-Us/FAQ, accessed November 19, 2007. 116. Catherine B. Allen, A Century to Celebrate: History of the Woman’s Missionary Union (Birmingham: Woman’s Missionary Union, Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention, 1987), 149. In 2007 the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering provided half of the operating budget of the International Mission Board. See the SBC International Mission Board funding chart, available at http://www.imb.org/giving/funding/#, accessed November 19, 2007.

“To Do Her Duty Nobly and Well” White Women’s Organizations in Georgia Debate Woman Suffrage, 1910–1920 S t ac e y H o r s t mann G a t t i

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a ry Mc L e nd o n, p r esi d e nt o f the G e o rgi a Woman Suff rag e

Association and leading member of the Georgia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), rose before the delegates of the 1910 Georgia WCTU annual convention to speak on behalf of woman suffrage. Hoping to recruit support for her cause, she appealed to the progressive impulse of WCTU members. “Conditions have vastly changed in the last few years,” she argued, “politics have become so much a part of every-day life that the moral atmosphere of your community, the comfort of your home, the health and happiness of your children is largely a measure of good or bad politics.” Imploring her audience to recognize the necessity of women’s votes, she continued, “To do her duty nobly and well, the woman of today must take her place at the ballot box beside her husband, father and brothers and use the ballot, not as a toy or plaything, but as a tool with which to carve out for the children of the race a better and brighter future.”1 McLendon’s arguments echoed those made ten months earlier in the pages of The Ladies Home Journal by national progressive activist, suffragist, and member of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Jane Addams, who outlined her own social housekeeping rationale for women’s enfranchisement in an article entitled, “Why Women Should Vote.” Addams explained, “many women today are failing to discharge their duties to their own households properly simply because they do not perceive that as society grows more complicated it is necessary that women shall extend her sense of responsibility to many things outside of her own home.” The comments reveal that woman suffragists like McLendon and Addams recognized that the recent rise of activism in women’s clubs and reform associations had propelled many elite 42

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and middle-class women throughout the country to work either directly or on the periphery of politics. This large group of women thus constituted a powerful audience of organized women who could be recruited to support woman suffrage.2 The progressive movement, beginning during the 1890s and continuing through World War I, captured the attention and won the support of the urban middle class throughout the country, including those living in the southern states. It was hardly a unified movement in that its adherents promoted a vast array of legislation, including reforms promoting openness in electoral politics, efficiencies in government and business, economic and social justice, and improvements in personal and community morality. Progressive organizations and individuals were not united on all issues, but they generally accepted that government should serve an increased role in addressing the consequences of an industrializing and urbanizing society. In other words, they sought out greater government control in business and society in what historian Robert Wiebe described as a “search for order.” Women’s organizations were particularly attracted to progressive reforms that would help them carry out their traditional role of protectors of the home and community. Women’s reform organizations and clubs supported the progressive movement by lobbying for legislation to expand and improve public education, safeguard public health, protect women workers, abolish child labor, and promote such moral reform measures as prohibition of alcohol and strict definitions of sexual morality. In the South, within the context of a racially segregated society, progressive politicians embraced programs that would help uplift their region by creating a morally pure, physically strong, and intellectually capable southern, white population.3 The social housekeeping arguments of Addams, McLendon, and others won many converts among progressive activists who had noted the potential woman suffrage could offer their particular political causes. Believing that women voters would strengthen their cause, progressive reformers initiated woman suffrage discussions throughout the nation, including the South. It turns out, however, that women’s political engagement did not lead to support for enfranchising women as reliably as the woman suffragists had hoped; rather, women’s expanding political experience compelled a careful consideration of whether their position on woman suffrage would support their political ideology and legislative goals. In Georgia, the most direct impact of these admonitions was to inspire a discussion among members of leading women’s organizations, including the Georgia WCTU, the Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs (FWC), and the Georgia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). If, as McLendon, Addams and other progressives suggested, woman suffrage would promote a progressive agenda, the discussion

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had to begin with reflection on other progressive policies and goals. A negative response to that agenda led inexorably to a powerful rejection of woman suffrage. For groups that had accepted a progressive philosophy and legislation, the next issue required an assessment of the status of their local political influence. Rather than focusing on arguments based on justice or women’s equality that were embraced by feminist activists, the members of white women’s organizations in Georgia addressed the issue in practical terms. In other words, they sought to determine whether McLendon was correct in her view that the vote would help each woman “to do her duty nobly and well.”4 As historians of southern women have argued since Anne Firor Scott began the discussion in 1970 with The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830– 1930, the story of woman suffrage in the South abounds in a complexity that exceeds that of the rest of the nation. For southerners, questions of southern identity, racial politics, and gender roles shaped the debates. That the first woman suffrage sentiments were expressed by northern abolitionists whose woman’s rights arguments had their roots in antislavery rhetoric certainly retarded the movement’s spread in a region still struggling with the longterm implications of the Confederate defeat. By the end of the nineteenth century some women who also identified themselves as proud daughters of the South broke with that tradition and publicly expressed their support for women’s enfranchisement, founded state and local woman suffrage organizations, and sometimes allied themselves with the national movement despite being decried as traitors by other white southerners. Among those who advocated votes for women, additional divisions developed. In the context of the Jim Crow South, white and black women formed separate organizations, and white women divided over whether they should pursue state rather than federal action, lest they threaten to undermine the process of black disfranchisement taking place throughout the region. As the story of the woman suffrage movement in Georgia reveals, even when united on race and tactics, factors such as age, occupation, political ideology and experience also divided them. As a result, despite the relatively small number of suffragists within the state of Georgia, women formed four separate suffrage organizations, three of which affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the fourth represented the National Woman’s Party. Mary McLendon led the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association and recruited primarily from the membership of the Georgia WCTU. The Georgia Woman Suffrage League, established in 1913, was led and represented by women working in education and business. The Equal Suffrage Party of Georgia was founded by elite, young women who were also members of the Georgia FWC. Certainly for the public-spirited activists McLendon and Addams hoped to inspire, there were abundant options.5

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Given the historical connection between the woman suffrage and antislavery movements and the continuing quest of white southern politicians to disfranchise black men, southern suffragists, antisuffragists and those who have studied them understandably have focused their attention on the racial arguments. Since Aileen Kraditor’s The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement appeared in 1965, historians have continued to examine the racism of both the woman suffrage and antisuffrage movements, especially those in the South. As I will demonstrate, southern antisuffragists clearly and consistently used racial politics to buttress their arguments, but the record of southern suffragists is less clear. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, for example, has stressed white suffragists’ use of racial arguments, but others, including Suzanne Lebsock and Elna Green, argue that by the early twentieth century southern suffragists used race-based arguments defensively, not proactively. This historiographical debate, which focuses on the unique challenges of woman suffrage in the South, the power of race in southern politics, and the acceptance of segregation by white politicians and reformers, should continue; however, it has also overshadowed other perspectives on the woman suffrage debates in the South. Without dismissing the significance of race to all southern political discussions including woman suffrage, as Glenda Gilmore has persuasively argued, my intention is to put the woman suffrage debates in the context of the emerging political identity—both practical and ideological—of white southern women by focusing on the woman suffrage debates within their reform organizations and clubs.6 Historians Marjorie Spruill Wheeler and Elna Green, in particular, have also enhanced our understanding of woman suffragists and antisuffragists in the South by examining other factors in addition to race. They have conducted careful studies of the lives, experiences, and personal histories of women activists on both sides of the debate. Wheeler’s study of eleven leading southern suffragists characterizes the suffrage leadership as educated women who, while often enjoying the social and political status of a “plantation background,” belonged to families who continued to prosper after the war, giving them the means to travel throughout the country and to Europe where they encountered other woman suffragists. Green’s more comprehensive study of the leaders of the suffrage and antisuffrage movements expands Wheeler’s description. According to Green, the southern woman suffragists belonged to the urban, professional, middle class, and the antisuffragists represented the plantation elite and the new industrialists who maintained significant ties to that older elite. As part of their analyses, Wheeler and Green, following upon the argument established by Scott, both identify participation in reform organizations and women’s clubs as preparation for suffrage activism and also acknowledge that most women active in either the suffrage or antisuffrage

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organizations began their public work in other organizations and then tried to use those organizations to promote their suffrage agendas.7 Because these analyses begin with suffrage, historians of woman suffrage necessarily view other women’s organizations as an instrument in this fight. As a result, their stories neither sufficiently explain how the suffrage and antisuffrage activists specifically sought to recruit support from members of other women’s organizations nor how the members of these groups responded to these appeals. A close examination of the suffrage debates within the Georgia WCTU, the Georgia FWC, and the Georgia UDC places the discussions about woman suffrage in the context of the larger story of the political apprenticeship of southern women. By the second decade of the twentieth century, white southern women had acquired both extensive organizational and political experience, from letter writing to testifying before legislative bodies, and they had also crafted their own political identities as they regularly deliberated on policy and legislation. While the woman suffrage debates intensified, Georgia women considered their position by carefully examining the consequences of their actions by asking themselves two questions: Did woman suffrage support their political philosophy and identity? Would the vote help or hinder their other work? Despite McLendon’s entreaties, other women recognized that the vote was much more than a “tool.” Woman suffrage represented an acceptance of their support for the progressive movement and an independent political role for women. For the Georgia WCTU, woman suffrage conformed to their political identity as strong supporters of the moral reform component of the progressive movement, but their organizational history made them cautious about alienating powerful supporters. As leaders in the educational and civic reforms of the southern progressive movement who promoted government programs and regulations at the local, state, and federal level, the Georgia FWC did not oppose woman suffrage on ideological grounds, but considered its practical implications. What impact would the vote have on their carefully crafted identity as a self-proclaimed “non-political” organization with indirect influence over powerful politicians? Although the Georgia UDC occasionally supported moral reform legislation—including prohibition and age of consent laws—and state-level reforms in education, they opposed most of the progressive agenda due to their reactionary states’ rights views. An examination of these debates suggests that the woman suffrage debates in the South were at the heart of a discussion that reflected women’s emerging identity as political activists. Addams and McLendon were certainly not the first to raise the argument that woman suffrage could serve as a means to reformist ends. As early as the 1890s some white southern women demonstrated that they were will-

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ing to listen and consider the cause, and women suffragists identified reform organizations as a valuable resource. The first woman suffrage organization in Georgia, the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association (GWSA), was founded by the Howard sisters of Columbus, Georgia, during the 1890s, and they immediately sought to recruit members of the burgeoning Georgia WCTU, which had been founded in 1883. Suffragists believed that women who joined this temperance society would be inclined to support woman suffrage. The national organization had supported woman suffrage since WCTU President Frances Willard’s 1880 admonition to “Do Everything,” in which she encouraged members to adopt a broad moral reform agenda under the banner of “Home Protection,” and to use all their tools to achieve it, including woman suffrage. The GWSA won a few crucial recruits, including McLendon and other officers of the Georgia WCTU, but the cause stirred more negative publicity than positive attention, so the Georgia WCTU officially tabled the issue in 1894. Other women’s organizations did not even engage in this initial debate. The Georgia FWC and Georgia UDC, both founded in the aftermath of the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition of 1895, did not discuss suffrage during their first fifteen years. Consequently, just as the national woman suffrage movement entered the “doldrums” in the years between 1896 and 1910, activity on the local level in Georgia also diminished. A few fervent Georgia suffragists held together the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association and occasionally attempted to stir up support within the Georgia WCTU, but their efforts had little immediate impact.8 In 1912, after this long period of relative silence, the topic of woman suffrage dramatically re-emerged. Former President Theodore Roosevelt had recently stunned the country by challenging his hand-picked successor William Howard Taft for the presidency and by running on the Progressive Party ticket. McLendon’s sister, the indomitable Rebecca Felton, attended the convention in Chicago at which Jane Addams delivered a nominating speech. The Progressive Party platform unequivocally endorsed woman suffrage, and the self-proclaimed Bull Moose himself expressed support for votes for women. By the time the Georgia women’s organizations met for their annual meetings in the fall of 1912, the country was in the midst of a presidential election and this time a prominent candidate, albeit a former Republican, had taken up the suffrage banner.9 The Georgia women reacted to the reverberating national discussion of women suffrage. This time not only did the Georgia WCTU address suffrage at its convention but so did the Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Georgia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The women of these organizations had achieved a level of political maturity by working on the periphery of politics for well over a decade, and this catalyst was all

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they needed to push them to address directly the suffrage question. Once the issue was raised, it would not fade. During the years between 1912 and 1920 these discussions intensified, and a careful reading of the minutes of the annual meetings, newspapers, and speeches of women on all sides of the issue reveals that the debates over woman suffrage represented complex differences of political opinions. Indeed, by 1910 and throughout the following decade the decision over whether or not an organization, or an individual, should endorse, oppose, or remain neutral on the question of woman suffrage was an essential aspect of their overall political beliefs, especially their support for or opposition to the Progressive impulse.10 The history of woman suffrage sentiment within the Georgia WCTU demonstrates the complexity of the suffrage debates as the members considered and periodically revisited both the ideological and practical implications of the franchise. During the 1890s, suffrage supporters followed the lead of the National WCTU by proposing that the Georgia WCTU work for woman suffrage, but the state organization declined to join the national union in this effort. The leaders suggested, instead, that individual members could pursue this goal on their own without receiving the sanction or condemnation of the state organization. This level of openness, however, offended some of their earliest supporters, including Bishop Warren Candler of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, who condemned the group for not severing its ties to the national organization. The membership of the Georgia WCTU subsequently diminished, and both the Georgia WCTU leaders and suffrage opponents attributed that loss to their early suffrage discussions. In 1894 the delegates were so concerned with the negative publicity generated by their discussions of woman suffrage that they unanimously agreed to strike out the suffrage report from the minutes of the 1893 meeting. The organization then effectively put a gag order on any discussion of woman suffrage for over a decade.11 Despite these official actions, individual Georgia WCTU members were among the first and most steadfast woman suffrage advocates in Georgia. During the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century, both the national and Georgia WCTU expanded their goals from promoting temperance to also supporting progressive causes, including protecting the sexual morality of their children and improving educational opportunities and working conditions for women and children. Furthermore, they shared a progressive approach by not only pursuing state and local regulations but also federal legislation and constitutional amendments to achieve their goals. Their embrace of strong government protections led them to pursue guarantees of voting rights by any means. As the Georgia WCTU expanded its scope, its leaders became more vocal about their support

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for woman suffrage, recognizing women’s votes as both a useful tool and as an aspect of their progressive legislative agenda. Although the majority of their members may not have agreed with this conclusion, they did not again withdraw their support from the organization.12 Mary McLendon, who had served as an officer in both the Georgia WCTU and the GWSA, assumed the leading role in promoting suffrage support within the Georgia WCTU. In 1906, she determined that the Georgia WCTU had regained its momentum, celebrating a rise in membership and increased political support for their central cause of prohibition, and she chose this moment to resume her pleas that reformers recognize the potential usefulness of women’s votes. The general membership responded politely but cautiously while women who were serving in leadership positions became more outspoken about their own suffrage activities. Mary McLendon’s motion that the Georgia WCTU endorse woman suffrage was not seconded, but for the first time since 1892 it was allowed to appear in the official minutes. This time membership did not decline in response, and McLendon continued her appeals.13 After six years of politely listening to, but then refusing to discuss, McLendon’s entreaties, in the midst of the 1912 election season, the delegates to the Georgia WCTU convention entered the national dialogue on woman suffrage. On the first day of the convention the 125 delegates and visitors who attended the convention either observed or participated in a discussion on woman suffrage. The minutes carefully explain that the debate did not focus on suffrage itself but on whether or not this body should endorse it as part of its official legislative agenda. The delegates overwhelmingly rejected the resolution, but the report in the Georgia WCTU’s official newsletter, the Georgia Bulletin, argued that the vote did not reflect widespread opposition to suffrage. Instead, the editor noted “a number of the members of the Georgia WCTU are also members of the Georgia WSA.”14 During the years between 1912 and 1920 prominent women within the Georgia WCTU also developed and publicly articulated prosuffrage arguments. The pattern reveals that when women, particularly those in leadership roles who most aggressively pursued legislation, became frustrated in their efforts, they became suffragists and joined McLendon’s efforts to persuade their sisters to do the same. The membership of the Georgia WCTU did not follow their lead on this issue, but also did not publicly object or withdraw their support from an organization whose leadership increasingly worked for suffrage. As Superintendent of the Legislation Department of the Georgia WCTU, Jennie Hart Sibley had started articulating forceful prosuffrage arguments in her reports and supported a local measure for woman suffrage in her home

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city of Union Point before the 1912 discussion. She attended meetings of the Progressive Women of the South in 1906 and 1908, joining prominent southern suffragists, including Belle Kearney and Laura Clay, on the podium. At the 1911 Georgia WCTU convention she also expressed her support for McLendon as “an inspiration to fire women to take their stand for simple justice,” and indicated that as Superintendent for Legislation her own job would be eased if women were politically powerful rather than “only supplicants.”15 During the rest of the decade, Sibley incorporated woman suffrage arguments into her other WCTU work. According to Sibley’s 1915 report, she had submitted petitions to both Congress and the Georgia Legislature on behalf of suffrage, and no suggestion was made in either the convention report or in the Georgia Bulletin that anyone protested this action, even though the membership had clearly refused to adopt woman suffrage as part of their platform.16 Mary Harris Armor also became an outspoken advocate of suffrage as a means to achieve legislative victories. Between 1903 and 1920 Armor held offices within both the state and national organizations, including state president and state organizer of the Georgia WCTU and field secretary for the national organization. Armor was highly esteemed for her public speaking abilities, and she worked to spread the message of prohibition not only to lawmakers in both Georgia and Washington, D.C., but also to women throughout the world.17 During her time as field secretary, Armor lobbied Congressional representatives and grew increasingly certain that woman suffrage would ease her efforts to promote progressive measures to use government to protect women and children, especially through prohibition legislation. By the late 1910s, Armor began to include prosuffrage arguments in the reports she sent back to the women of her home state. She exclaimed, for example, “Give the women a chance and you will see they can vote and will soon get rid of John Barleycorn,” suggesting women would use the vote for reformist ends. The Georgia Bulletin described her remarks as “bright flashes from her keen and nimble sword.”18 Lella Dillard assumed the presidency of the Georgia WCTU during these turbulent years, and as she assessed the organization’s legislative accomplishments and failures, she occasionally expressed her support for suffrage. As her frustration grew, so did her expressions of prosuffrage sentiment. When the Georgia General Assembly, once again, failed to uphold its promise to significantly raise the age of consent in 1917, President Dillard proclaimed, “The failure of the Legislature to raise this age of protection for our girls . . . will be the means of making hundreds of converts for the franchise of women.” She continued, “Our men are driving us all to active enlistment in a campaign for woman suffrage. We can longer read day after day of the careful legislation to protect birds and beasts and growing crops, and see our ear-

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nest petitions for the protection of precious little girls unheeded, except by shameful compromise.”19 In addition to frustration over legislative defeats, she also suggested that weak law enforcement would compel women to support suffrage. In 1919, even though the Georgia WCTU had much to celebrate following the enactment of national prohibition laws and the ratification the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Dillard expressed her concern that without the power of women’s votes, those measures would not be appropriately enforced. In her March letter to the Georgia Bulletin she wrote, “We never can [enforce the law] until we have the ballot and can vote for men who will. Such conditions make us rampant suffragists.”20 When both houses of Congress passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment three months later, Dillard rejoiced and praised both men and women from Georgia who had supported this amendment, especially Mary McLendon, “that brave pioneer who has dared to stand true to her convictions in the face of what to the ordinary woman would have been fearful odds. All honor to her!”21 By the middle of 1919 Dillard, still without the official sanction of the organization, continued to support woman suffrage. She encouraged all Georgia women to work for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, arguing that the only reason the Georgia WCTU had not previously supported woman suffrage was out of fear the stand would “create antagonism when there were other battles to fight.” By June 1919, she argued, “There is no obstacle now, for the legal battle of Prohibition is practically over.”22 Dillard’s estimation of the support for woman suffrage within both the state and the organization missed the mark. The Georgia Legislature rejected the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and the delegates to the 1919 convention of the Georgia WCTU once again refused to support woman suffrage.23 Dillard’s remarks, it seems, represented her own conviction that women’s votes would help the Georgia WCTU’s progressive moral reform agenda. The editors of the Georgia WCTU’s official newspaper, the Georgia Bulletin, also clearly supported woman suffrage. Between 1913 and 1920 the Georgia Bulletin printed numerous stories to provide evidence that woman suffrage had already boosted prohibition and other moral reform causes in parts of the country where women could vote. These articles substantiated the arguments that were more clearly and more fully articulated by the prosuffrage women within the organization. Each story not only provided evidence suggesting that women’s votes would help the WCTU fulfill its legislative agenda, but also implied that woman suffrage was becoming an acceptable cause for white southern women. In 1913 one short blurb simply stated, “Before women got the ballot many saloon-keepers had served on the Denver city council. Not one has been elected within the nineteen years since that time.”24 Other articles demonstrated that woman suffrage had directly resulted in

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Â� promoting prohibition laws in Texas, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon.25 Without explicitly stating their intention, the editors of the Georgia Bulletin provided support for the argument that women voters would improve the chances of meaningful moral reform. Despite these powerful prosuffrage voices, the Georgia WCTU remained officially neutral on the issue of woman suffrage. Although the membership did include women who opposed woman suffrage in principle, given the history of woman suffrage discussions within the organization, other women certainly rejected woman suffrage for practical reasons. During the 1890s, opposition to suffrage by powerful church leaders nearly destroyed the Georgia WCTU, and some women certainly did not wish to alienate powerful supporters of their reform efforts. Although these internal and external forces of opposition constrained the suffragists within the ranks of the Georgia WCTU, it is also clear that those women within the organization who engaged most directly in political activities on its behalf were suffragists. The same women who fought aggressively for progressive legislation that would expand the power of the state and federal government for the perceived good of the morality of their communities also frequently advocated woman suffrage as a means to accomplish those ends. The leadership of both the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) and the Georgia FWC approached politics slowly and cautiously. As the most elite members of society, they sought to maintain their class power and reluctantly approached any changes that might interfere with their status. Neither the national nor the state federations of women’s clubs seriously discussed woman suffrage until they felt secure that it would serve their interests. Once satisfied that woman suffrage was no longer a radical cause and that women’s vote would promote their progressive political agenda, both the national and Georgia organizations threw their support behind it. Furthermore, by the 1910s antisuffrage concerns about a constitutional amendment were no longer shared by many members of the Georgia FWC. Since 1895 the Georgia FWC had supported plans to improve the education system, ameliorate working conditions for women and children, and protect public health systems throughout the state. The organization began its efforts with direct influence over individual local politicians and businessmen, but, when necessary, had expanded its legislative focus from local and state jurisdictions to federal authorities. In the second decade of the twentieth century the organization pragmatically accepted assistance from any source, including a proposed constitutional amendment. During the early years of club work, the women of the General and Georgia Federations of Women’s Clubs understood that they would be involved in political influence peddling, but rather than advocating suffrage, which they

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deemed the essence of male political activity, they framed their role in traditional—rather than feminist—terms. When Georgia’s own Rebecca Lowe was re-elected president of the national organization in 1900, she described their role as similar to that of the Republican Mother of the last century, by arguing that club work would help women to “teach our sons and husbands . . . what it is that is required to make a statesman. . . . Teach them, women of America, to have high political ideals, and thus become leaders because they are true and honest.”26 For clubwomen who sought not radical social and political upheaval, but rather to take an active role in protecting their communities, Lowe’s approach seemed reasonable. It justified their discussion of legislative issues with each other and with men, including lawmakers, without lumping them with suffragists whose reputations and ideals remained fraught with controversy. No significant or extensive re-evaluation of women’s political identity took place within either the national or the Georgia FWC, and they engaged in no discussion of woman suffrage until 1912. In the wake of Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party nomination and corresponding declaration of support for woman suffrage, clubwomen reconsidered the issue. Suffragists within the national organization, notably suffrage speaker Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and Progressive Party member Frances Kellor, took the initiative in 1912 to discuss woman’s enfranchisement as a means of promoting the rest of the GFWC’s progressive agenda, proclaiming, as Theodore Roosevelt had, that women’s influence would improve society and would not diminish their domestic role. Furthermore, they assured elite women that their power would be no more diminished by the expansion of the franchise than their husband’s power had been by democratizing influences.27 After two years of public discussion, the GFWC endorsed woman suffrage with a general statement in favor of “political equality for men and women.”28 In 1912, members of the Georgia FWC also recognized that woman suffrage was gaining momentum and respectability throughout the nation. For the next seven years they carefully considered the issue, and in 1919 they endorsed woman suffrage, taking a step the Georgia WCTU did not. Once the majority of the Georgia FWC were persuaded that this decision was no longer considered radical, at least in their own political and social circles, they ultimately determined, after Congress passed the amendment that they could use the vote to bolster their own power to improve conditions in their community. The Georgia FWC’s approach closely resembled that of their national organization. Women in both organizations introduced the issue of woman suffrage gradually and then, once they felt certain that it would help their cause and not hurt their image, they endorsed it. At the 1912 convention of

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the Georgia FWC Nellie Peters Black opened the discussion by explaining that the national organization had left the woman suffrage decision in the hands of the state organizations, a decision she supported because taking an affirmative stand at that time “would produce a discordant note, owing to the diversity of the delegates.”29 Since the Georgia FWC had never before formally raised this issue, it was no surprise that they postponed the discussion for a year. Just as national women’s club leaders relied on Theodore Roosevelt’s arguments when discussing woman suffrage, Georgia clubwomen sought out the opinions of prominent Georgia politicians in testing their own political waters. In preparation for a 1913 article for a special Woman’s Edition of the Atlanta Constitution, three clubwomen interviewed Mayor Woodward of Atlanta. When they asked his position on woman suffrage, Woodward vacillated. He refused to endorse suffrage on the grounds that he was “a little oldfashioned,” fearing that the women themselves might suffer from this new role, but admitted that he saw no real reason why women would not, with a “little practice,” become competent voters and politicians. Woodward further stated that no matter what his personal opinion may be, he recognized that woman suffrage was coming.30 The leaders of the Georgia FWC may have had an advantage over those of the Georgia WCTU. Since their organization did not have a history of introducing this controversial topic, they were starting with a clean slate and could approach this issue from the strictly practical perspective of whether or not the franchise would be useful to them. In a December 1913 interview Georgia FWC President Ida Fitzpatrick explained, “As a clubwoman the question with me is whether if suffrage should indeed come it would prove a help or a hindrance to the work which we are trying to do for the improvement and uplift of conditions of many sorts in our communities and in the state.” Recognizing that women had already expanded their sphere and increased their political influence, she argued the practical question was “would the giving of the ballot to women increase that influence?” Like Mayor Woodward, she was uncertain. She relished women’s influence as the “power behind the throne,” and feared that once women were enfranchised they could actually lose power. She, too, conceded that this stance might be “old-fashioned,” and she was willing to be persuaded that she was wrong. Furthermore, she expressed no personal reservations to voting and readily admitted, “I may be one of the first to use the ballot should it be given us, [because] there are a good many questions coming up that I would like to take a hand in settling especially when it comes to school matters . . . which I often think woman would accomplish a great good were she allowed to have a voice in deciding them.” Fitzpatrick closed the interview by apologizing for her unsatisfactory

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answer to the question and suggested “at present I am on the fence on that issue, or rather I may be said to be on one side of the fence looking over to see what the prospects for betterment are on the other side.”31 In the meantime, prosuffrage forces within the Georgia FWC began to act. Rather than joining the GWSA, which was dominated by members of the Georgia WCTU, in 1914 two Atlanta clubwomen, Emily McDougald and Mary Raoul, created a new woman suffrage organization, the Equal Suffrage Party (ESP) of Georgia. The competing suffrage organizations maintained a cordial working relationship, but they refused to merge even when encouraged to do so by NAWSA. Instead the ESP effectively served as the woman suffrage organization for members of the Georgia FWC. The young leaders of the ESP engaged in an aggressive publicity effort aimed at winning the support of “influential men and women” through public actions, including parades and suffrage teas. The ESP used the Georgia FWC, in particular, as a source of recruitment and quickly grew from a membership of less than one hundred in 1914 to a membership of nearly two thousand by January 1915 by appealing to the municipal housekeeping initiatives the FWC supported. One ESP pamphlet, for example, asked, “Isn’t it true that housekeeping is woman’s business and that her success depends not only on herself but on the way her town is governed?” Another leaflet succinctly summarized the progressive agenda of the Georgia FWC. “WOMEN!,” they charged, “Your Home and Your Children need you. You are interested in: Better Schools; Better Sanitation; Better Morals; Better Playgrounds . . . Don’t Shirk Your Task.”32 Between 1915 and 1919 members of the Georgia ESP repeatedly introduced motions at Georgia FWC meetings to endorse woman suffrage, but each time they were ruled out of order by antisuffragists and women who professed that they were trying to avoid any divisive confrontations. At the 1915 Georgia FWC meeting a member introduced a resolution supporting the GFWC’s recent statement in support of “the principles of political equality, regardless of sex.” Her motion received a second, but the Georgia FWC delegates agreed to postpone a vote on the measure for a year.33 This postponement gave women on both sides of the issue sufficient warning to prepare for the inevitable debate that would ensue at the 1916 convention. Sarah Morgan prepared to lead the suffrage arguments and Georgia UDC President Dorothy Lamar assumed the lead of the antisuffrage forces. President Ida Fitzpatrick and her moderate supporters, hoping to avoid a disruptive confrontation, made several attempts at using administrative tactics to prevent any discussion. Despite these efforts, a debate ensued in which both sides presented passionate arguments, but it ended when President Fitzpatrick ruled the motion out of order.34 Immediately following the 1916 convention, President Fitzpatrick attempted to control the damage by arguing that woman suffrage should not

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be added to the organization’s agenda, because their constitution stipulated that organization was not “political.” She also explained that they already had a full slate of other legislative concerns to which they should devote their energy and that suffrage was an unnecessary fight. Fitzpatrick recommended that anyone interested in the woman suffrage debates join one of the organizations focused on that issue, which, she reminded them, they were free to do. A similar debate, nonetheless, developed at the 1917 convention with the same result. Faced with a contentious issue, the president chose to silence discussion for practical reasons.35 When the Georgia FWC met in November 1919, the climate had changed. Public support for woman suffrage had increased. President Wilson had endorsed and Congress had passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and new discussions and votes were taking place in statehouses across the nation. After a brief debate, including another discussion of whether or not the entire discussion violated their constitution’s statement against “political” activity, the delegates passed a resolution endorsing Congress’s actions by a vote of eighty-five to forty and appealed to the Georgia General Assembly to ratify the amendment.36 The Georgia legislature, however, quickly rejected the constitutional amendment, and the Georgia FWC addressed the states’ rights debates. Although the Chairman of the Department of Legislation, Mrs. Robert Berner, professed her preference for the states’ rights approach of state legislation rather than a federal amendment, she nevertheless sent telegrams in support of ratification to representatives of the Tennessee state legislature. She explained, “I did this as your Chairman of Legislation and I trust it meets with your approval. It was my desire, when suffrage came, that it would come through the State of Georgia. Fate willed it otherwise! It has come, not in my way, perhaps not in your way, but it has come.”37 Berner’s statement may represent genuine support for the third approach to woman suffrage, one promoted by the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference led by Kate Gordon of Louisiana. These states’ rights concerns, however, were rarely raised by Georgia’s leading woman suffrage supporters as either part of their public statements or the records of club discussions. Historians of woman suffrage in the South, especially Wheeler, have devoted considerable attention to the states’ rights approach, but as the actions of Georgia suffragists suggest and as Wheeler herself acknowledges, many southern suffragists did not share the commitment of the Gordon sisters and Laura Clay to seeking the vote expressly through state actions. Elna Green emphasizes this point, arguing that the states’ rights suffragists represented a minority point of view among southern suffragists. In Georgia, the GWSA and the ESP both supported the quest to win the vote by any means possible and recognized that the states’

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rights approach would result in a prolonged delay to realizing their goals. Berner’s cautious qualifications aside, it seems that she and the majority of the members of the Georgia FWC recognized the increasing popularity of the constitutional amendment, so they supported the winning cause.38 By the time the prosuffrage forces throughout the nation had gathered enough momentum that Susan B. Anthony’s Amendment moved toward victory, many Georgia clubwomen saw little reason to resist joining the tide. This decision reflects their overall approach to politics. The Georgia FWC did not lead the fight on controversial issues or resist the forces of industrialization and urbanization. They merely sought to modify and improve their lives within the confines of these changing conditions by supporting improvements in education and modest restrictions on child labor. Only after the Georgia WCTU had worked to make culturally sensitive issues such as prohibition and raising the age of consent acceptable did the Georgia FWC endorse those causes. Likewise, when the battle for women’s enfranchisement had won politically powerful converts, the clubwomen were ready to support suffrage. Immediately after women were enfranchised, Georgia FWC President Louise Hayes declared that now the members of women’s clubs would use the vote to promote their interests as mothers and community leaders. As part of her presidential address to the 1920 convention she stated, “The truth is education, freedom, organization, agitation and even the suffrage are but tools which relate to an end and that end is the preservation and improvement of the home.”39 At the 1921 convention, members of the Georgia FWC amended their own constitution to indicate that their organization was “non-partisan” rather than “non-political.” They explained, “This implies no change in policy. The federation has always concerned itself with policies in sense of government and public welfare. It has always worked for desired legislation. . . . Only the incorrect wording of the constitution is changed. The federation’s policy will remain the same.”40 When the Georgia FWC needed to protect its reputation and avoid many divisive debates over the politically contentious issue of woman suffrage, it shielded itself as “non-political,” but once that controversy had abated, they declared it was all just a misunderstanding. Ever the practical politicians, the leaders of the Georgia FWC seamlessly changed with the times. While the members of the other women’s organizations debated the risks and benefits of endorsing woman suffrage, the Georgia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy remained relatively quiet. For them, there was nothing to debate, because their opposition was both ideological and practical. Their organization was dedicated to upholding the history and heritage of the Old South and of the Confederacy, and, as recent historians, especially

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Sarah Gardner and Karen Cox, have demonstrated, the UDC was a powerful public and political force behind the promotion of the Lost Cause and Confederate Culture. For the leadership of the UDC working against woman suffrage was a natural extension of promoting the values of the Old South and the Confederacy. While they justified their public and even political activities as an extension of that work, invoking the specter of Confederate women’s wartime efforts, woman suffrage threatened to disrupt their society’s view of appropriate gender roles and relations. Furthermore, as they listened to the suffrage arguments around them, they noticed that the most vocal proponents of votes for women were the same people who advocated the aggressive progressive agenda, complete with an increase of federal authority, which they consistently shunned in the name of states’ rights and traditional southern values, including white political control.41 Even though the delegates to the Georgia UDC annual meetings never debated suffrage, their leaders occasionally preached to them about the dangers of woman suffrage in order to stimulate their concerns about this threatening storm. Dorothy Lamar and Mildred Rutherford, in particular, made use of this particular bully pulpit to express their opposition to women’s enfranchisement. In 1912, Dorothy Lamar, who was then President of the Georgia UDC, gave a speech in which she argued that Theodore Roosevelt, Progressivism, and woman suffrage all threatened the overall goals of the UDC. She began her talk by explaining that “although the mental and moral, and physical antics of the ‘Wild Man from Oyster Bay’ are sometimes amusing and cause his visits to the South to be tolerated,” the Daughters should not be fooled. Lamar criticized him equally for calling Jefferson Davis a traitor and for advocating woman suffrage. She extended her damnation to both the Republican and Progressive parties as well as to industrialists for causing problems that drove others to support socialism, arguing that each of these groups threatened to undermine the traditional states’ rights values of the South and that men were using women to carry out their progressive agenda. President Lamar urged the Daughters not to take the bait, but suggested that being “a citizen of the Republic does not mean that the gentlewomen we have ever been are to become militant suffragettes.” Rather, she continued, “it does mean that our influence in politics, upon the lives we touch shall continue to make for purity and magnanimity by a determination on the part of each of us to count for something definite in the moulding [sic] of public opinion.” The president concluded her indictment of progressive national politics by urging the Daughters to protect the South, proclaiming, “Ours is the only strictly southern organization, and unto us is entrusted the South’s fair name.”42 Lamar acknowledged that the recent endorsement of woman suffrage by former president Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party was

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an important political event, and she carefully responded to it on behalf of her organization. Lamar’s speech contains the only reference to woman suffrage recorded in the reports of a Georgia UDC annual meeting, but prominent Georgia Daughters frequently spoke in public and testified before legislative committees on the issue of woman suffrage. Lamar and Mildred Rutherford became the unofficial antisuffrage representatives in the Georgia State House to argue against suffragists, including Mary McLendon of the GWSA and the Georgia WCTU and Emily McDougald of the Equal Suffrage Party and the Georgia FWC. Lamar and Rutherford appeared before both the Georgia House and Senate Committees during the 1914 legislative session. Their arguments focused upon the legacy of their southern states’ rights heritage. They accused southern suffragists of betraying their region and warned that expanding suffrage would not only enfranchise black women but might also lead to the re-enfranchisement of black men, thereby threatening white political control of the South. When speaking before the House committee in 1914, Lamar argued that most Georgia women did not want the vote and that “the bulk of those who are for suffrage form a fungus growth of misguided women.”43 Rutherford’s arguments centered on the principle of states’ rights and the implications of maintaining the racial order in the South. In 1914, she explained, “The women who are working for this measure are striking at the principle for which their fathers fought the Civil War. Woman’s suffrage comes from the north and west and from women who do not believe in states rights and who wish to see negro women use the ballot.”44 The next year Rutherford again warned the politicians that they should steer clear of changing voting laws “when the negro question was unsettled,” and during the ratification debate she predicted that woman suffrage through constitutional amendment would result in “negro domination” of the South.45 Historians have focused considerable attention on the significance of race to woman suffrage debates in the South, suggesting that women on both sides of the debate viewed suffrage as either protection for or a threat to white supremacy. The appeal of race-based arguments to antisuffragists is widely accepted. Elizabeth McRae and Grace Elizabeth Hale have argued that for Rutherford, in particular, and for the Georgia Antis and the UDC, in general, the threat of disrupting the southern racial order was at the heart of their public objections to woman suffrage, and they frequently put southern suffragists on the defensive with these challenges. As previously noted, however, there is less consensus on the significance of suffragists’ use of race. Whereas some historians, including Wheeler, have frequently noted the racism of southern suffragists, Lebsock, among others, has demonstrated that white suffragists did not initiate race-based arguments, but rather used the argument that the

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votes of white women would ensure white supremacy only after antisuffragists had warned of the impending peril of “negro domination.”46 The record of woman suffrage debates in Georgia provides further support for Lebsock’s arguments. Although the members of both the Georgia WCTU and the Georgia FWC openly assessed the practical impact of woman suffrage to the reputation and effectiveness of their organizations, the accounts of their meetings contain no discussion of race. Furthermore, Georgia suffragists regularly responded to these racial arguments by making clear that their primary intention was to enfranchise women on the same terms with men, while also providing assurances that they would not threaten white political power. In a 1915 report on the status of suffrage work prepared for the members of the GWSA, McLendon wrote, “Last year we introduced a bill in the Legislature to submit to the voters an amendment to the Constitution allowing women to vote upon the exact basis that men were allowed. This satisfactorily disposed of the Negro vote.”47 As this report suggests, Georgia suffragists raised the issue of race in response to antisuffrage arguments, but once the concern was raised, they did not hesitate to accommodate it. For McLendon and other white Georgia woman suffragists, their paramount concern was to enfranchise white women, and they were willing to do so whether black women voted with them or not. That antisuffragists, rather than suffragists, consistently introduced these arguments suggests that preserving white political power was a paramount concern to them and that if the result was not enfranchising white women, so be it. Maintaining white supremacy was paramount to antisuffragists, but secondary to Georgia suffragists who were primarily appealing to women interested in the moral, civic, and educational reforms of the southern progressive movement. In addition to raising contemporary racial concerns, Rutherford also regularly tied her views on woman suffrage to her nostalgic interpretation of southern history. On one such occasion she addressed the question: “What would our grandmothers have said if confronted with present day problems?” Rutherford argued that even though the women of the Old South would have advocated becoming involved in their communities in order to protect their families and to serve those less fortunate members of the population, their grandmothers would have opposed woman suffrage out of respect for men and the code of chivalry. Instead of pursuing votes for women, Rutherford argued, the woman of her own time must “get back to her rightful place where she commands the respect, the confidence, the love and the admiration of the man.” Rutherford encouraged women to get “back to the home as near as possible to the home on the plantation of the Old South, which was the ideal home, where the men were noble, honest, brave and true, and where the women were lovely, gentle, modest and pure.”48 According to Rutherford,

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women could improve their condition by retreating from a present affected by urbanization, industrialization, and progressivism and returning to a rural, agrarian world of chivalry that resembled the society of the Old South. The Georgia UDC leadership not only preached antisuffrage sentiments, but they also organized to fight for their cause. In May 1914, a group of Georgia women organized the first southern chapter of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, the Georgia Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (GAOWS), and Caroline Patterson, Dorothy Lamar, and Mildred Rutherford served as officers.49 These women maintained close ties with antisuffrage men in Georgia, including Methodist Bishop Warren Candler, journalist James Calloway, and United States senator Hoke Smith. The men turned to women to carry out the antisuffrage cause, believing that the antisuffrage argument would be more powerful if it came from women. Patterson, Lamar, and Rutherford eagerly accepted this task and reported on their progress through their correspondence with these men. Following the 1916 Georgia FWC meeting, for example, Caroline Patterson sent a letter on GAOWS letterhead to Warren Candler in which she reported, “We were delighted that in spite of the fact that the Atlanta, Augusta, and Savannah women tried hard to introduce woman suffrage into the clubs, they were ruled out of order, as the Federation is ‘non-political.’”50 Although A. Elizabeth Taylor has emphasized the influence of men over the Georgia Antis, McRae has recently argued that the Georgia antisuffrage women were not “pawns of planter or liquor interests,” but instead suggests that the women themselves “carefully crafted a conservative ideology that responded to the changing political terrain of the twentieth century.” The Georgia antisuffrage activists demonstrated that they were deeply committed to this cause and expressed their devotion not only through their public appearances at the statehouse but also by working to influence women within other organizations to resist the suffragists’ arguments. In addition to the Georgia Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, Caroline Patterson was also a member of the Georgia UDC, the Georgia WCTU, and the Georgia FWC, where she frequently fought to prevent those organizations from supporting woman suffrage. Other women who spoke against woman suffrage at Georgia FWC meetings include Lamar, Mrs. S. C. Moore, and Mrs. Walter Grace, all of whom were also members of both the GAOWS and the Georgia UDC.51 Even though the Georgia UDC and the Georgia Antis remained officially separate organizations, the overlap of their leadership and the ties between their causes was noted by the women themselves and also by their opponents. In a 1915 article, Georgia suffrage advocate Rebecca Felton accused Lamar and Rutherford of using antisuffragism as a means of promoting their own

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influence within the UDC. She described Rutherford’s testimony as “a ‘rebel yell’ so to speak—denouncing suffrage as a Yankee scheme which would break the hearts of Confederate veterans.”52 The antisuffrage UDC members themselves embraced this connection between the Confederate cause and antisuffragism. In a July 1917 letter to Warren Candler, Patterson herself refers to the antisuffrage fight as the “Cause.” By using quotation marks and by capitalizing the word, she drew attention to the parallel between her fight against votes for women and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy that she and the UDC worked to promote.53 For the leadership of the Georgia UDC working against woman suffrage was a natural extension of promoting the values of the Old South and the Confederacy. They acknowledged that they, as women, could and should work with the political system, but they never lost sight of their main goal, which woman suffrage challenged. They believed that woman suffrage would erode the code of chivalry, threaten white political power, and promote federal progressivism. If prosuffrage advocates, including Mary McLendon, Jane Addams and Theodore Roosevelt, were correct in their assumptions that women would promote progressive legislation, women voters threatened those who were opposed to that agenda, which included expanding the power of the federal government. The politically conservative members of the UDC cherished local control, and to them such a change would threaten their ability to protect the historic legacy of the Old South. Thus, woman suffrage sat at the heart of a larger political debate between progressive and conservative southerners. After Georgia women were officially and constitutionally enfranchised in 1920, women could vote whether they believed in the cause or not; consequently, the most outspoken women on both sides of the issue, along with many other women who had remained neutral throughout the debates, headed to the polling booths. Antisuffragists recognized that even though they had lost this battle, the war for the political, economic, and cultural future of their state continued. With this debate behind them, all women’s organizations added voting to their arsenal of political tools and resumed work on the same legislative issues they had long supported. The Georgia WCTU remained concerned about a variety of moral reform measures and understood that vigilant attention must be paid to maintain prohibition. The Georgia FWC continued to support progressive measures that were designed to protect mothers and children, including the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921, creating a federally funded social welfare program to support state and local public health efforts, and to promote educational improvements and civic uplift through either state or federal action. The Georgia UDC acknowledged that their disagreement with these women extended far beyond women vot-

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ing, so the Daughters and other antisuffragists headed for the polls as well to promote the values of their grandmothers. Their continued efforts reveal that, for women’s organizations, the debate about women suffrage—although often fraught with controversy—was merely one fight among many concerns as they sought “to do [their] duty nobly and well.”54 —— 1. “Fraternal Greetings from the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association to the Georgia Women’s Christian Temperance Union,” Report of the Twenty-eighth Annual Convention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Georgia held in the Baptist Church, Madison, Ga., October 11th to 14th, 1910 (Columbus, Ga.: Gilbert Printing Co., 1910), 30. The reports of the Georgia WCTU annual conventions are included in Georgia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Records, Special Collections Department, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. 2. Addams, “Why Women Should Vote,” The Ladies Home Journal 27 (January 1910): 21–22. For an analysis of Addams’s argument, especially its appeal to middle-class women with an interest in domestic reform movements, see Victorian Bissell Brown, “Jane Addams, Progressivism, and Woman Suffrage: An Introduction to ‘Why Women Should Vote,’” in Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, ed., One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement (Troutdale, Oreg.: New Sage Press, 1995), 179–91. For other discussions of the relationship between woman suffrage and progressivism, see Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 6–7; and Jo Ann Freeman, A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics (Lantham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 47–57. 3. Scholarship on national and southern progressivism is extensive; I have relied primarily on the following: Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966); Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951); Dewey Grantham, Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation of Progress and Tradition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983); William A. Link, The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). On women’s organizations and progressivism, see Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992). 4. Annual Report of the 1910 Georgia WCTU Convention, 30. 5. Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). On the national woman suffrage movement, see also Eleanor Flexner, A Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959) and Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 172–221. For background on the woman suffrage movement in Georgia, see A. Elizabeth Taylor, “The Origins of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 28 (June 1944): 63–79; Taylor, “Revival and Development of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 42 (December 1958): 339–54; Taylor, “The Last Phase of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 43 (March 1959): 11–28; Mary Kathryn Kelly, “Antisuffrage Arguments in Georgia, 1890–1920” (Master’s thesis, Emory University, 1972); and Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, “Caretakers of Southern Civilization: Georgia Women and the Anti-Suffrage Campaign,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 82 (Winter 1998): 801–28.

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6. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965); Elna Carolyn Green, Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Suzanne Lebsock, “Woman Suffrage and White Supremacy: A Virginia Case Study,” in Nancy Hewitt and Suzanne Lebsock, eds., Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 62–100; Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Woman and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), especially 203–11. On race and antisuffragism, see also McRae, “Caretakers of Southern Civilization”; Grace Elizabeth Hale, “‘Some Women Have Never Been Reconstructed’: Mildred Lewis Rutherford, Lucy M. Stanton, and the Racial Politics of White Southern Womanhood, 1900–1930,” in Georgia in Black and White: Explorations in the Race Relations of a Southern State, 1865–1950, John C. Inscoe, ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994), 173–201. 7. Wheeler, New Women of the New South, xvi–xx, 38–71; Green, Southern Strategies, xii– xxvi, 57–77. 8. H. Augusta Howard, “Significant Convention in Georgia,” Woman’s Journal, July 5, 1890, 33; Claudia Howard, “First Suffrage Association in Georgia,” Woman’s Journal November 15, 1890, 31; “Constitution and By-Laws of the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association,” Georgia Woman Suffrage Collection, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Ga. For accounts of the origins of the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association and its early relationship with the Georgia WCTU, see Lula Barnes Ansley, History of the Georgia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (Columbus, Ga.: Gilbert Printing Company, 1914), 140–81; Taylor, “The Origins of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia”; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Gage, eds., The History of Woman Suffrage, (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1922), vol. 4, 581–88. For the discussion of woman suffrage at the 1894 Georgia WCTU convention, see Annual Report of the 1894 Georgia WCTU Convention, 9. 9. Theodore Roosevelt received only 18 percent of the vote in Georgia in 1912, but he did win a majority in six north Georgia counties and received support for prominent Georgia progressives, especially Julian Harris and Rebecca Felton, and some of those supporters endorsed woman suffrage as well. William F. Mugleston, “The 1912 Progressive Campaign in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly (Fall 1977), 233–45. For a discussion of the impact of the election of 1912 as a stimulus to woman suffrage activism, see Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 163–66; Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 207–10; and Jo Freeman, “The Rise of the Political Woman in the Election of 1912,” (2003), at http://www. jofreeman.com/polhistory/1912.htm, accessed March 21, 2003. See also Freeman, A Room at a Time, 59–60 and 70–75. 10. Male and female progressives in the South divided over support for woman suffrage. My argument pertains only to women. Some progressive southern politicians, including Georgia Senator Hoke Smith, opposed woman suffrage while supporting prohibition, federal education programs, and other pieces of federal progressive legislation. Male and female anti-Progressives shared their reasons for opposing woman suffrage, which focused primarily on race and states’ rights, but among Progressives, men and women diverged on this issue. See Mary Kelly, “Anti-Suffrage Arguments in Georgia,” and Dewey Grantham, Hoke Smith and the Politics of the New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958) for a discussion of antisuffrage sentiment among prominent Georgia Progressive men. 11. For information on the National WCTU’s work for woman suffrage, see Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–1900 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981); Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North

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Carolina, 1986); and Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford, “Frances Willard and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s Conversion to Woman Suffrage,” in One Woman, One Vote, 117–35. For activities of the Georgia WCTU, see Ansley, History of the Georgia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 140–48; Taylor, “The Origins of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia;” Annual Report of the Georgia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 1888, 12; “Mrs. Sibley’s Address,” Annual Report of the 1893 Georgia WCTU Convention, 17–18; “Resolutions,” Annual Report of the 1893 Georgia WCTU Convention, 14; and Annual Report of the 1894 Georgia WCTU Convention, 9. 12. Ansley, History of the Georgia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 140–48; Taylor, “The Origins of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia.” 13. Annual Report of the 1906 Georgia WCTU Convention, 20, 34. 14. “A Great Convention,” Georgia Bulletin 7, no. 10 (October 1912), 2; Annual Report of the 1912 Georgia WCTU Convention, 130. 15. Sibley, “Legislative and Petition Department Report,” Annual Report of the 1911 Georgia WCTU Convention, 69. Jennie Hart Sibley and Jennie Hart Sibley Lamb Scrapbooks, Sibley Family Papers, Special Collections Department, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. 16. Sibley, “Legislation and Petition Report,” Annual Report of the 1915 Georgia WCTU Convention, 96. 17. For background on Mary Harris Armor, see her daughter’s brief biography. Mattie Armor Hale, One Great Lady [np.]. 18. “Mrs. Armor Does Good Work,” Georgia Bulletin 12, no. 1 (January 1917), 2. 19. Dillard, “President’s Letter,” Georgia Bulletin 12, no. 8 (August 1917), 1. 20. Dillard, “President’s Letter,” Georgia Bulletin 14, no. 3 (March 1919), 2. 21. Dillard, “President’s Letter,” Georgia Bulletin 14, no. 6 (June 1919), 1. 22. Ibid. 23. Dillard, “President’s Letter,” Georgia Bulletin 14, no. 8 (August 1919), 4; Frances Burghard, “Monroe Convention Notes,” Georgia Bulletin 14, no. 11 (November 1919), 2–5. 24. Georgia Bulletin 8, no. 9 (July 1913), 5. 25. “For Press Superintendents,” Georgia Bulletin 8, no. 9 (September 1913), 6. 26. Lowe, Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1900, 33. The Reports of the Biennial Conventions of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs are located in the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Archives, Washington, D.C. 27. Breckinridge, “A Mother’s Sphere,” General Federation Bulletin 10, no. 5 (August 1912), 404–8; Keller, “A Message to Women,” General Federation Bulletin 10, no. 6 (September 1912), 437–43. Other articles included in the GFWC’s official publication include: Dr. Eugenie R. Eliscu, “The Feminist and Suffrage Question: Not a Fight of Sex But a Biologic Cosmic Evolutionary Law of Adjustment and Righteous Expression,” General Federation of Women’s Clubs Magazine 12, no. 4 (April 1914), 21–23, 34; Mrs. Simon Baruch, “Feminism is a Bar to Social Betterment,” General Federation of Women’s Clubs Magazine 12, no. 5 (May 1914), 25–28; Marie Juliette Pontin, “Feminism Impartially Considered,” General Federation of Women’s Clubs Magazine 12, no. 6 (June 1914), 91. For the latest biography of Breckinridge, see Melba Porter Hay, “Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and the Battle for the New South” (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009). 28. “Report of the Resolutions Committee,” Report of the Twelfth Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1914, 3; “General Federation for Suffrage and Prohibition,” Georgia Bulletin 9, no. 7 (July 1914), 4. 29. Black, “Biennial Meeting in San Francisco,” Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs Year Book, 1912–1913, 43–46. Annual Year Books are included in the Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs Collection, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Ga. 30. Ida Howell Cramer, “Mayor Woodward a Suffragist at Heart, But Doesn’t Say So,” Â�Atlanta

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Constitution, June 4, 1913. From Scrapbook in Georgia FWC Collection, Georgia Â�Department of Archives and History. 31. Clipping entitled “Woman Strongest as Power Behind the Throne, Thinks Club Federation President,” December 20, 1913, from Scrapbook I, Mrs. D. Mitchell Cox Collection, Atlanta History Center. 32. Quotes from, “Isn’t It True,” and “WOMEN!,” handouts, Georgia Woman Suffrage Collection, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Ga. See also “Georgia,” Woman’s Journal, November 13, 1915, 363; “South Holds Big Suffrage Parade: Atlanta Has First Line of Marching Women Ever Seen in Southern City,” Woman’s Journal, November 27, 1915, 375; “Georgia,” Woman’s Journal, January 29, 1916, 37; “Georgia,” Woman’s Journal, October 4, 1916, 347; “Suffragists Open Tea Room and Shop,” Woman’s Journal, February 17, 1917. For additional information on the relationship between the GWSA and the ESP of Georgia, see Taylor, “Revival and Development of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” 346–47; A. Elizabeth Taylor, “Woman Suffrage Activities in Atlanta,” Atlanta History Journal (Winter 1980): 45–54; History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 129–44; and correspondence files, Georgia Woman Suffrage Collection, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Ga. 33. “Report of Resolutions,” Georgia FWC Year Book, 1915, 11–12. 34. Georgia FWC Year Book, 1916–1917; Clippings from Scrapbooks 2 and 3, Mrs. D. Mitchell Cox Collection, Atlanta History Center. 35. Ida Fitzpatrick, “Club Women of Georgia Are Not Organizing for Political Purposes,” 1916, clipping from scrapbook 3, Mrs. C. Mitchell Cox Collection, Atlanta History Center; Georgia FWC Year Book, 1917, 8–9; “Refuse to Send Telegram Congratulating New York Suffragists on Their Victory,” Clipping in Scrapbook 2, Mrs. D. Mitchell Cox Collection, Atlanta History Center. 36. Georgia FWC Year Book, 1919–1920, 18–19. 37. Berner, “Report on Legislation,” Georgia FWC Year Book, 1920–1921, 117. 38. Wheeler, New Women of the New South, xv–xvi, 133–97; Green, Southern Strategies, xiii, 128–50. For the changing views of Georgia woman suffragists on the state and federal approaches, see Taylor, “The Last Phase,” 22–23, and Taylor, “Woman Suffrage Activities in Atlanta,” 50. See also, “Southern Women Call For Action,” Woman’s Journal, September 13, 1913, 289–90; “Southern Conference Plans for Vote,” Woman’s Journal, November 22, 1913, 371–72; “Southern Women Hold Big Conference in Richmond,” Woman’s Journal, December 25, 1915, 412; “Georgia,” Woman’s Journal, February 5, 1916, 45. 39. Quotes from “President’s Address,” Georgia FWC Year Book, 1920–1921, 30. 40. “Federation Makes Changes in Constitution and By-Laws,” Atlanta Constitution, November 20, 1921. 41. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003); Gardner, Blood and Irony: Southern White Women’s Narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1932 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 42. Lamar, “The Daughters of the Confederacy, a Citizen of the Republic,” Minutes of the Eighteenth Annual Convention of the Georgia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1912, 111–24. The Minutes of the Annual Conventions are included in the Georgia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy Collection, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Ga. Lamar later elaborated on her antisuffrage views and her conservative politics in her autobiography. See Dolly B. Lamar, When All Is Said and Done (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1952.) 43. Taylor, “Last Phase of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” 18. 44. Taylor, “Last Phase of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” 18. 45. Taylor, “Last Phase of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” 21, 25. 46. McRae, “Caretakers of Southern Civilization”; Hale, “‘Some Women Have Never Been

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Reconstructed’”; Wheeler, New Women of the New South; Lebsock, “Woman Suffrage and White Supremacy.” 47. “Report on the Status of Suffrage Work in Georgia,” unpublished, located in the Georgia Woman Suffrage Collection, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Ga. 48. “Miss Rutherford’s Address,” clipping in Scrapbook 2, Mrs. D. Mitchell Cox Collection, Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Ga. 49. Taylor, “Last Phase of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” 16; McRae, “Caretakers of Southern Civilization,” 807. 50. Letter from Caroline Patterson to Warren Candler, dated November 3, 1916, Warren Candler Collection, Special Collections Department, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. 51. Taylor, “The Last Phase of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” 16–28; McRae, “Caretakers of Southern Civilization,” 828. Other recent historians have also portrayed the antisuffragists, especially Lamar and Rutherford, as strategic political actors. See Elna Green, Southern Strategies; Hale, “‘Some Women Have Never Been Reconstructed’”; Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940 (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 106–7; Anastatia Sims, “Beyond the Ballot: The Radical Vision of the Antisuffragists,” in One Woman, One Vote, 105–28. This argument is supported by the recent scholarship on the national antisuffrage organizations, including Jane Jerome Camhi, Women Against Women: American Anti-Suffragism, 1880–1920 (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1994); Thomas J. Jablonsky, The Home, Heaven, and Mother Party: Female Anti-Suffragists in the United States, 1868–1920 (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1994); and Manuela Thurber, “‘Better Citizens Without the Ballot’: American Anti-Suffrage Women and Their Rationale During the Progressive Era,” in One Woman, One Vote, 203–20. 52. The manuscript copy of Felton’s article is located in Rebecca Felton Papers, Special Collections Department, Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, Ga. 53. Letter from Caroline Patterson to Warren Candler, dated July 31, 1917, Warren Candler Collection, Special Collections Department, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. 54. On the impact of the vote on southern women’s reform efforts, see Lorraine Gates Schuyler, The Weight of Their Votes: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), especially 135–87; on the role of women’s organizations in social welfare reform, see Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

“Consumed with a Ghastly Wasting” Home Demonstration Confronts Disease in Rural Florida, 1920–1945 K e ll y M i n o r

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n 1910 an d 1 9 1 1 , th r ee - y e a r ol d Maggi e B ryan t an d he r th r ee

older brothers, Albert, Thurman, and Langley, all visited a Florida State Board of Health physician, and all learned they had hookworm. Little Maggie, though a new victim, already suffered from “marked anemia, pot belly and dry hair.” Her brothers demonstrated the long-term effects of living with hookworm. Sixteen-year old Albert’s affliction was most severe, his condition typical of longtime hookworm victims. Having experienced “ground itch every year for twelve years,” Albert’s symptoms were a grim catalog of suffering: “anemia, undersized, pot belly, dry hair, pain in abdomen on pressure, eats dirt, rags, horse feed, etc.”1 It was just this sort of material debilitation that Extension Service Home Demonstration agents (HDAs) worked with partner institutions to correct and, with perseverance, prevent. For much of the twentieth century, the women who formed Florida’s force of HDAs concentrated on tangible, practical health reforms as a valid end. Those ends might then become a means toward broader societal changes regarding class, race, or gender. Whether or not a rural Florida school was segregated, a Home Demonstration agent was determined first that it have a sanitary privy. But success was not instantly, and never completely, attained. HDAs had to marshal many resources to combat poverty, suspicion, ignorance, politics, and want. They created an arsenal of weapons that included local access, female empowerment, and national networking. The result was a comprehensive health endeavor characterized by an aggressive and unique constellation of personal and contextual wherewithal. In general, Home Demonstration was a massive federal, state, and local program with generous resources that achieved uneven results within local 68

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communities. Mismatched resources, intent, and results opened Home Demonstration to contemporary and historical criticism, much of it not unfounded. However, HDAs’ health reform work challenges the more general conclusion that Home Demonstration was ineffective and unnecessary as a force of substantial change in rural life. On the contrary, agents’ part in health reform in rural Florida between World War I and II demonstrates that HDAs contributed something unique and effective to national and regional efforts to improve the quality of rural health. Agents’ primary role as reformers was to act as intermediary and conduit, to bridge gaps between mandate, information, and application. HDAs were particularly well suited to serve as liaisons because they were equal parts federal courier, state worker, and local neighbor. And what is most remarkable is that HDAs did all this as women, both white and black, in a predominantly white, male organization that prioritized agricultural over home extension. Home Demonstration welcomed male involvement and cooperation, but the entire program was distinctly female. Those seeking a feminist stirring in the work of female extension agents may be disappointed that HDAs embraced rather than rejected traditional associations like women and health care. HDAs, however, used the traditional relationship between women and care-giving to encourage, educate, and even embarrass rural women into taking on the mantle of health reform themselves, and to build support among male colleagues for their relevance in extension work. Practicality ruled the HDA—she seized upon what achieved results and abandoned what did not. The limits and opportunities facing a woman in rural reform lends added potency to the challenges agents faced while working to be many people at once. Within health reform is that role most evident and best played. HDAs’ exceptional caddy of tools made them particularly effective reformers. First, Home Demonstration was a program of and for women, a rare circumstance even in urban areas, much more so in rural ones. Second, Home Demonstration before World War II was a rural program, designed for rural people, located in rural areas, and usually staffed by women from a rural background. In contrast, most early-twentieth-century reforms, including contemporary Progressive initiatives like Jane Addams’s settlement house movement and the rise of home economics, were decidedly urban. Third, though extension work was governed from the USDA’s Washington, D.C., base, was legislated in federal and state congresses, and was funded largely by federal and state treasuries, Home Demonstration operated on the ground. HDAs lived in the communities to which they were assigned; they shopped in local stores, ate in local restaurants, worshiped at local churches, attended local functions, spoke at local schools, and met in local homes. No other reform agency had that kind of consistent, close contact with its beneficiaries on their own turf.

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HDAs were in the unique position of having federal resources at their disposal and local opportunities to use them. Fourth, HDAs drew inspiration from the Country Life creed that helped create the Cooperative Extension Service, touting the supremacy of rural life, particularly in contrast to urban manufacturing, as the social and historical heart of the nation, a nebulous mix of wide-eyed nostalgia and modern progressive reform. Nevertheless, Home Demonstration transcended ideology and politics to focus on the concrete, to a fault, some critics might say. Certainly many reform movements, government agencies, and aid societies were results-oriented and embraced tangible benchmarks, but most also sought abstractions—Americanization, democracy, equality, and the like—as their measure of success. Home Demonstration embraced such ideals, too, but only as a continuation of measurable improvement. Anyone who has researched Home Demonstration in any detail can attest to the degree to which numbers dominate the definition of achievement for HDAs and their Extension peers. This feature may not always have served HDAs well, but it gave health reform a substantive foundation upon which to work. Each of these tools was not necessarily unique to Home Demonstration, but their combination in HDAs’ health work reveals women who wanted to, could, and did do some real good in rural communities. But this is not a story of super-women on a mission to single-handedly save rural America. Perhaps the greatest asset HDAs brought to health reform was their willingness to share resources and accept help. For the HDA, diplomacy and cooperation were as necessary for success as her education and accessibility. Agents worked best as part of a team, both within the Extension Service and with a number of outside agencies. Such collaboration did not diminish the agents’ efforts or slight their impact. Instead, it allowed HDAs to accomplish much more than they could have alone, just as the access they provided third parties allowed them to accomplish more than otherwise was possible. The symbiotic, if tenuous, relationship between HDAs, rural families, and outside health agencies is the linchpin of an effort to overcome decades of deterioration. To be sure, HDAs received little credit in the long run, never achieving the status of the U.S. Sanitary Commission or Rockefeller Foundation. But without the Home Demonstration agent serving as a liaison, those efforts would have been stunted by more than local poverty and ignorance. Though health initiatives were many—ranging from sanitation to correct posture— the grim reality of two diseases, hookworm and pellagra, demonstrate the tangible gravity of rural southern health, and provide important contexts for understanding HDAs’ role, and corresponding value, in health reform. Of course, as a fundamentally local program, Home Demonstration’s most important context was wherever agents made their homes and carried out their work. Between 1920 and 1945, Florida changed dramatically, a precur-

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sor to the demographic explosion that followed World War II. In the century after statehood, Florida’s population swelled from fewer than one hundred thousand to more than two million people, spread over sixty-seven counties. In the 1940s alone, the state’s population increased by more than 40 percent.2 Before a post-war urban boom, Florida was primarily a rural state, with urban anchors at Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Tampa, and Miami, and its agriculture was as diverse as its regions. Floridians engaged in truck farming, turpentine, citrus, cotton, and fishing industries. Its population was likewise diverse, with concentrations of African Americans in the panhandle and Hispanics in the southern peninsula. Sharecropping was common around the state, and agricultural labor was a vital part of the economy. Given its agrarian identity, it is little wonder that extension work began early in the state; the first extension agent began his work in 1909, five years before the work became officially legislated. Female extension work began in 1912; by 1945, there were fifty-three HDAs, white and black, in the state.3 Female extension work began with children’s Corn and Tomato Clubs, then rapidly expanded to include a comprehensive program of rural uplift. Throughout much of the twentieth century, home extension work attempted to correct perceived and real deficiencies in country life with myriad “phases” of work, each carefully designed to foster better living and working conditions for rural, and eventually urban, women and families. Of all those phases, the most important was health reform. This was certainly the case in Florida, and the South in general, where a steamy climate and the persistent poverty of its rural people combined to create ideal breeding grounds for hookworm and perpetuate the poor nutritional standards that caused pellagra—a profound irony in a state of agricultural abundance. Home Demonstration’s work was all the more compelling because hookworm and pellagra, as they became epidemic, deeply and adversely affected the well-being of rural families with little regard for sex, race, or income. HDAs attacked health reform by first identifying the enemy. Before 1900, most Americans had never heard of hookworm, and those who knew of it little understood its siege upon the rural South. The disease has been known, if not explicitly, since antiquity, and though largely eradicated in the United States today, hookworm is still common worldwide in any warm, moist climate. The parasite’s survival and spread depends upon an unsanitary environment; today as much as 25 percent of the world’s population may be infected at any one time.4 The parasite comes in a variety of forms, and though most infect animals, two seriously infect humans. One of these is endemic to the American Southeast, Necator americanus, or “American killer.”5 An infestation, though not necessarily fatal, leads to serious medical consequences. There still is no permanent cure for hookworm, so physicians continue to

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treat victims with a purgative to eliminate the worms. Of course, even if an infected person is treated and the infestation purged, re-infection is as close as the next barefoot contact with infested soil—prevention is the only real cure. Both the parasite and the disease are so seemingly innocuous that southerners initially made little connection between them. Eggs incubate in the soil, hatch out as larvae when the soil becomes damp, and in about six weeks are capable of infecting a human. Even at that point, the parasite is nearly invisible to the naked eye. Infection can occur wherever skin is exposed to contaminated soil, but it usually happens on the soles of the feet while walking on infected soil. The parasite bores into the skin, causing a small rash at the entry site, what southerners called “ground itch” or “dew itch.” Before any other symptoms appear, the rash usually has faded, and doctors assumed that hookworm and ground itch were separate conditions. In fact, once inside the body, the hookworm larvae travel through the bloodstream to the heart, then the lungs, and finally into the intestines, where they feed on blood and multiply by the thousands, inducing debilitating anemia in their hosts. Eventually, the worms are excreted and the cycle begins anew. Hookworm disease became so widespread in the rural South that its physical manifestations created a picture often identified as that of the quintessential rural southerner: yellowish skin, listlessness, and the classic pot belly and “angel wings,” jutting shoulder blades caused by emaciation and slumping. Most obvious was the unusually small stature and mental limitations of hookworm victims, particularly among teenagers and adults first infected as children. But hookworm was not the only pestilence facing rural families. The rural South was host to a number of sanitary diseases, but a nutritional affliction—pellagra—typified the result of another endemic condition, a nutrient-poor diet. Like hookworm, pellagra remains dangerously common in certain areas of the world. And like hookworm, pellagra can result in a state of profound discomfort, even disfigurement. Early-twentieth-century HDAs called pellagra symptoms the “three Ds”: diarrhea, dermatitis, and dementia. Sufferers first were marked by a butterfly rash, then a symmetrical blotching, scaling, and shedding of skin exposed to sunlight, particularly on the face, neck, hands, and feet. Digestive problems often followed, and in advanced cases, madness was not uncommon. A physician once described the pellagra victims he saw as “‘consumed with a ghastly wasting.’” Once thought to be germ-based, pellagra is a nutritional disease based on a vitamin deficiency, usually niacin. It predominates in poor populations whose limited diet tends to focus upon the archetypal rural southern meal—corn, molasses, and fat pork—deficient in vegetables, milk, and lean meats.6 What hookworm and pellagra victims shared was a cyclical, potentially life-threatening, and wholly preventable disease.

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These realities shed new light on Home Demonstration’s health work. By delving into a more detailed analysis of both the affliction and the cure, historians can better appreciate HDAs’ attempts to improve the state of rural health. By closely examining the work HDAs were doing, it is possible to see them as women involved in a concrete, often unpleasant, battle against very real afflictions. Moreover, Home Demonstration’s health work indicates that agents were both charged with and capable of more than unyielding and insensitive overhauls of rural culture. How they went about health reform reveals the distinctive contribution they made to it—a unique confluence of ideology, scientific expertise, practical education, personal appeal, and local access. This is a complex story about the Home Demonstration relationship between the elemental and contextual nature of health reform. All Home Demonstration work, especially health work, sprang from the motivations that fueled agents, and these motivations, in turn, clarify the unique position HDAs held in health reform prior to World War II. Florida Home Improvement specialist Virginia P. Moore captured the essence of HDAs’ health goals in a 1933 internal report: rural home improvement would create homes better than “some slum in a city.” The public version of this report was more diplomatic, but its message was the same.7 Like the Progressives’ Country Life Movement that had helped launch female extension work, Home Demonstration was concerned with ameliorating rural ills so that rural life could resume a place of prominence in the American landscape. Such a motive seems naïve at best and perhaps baleful at worst, but it was powerful nonetheless. But not all motivations were as ideological, or as tenuous. For very practical reasons HDAs were genuinely concerned about the state of rural health. HDAs saw the relationship between physical and economic well-being as a linchpin in their health work. Across the rural South, the consequences of poor sanitation and diet were plain, and grim. A black HDA in Alabama, B. T. Pompey, cried in 1933, “My people are dying from a want of knowledge.”8 In the sometimes clinical world of extension work, governed by science and statistics, it is easy to overlook the extent to which many agents came to see the families with whom they worked as neighbors and friends—their “people.” A second motive, economic recovery in the rural South, also drew HDAs’ attention to health work. The economic fallout attached to poor health was as impossible to ignore as physical deterioration among sufferers. Ill health sapped productivity from the laborers who kept the economy afloat. HDAs united these altruistic, ideological, and practical concerns, each shared by other reform agencies, into a single localized impetus that sought out rural women and their families in the heart of their own communities, distinguishing Home Demonstration’s efforts from those of national programs like the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission or U.S. Public Health Service.

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HDAs were entrenched not only in the circumstances of their own work, but in the context of their time, and that, too, shaped the character of their health work. For example, southern and Florida interwar health work mirrored a similar effort across the Western world following World War I. Consumed with notions of national progress, international reformers delved into a concerted rural health campaign, seeing it as a vital stepping stone to national health and prominence. Another important context in which HDAs moved was presumptions about connections between race and disease. Whatever they may have believed or espoused privately, in their official reports and their correspondence, HDAs did not express the same sorts of “race infection” theories that some State Board of Health contemporaries blamed for outbreaks of hookworm, malaria, typhoid, and other sanitary diseases.9 Neither did black and white agents tend to characterize the ill as deviant, nor did they blame one group for sufferings shared by all. Indeed, the most virulent bias evident in Florida HDAs’ reports is one against urban Americans, such as Moore’s “slum” characterization. It is possible, of course, that Moore and other agents associated city slums with African American or immigrant populations, but within their own rural communities they seldom drew such distinctions, perhaps choosing instead to soften real conditions of rural poverty whenever any rural-urban comparison was necessary. Moore’s fear was not only that rural Florida would continue to deteriorate in its own right but that it would replicate the foul conditions she associated with American cities. Her depiction of urban squalor and its association with disease and decline coincides with similar conclusions contemporaries formed about the rural South. Alan I. Marcus makes a provocative argument related to hookworm and national identity. When the disease and its method of transmittal were finally identified in 1905, physicians took the parasite’s southeastern concentration as a sign that southerners were aberrant, even un-American, because Americans at large did not appear to suffer from the disease. But in 1900, a physician in Puerto Rico found that a significant portion of the island’s population also was infected. The same was true in the West Indies and the Philippines. Aware now that hookworm was endemic outside the American South, physicians shifted their blame for the disease onto a specific social group—poor whites, among whom hookworm was most common. To doctors, lack of cleanliness, notably dirt-eating, seemed the primary root of hookworm susceptibility—a theory that, though inaccurate, transferred “deviance” from social commentary to medical intervention. Despite this prejudice, once medical researchers made the connection between “ground itch” and hookworm, they were poised to advocate effective ways to prevent infestation.10 Theories like Moore’s about the urban poor or physicians’ about the rural poor were not isolated, but they were similar to urban Progressives’ ideas about the urban poor’s proclivity for

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vice. In each case, replicating the reformer’s roughly middle-class standard of lifestyle was the goal. Thus, HDAs shared motives with others seeking health reform, but agents united the varying motives into a cohesive whole, powerfully driven by entrenched theories about rural supremacy and urban blight. Armed with a cause, agents began the gritty work of digging rural Floridians out of the muck—sometimes literally. HDAs approached their work, health and otherwise, with a veritable arsenal of strategies, but they were not assembled at random. Agents consciously selected each to reach rural clients in different ways. The first strategy HDAs employed to help rural women and their families regain control of their health was education and awareness. Though an ongoing mission, it took on particular significance in the 1920s, when HDAs were establishing a reputation as reformers and domestic experts across Florida, and building awareness of and support for Home Demonstration in general. As HDAs became more involved in their work, their relationship to the programs evolved, often based on what the extension service assumed was most appropriate. For example, HDAs always led in food nutrition, preparation, and preservation aspects of health reform. That assignment seemed obvious, given female extension’s origins in the girls’ Tomato Clubs first formed at the turn of the century, and Farmers’ Institutes, open to women as well as men, that were popular in the early twentieth century before the 1914 Smith-Lever Act. Both the informal clubs and the somewhat more formal institutes showcased women’s education in food production and preservation, housekeeping, and other traditionally female pursuits. As Institutes spread, they began to welcome rural African Americans, as well, so that black women participated in these early versions of extension work, though like their white neighbors, they remained focused on traditional tasks related to food and housekeeping.11 Despite HDAs’ and rural women’s investment in a healthier rural household, it was not until after World War I that either became overtly involved in sanitation work. Prior to 1920, health work appeared as a brief mention in HDAs’ state reports, and agents did attend annual conferences at which health issues were on the program. But it can be little surprise that the food production and conservation demands of world war consumed the majority of female agents’ attention. As war demands tapered, however, new opportunities to expand HDAs’ reform options arose. Even so, in the early 1920s the county agricultural agent, not the HDA, tallied physical sanitation improvements, such as the number of privies built. But agricultural agents did not describe the work in their narrative reports. Instead, the descriptive work fell to HDAs, who included sanitary health work in the larger Food and Nutrition program. Then, in 1924, HDAs placed “home health and sanitation” under the rubric of Home Improvement, situating sanitary reform more squarely

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in the realm of “women’s work.” Importantly, women’s increased involvement did not perpetuate a one-sided program, but enhanced a cooperative one that involved men and women alike.12 Once sanitation work became a female and community responsibility, the task of education began in earnest. Though sanitation reform was relatively new to the Home Demonstration curriculum, it shared with nutrition work the fundamental necessity of upsetting entrenched beliefs about health practices. Indeed, the nutritional deficits linked to pellagra had only just become widely accepted as an accurate cause. Pellagra pioneer Joseph Goldberger finally managed around 1928 to convince the medical and scientific communities that pellagra was not the result of local air, germs, or heredity. Yet the nutritional practices that caused pellagra persisted, perpetuated by poverty, misinformation, and cultural defensiveness.13 Likewise, before HDAs or their partners could begin to help families build and use sanitary privies to combat hookworm, they had to counter the prevailing belief that disease was a result of miasmas rather than microbes or parasites. The miasmic pollution theory proved especially frustrating for HDAs trying to convince rural families to alter their sanitary habits. Many Americans, rural and otherwise, had adopted certain strategies to combat the miasmas they believed made them sick—such as placing a privy far from a kitchen door, where it was out of sight and smell, but near a more distant water source. Even after the sanitary privy caught on, and the next obvious step seemed to be indoor facilities, a number of Florida families balked. Bathing was not a problem, but depositing excrement inside the house, even in a bathroom with appliances designed to remove the waste, just did not make sense.14 There was, however, a certain distinction between what was necessary to combat pellagra and to combat hookworm, because pellagra had been under attack for some time, if not explicitly. From Home Demonstration’s inception, HDAs had identified certain food “prejudices” and preparation practices that they encouraged rural families to overcome. Even before pellagra was widely acknowledged to be a nutritional disease, HDAs had been stressing the value of a perennial, varied diet rich in fruits and vegetables. In fact, medical observers and sufferers alike had long noted that pellagra seemed to worsen in cycles, striking with the greatest ferocity in spring and summer, the result of a nutrient-poor winter diet. Because many rural southerners, including Floridians, did not cultivate a vegetable garden, the long growing season did little to offset the impact of nutritional deficits. By the late 1930s, HDAs refined their message further by linking poor diet specifically to the onset of pellagra, but their emphasis on the sort of diet that warded off pellagra already was firmly established.15 By encouraging food preservation to save— and consume—the surplus year-round, HDAs from the start had helped

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families ward off the impact of pellagra without even discussing the disease.16 Such a circuitous strategy, however, could not suffice for sanitary reforms, and HDAs became ever bolder in their approach to sanitation, particularly as the tangible means to combat sanitary diseases increased during the 1930s. HDAs certainly did not stray from education as the backbone of reform; they simply wielded knowledge more aggressively. Providing information was only the beginning—encouraging women to apply it was vital. That encouragement could be gentle, but as often, it was not. This was particularly the case in sanitation. Home Improvement specialist Virginia P. Moore spearheaded the campaign to inspire sanitation converts with a careful combination of education, rhetoric, and shock tactics. As part of a Home Improvement series in 1931, Moore compiled a questionnaire called “Questions on Home Sanitation to Make You Think.” In it, she addressed location of water supply, screening, privies, clean surroundings, compost heaps, whitewashing, mosquitoes, and the “germs with legs:” flies. In a battery of questions designed to inform readers, Moore attempted to heighten their understanding of just how filthy the untended rural home could be—and provoke them into remedying the situation. Moore was ruthless, jumping right in with “Do you realize that your well may be getting the drainage from the toilet, the pig pen or the stable?” Unsettling, indeed, but a blunt approach was more likely to encourage rapid habit changes by families facing the risks posed by contaminated water. The questions grew more pointed as the bulletin went on, especially when Moore made direct connections between the privy and the kitchen: “[D]o you know [that] the common house fly . . . lays its eggs in horse manure, the outdoor toilet and door yard filth?” Learning where the fly laid eggs was bad enough, but Moore’s provocative illustration grew more intense with the next question: “Do you know where the fly that crawls over the food or falls into the milk pitcher came from the last time he lighted?”17 Inciting alarm and disgust was only the first step. Just as the nature of awareness had become meatier, knowledge gained a more concrete use because HDAs reinforced information with demonstration. Rather than simply say that flies were a pest, Moore and the Service also provided families with tangible resources to “Swat the Fly” and his unsanitary brethren. For all their lofty talk of the improved rural home, many HDAs were as interested in the nuts and bolts of improvement. Talk could inspire reform, but it could not produce it. So, agents united two of their strengths, information and demonstration, with their emphasis on tangible results in a local setting to affect material reforms, including construction of sanitary privies and school lunchrooms. In this way, HDAs and their families could attack both hookworm and pellagra head-on.

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The solution for bringing hookworm under control was surprisingly simple: shoes and privies. HDAs drilled their younger charges especially on the absolute necessity of not running about barefoot, and hammered home the most basic mantra: “always use the privy!”18 Of course, using a privy consistently depended upon having access to one, and their construction was a hallmark of Home Demonstration health reform. Any privy was an improvement on the habits of many rural Florida families, who simply used a slop jar and discarded the contents behind their house. Privies were not unheard of, but many rudimentary designs merely included pits in the earth covered by a wooden shed, open in the back for ventilation. How often these pits were cleaned depended on how fast they filled; excavations might be years apart. And rather than cleaning out the pit, an owner might just backfill it, move the shed to a new pit nearby, and start the process again.19 What interested HDAs and other health reformers most was that families use a sanitary privy. What constituted “sanitary” evolved as science caught up with disease. The first sanitary privies usually were pretty simple: a tub or water-tight barrel as a receptacle, with screened ventilators to deter flies, and lidded seats. A 1908 bulletin recommended cleaning out such a privy weekly, and letting the contents “cure” before disposing of them to kill bacteria. By the 1920s, the USDA issued bulletins with more precise directions for constructing privies and dealing with their contents. Among the most advanced options was the sanitary privy, a standard only achievable if “its construction . . . [is] such that it is practically impossible for filth or germs to be spread above ground, to escape by percolation underground, or be accessible to flies, vermin, chickens or animals.” To accomplish this level of sanitation, it was vital that the owner maintain the privy on a regular basis, and avoid using wooden pails or boxes that might warp or leak. Though the bulletin suggested using a galvanized iron pail for easy removal, it recommended a more permanent receptacle, such as a “stationary underground metal tank or masonry vault.”20 The earliest examples of sanitary privies were simple enough for a teenaged boy to build, but these later, more secure, models required more labor, expertise, and materials to make their widespread construction and use possible. Privy use was not unique to interwar Florida, but federal New Deal programs—and their attendant personnel, mobility, and funding—made a notable difference in how many and how fast privies went up across the Florida countryside. The privy construction boom is testament to another of Home Demonstration’s vital tools in HDAs’ role as intermediaries: collaboration. No agencies were more prominent in their practical contribution to Home Demonstration sanitation reforms than the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Not only did federalizing some of the sanitation work increase funding and person-

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nel, the influx of labor and standardization also effectively leveled the quality of health programs around the state.21 Nationwide, the WPA constructed or renovated more than two million privies, each meeting federal standards with a concrete base, airtight seat, and screened ventilators. Locally, Florida residents reaped the rewards of collaborative effort. In Depression-wracked Florida, dwindling funds had slowed sanitation work like privy construction.22 HDAs welcomed the federal aid that came with the New Deal, not only to maintain privy work but to increase it. For example, in a typical year prior to the Depression, Escambia County residents installed fewer than 100 sanitary privies, but in 1939 more than 160 new backhouses dotted the landscape. According to HDA Ethel Atkinson, the WPA built sanitary privies for anyone willing to furnish either the materials or the five dollars necessary to build one.23 Home Demonstration’s experience with the WPA and other New Deal agencies was not limited to sanitation reforms, but extended into the more pleasant task of keeping school children well fed. In theory, pellagra was as easy to combat as hookworm. And, fortunately, there were even more concrete ways to approach and solve the problem. Those options made HDAs indispensable, because even after pellagra’s cause was identified, the disease persisted for another generation. “It was,” one commentator has remarked, “as if the disease mocked science as crucial but insufficient.”24 The gap between science and reform could be closed only by education and material aid to alter habits, and HDAs could provide both. The critical issue related to nutrition was food insecurity. Many families had neither the right quantity nor the right quality of food available at all times. HDAs taught rural families to combat that vulnerability with a combination of Home Demonstration hallmark programs. Chief among the possibilities was home gardening wherever possible to increase the variety of foodstuffs available; food preservation via canning, drying, and (later) freezing, to extend the availability of a varied diet; nutritional supplements and evaluations provided by physicians; and dietary care provided for children when they were away from home.25 HDAs and their partners theorized that if school-age children could eat at least one balanced meal per day, their health would improve. Focusing upon school children was not an accident. First, HDAs found that, as with most of their proposed reforms, children were more receptive to new ideas than their parents. Many agents worked with children in a way that not only fostered their own better habits, but encouraged them to take their new practices home and inspire their families to do likewise. And the easiest way to influence the most children was to begin health work in schools. This certainly had been the case with hookworm campaigns. The State Board of Health’s Dr. Hiram Byrd recognized the power of schools to inspire community change in 1910. Schools represented both grave danger and great promise where

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hookworm was concerned—the dense collection of students and the absence of sanitary facilities meant that even one infected pupil could start a chain reaction in which hookworm infestations would multiply exponentially. But schools also represented an opportunity to gather in one place a large body of rural communities’ most tractable people. Rather than the children spreading hookworm through the schools, they would spread health through their families. “What a strategic point in the hookworm crusade!” Byrd crowed.26 Nutritional reforms happened in much the same way. Second, schools provided reformers with at least a modicum of control over the circumstances of children’s diet. Nutrition specialist Anna Mae Sikes argued that there was “considerable need” for adequate school lunch programs across Florida. She explained, “Very often the family has their big meal in the middle of the day, hence the school child was not getting the daily food requirement.” Her special concern was that children were missing out on what she termed “protective foods,” like vegetables and milk.27 School meals, then, provided many children with perhaps the most filling and most nutritious meal of their day. School lunches included both meals that students brought from home, and those offered at school, prepared by some combination of local mothers, Parent-Teacher Associations, Red Cross volunteers, HDAs, and school personnel.28 Like nearly all Home Demonstration programs, school lunches evolved as part of wider nexus of food work, so those involved could tap a number of skills and resources. For instance, Columbia County’s HDA led a school lunch demonstration and round table discussion with community leaders in 1938, who soon after began constructing a community center adjacent to the school, at which meals could be prepared, and a canning center nearby that allowed locals to convert the surplus into a year-round store of food for their children.29 However it reached the children, the nature of the school lunch campaign reflects HDAs’ vigorous approach to nutritional health. Particularly telling is that HDAs stepped up their efforts to ensure that children, and by extension families, continued to eat well even during the Depression. What nutrition specialist Anna Mae Sikes called “the economic situation” could not be allowed to cost families their health, even in cases where food stores depended upon relief. “Regardless of the way relief is given,” she warned, “it is important . . . to provide for an ample margin of safety in the dietary essentials and to allow for a reasonable variety in the selection of foods.” There was little room for error as Sikes saw it; she reported with dismay in 1933 that only the year before, eighty-two pellagra deaths had been reported in Florida, a mortality rate second only to tuberculosis. In certain counties, such as Taylor and Jackson, pellagra posed “a grave danger” in the extent of its occurrence. It is little wonder that Sikes and other HDAs did not back away from the school

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lunch campaign in the face of restricted funding, but instead intensified their efforts, working closely with non-Extension partners to compensate for shortfalls. Anticipating a prolonged danger, HDAs shaped prolonged safety measures by crafting nutritious relief menus for both homes and schools, and employing a series of cautionary posters expressly linking diet to diseases like pellagra.30 HDAs discovered, too, that the Extension-New Deal collaboration allowed agents to campaign even more aggressively for expanded lunch programs. That is not to say that the New Deal offered the first or only opportunity for HDAs to make use of the services of other agencies. In 1929, for example, Florida school lunch efforts represented an alliance of HDAs, the State Board of Health, the State Board of Child Welfare, and the State Parent-Teacher Association. And in 1933, Duval HDA Pearl Lafitte reported on the graciousness of the State Board of Health in granting her “unusual privileges,” including examining at her request any child she suspected might be suffering from pellagra and providing necessary treatments if the diagnosis confirmed her fears.31 But New Deal programs like FERA and the WPA became vital to Home Demonstration by providing funding, materials, and manpower to build physical lunchrooms for children. At that point, the school lunch plan became a network of federal, state, and various local leadership and workers. For instance, in 1933, specialist Sikes was called upon to develop with FERA and the PTA a school lunch program for Emergency Relief. In Calhoun County, FERA built lunchrooms, HDAs designed the menus and coordinated their preparation, and local women prepared the meals. Similar collaboration took place with FERA in 1934 Hillsborough County and 1936 Palm Beach County, as well as with the WPA in 1935 Wakulla County and 1938 Gadsden County.32 These examples highlight HDAs’ distinctive position as intermediaries, uniting their core strategies: collaboration, practicality, and locality. As Home Demonstration’s experience with the New Deal illustrates, one of the most important strategies in Home Demonstration work was interagency cooperation. Health Specialist Sikes remarked in 1939, “The food, nutrition and health program cannot render the most effective service unless it sustains a proper relation to other organized institutions and agencies which exist in the various communities.”33 Like the USDA, there were other agencies with national scope and institutionalized efficiency, such as the Anti-Tuberculosis Society and State Boards of Health, and HDAs gladly collaborated with them. Indeed, there were certain advantages to working with less personable agencies like the Board of Health. For example, the Health Department could relieve HDAs of some of the more sensitive directives about sanitation, though they usually took on that task anyway, often with gusto. Once the Board of Health had presented women with the gritty details, agents could

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re-enter the process as advisors and confidantes.34 HDAs’ ability to work as an intermediary between cold facts and warm fears, to make new programs seem familiar and normal, was all the more valuable in the sanitation reform process, which necessarily involved HDAs and rural women alike in graphic details of private functions and demanded that families change the way they approached health and hygiene. Indeed, in health work HDAs were hardly the key players—they were a key player, participating in a shared campaign. In 1935, Food, Nutrition, and Health Specialist Eva Cully tallied nineteen separate organizations with whom HDAs had worked that year to circulate information and improve access to health care for rural Floridians. Among the list were the School of Home Economics, State Board of Health, State Departments of Agriculture and Education, Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs, Florida Council of Health Education and Public Welfare, F.E.R.A., W.P.A., and local doctors and dentists.35 The most significant tool HDAs had to offer this collaborative affair was access, for they lived among and worked with on a daily basis the rural women and families slated to benefit from health programs. As both local reformers and federal envoys, HDAs perfectly suited the task of disseminating the information contained in USDA and Board of Health bulletins, making them a vital link in the much wider campaign. Federal and state agencies wrote bulletins, HDAs distributed and explained them, rural families followed the bulletins and proved that their methods worked, then more rural families decided to adopt new practices, too. Besides the immediate benefits of their local base, being both educator and neighbor helped HDAs earn families’ trust, something few other reformers could have done with the access and time available to them. HDAs’ entrée into a neighborhood was not always smooth, nor trust guaranteed. To gain and keep local confidence, agents needed to shepherd and apply every available resource. Like the constellation of features that made Home Demonstration work unique, the agents embodied another set of qualities that both empowered them as reformers and made them more vulnerable to local disdain. Making the most of these features ensured that an agent could succeed; to fail would handicap even her best efforts. First, agents were women, and most were from a rural background. That demographic providence helped agents by giving them an essential camaraderie with the women they hoped to help. However, most agents were young, unmarried, and childless. It is little wonder that some rural women scoffed at the advice HDAs proffered as unrealistic. HDAs could tout scientific understanding, but they could not dismiss the presumed supremacy of their clients’ practical experiences as wives and mothers. Second, agents were university-trained, scientifically prepared, and professionally employed. Participation in Home

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Demonstration was voluntary for local women, but it was a paid position for the HDA. HDAs had no shortage of timely information to disseminate, but women with families to care for were unlikely to be impressed by impractical advice or a careless manner. Expertise was a core tool for agents, but individual HDAs had to balance their own academic confidence and professional position with civility and a judicious application of deference for the demands of daily life in a rural home. Third, agents were federal representatives. In some ways this condition was the most empowering, and the most daunting, for agents seeking their community’s confidence. Agents’ national affiliation has been a source of criticism for historians citing agents’ intrusiveness. For example, Katherine Jellison argues that home extension workers acting as modernizers tended to bombard rural women with imprudent gadgetry that families could not afford and did not need. Likewise, Deborah Fink has found that midwestern rural women contended with overeager, nosy extension agents whose advice and very presence was an unwelcome annoyance. And Rebecca Sharpless’s study of Texas extension highlights a system that failed to meet even the basic needs of farm families, because agents were too removed from the daily realities of life in rural Texas to do much good. Kathleen Babbitt, too, has argued that extension in New York was characterized by agents attempting to force rural women to abandon their productive strategies in favor of a more nationally chic consumptive role.36 Each of these studies examines a unique rural setting and set of relationships between rural women and home extension agents, but each shares a prevailing argument that, though women resisted or accepted agents as they saw fit, the agents were more often than not overbearing national reformers out of touch with local interests or needs. At least in Florida, the agent-client relationship was not so strained or heavy-handed, and the agents’ national connections actually facilitated reforms by giving agents access to resources that local or even state facilities could not match. Funding was not unlimited and paperwork was cumbersome, but a bureaucratic infrastructure balanced red tape with access to research, media, and manpower. The most important asset in health reform was information, and HDAs’ position helped them conduct information much more directly between researchers, reformers, and families. Certainly, though, there is truth in the concern that agents represented an outside force that many rural families might have distrusted. Nowhere was HDAs’ tenuous position between stranger and neighbor more evident than in black communities where residents were both physically and socially more removed from and wary of white administrative personnel. Like their white counterparts, black HDAs faced obstacles in shedding their outsider status for a neighborly one, but equipped with their tool kits, they were in a Â�crucial

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position to open minds to—and engage families in—practices that could restore vitality.37 The exact relationship that black HDAs built with their neighborhoods was complex, but it was an extension of a role black female reformers had been crafting since disfranchisement had silenced their husbands’ political voice. Glenda Gilmore explores this relationship among “Diplomatic Women,” those African American women who worked outside the political mainstream to affect reforms in their own communities by taking advantage of the very invisibility that created challenges in the first place. Gilmore argues that black women, though not voters, “could be clients . . . they could claim a distinctly female moral authority and pretend to eschew any political motivation.” These women, like so many women seeking entrance to the public sphere of reform, relied on what Gilmore calls “the deep camouflage of their leadership style—their womanhood.” Black HDAs relied on this camouflage, too, by embedding themselves in a community. Such tactics not only “dull[ed] the blade of white supremacy,” as Gilmore argues, but were equally effective at dulling neighborhood suspicions of federal outsiders.38 That said, black HDAs—all HDAs, for that matter—benefited from their federal associations. Their position in a recognized, legal, and national body gave HDAs a basis for their authority and access to resources that otherwise would not have been open to them. And for black HDAs, especially, extension work gave them an acceptable means to campaign for reforms publicly. Finally, agents were members of the communities they served. They attended local churches, spoke at local clubs and schools, shopped in local stores, lived in local homes, read and contributed to local newspapers—in every way, HDAs lived with the people they were trying to reform. Sanitation problems were not some distant project, but everyday realities. Here, too, black HDAs walked the finest line— public, female reformers in a white, male world, and federal agents stationed in wary black communities. Successful HDAs sought allies to help them make health reform seem normal, to approve the presence and influence of this outsider, and black agents consistently sought the support of local clergy as an ally for reform. Florida’s agent in charge of Negro extension, A. A. Turner, praised the work of local pastors who encouraged the men and women of their congregations to attend extension schools and follow recommendations for cleanliness and health.39 Though successful agents relied on the no-nonsense camaraderie that worked well in white communities to earn trust and respect, they needed an added tool to do so where outsiders were less welcome, and nothing helped an HDA win over her families like the ringing endorsement of local clergy. Such strategies—common sense, civility, expertise, and deference—seem to have worked for many agents in Florida. After researching HDAs’ health efforts,

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it is particularly striking to note the degree to which rural women treated their agent as a confidante, a sharp contrast to characterizations of the Home Demonstration agent as a hypercritical bully or a fair-weather friend content to organize potlucks and sewing circles. Effective HDAs accepted another reality that forced them to think and act beyond their own interests; their work was not the only work. Building trust among families was both an aim and a result of cooperation with those outside the Extension Service. Like the clergy, other local voices proved vital in the quest for sweeping rural health reform across both black and white communities. As illustrated with lunches, schools provided the optimum setting to implement ideas and prove that they worked, helping to win over parents and community leaders. Health clinics based in schools targeted and treated hookworm and other “defects,” and distributed information intended to prevent re-infection. Immunizations against smallpox, typhoid, and diphtheria, provided by the State Board of Health and county nurses, protected hundreds of children from further illness. In 1931 alone, more than eight hundred African Americans in rural Florida reported having been immunized. The same preventive measures were benefiting white communities, in almost as great a number.40 Building local alliances was indispensable to what HDAs hoped to accomplish in rural health reform, but they also expanded their cooperative network by depending upon and cooperating with larger, national bodies. Designed for, staffed by, and lived by women, Home Demonstration also was a fitting partner for a third national body, the National Negro Health Week (NNHW). Booker T. Washington began NNHW in 1915 to galvanize health care by and for black Americans. Like Home Demonstration, the movement was female-powered on the ground, even as men steered it nationally.41 Indeed, NNHW was itself rooted in the earlier efforts of African American clubwomen’s sanitation campaigns, in which they encouraged black families to take charge of their health and called for increased attention to and resources for families on the periphery of health provision. The women who brought the national campaign for black health to the people, often with the assistance of HDAs, put black southerners in a position to benefit directly from the combined determination of national and local activists working specifically for clients normally on the fringe. In Florida, agent Julia Miller noted the real-time benefits of the NNHW in conjunction with local Home Demonstration and state efforts—hundreds of new privies to ward off hookworm, hundreds of homes screened against flies and mosquitoes, and immunizations to protect thousands of children from debilitating illness.42 Collaboration between black HDAs and the NNHW provided a vital boost to the health work HDAs could carry on

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in their Â�neighborhoods, much as New Deal programs funneled additional resources into Home Demonstration sanitation work already strapped by the Depression. Between the world wars, black HDAs made up only 20 percent of the total number of HDAs in Florida, so any additional money, manpower, and ideas toward health reform were invaluable. Rather than shun this outside help, black HDAs actively encouraged their clients to participate in NNHW for both its practical and social value. Mary Todd Mackenzie, Alachua County’s Negro HDA, reported with pride her county’s work toward health in 1934. Residents tidied school and home grounds, and a cadre of teachers and 4-H members made a “house to house canvass . . . stressing sanitation as being indispensable to good health and happiness.” As part of the overall emphasis on health, Mackenzie and the county farm agent sent out a series of letters to local families urging them to celebrate NNHW by concentrating on their health not just for one week, but for fifty-two. “As a result,” she declared with satisfaction, “some very constructive work was done in the rural sections.”43 That HDAs embraced this sort of interagency collaboration is not surprising, because the whole Home Demonstration dynamic was built on community action and information sharing. By seeking out and cooperating with one another and a number of non-Extension initiatives in health work, white and black HDAs made more progress than they could have alone. That pragmatism highlights alliances as one of HDAs’ aggressive strategies of reform, by seizing the prospect of better results when the opportunity presented itself. Reform was more important than acclaim. Reminders of that motive confronted HDAs at every turn. In 1934, Home Improvement specialist Virginia Moore assumed leadership of Florida’s contribution to the Federal Farm Housing Survey. Cataloguing the deficiencies and strengths of rural homes, Moore made one particularly striking observation: “The unimproved toilet is all too prevalent.” Her comment cuts to the heart of Home Demonstration’s work in health reform—the dangers were endemic and the device for reform was nothing more spectacular than a sanitary toilet.44 So, why was this period, and HDAs’ role, in Home Demonstration health reform so key? First, uniting their distinctive identity as official, rural, educated, female reformers with their equally distinctive brand of education, collaboration, and localism, HDAs accomplished elemental good in these decades. The continuing global significance of sanitary health serves as a grim reminder that interwar health campaigns were anything but incidental. By 2010, 2.5 billion people worldwide still will not have access to clean drinking water, and populations without a consistent supply of clean water endure the same diseases that rural southerners once did, including malaria, typhoid, cholera, and hookworm. Second, the context in which HDAs employed their brand was perhaps

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the most important in Home Demonstration’s nearly one-hundred-year history. The interwar period was one of tremendous urgency and immediacy in health reform, and Home Demonstration responded in kind. Indeed, before the 1950s, HDAs were in the thick of rural health reform. Not only were they tackling unappealing problems like disease and sanitation, but they were doing so by focusing on those with the most direct access to rural families and the least power to help them—rural women. For decades before 1920 Americans had identified the centrality of women’s experience in the process of rural rejuvenation, and the New Deal programs of the 1930s made valiant inroads into rural life, but even the most ambitious programs continually relegated rural women’s concerns and activities to appendages on “primary” programs like crop subsidies, boll weevil control, electrification (barns before homes), and farm mechanization. But that did not mean that HDAs had been idle while awaiting formal recognition. Virginia Moore, ever mindful of Home Demonstration’s potential, twice made it clear that HDAs like her had been in the trenches even before the New Deal. In 1934 Moore noted that, before the Federal Farm Housing Survey commenced, she had made previously many of the same recommendations it ultimately did. Then, in 1939, when cataloguing the number of sanitary privies constructed (such as 583 in 1929), she remarked that these accomplishments “preceded the W. P. A. project.” That “front lines” distinction did not remain the case. After World War II, particularly in and after the 1960s, Home Demonstration became but one of a multitude of federal, state, and local assistance, education, and relief agencies, many with a far more prominent— and urban—profile. The postwar proliferation of federal and state agencies capable of health services would seem to guarantee that the work HDAs had done before the war would continue, enhanced by better funding, a more visible presence, and greater public relevance. But as of 1920, and especially after 1945, the majority of Americans were urban.45 So, those programs and services, and their funding, presence, and relevance, were applied heavily to the needs of urban families. Rural Americans simply lost a battle of demographics, and demographics translated into what Home Demonstration and other rural aid networks most needed, the elusive funding, presence, and relevance. The new demographic reality would seem to preserve Home Demonstration’s distinctive role, for HDAs had once been unique for focusing primarily on rural families. But even the decided national shift toward urban care did little to preserve HDAs’ distinctiveness, particularly because Home Demonstration followed Americans out of the countryside. The reasons for Home Demonstration’s own urbane shift are two-fold. First was the focus of newer national programs. Though most aid programs were urban, they did not entirely neglect their rural neighbors, further

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diminishing Home Demonstration’s initial distinctiveness. For example, the War on Poverty spawned several economic aids intended not only for the urban poor but also for “hard-to-reach groups.” Sidney Milkis and Jerome Mileur note in their assessment of the Great Society that the Social Security Administration and Office of Economic Opportunity paired with the USDA’s Rural Community Development Service to “reach people in the countryside who might otherwise be ignored.”46 As rural populations diversified, the federal arm extended aid to them, including health services for Cuban refugees and migrant farm workers, as well as more traditional rural Americans like those in Appalachia.47 Even if the intended services did not reach rural Americans on any meaningful level, the fact that they were included in these newer programs at all made it more difficult for home extension workers to justify their own relevance as unique health reformers. But what of rural families, Home Demonstration’s traditional base? The changing demographics in postwar America, certainly Florida, answers this question, and offers the second reason for Home Demonstration’s own declining rurality. After 1945, in the wake of Florida’s mass-urbanization, home extension evolved to meet the needs of a more urban, modern, and convenience-oriented population. These newer clients (even rural ones) already had indoor plumbing, freezers, running water, and screens. Mothers more often were employed, drove to the grocery store to restock pantries, and had children who attended one of the many new schools built to meet the demands of a baby boom population often employed in technology, space, and military industries. In order to stay ahead of the shifts these new dynamics created, HDAs reworked existing programs, scrapped some, and introduced others entirely new to the extension curriculum. As the mainstream changed, so did home extension. It is true that home extension maintained important links to its historic core. For example, as of 2006, Family and Consumer Sciences programs regarding health include Food Safety Issues, Family Nutrition, Eating Disorders, Infant Nutrition, and Breastfeeding. Food preservation remains, adapted to meet changing options in preservation technology.48 Nevertheless, choice and circumstance limited the reach of postwar Home Demonstration, maintaining its diminished role in a modern context replete with reformers. Once vital intermediaries with unique access to both information and rural families, home extension agents were no longer distinctive. Indeed, they could not even point to their unique role in helping women because postwar programs reached out to women in a way that earlier ones had not. How then can, or should, historians assess HDAs’ role in interwar health work? Ever outspoken, Virginia P. Moore may serve as a guidepost for what defined Home Demonstration.

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Moore’s motivations and tactics reflect those that HDAs in general meshed and applied to health work, creating that potent combination evident in sanitation and nutrition reforms. Moore’s determination that rural homes be better than “some slum in a city” propelled her work for Home Improvement. Though proud of the HDAs’ efforts, she fully expected to make use of any resource that became available. For example, she speculated that bathrooms could be more plentiful in the country if the New Deal sent “idle plumbers” from the city into rural communities. And she was not shy about appropriating the propaganda techniques so effective in both world wars. In 1943, she attacked poor rural health where it lived—at the family doorstep. “All members of the family,” she warned, “must consider preventable illness a form of treason.”49 Certainly such aggressive tactics deterred some women from pursuing Home Demonstration–style health reforms, but Moore’s take-no-prisoners message swayed most who heard it. Clearly, to the varying degrees that individual HDAs copied Moore’s approach they created short-term, localized successes. But how does that translate into long-term significance, particularly as HDAs lost or gave up ground in a changing postwar context? Did HDAs create a lasting legacy, or a quick fix? By their own pragmatic, results-oriented standards, HDAs failed. They did not eradicate hookworm, pellagra, or a host of other afflictions. A more complex set of circumstances accomplished that feat. And historians lament HDAs’ failure to uproot social systems defined by racial, class, and gender bias, though agents did not make such societal shifts their goal. Yet, Home Demonstration’s legitimacy as a reform force cannot be found by crunching numbers or by exposing it to the glare of modern expectations for change—these standards are simplistic and unfair. Rather, where Home Demonstration stands out in the record is in HDAs’ position within the larger reform network devoted to substantive improvements in rural health. Both before and after World War II, context provides clues to understanding where and how HDAs fit into rural health reform, and the significance of that role. No context is more central to understanding Home Demonstration than the dual conditions that defined the program: rural and female. Urban female reformers like Jane Addams had built a reputation retooling the lives of immigrant women, and agricultural male reformers had spearheaded national campaigns to revitalize American agriculture, but rural women did not yet have a corresponding champion, or the resources to affect their own reforms. But extension opened a whole new possibility: reform by and for rural women. Indeed, in health reforms, HDAs wrested authority for better health from a predominantly male world by embracing rather than rejecting the traditional caregiving traditions that united women and health reform. Not only did HDAs teach rural women about health dangers and solutions, they gave them the resources to take charge of their

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families’ health. That effort in health reform mirrors the larger one in Home Demonstration—women became the experts, the actors, the intermediaries, and the decision-makers. HDAs’ work not only helped democratize agrarian reforms, it feminized them, by putting substantial power for improvement in the hands of women agents and women clients. Expertise and action were no longer the purview solely of men and elite women. Perpetually battling inadequate funding, a shortage of resources, local bias, institutional segregation, and public ignorance, HDAs and their clients united traditional domestic advice and agricultural improvement into one fertile seedbed of agrarian domesticity. And they did it by getting their hands dirty—literally as often as figuratively. Before 1945, HDAs and their client families were in the trenches of a rural health crisis when rural families in general were largely neglected by federal, state, and local initiatives aimed at urban Americans. And their presence alone, though laudable, is only one factor in their contribution. Given rural families’ general geographic isolation, social localism, and the mistaken perception of bucolic vigor in the American imagination, it is unlikely that other mainstream health workers could have accomplished even the limited success HDAs did. HDAs brought to their improvement schemes a willingness to live, work, and think locally, to both challenge and respect local families’ sense of pride and tradition, to adapt current scientific expertise to local needs and understanding, and to embrace the resources of many sundry efforts, from informal and local to official and national, to affect mutual reforms. As women, HDAs could more easily gain entrance into rural homes to speak with rural women and their children. Often from a rural background, HDAs brought to their work an ideology of uplift and rural superiority typical of Progressive Country Lifers, combined with a native interest in seeing people much like their own families live healthier, more comfortable lives. These qualifications and motivations did not necessarily change, but demographics and national concerns did. Post-1945 health initiatives also help put interwar health work into perspective, particularly the role of HDAs in reform. HDAs succeeded as reformers—they lost their unique status precisely because others stepped up, if unevenly, to take on their cause. In doing so, newer programs even highlighted weaknesses in Home Demonstration’s. Certainly, HDAs and their successors were in no position in terms of training, funding, or authority to operate as physicians among rural families. Club meetings and monthly clinics could not take the place of hospitals and round-the-clock medical providers. At the same time, hindsight more clearly defined the distinctive role HDAs played, for even after World War II, few reformers united all the same tools on so local a level. Many agents had proven they were consistent, familiar sources

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of reliable, up-to-date information, trustworthy confidantes and advisors, committed intermediaries between families and bureaucracies, and practical, no-nonsense educators. Acting as a conduit between dissemination and reception of information was HDAs’ primary role, but that only designates the superficial, practical connection at work. Bridging the gap between perceptions by helping providers understand what rural women were looking for and helping rural women understand what services were available is precisely the sort of task at which HDAs excelled. Here again is the irony of success—agents struggled with few other allies for decades, until a swell of reformers and educators arose to take up their role. HDAs finally were supplanted by the wider effort they had been craving. Though displaced from their once central position as unique intermediaries, HDAs nonetheless could regard postwar health reform with satisfaction. Whatever the cost to their professional distinction, HDAs who were genuinely concerned about rural health could not help but be buoyed by the influx of other reformers. Does that make interwar HDAs heroic crusaders? Not at all. The story of Home Demonstration and health reform in rural Florida, and across the rural South, is complex and rich. Rural women’s historian Lu Ann Jones once described the historiographical assessment of HDAs as “not the most progressive of the Progressives.”50 Now, albeit slowly, rural and women’s historians are beginning to look at Home Demonstration through a more nuanced filter. Exploring the part HDAs played in rural health reform reveals a cadre of women acting at a time when their unique assemblage of strategies was of most use. Before 1945, only HDAs really had the resources to unite federal authority, mass information, technical knowledge, local presence, female companionship, and personal mission into an effective, on-the-ground, personalized, rural health reform initiative. Indeed, their potential contribution became evident before the Extension Service even existed. In 1910, when Home Demonstration was in its infancy, Hiram Byrd cautioned health reformers, “The eradication of hookworms on paper is one thing; in the field it is another.” The circumstances and afflictions—the “ghastly wasting”—that sapped rural health in Florida were real, and Byrd predicted that “our success must finally rest upon the cooperation of the people at large; for who can prevent soil pollution unless the people will it be so? Who can treat the sufferers unless they choose to be treated? Who can force shoes upon the children, if they and their parents do not elect that they shall wear them?” Byrd expected that the most convincing reformers would be those who could approach sufferers with compassion, proficiency, and sense, those who could deal with the public on the most local terms. In 1910, Byrd likely had never heard of home extension agents, but the decades to follow proved that he had

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described them exactly.51 With varying degrees of success, HDAs brought the same collection of tools to their work in myriad programs. But health work between the world wars demonstrated most clearly the potential power of female agents’ unique position as experts, neighbors, and intermediaries. —— 1. “State Board of Health—Hookworm Case Files,” Florida State Archives, Record Group 894, S. 905, Box 1. Though these symptoms were common, they were not universal, especially in mild cases. 2. Donald R. Dyer, “The Place of Origin of Florida’s Population,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 42 (December 1952): 283–94. 3. Agnes Ellen Harris, Report of Extension Division. Department of Home Economics. Florida State College for Women 1914 (FSU—1); Florida Cooperative Extension Service Annual Reports, 1915–1961. Home Demonstration records found on microfilm are noted as follows: Agent, Position/County, Year (Location, Reel Number). Locations include: SL: State Library of Florida, FSU: Florida State University Strozier Library, NARA: National Archives and Records Administration. “SC” refers to the University of Florida Special Collections, Series number, Box number. 4. A classic treatment on hookworm, Clinical Parasitology, describes hookworm as second only to malaria and malnutrition in “production of human misery and economic loss.” It is worth noting that worldwide, and once in Florida, the three maladies often co-exist in a single sufferer. See D. W. T. Crompton and L. S. Stephenson, “Hookworm Infection, Nutritional Status and Productivity,” in G. A. Schad and K. S. Warren, eds., Hookworm Disease: Current Status and New Directions. (London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 1990), 231. It is possible to contract an animal parasite by coming into contact with soil infected by animal waste, but such an infection is localized and treated with relative ease. See the children’s book by Gail Jarrow, Hookworms (New York and London: KidHaven Press, 2004), 20–21. 5. Alan I. Marcus, “Physicians Open a Can of Worms: American Nationality and Hookworm in the United States, 1893–1909,” American Studies 30 (1989): 103–21; Byrd, “Hookworm Disease,” 23–24. 6. Indeed, one of the most striking features of pellagra is its historical persistence. Pellagra might have appeared first among biblical populations, and it certainly still was prevalent in Southern Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where a polenta-based diet predominated. The relationship between corn and pellagra was well-documented, if misunderstood. Italian physicians assumed that fungi growing on spoiled corn caused pellagra. That argument persisted into the twentieth-century South, where pellagra was epidemic among poor citizens, particularly African Americans and women. Mary Katherine Crabb, “An Epidemic of Pride: Pellagra and the Culture of the American South,” Anthropologica 34 (1992): 94, 90; Daniel Akst, “The Forgotten Plague,” American Heritage 51 (December/January 2001): 74. Proof that pellagra is not an easy disease to understand is in the variations of who gets it, and who does not. For example, not all corn-based diets will induce pellagra, for no native population in the Americas ever showed signs of the disease. Research eventually proved that their diet, though maize-based, was prepared with lime and wood ash, enabling the absorption of niacin, the B-vitamin usually associated with pellagra. See http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2000/WHO_NHD_00.10.pdf 7. Virginia P. Moore, Home Improvement AR 1933 (SL-23), 4; Virginia P. Moore, “Home Improvement,” Florida Cooperative Extension Service AR 1932 (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1933), 87. 8. Pompey quoted in Mary Kyes Stevens, “‘By Our Surroundings Ye Shall Know Us’:

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Alabama Black Home Demonstration Agents and the Complexities of Moral and Social Uplift, 1928–1936,” (M. A. thesis, Sarah Lawrence College, 1999), 5. 9. For examples of such theories, see “State Board of Health Subject Files—Jacksonville— excerpts from early Board of Health reports ca. 1916,” Florida State Archives, Record Group 810, Series 899, Box 4, Folder 42. 10. Marcus, “Physicians Open a Can of Worms,” 103–21. 11. Roy V. Scott, The Reluctant Farmer. The Rise of Agricultural Extension to 1914 (Chicago and London: University of Illinois Press, 1970); see Chapters 3–4 for a detailed history of the development and fulfillment of the Institute movement, including the participation of women and youth. See, too, Barbara Cotton, The Lamplighters: Black Farm and Home Demonstration Agents in Florida, 1915–1965 (Tallahassee: United States Department of Agriculture in cooperation with Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, 1982), 14. 12. Sarah W. Partridge, State Home Demonstration AR 1921 (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1922), 27; A. P. Spencer, Vice-Director and County Agent Leader AR 1922 (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1923), 27; Flavia Gleason, State Home Demonstration AR 1924 (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1925), 71–72, 26. Home Demonstration sources, usually annual narrative and statistical reports, are noted as follows: Agent, Position/County, Annual Report and Year. 13. Crabb, “Epidemic of Pride.” 14. Ronald S. Barlow, The Vanishing American Outhouse. A History of Country Plumbing (El Cajon, Calif.: Windmill Publishing Company, 1989), 81–82, 2; M. Jay Stottman, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Privy Architecture and the Perception of Sanitation,” Historical Archaeology 34 (Spring 2000): 39–61; Brian D. Crane, “Filth, Garbage and Rubbish: Refuse Disposal, Sanitary Reform, and Nineteenth Century Yard Deposits in Washington, D. C.” Historical Archaeology 34 (Spring 2000): 20–38. On this and other conditions limiting sanitation reform, see Ronald Kline, Consumers in the Country. Technology and Social Change in Rural America (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 205–7. 15. Anna Mae Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1936 (SL), 7; Anne Mae Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1928 (SL-32), 6. 16. Home Demonstration agents persistently devoted attention to new science and reliance on expertise. It is not surprising that pellagra, per se, did not appear in various Home Demonstration narratives prior to about 1930, because the disease was not widely regarded as nutrition-based until 1928. But after this point, when work to educate southerners about necessary changes to their diet was underway, HDAs increasingly addressed pellagra as a specific threat in terms of health and nutrition. 17. Hoy, 132–33; Virginia P. Moore, “Questions on Home Sanitation to Make You Think,” Circular No. 987 (Gainesville: University of Florida, reprint 1931). 18. Deanne Stephens Neuwer, “The Importance of Wearing Shoes: Hookworm Disease in Mississippi,” Mississippi History Now Feature 31 (http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/features/feature31/hookworm.html). 19. Barlow, The Vanishing American Outhouse, 6, 101. 20. “Home Sanitation and Hygiene,” in Barlow, The Vanishing American Outhouse, 101–3; “Sewage and Sewerage of Farm Homes,” Farmers’ Bulletins No. 1227 (1922, 1928) in ibid., 107, 114–23, 126. 21. Edward H. Beardsley, A History of Neglect: Health Care for Blacks and Mill Workers in the Twentieth-Century South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), 41, 156. 22. See “Malaria—Escambia County, January-June 1938,” Division of Health Subject Files, Box 4, Folder 7. Record Group 810, Series 899, and “Malaria—Escambia County, 1937,” Florida State Archives, Division of Health Subject Files, Box 4, Folder 46. Record Group 810, Series 899. 23. Ethel Atkinson, Escambia County AR 1934 (SL), 17; Ethel Atkinson, Escambia County AR 1939 (SL), 18; Barlow, The Vanishing American Outhouse, 22. 24. Daniel Akst, “The Forgotten Plague,” American Heritage 51 (December/January 2001): 74.

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25. One of the most common treatments for pellagra was dry brewer’s yeast, which physicians found was a suitable, easy, and cheap deterrent to the diseases. 26. Byrd, “Hookworm Disease: A Handbook of Information for All Who Are Interested,” Florida State Archives, Record Group 810, Series 905, Box 1, 37, 54. 27. Sikes, Food Nutrition and Health AR 1938 (SL-32), 18. 28. School lunch programs became a Home Demonstration and community focal point after World War I, reflecting a much larger (and usually urban) trend nationwide. In Florida, as early as 1925 Home Demonstration-led school lunches were the result of collaboration between HDAs, the Red Cross, and PTAs. Eva Culley, Dairy and Nutrition AR 1925 (SL-8), 2. 29. Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1938, 18. 30. Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1933 (SL 23), 3, 9, 16, 33, “The Family’s Food for Health”; Eva Culley, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1935 (SL 26), 9. Though nutritional diseases like pellagra no longer plague the American South, pellagra remains prevalent in some world populations, particularly in refugee and other emergency situations—proof that Anna Mae Sikes was right to be concerned about rural Floridians’ dietary health during the Depression. 31. Mary Stennis, Dairy and Nutrition AR 1929, (SL-16), 14; Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1933, (SL-23), 26. 32. Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1933, (SL-23), 33–35; Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1934, (SL-25), 28; Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1936, (SL-25), 37; Eva Culley, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1935, (SL-26), 22; Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1938, (SL-32), 48. 33. Sikes, Food, Nutrition and Health AR 1939, (SL-34), 53. 34. See Floresa Sipprell, Escambia AR 1926 (SL-10), 6; Floresa Sipprell, Escambia AR 1925 (SL-10), 17. Home Demonstration pioneer Jane McKimmon noted such a process in North Carolina, where Health officials delivered information about diseases like cancer and syphilis, and then HDAs stepped in to help women make sense of it all. See Jane S. McKimmon, When We’re Green We Grow (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1945), 251. 35. Eva Culley, Food, Nutrition, and Health AR 1935, (SL-26), 35–36. 36. Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913–1963 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880–1940 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 11–24, 25–26; Sharpless, Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices. Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900–1940 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, xviii–xix, 4–5; Babbitt, “Producers and Consumers: Women of the Countryside and the Cooperative Extension Service Home Economists, New York State, 1870–1935” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1995), abstract; Babbitt, “The Productive Farm Woman and the Extension Home Economist in New York State, 1920–1940,” Agricultural History 67 (Spring 1993): 83–101. 37. Susan L. Smith, Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women’s Health Activism in America, 1890–1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 92–93. 38. Gilmore, “Diplomatic Women,” in Who Were the Progressives? (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 224, 223. 39. Turner, Negro Extension Work AR 1922 (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1923), 93. 40. Julia Miller, Negro Home Demonstration AR 1931 (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1932), 144. 41. NNHW was headquartered at Tuskegee Institute from 1915 until 1930, when the U.S. Public Health Service took over and made the week into a year-long program. Because NNHW began in the era of Jim Crow, Washington responded to outside pressure by basing calls for federal assistance on “needs” rather than “rights.” In practice, the dynamics of NNHW tended to foster interracial and intraracial cooperation by activists who had little patience for racial

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divisions in their quest for practical health improvements. See Smith, Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired, 33–39; on interracial cooperation, see Glenda Gilmore, “Diplomatic Women,” 245, in which she notes that white women might be interested in black health to secure their own safety, and black women, as Washington had done, cultivated white aid as a means to advance their own aims, acting as “clients” rather than “voters.” 42. Lu Ann Jones, Mama Learned Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 154–55; Julia Miller, Negro Home Demonstration AR 1929 (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1930), 101; Julia Miller, Negro Home Demonstration AR 1931 (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1932), 144; Julia Miller, Negro Home Demonstration AR 1932 (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1933), 87. 43. Mackenzie, Alachua AR 1934 (SL-25), 6. 44. Moore, “Federal Farm Housing Survey Summary Report, Florida, Part IV” (SC-21–7), 5. 45. The definition of “rural” traditionally has been U.S. census-defined; urban is a population of 2,500 or more, and rural is whatever is not urban. There is another distinction, metropolitan and non-metropolitan, that is more precise: a metro area denotes “a core (usually a county) containing a large population (densely settled) along with a set of adjacent communities that exhibit a high degree of economic and social integration with that core,” and such an area “must contain either a place with a population of at least 50,000 or a census-defined urbanized area and a total [metro] population of at least 100,000.” Based on the metropolitan standard, in 1990, almost 48 percent of census-defined rural Americans lived in metro areas, and almost 15 percent of metro Americans lived in census-defined rural areas. Population density, however, can be misleading in evaluating the quality of rural health care, for factors such as transportation can prove decisive in how much and how well rural Americans receive care. See Thomas C. Ricketts III, Karen D. Johnson-Webb, and Randy K. Randolph, “Populations and Places in Rural America,” in Thomas C. Ricketts III, ed., Rural Health in the United States (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 7–8, 10. 46. Milkis and Mileur, The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 338. 47. John A. Andrews III, Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998), 96. 48. For a more comprehensive list of statewide extension health programs, see the Florida Cooperative Extension Service website, beginning with nutritional health: http://solutionsforyourlife.ufl.edu/families_and_consumers/health_and_nutrition/eating_well.html. 49. Moore, Home Improvement AR 1934 (SL-25), 18; Moore, Home Improvement AR 1939, “Historical Data Relative to Home Improvement Work in Florida” (SL-34), 9; Moore, Home Improvement AR 1943, “Wartime Home Improvement and Management” (SL 42–43), 2. It is worth noting another context. The official Extension apparatus emerged in 1914, in time to fill a gap in the health crusade. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, which had spearheaded the hookworm eradication effort since 1910, left the South in 1914 to become the International Health Commission; World War I consumed government resources and time; after the war, health leaders like the RSC, U.S. Public Health Service, and state Boards of Health focused on urban areas as more cost-effective than rural neighborhoods. Suellen Hoy, Chasing Dirt: The Pursuit of American Cleanliness (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 2; Beardsley, A History of Neglect, 21. 50. Comment made during SAWH Triennial Meeting, June 2006. 51. Hiram Byrd, “Hookworm Disease: A Handbook of Information for All Who Are Interested,” Florida State Archives, Record Group 810, Series 905, 49–50, 55.

Playing with Jim Crow Children’s Challenges to Segregated Recreational Space in New Orleans, 1945–1949 A. Lee Levert

I

n Octo ber 1 9 4 6 , a gro up of A f r ican A me r ican gi r ls i n J i m Crow

New Orleans played undisturbed in the backyard of a biracial union hall until several white children began peering at them through the fence. Aggravated by the unwanted attention, one of the black girls shouted at the staring children. A white girl responded by tossing a rock over the fence and into the yard. This, in turn, provoked the black youngsters to chase her down the street and away from what they considered to be their exclusive space. The supervising adult, who was white, reprimanded the white children for provoking the altercation and barred them from the yard while the black children were at play.1 These black and white children were part of a recreational program introduced by New Orleans’s Kingsley House settlement between the end of World War II and the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Kingsley House, in cooperation with the biracial Textile Worker’s Union of America (TWUA) Local #351 and its affiliate textile factory, Lane Cotton Mill, created this program to address juvenile delinquency in the mill’s impoverished working-class neighborhood known as the Twelfth Ward. Established in 1856, by the turn of the twentieth century Lane Cotton Mill had become a major national producer of denim, ticking, and cotton rope. In 1956, Lane “vied with Higgins for title of the parish’s largest industrial employer,” had 1400 black and white workers of both genders and an annual payroll of four million dollars, and produced 10 percent of the nation’s denim fabrics.2 Named the Riverfront Extension Program, this unusual children’s experiment, begun in 1946, was housed in the union’s hall. Though the children 96

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were separated by gender and race, with the “colored program” offered on days and at times intended to avoid conflict with use by whites, program leaders failed to prevent interplay between the two racial groups. As a result, the Riverfront Extension Program presents a rare look at racial interaction, conflict, and negotiation between black and white children of the Jim Crow South, as well as the ways in which they developed their own understandings of racial identity and place. Racially divided space, by its nature, is what historian Robin D. G. Kelley labels “contested terrain,” and the union hall’s recreational space, though semipublic rather than fully public, may be considered a microcosm of the political crisis of racial conflict simultaneously occurring in the greater community.3 The issue of gender operated simultaneously with that of race in defense of the recreational space. Moreover, the prejudices of white leaders regarding the sexualization of race relations reinforced the prevailing policy of segregation that existed both within and outside of the space. The importance of this biracial experiment lies in its very occurrence during the pre–civil rights era. The struggles among settlement house board members and staff, union leaders, community members and especially the children, highlighted the discrepancies between the ideological principles of Jim Crow and the practical realities of changing race relations. This small stage acted as both a very contained example of social disaffection and a dress rehearsal for the wider responses to it. Enduring social change may not have come as a direct result, but the children’s actions had significant political implications in redefining their assigned place in the segregated South prior to the onset of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.4 Though filtered through the lens of middle-class social workers and upper middle-class philanthropists, careful reading of the evidence reveals moments of interaction between the black and white girls and boys of the Riverfront Extension Program as well as the ways in which they influenced and resisted reform efforts created for their benefit. Examining how adults influenced children about race, including the sexualization of race, is among the few ways historians can know what children learned and how they were socialized regarding relations between blacks and whites. As Kelley has observed, “knowing how those in power interpret, redefine, and respond to the thoughts and actions of the oppressed is just as important as identifying and analyzing resistance.”5 Most of these children were not yet twelve years old but, given the pervasiveness of racial discrimination and segregation in the years following World War II, it is likely that they had already constructed their own ideas about race. Too young to understand fully their roles in adult political crises, it may not have occurred to the black youth that they were part of an oppressed

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group engaged in struggles for equality in their neighborhood or beyond. Shouting and chasing away attackers were reflexive acts rather than deliberate breaches of racial etiquette. Nevertheless, their actions may be considered political because the black children were able to exercise some power within the white-controlled union hall. As Kelley argues, historians must “break away from traditional notions of politics” and consider “unorganized, often spontaneous battles with authority” as authentic political movements.6 Rather than focusing exclusively on formal organizations and institutions as political, we must consider “day-to-day strategies” of resistance found outside those organizations and in adult grassroots efforts. Studying the everyday acts and experiences of subordinate groups reveals that they often engaged in informal and indirect ways to resist their dominators, all of which can have a “cumulative effect on power relations.” For historian Thomas C. Holt, “it is precisely within the ordinary and everyday that racialization has been most effective, where it makes race.”7 This applies even to children who were no less oppressed than their parents and other black adults. For them, combining what political scientist James C. Scott called the “public transcript” of deference and compliance and the “hidden transcript” of everyday forms of resistance may come most often as a result of impulse and spontaneity. Although individual, personal, and subtle, the implications of their resistance are no less significant and no less political.8 By regularly barring white children from the yard and separating the two racial groups, the white supervisor reaffirmed segregation as a social system. At the same time, by explicitly siding with the black children, he temporarily shifted the balance of power in their favor. Thus, the supervisor inadvertently became a collaborator in their challenges to Jim Crow etiquette and showed them, as Kelley has observed, that “small victories were possible within the framework of ‘separate but equal.’” These types of political actions were equally revealing to the white children who were witness to both successful acts of black resistance and the defense by white adults of black space at the white youths’ expense.9 The upheaval of World War II disrupted traditional associations and contributed to the beginning of a progressive transformation in American race relations. Though Jim Crow racial etiquette was traditionally accepted by most whites, many areas of the South had few legal distinctions between the races. Similarly, 1940s New Orleans with a population of 495,000, approximately 30 percent of which was black, had only a small number of segregation ordinances. But those that existed had a powerful impact, separating African American adults and children from whites in segregated schools, public transportation, movie theaters, and other public and semipublic spaces.10 Even where no segregation laws existed, however, Jim Crow was enforced

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through extralegal means. For the urban white community, unfamiliar blacks and black economic achievement threatened what the South called “place,” defined by Leon Litwack as the “caste system in which skin color dictated every daily interaction” and served to increase discrimination. Blacks who attempted to breach Jim Crow boundaries faced white violence and a seemingly impenetrable white power structure.11 For example, though no law prevented blacks from enjoying New Orleans’s two major public parks, Audubon Park and City Park, their access was severely limited by the underlying threat of white retribution.12 At the close of the war, New Orleans faced a grim economic reality: 27 percent of the city’s population was unemployed, and twenty-six hundred white men, women, and children were enrolled to receive aid from Kingsley House, a 700 percent increase in three years. Still, the settlement did not offer its services to African Americans.13 New Orleans was a unique southern city for its relative residential integration. Blacks and whites often lived on the same block, across the street, or even immediately next door to each other. In 1945, 10,700 mostly low-income people resided within a half-mile radius of Lane Cotton Mill and the union hall. Twenty percent of the mill area’s residents were black and of the 2,150 grade or high school children, 21 percent were black. The majority of employed people were unskilled laborers, domestic servants, clerks, mechanics, truck drivers, railroad workers, or employees of the mill.14 The Twelfth Ward neighborhood provided nearby access to a shopping center, bank, hardware store, grocery store, movie theater, a branch of the New Orleans Public Library, and regular and dependable bus and streetcar service connecting the area to other parts of the city. Duplexes and small single-family houses made up the majority of residences, most of which needed painting and repairs, and very few of which were owned by their inhabitants. In 1950, out of a total of 2,175 dwellings in the neighborhood, 69 percent were renter-occupied, 36 percent had no private bath, and 24 percent had no running water. The houses were small, built close together, and had little yard space so that children were left to play in the streets, most of which were unpaved with open gutters. Not one playground for either white or black children existed in the entire Twelfth Ward.15 Of the nearly seventy acres of playground space in New Orleans, the majority was reserved for the exclusive use of whites, leaving less than ten acres for blacks. For each acre of playground area, there were 780 white children and 1,244 black children. The nearest public playground to the union hall was twenty-three blocks away and was for whites only. The closest recreation area that did not ban blacks was located thirty-three blocks from the hall and consisted of little more than a third of an acre.16

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During World War II, the union offered organized recreational activities specifically for the neighborhood’s children. Those activities were dropped at the end of the war, and without this outlet and with little supervision, teenagers, mostly boys, continued to use the hall’s pool tables and table games, sometimes with destructive results.17 Because the social welfare interests of organized labor often aligned with those of settlement houses, TWUA officials sought advice on the growing delinquency problem from Kingsley House settlement, the nearest social agency.18 Before 1900, philanthropists and private institutions rather than government agencies cared for most of Louisiana’s dependent population, including its children. An unusually high number of these institutions, including Kingsley House, were located in New Orleans.19 In 1896, in an effort to uplift its mostly European immigrant neighbors, Kingsley House, the first settlement in the Deep South, was established in a Lower Garden District neighborhood known as the Irish Channel. Like most other settlement houses instituted in the progressive era, this one served only a small portion of the urban poor, and its so-called progressiveness “evaporate[d] at the color line.”20 As a matter of policy, Kingsley House served whites exclusively into the 1930s and 1940s, even though, by that time, its former immigrant clientele was moving out of impoverished urban areas and blacks were moving in to replace them.21 Jane Addams, founder of America’s first settlement, Chicago’s Hull House, like other social reformers of her time, opposed racism but did not advocate integration. She believed that “neighborhood realities mitigated against the mixing of blacks and whites in settlement houses.” As historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn has observed, Addams’s vision set the tone for the entire movement and had “critical implications for the way settlement workers would translate philosophy into policy.”22 In 1945, Emeric Kurtagh, a self-described “liberal,” served as Kingsley House’s head resident. Kurtagh, a Hungarian immigrant with a Master’s degree in Education from Columbia University, had worked for the integrated Henry Street Settlement in New York before arriving in New Orleans. He served on the faculty of Tulane University’s School of Social Work and was publicly involved with several pro-labor and civil rights reform measures.23 The all-white Kingsley House board included only a handful of Irish Channel residents and consisted mostly of social work laymen and wealthy, influential citizens of New Orleans who resided in neighborhoods far removed from those it served. Though settlement workers often were sympathetic toward organized labor at a time when unions had few defenders, their public support sometimes caused friction with the people who served on settlement house boards and who contributed money. Settlement houses usually gave in to the prejudices of their white neighbors and donors, either excluding

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blacks, conducting segregated activities, or closing down completely rather than admit the minority.24 Similarly, several members of the Kingsley House board were reluctant to sanction the Riverfront Extension Program because it involved a trade union and because the union included black members. The board voted to proceed with the project for a probationary period, with the joint cooperation of several entities: the settlement house providing administration, supervision and staff; the textile factory and its biracial CIO union providing facilities; and a public charity, the Community Chest, supplying much of the financing. Still, these groups declined to include the neighborhood’s black children.25 To conduct the Extension Program, Kurtagh hired twenty-four-year-old Constance Jane Grigsby, a Des Moines, Iowa, native and recent graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Grigsby had studied with sociologist Howard W. Odum, the author of Race and Rumors of Race: Challenge to American Crisis (1943) and the creator of the Institute for Research in Social Science, which dealt candidly with race relations in the South. He also led the Atlanta-based Southern Regional Council, a prominent postwar interracial group. Grigsby received training in the field of recreation, directed activities for teenage girls in the YWCA Central Branch in New York, and worked with New York’s Presbyterian Labor Temple, as well as the Henry Street Settlement, before arriving at Kingsley House.26 In an effort to increase local understanding and acceptance of the program and to assist in its management, Kurtagh set up an Advisory Committee composed of public school officials, clergy, union representatives, mill management, neighborhood residents, and parents of program children.27 On January 7, 1946, despite the union’s biracial nature, the experimental program welcomed only the white children of the mill neighborhood. Most of the working-class children were boys from seven to seventeen years of age who lived with both parents. The majority was of French descent, though there were large minorities of Italian and Irish. Half of the families had lived in the neighborhood for more than twenty years and knew, or knew of, their neighbors. The rest had lived there for at least five years. Twelve of the children’s parents worked at Lane, but the majority of fathers held other jobs, including as grocer, merchant marine, painter, grain elevator operator, truck driver, bartender, and cook. The majority of the mothers did not work, but those who did earned their livings through nursing, stamping cigarettes, cleaning the “picture show,” or selling Avon cosmetics. Though most of the children did not have jobs, some of the boys worked as shoe shiners or delivery boys for cleaners, Western Union, and ice houses.28 The union hall space dedicated to the Extension Program, which was available during the day and most evenings and could accommodate up to twenty

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children at a time, would be the base of operations until a better site could be located. The space consisted of a large recreation room for painting, ring toss and playing pool; a second smaller room for club meetings; and a small back yard of approximately twenty square feet. Singing, dancing, dramatics, arts and crafts, story hour, and cooking were offered to children in group work clubs. Children played softball, touch football, and horseshoes in the street in front of the hall. So many participated in the program that often four groups met at the same time, one in each of the spaces.29 By the beginning of the summer, the program recorded a total of 2,211 visits in June and 101 children enrolled as members.30 Still, black children were not included. Late in the spring of 1946, Kurtagh reintroduced the idea of offering the services of the Extension Program to the union neighborhood’s black children. In the years following World War II, as the populations of settlement neighborhoods became more racially mixed, settlements reassessed their policies and practices regarding their African American neighbors, but any biracial experiment during Jim Crow was controversial. Even though white juvenile delinquency was more prevalent in the Lane Mill area in the years leading up to the creation of the recreational program, black teenage boys were perceived as a “growing menace” by much of the white community in New Orleans, re-enforcing white prejudices about African Americans as dangerous and unpredictable. As a result, the all-white Advisory Committee was divided on whether or not to open the program to blacks.31 In light of the union’s biracial nature, entirely separate programs in separate facilities would be inappropriate, as well as too costly, some members of the committee argued. Others predicted fights between the children. The committee chairman was adamantly opposed to devoting any space to black children, and he “seemed surprised that we would even think of such a thing [saying that] all niggers are no good and don’t deserve to be treated as good as animals.”32 One school board member argued that “the deprivation of the children who already considered the program their own should be considered seriously,” saying that “if the program had started out as a joint project, that it would be alright.” Another suggested that because the summer program would provide activities for the white children away from the hall, including dances at Kingsley House, “the colored children could come there without depriving those who thought the program was theirs.” She stressed that it would be “very much of a backward step to have this divided program.”33 Some members of the neighborhood’s black community were themselves hesitant to support a biracial project. According to a group of men from the Twelfth Ward Negro Improvement League, the four blocks surrounding the union hall contained the largest concentration of blacks, including approxi-

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mately three hundred children. Others would have to travel a considerable distance, and already the children were fighting with each other on their way to and from school. Black children, said one neighborhood minister, were forced to avoid certain streets in the neighborhood to escape beatings by white children. Another black resident, echoing members of the white committee, felt it would have been easier if the two programs had started at the same time. He called the biracial plan “unwise,” warning that “the thing might hold a lot of dinamite [sic] if not very careful.” “At this point,” he said, “it would be taking away a day from the white children and might cause a good deal of friction.” Grigsby attempted to assure the men by explaining that the black program would be conducted “on separate days, of course.”34 In the end, the Kingsley House board and officials of Lane Cotton Mill and the union voted to approve the biracial project, but with the understanding that there was to be “no inter-racial play” between the two groups of children.35 The Advisory Committee agreed to invite three representatives from the Negro Improvement League to join its group. Instead, the committee later formed a separate Negro Advisory Committee occasionally invited to participate in “joint Negro and white” meetings. Members of the Negro Committee included clergy, civil rights attorneys, and neighborhood residents with children interested in the program.36 At the end of June, the Extension Program staff called all of the white boys and girls together to explain that the union hall would be unavailable to them on Wednesdays and Saturdays so that black neighborhood children, who had no place else to play, could use the recreation space. The presence of black boys and girls in the hall was “justified,” one staff member told them, because the Community Chest, which funded the program, received contributions from both races. The white children were apprehensive, and a couple expressed fear that the black children would destroy the recreation equipment. More significantly, and as some members of each of the advisory committees predicted, the children were angry that the union hall space they now considered as their own was being taken away and given to blacks. “To ensure that the white children would not feel deprived of their privileges,” consequently legitimizing their feelings of superior ownership in the hall, program leaders promised them extra programming, such as dances at Kingsley House, that the black boys and girls would not receive.37 In accordance with community patterns as well as those of Kingsley House, the black program, like the white one, was divided by gender. Joy Coombs, a white woman who had recently moved to the city from New York, led the black girls’ program. Two black women, who were employees of Lane as well as members of Union Local #351, volunteered to assist her. A student from historically black Xavier University led the boys’ group.38

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On July 3, 1946, eight black girls arrived at the union hall for the first day of the biracial Extension Program. Of the black boys and girls registered during the life of the program, approximately 70 percent were between the ages of six and eleven and the remaining were between twelve and sixteen. Many traveled at least ten blocks to the union hall, but others lived directly across the street or next door to the white program children. Like the white members, all of the black children were part of working-class families. Almost a third lived with only one parent or grandparent. Eight of their mothers and ten of their fathers worked at Lane Cotton Mill, picking cotton, sweeping, or working in the dye room. At least 23 percent of the mothers worked as domestics. Others worked for restaurants, a shrimp factory, and a beauty shop. Approximately 28 percent did not work outside of the home. Fathers of black program children worked at a variety of jobs including delivering for fruit stands and ice houses, unloading box cars for Southern Railroad, hauling furniture, or shining shoes. Most of the children attended the same all-black public school. None of the girls had jobs, but eight boys worked as shoe shiners and other boys had paper routes, worked for Lane, delivered for a drug store, or worked in a bowling alley.39 The program’s black and white children may have played together outside of the union hall as many lived in the same block with one another. Coombs reported that “there were quite a few white children hanging around and watching them [the black girls] at their play which seemed to make the girls quite self conscious.” “Sparring” broke out when some of the younger white boys began making “very cutting remarks” like “‘don’t you break that you nigger’ and ‘dirty old things.’” Despite these affronts, Coombs characterized the episode as “nothing serious and . . . anticipated no difficulties.”40 Three days later, on the first day for black boys, Coombs reported “a great deal of talk from the [white] children about having ‘niggers’ in the place.” Some threatened to stay away from the hall as long as blacks were allowed to have access to the space, but there was only a slight drop in white attendance. At the end of the first week, she wrote that “talk is quieting down as they learn from observation that the Negro children are really no different in their cleanliness, manner and way of play.”41 The next week, thirty black girls arrived early at the hall and program leaders found them on the verge of a fight with white boys and girls who were also in the hall and were unwilling to leave. The white children had been vested with ownership and additional privileges in the hall first, and they fought hard to preserve their monopoly on the space. Many lived nearby and continued to play there after school, even on days specifically set aside for the “colored program.” Repeatedly interrupting the black children, white boys and

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girls yelled at them from outside, calling them “nigger.” One program leader purposefully made no effort to suppress their use of the word. Instead, she referred to the black boys and girls as “colored, hoping that by verbal action they would understand that that race was to be respected and that I did not approve of the use of the word ‘nigger.’” The leaders removed the white children amid “much nasty talk on both sides.”42 Later, during a party for the black girls, white boys threw firecrackers into the hall, and at least one boy was overheard saying that the black children should not be allowed there. In an apparent effort to remain optimistic despite the aggressiveness of the boys’ behavior and perhaps in comparison to other more volatile episodes, one program leader characterized the event as occurring with “very little disturbance.” By the third week, however, attendance had dropped from thirty to sixteen girls and to only nineteen black boys. One Tulane student worker would later remark that “the children reflect the intolerances and prejudices of their parents and the neighborhood . . . which is not ready for a bi-racial [sic] program. . . . The white children think we are taking something away from them to give to the colored children. . . . The colored children are forced to take the disrespectful remarks made by the white children.” By the end of the second month, though, the objections of the white children and nearby residents had eased, and overall membership climbed to 117 black children with 1,036 cumulative visits to the union hall.43 Swimming was the most popular activity but the source of many problems. Lane Cotton Mill officials approved the use of the mill pool three times a week, but by the white children only. Options were limited for the program’s black children, both because few places admitted them and because transportation was scarce.44 In fact, only one swimming pool was available to the city’s entire black population, and the only stretch of Lake Ponchartrain beach available to them was more than five miles from the center of the city.45 Segregation is a social system based on dominance and compliance. This system was sometimes enforced through laws but most often through racial etiquette, a code of behavior and interaction that followed what political scientist Scott designates as a “public script” of white supremacy in which blacks and whites were expected to play assigned roles. Whites, who controlled the legal system, employment, housing, social services, education, and even the everyday movement of blacks in public space, played the parts of dominators. Black adults, when interacting with whites, were expected to act with compliance and deference, attitudes and behaviors embedded in southern society since the era of slavery.46 Because young black children were less often directly exposed to labor arrangements and segregationist laws, learning racial etiquette was for them the predominant means of defining race relations in the Jim Crow South.

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Through what Leon Litwack terms racial “baptisms,” parents, teachers, and other influencing adults instructed black children about the significance of racial membership and their assigned “place” and space. They taught the essential survival skills of accommodation and the self-restraint to ignore daily indignities from white people, imposing on their charges a psychological and sociological manipulation about race in order to protect them from violence and public humiliation. “The task, then, is one of making sure the child is afraid of whites,” one black mother explained to child psychiatrist Robert Coles, who studied the adaptation of children to adult political crises. “Bravado or outrage must be curbed.”47 However, constant acquiescence and restriction of one’s instincts, or what Kelley calls the “mask of grins and lies,” over time awakens anger in the oppressed and moves them to action. Likewise, according to Scott, “every subordinate group creates, out of its ordeal, a ‘hidden transcript’ that represents a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant,” contesting the “public transcript” of power relations.48 This holds true even for children like those of the Riverfront Extension Program, who through their mostly impulsive breaches of racial etiquette were in effect engaging in acts of protest against the white power structure. The spontaneous nature of their resistance does not diminish its significance nor make it any less political. Further, many less overt actions likely went unnoticed by the settlement staff, and black children may have breached racial etiquette more often than their parents because the consequences for them were less severe.49 Unlike protests by blacks in truly public space, there seemed to be no real punishment for acts of defiance in the hall. Segregation as an institution was never inflexible or uniform, and members of the white power structure, including leaders of the Riverfront Extension Program, vacillated between strict adherence to Jim Crow boundaries and ambivalence toward racial separation and interaction. From the outset then, program children learned that the rules of Jim Crow, as well as the penalties for failing to follow these rules, were, at best, ambiguous, and that white power was situational and could be manipulated. For example, as a “purely . . . precautionary measure,” union officials required separate toilet facilities and separate drinking fountains for the black children. At least one program leader was aware that despite this community pattern, separate facilities might offend the children. In an attempt to devise “a courteous way of dealing with the situation,” he planned to tell the black boys and girls that a second rest room was for the staff and only one of the drinking fountains would be turned on at any time. Perhaps his attempt at courteousness toward the black children long before the era of “political correctness” stemmed from his own awareness of and effort to contest the “public script” of

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white supremacy. Another apparently sympathetic leader complained that this explanation would not “fool” any of the children. Despite the plan, no separate bathroom facilities were in working order during the first week, and the black children used the one reserved for whites. They continued to do so, even after the “colored” bathroom was made available. Whether they were intentionally testing the limits of segregation, as did some black adults who drank from forbidden water fountains during Jim Crow, is unknown. Even if the black children’s use of the whites-only bathroom after a separate “colored” one became available did not constitute a deliberate act of protest, it was a transgression of racial etiquette rife with political implications because it allowed the black children to exercise some power within the white-dominated space.50 Leaders of the Riverfront Extension Program often left it to the children to act as socializing agents for each other. For example, on outings into public spaces, the black girls inquired about residential sections through which African Americans were permitted to pass and equipment they were allowed to use. Acknowledging that they needed “sound advice in this area,” Coombs, nevertheless, left it to the children to sort it out. “The older girls are quick to tell the younger ones if their behavior is not acceptable,” she wrote. “Their admonition is in a moralistic generality: magic words ‘bad’ and ‘nice’ are their only explanation. The leader supposes that Negro children have to accept the behavior pattern expected of them younger than white children do and that standards of good public behavior are therefore a special need for them.”51 Group leaders often wavered between following racial etiquette and ignoring it, unless someone complained. For instance, Coombs took six black girls for a picnic on the levee of the Mississippi River and to Audubon Park, both segregated public spaces in 1946. The girls’ familiarity with the realities of life outside of their immediate communities varied. Eight-year-old Doris, whose father sat on the Negro Advisory Committee, had never been to the levee before. She asked if white people would allow it. Coombs, attempting to reassure Doris and the other girls, told them that they could move if anyone complained. One of the girls wanted to play on the park swings. Twelveyear-old Rosemary, the oldest in the group and likely more socialized into the ways of racial etiquette than the younger girls, warned that “the man was very fussy” and did not permit black children to use the equipment. Coombs, who was white and who had only recently arrived in New Orleans, claimed not to know whether the swings were forbidden to blacks and allowed the girls to swing while no other people were around. All but Rosemary used the swings and see-saws “with great apparent pleasure.” During a subsequent visit, a white adult also enjoying the park ordered the girls off the swings, and Coombs concurred that she should not have allowed them to use the equipment in the first place.52

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The next month, Coombs took nine girls on an outing by streetcar. Jim Crow laws and racial etiquette permitted black domestics traveling with their white employers’ children to sit in the white section on public transportation. The reasoning was that, for the black woman, the association did not imply an equal relationship and the white children were spared subjection to the back of the car. But no such etiquette existed for the rare instance such as this when a white woman traveled with black girls. Without guidance, Coombs sometimes sat or stood with the girls in the “colored section” and at other times, she sat without them in the white section. When one of the black girls offered her seat, she declined without explanation, but later reported that she “felt she should not sit in the colored section if she were taking a seat from a colored person.” When she sought advice from the two black volunteers, they suggested she sit anywhere she liked. Without asking for clarification, Coombs took this to mean that “she should feel free to sit in the white section and that the girls would accept this.”53 Her uncertainty regarding the rules of segregation and her unwillingness to uniformly enforce those she understood, especially in front of her black charges, illustrates not only the ambiguous nature of Jim Crow, but the opportunity for challenges to the system. The history of segregation shows a clear connection to gender, and the racially divided space of the union hall was no exception. Early on, color difference seemed to matter little to the boys in the program as long as their shared interests predominated. Because approximately one-fifth of the program’s black and white children resided either in the same block, across the street, or next door to each other, it is quite possible that they were, or had been, playmates outside of the hall. Black and white boys enjoyed the union hall together, and throughout the fall of 1946 they played softball and touch football in the street. One volunteer student from Tulane University’s School of Social Work reported that there was “no untoward antagonism exhibited by any present.” Likewise, a Negro Advisory Committee member observed that even, or especially, when there was no supervision in the game room, black and white boys played pool, “used the hall together in a friendly way,” and even negotiated to share their allotted time in the hall.54 On one “colored day” early in the biracial program, eleven white boys arrived at the hall where seven black boys were already playing. The white group could remain, the leader on duty explained, only at the black boys’ invitation and only “with reciprocal courtesies.” After some bargaining, the black boys agreed to allow the whites to play football on their day and the white boys agreed to permit the black children to play pool during the week. The two groups proceeded to “play together in good spirits.”55 Most of the early reported conflicts occurred when white girls occupied

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the hall with black children of either gender. One cause of the strife was that during the one day each week specifically reserved for the black girls’ program, white girls were permitted into the hall to make preparations for weekly dances from which blacks were excluded.56 The black girls became “unsettled” as the white children continually stared at them. They complained to their white leader that the hall, the back yard, and the recreation equipment was theirs alone on “colored day” and the white group should not have access to any of it. The leader tried “to jolly them out of being hyper-sensitive about this, but they always have the complete answer that they aren’t allowed even to poke their noses in on days for the white children.” Acknowledging that she “may have been too lenient with the white children, making the Negro girls insecure and making them feel gyped [sic],” she still did not discourage the white boys and girls from entering the hall nor did she attempt to negotiate a compromise for use of the space.57 This episode provides perhaps the starkest example of the dilemma between the white children who claimed superior ownership as the first occupiers of the hall and the black children who felt equally entitled to the recreation space. While the leader expressed sensitivity toward the black children, in the end, it was the white ones who prevailed. The issue of gender operated simultaneously with that of race in the defense of the recreational space. Moreover, the prejudices of the white leaders regarding the sexualization of race relations, especially inflammatory rhetoric about the rape of white women by black men, helped to transform the hall into both a physical and ideological construct that reinforced the racial divide. A prominent local businessman, in discussions with Kurtagh about juvenile delinquency in the city, recommended the establishment of a “moral training program” for black teenage boys, not so much for their own improvement, but rather “for the very practical reason [of] lessening of the menace to health, the safety of life and limb, [and] the chastity of our women.”58 A group leader reported that “many adolescent girls are worried to keep out of the way of colored people,” and her girls had expressed “sexual fears” as demonstrated, she said, by one girl’s statement that “‘niggers whistle at white girls.’”59 At the same time, however, white girls habitually attempted to enter the hall knowing the black boys were inside. In the segregated South, even the mere presence of black males and white females in the same space was construed by many as intimate and therefore dangerous. As a matter of policy, the program director attempted to prevent the two groups from occupying the hall at the same time, even in separate areas. She explained to the white girls that their mothers would be “upset if they knew their daughters were actually playing in the same room with big Negro boys.” In a meeting with their mothers, she told them she was “sure they would not want their daughters playing in such close quarters with the

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Negro boys. They were all horrified at the very idea.” She promised them that black teenage boys would be present in the hall no more than one day a week. Soon after, the black boys sought use of the space on additional days, but the director, explaining her promise to the white women, denied their request.60 By the end of the first year, cumulative attendance in biracial program activities had reached 10,905, translating into more than ten thousand visits by neighborhood children. A Tulane University volunteer optimistically concluded that the Extension Program demonstrated that “both Negro and white children can be served in the same community by the same social agency, if that service is based upon cooperative community planning between both races on a democratic basis.”61 Even so, only the program’s white children were invited to the Kingsley House settlement to celebrate the first-year anniversary.62 The second year of the biracial program, 1947, began with an even more dramatic reminder of the pervasive racial attitudes of many so-called southern liberal progressives: a minstrel show in blackface. At first reluctant to agree to it “because of the implied ridicule of a minority group,” settlement house leaders, including Kurtagh, relented to the requests of one of the program clubs for the performance. Kurtagh reasoned that “both participants and audience were unaware of this unhealthy spirit and largely concerned with the fun they got out of it,” and furthermore, “a settlement cannot completely close itself off to such neighborhood mores.”63 By the summer, white children were attending activities at the union hall less frequently, and program leaders attributed this to the opening of new city playgrounds. But growing tension in the neighborhood as well as inside the hall was also to blame. White boys and girls were becoming increasingly “hostile,” heckling the black children and calling the leaders “nigger lovers,” and in July, white boys forcefully “took over” the hall on “colored day.” One program leader reported that “the distinction between ‘colored day’ and ‘white day’ seems to be aggravating the rivalry between the two [groups of children], instead of encouraging sharing of facilities.” During the first weeks of the biracial program, the director noted that the black boys “do not seem to stand up for their rights at all, when the white boys become dominating, but simply withdraw and wait patiently.” Though she may have been surprised by the black boys’ initial reticence, by the end of the summer she observed that the black children had become “obviously more fearless about expressing their aggressions . . . which may be to some extent a healthy release for them, but which seems only to incite the white children to greater rejection, which, in turn, does nothing to help the Negroes.”64 By the end of the second year, with only forty-five children participating and no leadership or organized activities for their clubs, the black program

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ceased to function altogether. Meanwhile, the red-baiting that followed World War II discredited and weakened progressive reform efforts, including those of settlement houses, which were criticized for their association with communist-influenced and interracial unions. But only one settlement leader, Emeric Kurtagh, lost his job as a result. In April 1949, Kurtagh was forced to resign after his name appeared on a list issued by the House Un-American Activities Committee accusing him of membership in two organizations it labeled Communist fronts, both of which pushed antidiscrimination policies. Shortly thereafter, Kingsley House abandoned the Riverfront Extension Program.65 The Kingsley House board acknowledged that the need for recreational services in the Lane Mill area still existed, specifically for black children of all ages. Nevertheless, on May 15, 1949, following regular activities, the doors of the Riverfront Extension Program were closed to the neighborhood and never reopened.66 It would be another seventeen years, in September 1966, before Kingsley House integrated its programs settlement-wide.67 Still, the very occurrence of a biracial recreational program, which had boys and girls of both races intermingling, intentionally or not, in one space during a time when schools, parks, and other public spaces were strictly divided by race represented a challenge to the status quo, even if that challenge may not have always been purposeful. Like most southern liberal reformers, leaders of the Extension Program stubbornly refused to part with traditional racial attitudes and were overly fearful of a public backlash. Rather than intentionally contesting or defying separation ideology, these reformers were responding pragmatically to the problem of juvenile delinquency. Advocating improved conditions for blacks without suggesting revolutionary changes, leaders such as these “neither intended nor expected the civil rights movement,” as historian John T. Kneebone has observed.68 In many ways, the divided program paralleled and even reinforced the South’s prevailing ideology of separation. However, Kingsley House’s decision to offer the services of the previously all-white settlement to black children, within the same space and with resulting interracial interplay, did call into question the institution of segregation. Further, because program leaders were often ambivalent about racial etiquette, they became inadvertent collaborators to the black children, aiding them in their struggles to gain some power within the white-dominated union hall. The black children successfully contested the racial ideology of the urban space and acted to shape that space for their own use. Most of these children probably were too young to understand fully the long-term implications of segregation or the extent of their own oppression. Shouting, chasing away attackers, and using bathrooms reserved for whites were acts carried out in

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response to white aggressors, not deliberate breaches of racial etiquette. The daily resistance of this small group of children may not have directly evolved into the overt politics of the Civil Rights movement. But the challenge to segregated recreational space by these boys and girls who would grow up to be young adults during the movement are suggestive of the more organized resistance that would emerge in the 1950s and 1960s and foretell of the coming changes in southern race relations. —— 1. “Narrative on Negro Girls’ Club at Riverfront,” by Joy Coombs, October 9, 1946, Kingsley House (KH) Papers, Jones Hall Library, Tulane University (TU), Box 18, Folder 65. 2. Higgins Industries was the builder of the Higgins landing craft used extensively in World War II. “Lane Cotton Mill Celebrates Its New Orleans Centennial,” New Orleans Item, July 16, 1956; TWUA letter, September 12, 1944, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 1. In New Orleans, much of the working class lived near the river where the dock and factory jobs were located. According to the TWUA’s regional organizer, by the 1940s Lane Cotton Mill had been operating for over fifty years with the lowest wage rate in the South, resulting in the violation of the Federal Wage and Hour Law and the removal of lucrative government contracts. Further, with low wages, no practical incentive plan, and insufficient lighting in the mill, Lane employees, during that period, participated in a series of spontaneous walkouts and strikes. Paul Schuler to John Becham, Labor Production Office, Dallas, May 1, 1944, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 1. 3. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 70. 4. Kelley refers to spaces like these as “small war zones.” Kelley, Race Rebels, 62. 5. See Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Random House, 1998); Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream (New York: W. W. Norton, 1949); Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Richard Wright, Black Boy: (American Hunger) A Record of Childhood and Youth (New York: Perennial Classics, 1998); and Jennifer Ritterhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Kelley, Race Rebels, 9. 6. Kelley, Race Rebels, 4. 7. Kelley, Race Rebels, 7, 8; Holt, “Marking Race, Race-Making and the Writing of History.” American Historical Review 100, No. 1 (February 1995), 8, 14. For the idea that race is socially and historically constructed, see Barbara Jeanne Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” in J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, eds., Region, Race and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). 8. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), x. 9. Kelley, Race Rebels, 61. See also Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963) for the idea that primitive rebels, those who lacked strong organization and disregarded modern political possibilities, often paved the way for more effective protest later on. For the development of individual means of resistance, see Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), xviii, and Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 34.

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10. Fairclough, Race and Democracy, xii, 73, 75–76; Arnold R. Hirsch, “Race and Renewal in the Cold War South: New Orleans, 1947–1968,” in Robert Fishman, ed., The American Planning Tradition: Culture and Policy (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center and Johns Hopkins University Presses, 2000), 220–22; William H. Chafe and Harvard, Sitkoff, eds., A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 159; See also Litwack, Trouble in Mind, xvii, and Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 136. 11. Chafe and Sitkoff, A History of Our Time, 51; Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 184; Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 134, 136–37. See also Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 3. 12. For the history of black access to recreation in New Orleans, see Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 152, and Hirsch, “Race and Renewal.” 13. Kurtagh’s handwritten report to KH board, December 13, 1945, KH Papers, TU, Box 1, Folder 40; Pamphlet on 30th Anniversary of Round Table Club and Beverley E. Warner, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 38. 14. The area considered to be the Extension Program neighborhood is most often based on U.S. Census tracts 95, 96, and 97, which included the union hall. When including Lane Cotton Mill, the additional tracts of 104, 105, and 106 are considered. I rely on tracts 95, 96, and 97, unless otherwise stated. “1945 Population Figures,” Director’s Report, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 3; Warren H. Carpenter, “Kingsley House Extension Program, School of Social Work Tulane University, 1947” (Master’s thesis), 8–11, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9; “Study to Determine Attitudes of Parents Whose Children Attend the Kingsley House River-Front Extension Project” (using only tracts 96 and 97), by Margery Sandfield (Sandfield Study), May 14, 1946, 2, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 11; 17th Census of the U.S., Tracts, 95, 96, and 97. 15. “1945 Population Figures,” Director’s Report, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 3; Carpenter, Kingsley House Thesis, 8–11, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9; Sanfield Study, May 14, 1946, p. 2, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 11; 17th Census of the U.S., Tracts 95, 96 and 97; “Negro Advisory “ Minutes, Dorothy Spiker, November 20, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. 16. “Estimated Total & School Age Populations Living Within a One-Half Mile Radius of New Orleans City Playgrounds & Number of School Age Children Per Acre of Playground Area,” August 1945, KH Papers, TU, Box 4, Folder 17; OCD Survey of Schools & Recreation Areas, August 1945, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 28. 17. Carpenter, Kingsley House Thesis, 3, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9. 18. Kurtagh, “Memo on Juvenile Delinquency” to Azzo Plough, chairman, Civic Affairs Committee, Association of Commerce, 1942/43, TU, KH papers, Box 4, Folder 13; Kingsley House board meeting minutes, ca. March 1945, KH Papers, TU, Box 17, Folder 2; “Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of KH and NO Day Nursery Association” by Shelby Friedrichs, February 26, 1945, KH Papers, TU, Box 3, Folder 16. 19. Robert E. Moran, One Hundred Years of Child Welfare in Louisiana, 1860–1960 (Lafayette, Louisiana: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1979), 2–3, 13, 17, 21. 20. John T. Kneebone, Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race, 1920–1944 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 198–99. See also Judith Ann Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change: From the American Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers, 1866 to Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 93–94 and Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 56, 81. 21. “Kingsley House,” undated and untitled 1920 newspaper and Times-Picayune, February 21, 1950, “Scrap Book, 1940–1961,” KH Papers, TU, new material, not yet indexed; “History of Kingsley House” by Maurice Stern, November 11, 1941, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 41; Kingsley House Charter, November 26, 1902, KH Papers, TU, Box 1, Folder 1; Allen F.

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Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), xviii. In 1946, over half of the 203 members of the National Federation of Settlements (NFS) were located in the major metropolitan areas of the Northeast and Midwest. The South had only eight, including Kingsley House. Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change, 3–4. 22. Lasch-Quinn, Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in the American Settlement House Movement, 1890–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 16, 23. See also Thomas Lee Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle Class Reform, Chicago, 1880–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 301. 23. S. Magee, National Committee for a Fair Minimum Wage, to Kurtagh, January 4, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 4, Folder 20. “YWCA Groups to Hear Mr. Kurtagh on Fair Labor Standards Act,” Times Picayune, March 31, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 4, Folder 23; Colcock to Boothby and Kurtagh, February 16, 1942, KH Papers, TU, Box 3, Folder 1; Kurtagh’s handwritten notes, ca 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 4, Folder 23; “Minutes of Staff Meetings,” backing Housing Bill, April 29, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 5, Folder 25. 24. KH Annual Meeting, April 29, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 1, Folder 41; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 56. The NFS, Lasch-Quinn has observed, ignored blacks as a matter of policy until the 1940s when the organization’s president, Clyde Murray, called for member houses to demonstrate racial equality in their programs. By 1944, approximately twenty-five settlement houses, all located in the North, served primarily black neighborhoods. Lasch-Quinn, Black Neighbors, 1, 3, 8, 59. 25. “General Outline of Settlement Function,” Summer 1945, KH Papers, TU, Box 4, Folder 19; “Proposed Plan for a Special Recreation Project Extension of Kingsley House Services in Cooperation with Textile Workers’ Union, CIO,” June 1, 1945, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 7; “Deep South” Liberal (union paper) 1, no.11, February 1946, column by Connie Grigsby, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 10. 26. November 26, 1945, “Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of KH and NO Day Nursery Association, KH Papers, TU, Box 3, Folder 16; David R. Goldfield, Black, White and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture: 1940 to the Present (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 18–19, 49. 27. Kurtagh to Community Chest director Julius Goldman, April 13, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 4; Kingsley House News, Special Edition, Annual Meeting, April 24, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 1, Folder 41. 28. Staff Meeting Minutes, January 3, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 5, Folder 22; Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes taken by Dorothy Spiker (Advisory Minutes), March 14, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8; Sandfield Study, May 14, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folders 11 and 26 through 46. That the majority of families studied were of French descent was based on a review of last names. 29. “Deep South” Liberal, 1, no.11, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 10; Carpenter, Kingsley House Thesis, citing Kingsley House Extension Program Monthly Reports to CSA, January 31 and April 30, 1946, 35, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9; 1948 Extension Program Annual Report, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 10; Advisory Minutes, June 5 and March 14, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. 30. Kurtagh to Goldman, April 13, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 4; Advisory Minutes, June 5, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12. 31. R. B. Roessle to Kurtagh and others, July 7, 1945, KH Papers, TU, Box 4, Folder 17; Council of Social Agencies (CSA) Research Department Memo to CSA Executive Committee on census tracts 95–97 and 104–106 (1936 U.S. Census) December 6, 1939, KH Papers, TU, new material, not yet indexed. 32. Director’s Report, May 26–31, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12. 33. Advisory Minutes, July 17, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. For the idea that

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providing separate facilities furthers segregation, see Lasch-Quinn, Black Neighbors, 39, and Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 152. 34. Director’s Report, May 26–31, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12; Advisory Minutes, June 5, 1946, and July 17, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. 35. Advisory Minutes, July 17, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. In the 1940s, Columbus, Georgia’s Godman Guild served both southern white immigrants to the city and an increasing number of blacks, but on different days of the week. Another Columbus settlement and two in Toledo, Ohio, followed the special-days-for-blacks pattern. Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change, 100–101, 107. 36. KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folders 2, 3 and 8; Handwritten notes on Joint Committee, March 27, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 5; “Negro Advisory” Minutes, November 20, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. 37. Carpenter, Kingsley House Thesis, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9. 38. The records do not reveal any specific reason for the selection of a white woman to lead the black girls’ program. However, the decision of program leaders to seek the assistance of two black women volunteers indicates their awareness of the need for black female mentors. Advisory Minutes, June 5, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. 39. Advisory Minutes, July 17, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8; KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folders 26 through 46. 40. Director’s Report, June 30–July 6, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12. 41. Advisory Minutes, July 17, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. 42. Grigsby’s Director’s Report, July 15–20, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12; Bobby Sox Club, Leader Report, Nancy Sisco, May 15, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 47. 43. Carpenter, Kingsley House Thesis, citing Kingsley House Extension Program Monthly Report to CSA, July 31, 1946, p. 41, 43, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9; Grigsby’s Director’s Report, July 22–27 and August, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12; Director’s Report, September 2–7 and 11, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12; Director’s Report, October 28–31, 1946, Box 18, Folder 13; “Narrative on Negro Girls’ Club at Riverfront,” Coombs, October 30, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 65; Director’s Report, August 11–15, 1947, KH Papers TU, Box 18, Folder 15. 44. Director’s Report, ca. February 17, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 11; Kurtagh to Goldman, April 13, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 4. 45. Advisory Minutes, November 11, 1946, May 1, 1947 and January 21, 1948, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. See Hirsch, “Race and Renewal,” 220–21, and Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 84; “Summer 1947 Development of Program for Negro Children,” Director’s Report, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 15; Director’s Report, June 23–27, 1947, KH Papers TU, Box 18, Folder 14. 46. For the origins of segregation, see John W. Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) and Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940 (New York: Vintage Books, 1998). Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, x. See also Goldfield, Black, White, and Southern, 2, and Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974). 47. For racial “baptisms,” see Litwack, Trouble in Mind, chap. 1. For teaching children the rules of racial etiquette, see Smith, Killers of the Dream, 39; Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 158–59; Wright, Black Boy; Fairclough, Race & Democracy, xvii; and Ritterhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow. Robert Coles describes the Civil Rights movement as a momentous period in history when black youth, and as a consequence, white youth as well, embarked on the reconstruction of the southern way of life and the traditional etiquette of race relations. Robert Coles, Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear (New York: Dell Publishing, 1964), 66–67. 48. Kelley is paraphrasing Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask,” Kelley, Race

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Rebels, 3, 7, 15; Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, x. See also, Ritterhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow, 48. 49. See Ritterhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow, 83. 50. Advisory Minutes, July 17, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8; Director’s Report, June 30–July 6, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12; Carpenter, Kingsley House Thesis, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9; “October 1946–January 1947 Report on Negro Girls’ Program, Riverfront Project,” Joy Coombs, February 11, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 65; Ritterhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow, 136. 51. “October 1946–January 1947 Report on Negro Girls’ Program, Riverfront Project,” Coombs, February 11, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 65; For the idea that many black children learned their ideas about race from older children see Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 14. 52. “Narrative on Negro Girls’ Club at Riverfront,” Coombs, November 30, 1946, and March 23, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folders 65 and 66. 53. “Narrative on Negro Girls’ Club at Riverfront,” Coombs, December 4, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 65; Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 237; Kelley, Race Rebels, 69. Black Atlanta community leader Eugenia Burns Hope’s son, in 1917, offered his seat in the black section of a streetcar to a white woman without a seat in the white section and she declined. The white woman’s rebuff, according to Ritterhouse, suggested the ambiguity that could result when the etiquette of respectability encountered the etiquette of Jim Crow. Ritterhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow, 106. 54. Riverfront Extension Program Membership lists, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folders 26–46; Director’s Report, September 2–7, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12; “Negro Advisory,” Minutes, November 20, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. 55. Director’s Report, September 2–7, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 12; Director’s Reports, October 7–12 and November 18–23, 1946, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 13; Carpenter, Kingsley House Thesis, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9. 56. Advisory Minutes, March 27, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8. 57. “Narrative on Negro Girls’ Club at Riverfront,” Coombs, February 26, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 66; “October 1946–January 1947 Report on Negro Girls’ Program, Riverfront Project,” Coombs, February 11, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 65. 58. Roessle to Kurtagh and others, July 7, 1945, KH Papers, TU, Box 4, Folder 17. At the turn of the century, sexual assaults of white women by black men were espoused as justifications for lynching. As a lingering result, white girls were taught to fear black men, and black boys were taught to avoid any appearance of impropriety. “It was a poisoned atmosphere . . . one that pervaded all the dealings each race had with the other” and “profoundly reordered” race relations in the South. Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 158–59. See also Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow, xx. 59. Bobby Sox Club, Leader Report, Nancy Sisco, May 15, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 47. 60. Director’s Reports, June 23–27, June 30–July 4 and July 14–18, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 14. 61. Carpenter, Kingsley House Thesis, 49, 52, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9; President’s Report to Board (handwritten), January 31, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 1, Folder 42. 62. Carpenter, Kingsley House Thesis, 49, 52, KH Papers, TU, Box 19, Folder 9. 63. Advisory Minutes, May 5, 1947, and May 26, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 15, Folder 33. The term Jim Crow had its origins in minstrelsy when a white minstrel, imitating the dancing, singing, and demeanor generally ascribed to black character, named his routine after an elderly slave belonging to a Mr. Crow. Litwack, Trouble in Mind, xiv–xv. See also Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) and Holt, “Marking Race,” 1–20. According to Grace Elizabeth Hale, whites portrayed blacks as caricatures and impersonated blacks in minstrel shows to relieve the guilt they felt

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for producing segregation. Hale, Making Whiteness, 151, 156. However, Litwack argues that blackface minstrels reinforced white perceptions of black inferiority. Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 468. 64. Advisory Minutes, July 3, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 8; Director’s Reports, June 23–27, June 30–July 4 and July 14–18, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 14; Director’s Reports, August 4–8 and 11–15, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 15. 65. Nancy Evans, acting Head Resident, to Kurtagh, March 17, 1948, KH Papers, TU Box 4, Folder 36; Director’s Report, December 1, 1947, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 15; “Kurtagh Leaves Kingsley House,” States Item, April 12, 1949; “Kingsley House Executive Quits,” TimesPicayune, April 13, 1949. Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 146; Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change, 107. 66. G. Shelby Friedrichs to unknown recipient, May 15, 1949, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 6; Sterbcow notes, May 15, 1949, KH Papers, TU, Box 18, Folder 20. 67. In 1952, Kingsley House again took up the issue of biracial programming when it considered, but declined, merging with Orleans Neighborhood Centers, a social agency providing similar outreach activities. Mary C. Raymond, Memo to File, February 23, 1952, CSA Papers, UNO, Box 80, Folder 861. 68. Kneebone, Southern Liberal Journalists, 216.

A Woman’s Touch Gender at Monticello, 1945–1960 M e gan S t ubb e n d e ck

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h e n W i ll i am S amps o n , a t o u r i s t f r o m N e w J e r s e y,

returned home in 1961 after a vacation to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s historic plantation, he dashed off a long letter to the estate’s superintendent. He began with praise for the building and the hostess who led his tour group, but then quickly turned to criticizing the talk she gave: “It seemed to me there was insufficient emphasis on the qualities of Jefferson ‘the man.’” According to Sampson, instead of highlighting Thomas Jefferson’s “forcefulness” as a statesman “that enabled him to bring forth a nation,” the house tour portrayed him as a “paragon of virtue.” The “sentimental ‘softness’” of the young woman’s tour detracted from the masculine image of Jefferson’s strength during the early crises of the republic. “He was not a Byron or Keats,” Sampson forcefully argued. “He was a man of great determination.”1 For William Sampson, gender was an important component of his visit to Monticello. He saw the house as a feminine space that affected the narrative told. Instead of the masculine model of a founding father he had expected, Sampson found Jefferson turned into a “soft” feminine example of virtue. Sampson’s letter is important for two reasons. First, it uncovers one type of often ignored public work in which women were employed during the first decades of the Cold War. Second, Sampson’s complaint shows that these women played an important part in shaping historic preservation and public history throughout this period. In fact, Monticello and its narrative became feminine because of the striking presence of these women. Sampson’s comments are only surprising when one knows the history of Monticello and its role in the development of historic preservation. 118

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The history of American preservation is often told in three phases. The first phase began in the mid-nineteenth century and was dominated by women who seemed suited for the work based on three prevailing gender ideals: republican motherhood, memorialization, and domesticity. First, republican motherhood demanded that women play an active role teaching children American ideals and values.2 Second, many people saw women as protectors of the American past and responsible for honoring the heroic deeds of men. By venerating great historic figures, such as Thomas Jefferson, they could accomplish both tasks: remembering dead heroes and using the stories of these men’s lives as perfect lessons in patriotism, citizenship, and American character. Lastly, women were responsible for the maintenance of a domestic sphere, which included cooking, cleaning, and the creation of a loving atmosphere centered on the family. Through the preservation of historic houses—traditionally domestic spaces—and the development of these sites into national shrines, all three ideals could be fulfilled. The efforts of the Ladies Association of Mount Vernon in the 1840s at George Washington’s home is the most oft-cited example of this work, but hundreds of other small projects dotted the United States, pulling in increasing numbers of active women.3 Though they based their claims to preservation responsibilities on gendered notions of the private sphere, women’s nineteenth-century preservation allowed them to challenge the division between public and private. Through their involvement, women learned to organize, headed foundations and boards of governors, coordinated public donation campaigns, and lobbied politicians for protection and support.4 In effect, women in preservation justified their public roles by evoking the traditionally private, female duties of domesticity, education, and memorialization. The 1920s ushered in the second phase of preservation when men increasingly entered the field and drove women out. Many of these new male preservationists argued that women focused detrimentally on the patriotic nostalgia of sites. Instead, they argued, men would bring a scholarly edge to the field by adhering to proven fact and bringing the focus back to the architectural elements that made sites worthy of preservation.5 Many based their justifications for male encroachment on the understanding that only men were capable of these “scientific” approaches. Reinforcing this concept was the fact that very few women received advanced training in any field during this period.6 At the same time, the field of history underwent a similar transition toward masculinization directly affecting and enhancing the changes in preservation.7 At its roots, this new phase was primarily focused on professionalizing the field. For today’s scholars, Monticello is the archetype of the male-dominated historic site. Built by Thomas Jefferson in 1769, the house was turned into a public shrine and preserved as a historic site in 1923.8 The Thomas Jefferson

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Memorial Foundation, which controlled the site and its restoration, was from the beginning composed entirely of men. Moreover, its major committees, resident scholars, and tour guides were almost exclusively male in the early decades. The final phase of preservation has been characterized by the increased role of the federal government in preservation work. In 1949, Congress passed legislation to create the National Trust for Historic Preservation, followed by a federal grant program and an explosion in preservation in the 1960s.9 By focusing on the role of government, historians have effectively written gender—and by extension women—out of this third phase. As a result, women’s part in preservation has been confined to the end of the nineteenth century, after which they have been replaced in the scholarship by men and the government. A close analysis of Monticello after 1945, however, will show that a gendered analysis is important for understanding this third phase of preservation’s development. From 1945 to 1960, women began to reenter the field and did so first through the stronghold of male-dominated preservation: Monticello. More importantly, women’s experiences at Monticello were distinct from men’s and were shaped by contemporary gender stereotypes. Furthermore, the presence of women modified the museum’s public image and affected visitors’ reactions, making a gendered analysis of preservation’s third phase all the more pertinent. To see this transition, it is important to keep in mind contemporary ideas about women and their role in postwar society. A number of scholars have argued that during the first decades of the Cold War traditional gender roles took on greater importance, especially for white, middle-class women. In order to fight communism effectively, men had to demonstrate masculine courage and provide for their families by working outside of the house. Women, on the other hand, best served the needs of the nation by staying home and creating a private space of warmth and security for their children. As Elaine Tyler May has argued, the demands of the Cold War imbued the traditional concept of domesticity with a new sense of national purpose. The place for women in the 1950s was once again the home.10 Recently, a number of scholars have revised this argument by demonstrating that many women took on active public roles in the form of labor and political activism. Most of these women used contemporary gender ideologies to support their claims to the public realm but, according to scholars, challenged through their work the very foundation of these ideas both in society and within the family.11 The women at Monticello, however, resided in the grey area between these two extremes of staying at home or publicly challenging conservative ideologies. Instead, the women found it possible to work outside of the home in ways that cemented domestic ideals and even supported other conservative agendas.

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In many ways, the rise of domesticity after World War II created a situation for women in preservation that was very similar to that of the late nineteenth century. As a result, women turned to the tried-and-true strategy of using prevailing ideologies in their favor. Women at Monticello once again justified their work in the field based on women’s ability to teach children and to manage and interpret a domestic space. But there were dramatic differences, too. First, the rise of family tourism in the 1950s gave women a unique voice as consumers at preservation sites. And second, increasing numbers of women had attained advanced education, which allowed them to pursue positions as experts. By following four influential women at Monticello and studying letters from both male and female patrons, we can see how women maintained a public role in preservation by relying on common gender stereotypes. Their dependence on traditional concepts of women’s roles helped them enter the protected and public field of preservation and allowed them to turn Monticello into a feminine space that idealized the plantation’s history, supported women’s domestic and familial roles, and promoted conservative southern ideas about race and gender. The feminization of Monticello began with the impact of thousands of female visitors each year. By the end of the 1950s, women had gained increasing power as consumers in the American market. This was especially true in a new and rapidly growing sector of the economy: family tourism. In many cases, women chose where their families traveled, ate, and slept.12 The staff and directors at Monticello recognized the influence women had and, as a result, took seriously female patrons’ complaints and requests.13 Women wrote most of the letters that Monticello received from visitors during the 1950s. Of the twenty-five patron-penned letters that remain in the Monticello archives, fifteen authors were women, nine were men, and one author’s sex was undeterminable.14 Interestingly, men’s and women’s letters differed greatly in tone and content. Men who wrote to Monticello often justified their criticism of the site by stressing their roles as heads of professional organizations or as experts in some field related to preservation. Male critiques focused entirely on business concerns, such as facility operations, or on the technical issues involved in restoring Monticello.15 For example, Edgar Frank, an art expert from Duke University, wrote to inform the president of Monticello’s board that he had noticed on a recent personal visit that placement of an oil painting near a heater had resulted in “superficial damage to the painting.” He suggested that the staff move the painting immediately.16 Women’s letters, on the other hand, addressed a variety of issues. They advocated changes such as moving the location of the gift shop, changing ticketing procedures and prices, and adding more staff to meet the demands of such an important site. Many of these women writers stressed their role

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as consumers in their lettters.17 Unlike male writers, they often threatened that, if their changes were not addressed, they would refuse to return to the site and would encourage their friends to boycott as well. Enid Kaplan of Charlottesville, Virginia, was one of the most passionate writers. She wrote more than once advocating various changes. “I feel now as though I never want to see Monticello again,” she emphasized, “until it is truly a restored home, one in which Mr. Jefferson would take pride.” As part of her threats, she implied that the guests she normally encouraged and brought with her to the site would, from that point on, be dissuaded from visiting.18 Kaplan’s letters are also important because they demonstrate a second element of women’s critiques. Kaplan’s primary reason for writing was to complain about the commercialism that seemed to run rampant at the house museum. “I could not believe that you . . . would let that historic shrine become a second Coney Island, with those horrible telescopes, all that atrocious junk in the shop, and the awful coca cola dispensers. I do not mean to sound disrespectful but it reminds me very strongly of a certain passage in the Bible, of money lender [sic] in the Temple.”19 Kaplan was not alone; other women wrote requesting that the staff confine the commercial aspects of the site to a location that would not detract from the patriotic shrine. Cynthia Young of Highland Park, Michigan, complained that selling souvenirs inside the front hall of Monticello was an affront to the sanctity of such an important site. “We left Monticello,” she wrote, “with the feeling that this sacred place was desecrated and sacrificed to commercialism.”20 These letters demonstrate that women not only saw themselves as consumers who could employ economic pressure to force change at Monticello, but that they also justified their claims in rhetoric reminiscent of earlier female preservationists who had characterized their work as a commemorative act. Almost no copies of responses to these letters remain in the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation archives, but we can assume that Monticello’s board did not simply ignore the women’s arguments.21 Monticello made extensive efforts during the period to advertise the site to female consumers and would not have easily brushed aside their comments. One of the largest marketing campaigns that the staff at Monticello was directly involved in was an article that appeared in McCall’s November 1955 issue. “Feast Days at Monticello,” a seven-page feature article, recounted the little-known influence Thomas Jefferson had on American culinary traditions. It told the story of Jefferson’s first tastes of vanilla ice cream, spaghetti, and waffles during his years in Europe, and his insistence on bringing them back to America. The article described the lavish hospitality Jefferson showered on his guests with food and beautiful accommodations. The piece ended with a sample menu served at Monticello, complete with recipes so that

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female readers could serve their families in the Jeffersonian tradition. The most eye-catching element of the spread was a series of photographs taken at Monticello. They included pictures of slaves preparing meals in the kitchen, a sumptuous feast laid out on the dining room table, and colorful photographs of Jefferson’s bedroom, hallway, and drawing room.22 When the idea of an article was first discussed, Marie Kimball, Monticello’s curator, stressed to the president of the board of directors: “[I]t seems to me it would be wonderful advertising for Monticello and bring tourists in the numbers in which the National Geographic seems to have.”23 The president agreed that targeting women would greatly increase attendance rates and gave Kimball permission to pursue the article idea.24 Monticello’s board also targeted female patrons through advertising attached to domestic products. Shortly after the article appeared in McCall’s, Dromedary Cake Mixes began running ads for its new pound cake mix. The recipe for the mix, developed through a collaboration of Monticello and Dromedary, was based on cookbook notations attributed to Martha Jefferson. Included in the cake mix advertisement was a sketch of Jefferson’s home where “Martha Jefferson Randolph baked delicious Pound Cake for her father—Thomas Jefferson.” The board at Monticello insisted that the marketing also feature Monticello’s location, most likely in hopes that women who bought the cake mix would also be inspired to visit the historic house with their families.25 Marketing geared toward women was very successful. Monticello received a number of inquiries from female writers as far away as California and Alabama who had read the article in McCall’s, and attendance continued to grow.26 But a shift in marketing was only the beginning of Monticello’s feminization; anticommunism opened even more opportunities for women to become involved at the historic house. During the decades immediately after World War II, communism threatened American interests abroad and seemed poised to infiltrate the minds of unsuspecting citizens at home. Particularly susceptible to the influence of “alien ideologies” were young schoolchildren who did not have a strong foundation of patriotism and citizenship training. During this period, anxieties brought on by the Cold War forced a reorganization of school curriculum that included new courses on American history at every level. This was an attempt to correct what many saw as the primary weakness in shoring up American democracy for the future.27 Historic shrines, such as Mount Vernon and Colonial Williamsburg, played a role in this reorganization. Not only were they common sites for school field trips, but they also became the focus of many family vacations. Experts advocated that such trips were fundamental to the strengthening of patriotic spirit among children. As Henry J. Taylor asked on a national radio broadcast, “This

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country is under attack, at home and abroad. How can we preserve this nation if we do not know what we are preserving?” The answer for Taylor lay in visits to national historic sites: “Good citizenship and progress in American ideals, here or abroad, are simply impossible without our knowing the story of America’s birth and development, and its consequences. . . . A great lift could come from organizing touring pilgrimages for our youth to our national memorials. . . . And, believe me, there will be no ‘isms’ here if we all make it our business to help our youth see with their own eyes the living story of our history, our heritage and our glory.”28 Monticello’s strong support of Taylor’s radio speech was not surprising since Taylor was a member of the Monticello Board of Governors. The speech encapsulated how those who ran Monticello saw their museum fitting into the demands of the Cold War. Throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s, Monticello worked closely with the United States Information Agency, a branch of the federal government whose job it was to spread ideals of democracy around the world. Monticello provided information for articles and brochures on Jefferson, and in 1956 Monticello’s board taped a series of audio interviews about the house for “broadcasting to nations behind the Iron Curtain in Europe and Asia.”29 While spreading democracy abroad, the Monticello staff and directors saw the site’s primary goal as one of education for those at home.30 It provided an opportunity to invigorate in young Americans “the democratic passion and philosophy of Jefferson” and at the same time make Monticello “the center of the defense of democracy in the United States.”31 By making Monticello a site primarily geared toward educating children in patriotism and democracy, new opportunities for women began to appear. Influenced by the ideals of republican motherhood and the conceptualization of grade school education as women’s work, the board of directors welcomed women to join the staff.32 Those most often in contact with visiting children and their families were the hostesses at the house. When debating the replacement of male guides with women, the board of directors insisted that they hire “either History teachers from High Schools, or college girls” assumed to be studying education.33 These women closely fulfilled the concept of women and mothers as teachers. One of the most important projects that the foundation undertook to educate children was a local essay contest in honor of Jefferson’s birthday. Each year, a small committee of four people at Monticello proposed an essay topic on Thomas Jefferson and his legacy. The committee then distributed the topic to local schools where students could compete for savings bonds. The authors of the best essay at the elementary and high school levels were welcomed to Monticello for a dinner to celebrate Jefferson’s birthday in the presence of the

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press and the board of directors. Both black and white schools were invited to participate in the essay contest, for, according to the Monticello board, patriotic education was important regardless of skin color. The board hoped that this program would allow students to explore Jefferson’s significance to America and encourage many to visit the museum. In 1958, the program’s inaugural year, the essay topic was “Thomas Jefferson’s Influence Today,” for which many children wrote of Jefferson’s adherence to democratic ideals and their importance in the modern world.34 Most committees at Monticello, established to plan large events or run important restoration projects, were composed entirely of men. The committee in charge of the essay contest was unique; because of its focus on education, half of the members were women. One of the most important was Elizabeth Whartonby, wife of one of the influential men at Monticello. Throughout her husband’s tenure at the museum, many observers thought of Whartonby merely as a helpmate to her husband, welcoming dignified guests and sitting in on important foundation dinners.35 With the advent of the essay contest, however, Elizabeth Whartonby was offered a rare chance to be member of a committee at Monticello. The board of directors allowed Whartonby and the other women on the essay committee to participate because of the belief that women were best suited for teaching children patriotism.36 Closely linked with the duty of raising children was the idea of women’s domesticity, a concept women at Monticello in the 1950s used to support their public work, just as their predecessors in nineteenth-century preservation had done. One woman who seemed to fit perfectly the prevailing ideas of domesticity was Hazlehurst Perkins. Wife of a prominent lawyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, Perkins spent much of her free time volunteering for the Garden Club of Virginia, which coordinated various gardening projects around the area. One of the club’s proudest achievements was the restoration of Thomas Jefferson’s gardens at Monticello. Begun in 1939, the restoration allowed Perkins to gain a foothold in the decision-making process at the historic house, her influence lasting well into the 1950s. Perkins later recalled her efforts in a drafted introduction to her book Thomas Jefferson’s Flower Garden at Monticello. In it she describes her own work in the restoration and draws an implicit parallel between Martha Jefferson and herself. Perkins opens the introduction by describing a lovely image of the newlywed Jeffersons arriving at Monticello. For their first night, Perkins describes an imaginary scene in which Martha at the piano accompanies her husband as he plays his fiddle, a fitting metaphor for her work as companion in the coming years. Quickly, the narrative turns to Thomas Jefferson’s years of toil on the grounds, laying out the flower gardens, planting the vegetables, all the while with Martha at his side. As Perkins writes, “I like to think of the tall blond bride advising,

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admiring and ever helping her brilliant husband in his activities.” In Perkins’s narrative this mutual labor ends abruptly with Martha’s untimely death, not to be resumed until Perkins and the restoration team arrived at Monticello 157 years later.37 In Perkins’s opinion, her own public work in the gardens was merely the continuation of a domestic trend begun by Martha Jefferson as she worked to support her husband’s vision at Monticello. As a major leader of the garden restoration, Perkins served as chairman of the grounds at the historic house and was involved in a number of important decisions. She made suggestions that included moving the location of public restrooms, decorating the indoor rooms with flower arrangements, and building a small house on the grounds where a resident manager could receive distinguished guests. According to Perkins, all of these changes would help create “a more dignified atmosphere” at Monticello. For her, Monticello’s dignity related directly to the estate’s ability to present a feeling of hospitality. Monticello was above all a home, and it should provide a feeling of welcome to its guests. This goal could best be achieved, argued Perkins, by making certain domestic changes to the museum.38 One of Perkins’s most influential suggestions was to replace the African American men who served as occasional tour guides throughout the 1940s. Very little has been written about these men, but it appears that in the early years, before the museum had a defined program of interpretation, a small number of black men were hired to attend to the upkeep of the house and the grounds. Many times they were asked to show crowds through the house as they were often the only free staff on hand.39 In 1950, the board of directors considered a proposal from Perkins as part of her campaign to dignify the house: “Do away with colored men guides,” she wrote, “Have ladies in their place.” The board of directors agreed wholeheartedly with her suggestion. Fiske Kimball, head of restoration, had complained that the male guides made an “unprepossessing appearance” with their mismatched neckties and did not reflect kindly on the site. Perkins suggested that the men be allowed to stay on at Monticello, though, dressed “in livery [they] could be used for cleaning brass, polishing floors, etc.” The board of directors eventually ordered uniforms for the men and reassigned them to the tasks of collecting visitors’ tickets and acting as doormen when patrons entered.40 A new set of local white women was then hired to take the men’s places and to expand the number of guides in the face of rising numbers of guests. Called “hostesses,” these women were put in charge of leading groups through the house and interpreting the historical significance of the structure. They were also responsible for keeping the house in order, arranging flowers, and alerting the doormen if any cleaning needed to be done. Above all, it was the hostesses’ job to make the visitors feel welcome in Thomas Jefferson’s home.

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Terry Tilman was the paragon of this group. Serving as head hostess from 1951 through 1973, Tilman directed the group of hostesses, taught them the tour, and led groups of the most distinguished visitors.41 This small, wellcoiffed woman added a “taste of Virginia hospitality” to Monticello. As one reporter noted “Mrs. Tilman speaks of Monticello not as a guide, but as a hostess opening her own home to guests.”42 The hostesses who served under Tilman’s direction closely followed her example by providing a warm welcome for patrons. Visitors often commented on the effect these women had. Richard Rath of Charlottesville went so far as to say that his hostess gave “one the sensation that we were all guests in the home of a friend who she knew well and for who she was serving as hostess while the family was away.”43 Hazlehurst Perkins’s suggestion to hire women dramatically increased the number of females working for the organization. Strictly adhering to domestic stereotypes, these women were thought of not as tour guides but as hostesses showing guests through the beautiful rooms. Moreover, this image took on a southern cast as these women’s efforts to find inclusion at Monticello rested on the demotion of black men to the role of servants. In this way, Hazelhurst Perkins, Terry Tillman, and the other Monticello hostesses created a new opening for women within historic preservation, but furthered conservative racial and gender ideals. Only one woman at Monticello seemed able to challenge a strict adherence to gender ideologies. This woman was Marie Kimball, Monticello’s first curator. Well educated and respected, she served as curator until her death in 1954. She began her career as a Jefferson historian after her graduation in 1911 and subsequent marriage to famed architect and preservationist Fiske Kimball.44 Contemporary historians celebrated her three-volume work on Jefferson, written on two Guggenheim fellowships, as one of the most complete works available on the former president.45 She was also well known for her early publications on the furnishings at Monticello and the cuisine at both Jefferson’s and Washington’s homes.46 Her marriage to Fiske Kimball may have brought Marie Kimball to Monticello’s attention, but it was her reputation as a scholar that secured her position as curator. Marie Kimball’s potential challenge to gender stereotypes rested on the common understanding of what scholarship was and who partook in it. Around the turn of the century, a new group of male scholars professionalized history and moved it into the confines of the university. The major focus of this transition was the introduction of scientific methods and documentbased research. The goal was to make history objective and qualify historians as experts. In the process, the dichotomy of amateur and professional historians became gendered. Professionals viewed women, who traditionally wrote local and family histories, as incapable of objectivity, the foundation

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of all scholarly pursuits. Because of “natural” proclivities, only men were able to remain unbiased.47 During the same period, a large number of American women began to attend higher education institutions to secure teaching degrees as the field of education professionalized.48 A much smaller but still significant number chose to pursue other interests in college that would prepare them for a variety of fields including science, medicine, and social work. Some even sought to break into professional history despite the gendered dichotomy working against them. As a scholar, Kimball took part in this new education for women and created a public role for herself that seemed to contradict prevailing gender ideals. Yet, upon closer analysis, it becomes apparent that only in name did she challenge the stereotypes. As Julie Des Jardins has shown, female scholars who sought inclusion in the historical profession faced a conflict between gender stereotypes and their desire to be seen as scientific experts. This tension often forced women to make lifestyle choices that fell in line with their professional work and the prevailing masculine image of academic scholarship. These choices included remaining single, eschewing motherhood, and becoming distinct from the perceived image of womanhood.49 Though these women may have taken on a traditionally masculine career, essentially they did not challenge the underlying gender ideologies that confined women to traditionally female roles. Marie Kimball was no different. In personal communications and in her research, Kimball tried to distance herself from other women. Buying into prevailing notions, Kimball viewed women as a capricious group with only a passing interest in anything intellectual. Moreover, she worked hard to separate her scholarly work from that which could be construed as feminine and unprofessional. Much of Kimball’s early writing from the 1920s through the early 1940s was, according to contemporary stereotypes, domestic and feminine due to its focus on furniture and the culinary arts. She quickly became aware that many of the men in the publishing field and in the historical profession did not see these topics as the focus of “real” historians. In June 1931, after publicly establishing herself as a scholar, Kimball met with Ira Rich Kent of Houghton Mifflin and discussed the prospect of writing a book on eighteenth-century American diplomats in Paris. Kent saw much promise in the concept and in Kimball herself. Kimball proposed a list of twelve chapters that covered everything from these men’s experiences at court to their communiqués about the French Revolution. Two of the proposed chapters, “Cuisine and Wines” and “Shopping in Paris,” did not impress Kent, who thought that the “subject of these chapters does not at first glance seem to have any special connection with the resident Americans” proposed for the book. Most likely Kent could not see how sections on womanly pursuits such as food and clothing might

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be important to understanding the lives abroad of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.50 Kimball assured him that the subjects would be treated in a way that chronicled the importance of shops and cuisine to these men’s experiences in France and that these chapters would represent serious scholarship.51 After Kimball’s insistence that feminine pursuits would be treated in a masculine way, Kent finally agreed that “a modest amount of this sort of thing would be useful and interesting.”52 Early exchanges such as this in her career must have made Kimball acutely aware of the subjects viewed as too feminine for scholarly work. During this period, though, scholarly publications were not the periodicals in which Kimball’s work normally appeared. Though she wanted to “abandon thought of cookery and such mundane subjects” for work on Revolutionary figures and their politics, she found it easier to publish in women’s magazines. Kimball wrote over twenty-five articles on the culinary arts for Good Housekeeping, Modern Priscilla, American Cookery, and Ladies’ Home Journal. Unlike her work on historical topics in professional journals, however, she published all of these cooking articles under pseudonyms.53 Kimball’s separation of scholarly and domestic articles made it possible for her to literally make a name for herself as an academic scholar. Once appointed as curator at Monticello in the late 1940s, Kimball stopped submitting to the women’s press almost entirely. At this time, she also sought to distance herself further from contemporary female stereotypes, an attempt most obvious in her letters to men associated with the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation. The spring of 1952 brought requests from the Garden Club of Virginia—the organization of which Hazlehurst Perkins was a member—for photos of Monticello and the club’s work there. Confusion over which images they needed caused Marie Kimball to write Curtis Thacker in mutual frustration: “You never can tell about a woman. They are some thing!”54 Similarly in December 1953, when the eighth volume of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson was released, Kimball wrote a long letter to the project’s editor, Julian P. Boyd. “I am reading your eighth volume with the gusto and passion usually spent by most women on a novel,” Kimball extolled.55 Through these letters to male colleagues, Kimball expressed her distaste for the flippant characteristics normally associated with women and sought to disassociate herself from them. Ironically, just as Kimball was distancing herself from women, she was forced to write the domestically centered “Feast Days at Monticello” because of the importance of female consumers to the museum.56 However, she remained resolute in her criticism of the stereotypical woman. For Kimball, the women who read these magazines would not be interested in politics or history; they would want an article with recipes and beautiful photographs.57

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When Frank K. Houston, president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, discovered that McCall’s was interested in doing a spread that included photographs of a dinner at Monticello, he was “not very much impressed.” “It seems to me,” he wrote, “that there are plenty of other things of historical interest at Monticello for them to show in the article.” Merely focusing on pictures of food “would cheapen it.”58 Marie Kimball responded that she thought sufficient time and space would be given to the article and that it would not make Monticello look cheap. She also stressed that if they did not take this approach to writing the article, McCall’s would not be interested. Emphasizing her knowledge of such things, she laughingly commented: “I don’t suppose you have ever looked at a woman’s magazine!”59 Critical as always about women, Kimball joked about the narrowness of the female press and the implicit stereotype of the domestic woman. Unlike other women at Monticello who had celebrated their womanhood and used it to justify their presence at the site, Marie Kimball, as a female scholar, chose to adopt a masculine identity. For Kimball this meant changing the focus of her work from domestic cookery to Jefferson’s politics and presidency. It also involved attempts to disassociate herself from women in general. Though her scholarly status on the surface challenged gender stereotypes, Kimball’s disdain for “womanly” pursuits and women in general demonstrate that she, too, failed to question common assumptions about women’s roles in society. As a whole, the women of Monticello took a conservative approach to opening new opportunities at the historic house. Their presence challenged the prevailing ideas that women best served society by staying at home and that modern preservation was best handled by men, but they did not seek to change the conservative soil from which these and other ideas sprung. The women at Monticello regarded domesticity and motherhood as a foreordained component of their public work. Furthermore, their femininity took on the trappings of southern white womanhood through their interactions with African Americans at the site. First, they re-created the ideal image of the “Old South” by taking over the role of hostess and demoting black employees to servant roles. Second, they furthered another important image of the southern white woman during the 1950s: the faithful supporter of segregation. When creating the essay contest for local school children, the essay committee decided it best to name separate black and white winners but to celebrate their accomplishment together. The result was a carefully orchestrated image of racial harmony made possible by segregation.60 It was their strict adherence to stereotypes about white womanhood that made women’s presence so obvious to visitors. As curator, hostesses, and members of the educational committees, these women were the public face

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of Monticello. While the men directed the upper levels of the organization in New York, these women met the tourists and provided most of the contact with the public. Though scholars argue that Monticello evinces the growing dominance of preservation by men, these Cold War women show us that men did not maintain exclusive control of the site. Women were the public face, a role that cannot be ignored. Most importantly, their presence transformed Monticello into a feminine space. One would expect that an organization headed by businessmen and devoted to one of the founding fathers would tell a story of masculine politics. Yet, when visitors arrived, they were greeted by women who spoke about Jefferson’s culinary achievements and were taught about the Jefferson family who had called it home. These women could be seen arranging flowers around the rooms and directing the black men who acted as servants. At the same time, the tour given to all patrons was geared toward teaching children virtues, patriotism, and reverence for American heroes. The women present were merely acting out the gender stereotypes of domesticity and motherhood they had used to justify their work. By doing so, the Monticello that the public saw took on a feminine cast and, in the eyes of visitors, the plantation household became one that stressed a “happy home” image. Historians of early republic and antebellum plantations have described the domestic world on estates like Monticello as one constructed around male dominance. All individuals of the household—women, children, slaves, and employees— were under the control of the male head.61 At Monticello in the early decades of the Cold War, however, the image created of the past was one that stressed a feminine household marked by companionship between the unseen male head and the women who worked at the old house. Hazlehurst Perkins’s vision of Martha and Thomas Jefferson creating Monticello together is just one of the most eloquent articulations of this concept, but the everyday efforts of the museum’s female employees enacted it for patrons. In effect, the plantation house had become a reflection of prevailing conservative ideals of the 1950s, which stressed the importance of women’s work within the home and a household characterized by familial affections and feminine softness.62 Scholars’ myopic focus on the role of the federal government in preservation after World War II has missed the important contribution of women to the field during this period. Women’s work at places like Monticello undoubtedly opened doors for female professionals in the years that followed, a dramatic change from the ways in which men drove women from the field in the 1920s. Most importantly, though, these women’s presence shaped the image of house museums in the public mind. Because of women, Monticello became a feminine space, a fact that is lost when we ignore the gendered component of preservation in the twentieth century. It was the work of women

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that began the effort to preserve historic houses in America, and it was their return to the field in the 1950s that solidified these sites as domestic, family oriented destinations. —— I would like to thank the following people for their constant support, helpful suggestions, and careful editing: Olivier Zunz, Joshua Schnakenberg, Christopher Loomis, Phyllis Leffler, Grace Hale, Neil Dvorak, Christy Chapin, and Cindy Aron. 1. W. S. to W. Curtis Thacker, April 26, 1961, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Archives, courtesy Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. (hereafter TJMFA). Emphasis added. 2. For a discussion of republican motherhood, see Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), 243–48; Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 10; and Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 47–58. 3. For a discussion of women’s central role in the formative years of the field, see William J. Murtagh, Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America, 3d ed. (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006), xvii, 12–16, 22, 63–65; Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Presence of the Past: A History of the Preservation Movement in the United Sates before Williamsburg (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965), 41–62, 101; James M. Lindgren, “‘A New Departure in Historic, Patriotic Work’: Personalism, Professionalism, and Conflicting Concepts of Material Culture in late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Public Historian 18 (Spring 1996): 42–44; James M. Lindgren, Preserving the Old Dominion: Historic Preservation and Virginia Traditionalism (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 11, 60, 69; Barbara Howe, “Women in Historic Preservation: The Legacy of Ann Pamela Cunningham,” Public Historian 12 (Winter 1990): 33–5. 4. Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to Be Counted: White Women and Antebellum Politics in Virginia, (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 103–36; Hosmer, Presence of the Past, 43, 47–48, 62; Patricia West, Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America’s House Museums, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), 1–37; Lindgren, “‘A New Departure in Historic, Patriotic Work,’” 44. 5. Murtagh, Keeping Time, 16–17, 20, 22–23, 64; Lindgren, “‘A New Departure in Historic, Patriotic Work,’” 41–60; Hosmer, Presence of the Past, 193–236; W. Fitzhugh Brundage, “Woman’s Hand and Heart and Deathless Love: White Women and the Commemorative Impulse in the New South,” in Cynthia Mills, ed., Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 77–78. 6. For scholarship that focuses on the disparity in women’s advanced education, see Howe, “Women in Historic Preservation,” 37; Kendall Taylor, “Pioneering Efforts of Early Museum Women,” in Jane R. Glaser and Artemis Zenetou, eds., Gender Perspectives: Essays on Women in Museums (Washington, D.C., and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 12; Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Preservation Comes of Age: From Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926–1949 (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1981), 1:7, 2:867–68, 871, 906–11. 7. Julie Des Jardins, Women and the Historical Enterprise in America: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Memory, 1880–1945 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 6, 13–51. 8. Murtagh, Keeping Time, 16–17, 20, 22–23, 64; Lindgren, “‘A New Departure in Historic,

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Patriotic Work,’” 41–60; Hosmer, Presence of the Past, 193–236; Howe, “Women in Historic Preservation,” 37; Taylor, “Pioneering Efforts of Early Museum Women,” 12; Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age, 1:7, 2:867–68, 2:871; Hosmer, Presence of the Past, 153–12; Merrill D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 380–94; West, Domesticating History, 93–127; Marc Leepson, Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Save the House that Jefferson Built (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003). 9. Murtach, Keeping Time, 28, 30–31, 61. 10. May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 102. See also Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present, 2d ed. (New York and London: New Viewpoints, 1979), 199; and William Henry Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic and Political Roles, 1920–1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 199–225. 11. For an overview of this scholarship, see the essays in Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). 12. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 313–14; Jessica Weiss, To Have and to Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom, and Social Change (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 42; Ruth Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930–1965 (Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 2000) 114, 116; Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1987), 171–73. For a study of the changing portrayal of women and families in advertising see Bruce W. Brown, Images of Family Life in Magazine Advertising: 1920–1978 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1981). 13. For a discussion of the influence of female consumption on public institutions, see Jennifer Scanlon, “The Home: Stretching the Boundaries of the Domestic Sphere,” in Jennifer Scanlon, ed., The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader (New York and London: New York University Press, 2000), 14. 14. Folder: Visitor Complaints and Compliments, TJMFA. 15. For one example, see W.R.L. to Frank K. Houston, July 15, 1952, TJMFA. 16. E.F. to Frank K. Houston, Mar. 31, 1950, TJMFA. 17. A discussion of family recreation and advertising along with the role of women in this trend is available in Brown, Images of Family Life, 53, 62–66. 18. E.K. to Frank K. Houston, Sept. 11, 1950, TJMFA. 19. E.K. to Charles Barham, Jr., Sept. 11, 1950, TJMFA. 20. C.Y. to Frank K. Houston, Oct. 8, 1950, TJMFA. 21. According to Jennifer Scanlon, “Women’s magazines were the most important medium for reaching these female consumers.” Scanlon, “Advertising Women: The Thompson Women’s Editorial Department,” in The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader, 202. 22. Marie Kimball, “Feast Days at Monticello,” McCall’s, Nov. 1955, 42–47. 23. Marie Kimball to Frank K. Houston, Aug. 24, 1950, TJMFA. 24. Frank K. Houston to Marie Kimball, Oct. 10, 1950, TJMFA. 25. “Dromedary Presents Famous Cake Mixes inspired by Treasured Historic Recipes used in the Homes of the Most Famous Women in American History,” [1956], TJMFA. The advertising brochure also contained ads for a yellow cake mix inspired by Mary Todd Lincoln, a gingerbread mix baked by George Washington’s mother, and an angel food cake mix cookbook of Juliette Gordon Law. 26. For examples of such letters, see E.K.N. to Curtis Thacker, Nov. 30, 1955, TJMFA; and M.E.M. to James A. Bear, Nov. 18, 1955, TJMFA. 27. Richard Lora, “Education: Schools as Crucible in Cold War America,” in Robert H.

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Bremner and Gary W. Reichard, eds., Reshaping America: Society and Institutions, 1945–1960 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1983), 223–60. 28. Henry J. Taylor, “Youth Tours to Our National Shrines,” Your Land and Mine, Aug. 30, 1954, Number 608, script TJMFA. Emphasis in original. 29. James A. Bear, “Curator’s Report 1956,” TJMFA 30. William S. Hildreth to Foundation Library Center, Sept. 5, 1957, TJMFA; Henry Alan Johnson to Frank K. Houston, April 2, 1945, TJMFA; Henry Alan Johnson to William S. Hildreth, June 20, 1950, TJMFA; Henry Alan Johnson to Charles Barham, Jr., May 13, 1952, TJMFA. 31. Claude G. Bowers to Henry Alan Johnson, May 5, 1948, TJMFA. 32. For a discussion of women’s roles as teachers, see Sally Schwager, “Educating Women in America,” Signs 12 (Winter 1987): 336, 346–49; Myra H. Strober and David Tyack, “Why Do Women Teach and Men Manage,” Signs 5 (Spring 1980): 499. 33. Minutes of the Meeting of the TJMF Board of Directors, Jan. 19, 1951, TJMFA 34. Norton G. Pritchett, Jr., to William S. Hildreth, Mar. 28, 1958, TJMFA; James A. Bear, “Curator’s Report, 1963,” TJMFA. 35. “James A. Bear, A 20th Century ‘Mr. Monticello,’” Charlottesville-Albemarle Foundation for the Encouragement of the Arts, Arts Annual 14 (Sept. 24, 1985): 7. 36. Board of Directors of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, April 13, 1958, TJMFA. 37. Hazlehurst Bolton Perkins, “Jeffersonian Jumble,” n.d., TJMFA. The printed and revised versions of the book do not include this drafted portion. See Edwin M. Betts and Hazlehurst Bolton Perkins, Thomas Jefferson’s Flower Garden at Monticello (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Charlottesville, 1971). 38. Hazlehurst Perkins to Frank Houston, Nov. 9, 1949, TJMFA; Minutes of the Meeting of the TJMF Board of Directors, Jan. 6, 1950, TJMFA. 39. For a similar change made at Mount Vernon, see Scott Casper, “Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: African American Life at an American Shrine, from Slavery to Jim Crow,” talk delivered at the Virginia Foundation of the Humanities Fellows Seminar, Oct. 31, 2006. 40. Minutes of the Meeting of the TJMF Board of Directors, Jan. 19, 1951, TJMFA; Wilmark Service System, Inc., Narrative Survey on Guide, Mar. 13, 1959, TJMFA; Schedules and Hostess Day Book, 1957, TJMFA. 41. Some of her most famous tours were given to various American presidents, Queen Elizabeth II, and Marilyn Monroe. “Only Marilyn Monroe could steal Jefferson’s limelight,” The Charlottesville Daily Progress, Sept. 14, 1997. 42. “Mrs. Tilman Retires After 22 Years,” The Charlottesville Daily Progress, Feb. 28, 1973. 43. R.R. to Terry Tilman, Jan. 16, 1958, TJMFA. 44. Anna G. Koester, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Archives Collection Guide and Catalog, Oct. 1998, 14, 17, TJMFA. 45. Verner W. Crane, “Review: Jefferson the Scene of Europe, 1784 to 1789 by Marie Kimball,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 37 (Dec. 1950): 518–19; Verner W. Crane, “Review: Jefferson The Road to Glory, 1743 to 1776 by Marie Kimball,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 30 (Sept. 1943): 253–54; “Fiske Kimball in Virginia,” Charlottesville Daily Progress, Sept. 20, 1977; Koester, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Archives Collection Guide and Catalog, 14, 17, TJMFA. 46. “Marie G. Kimball, Author, Scholar: U.S. Historian Who Wrote Trilogy on Jefferson Dies—Found New Material,” The New York Times, Mar. 3, 1955. 47. Des Jardins, Women and the Historical Enterprise in America, 21. 48. Roberta Wein, “Women’s Colleges and Domesticity, 1875–1918,” History of Education Quarterly 14 (Spring 1974): 31–47; Jill K. Conway, “Perspective on the History of Women’s Education in the United States,” History of Education Quarterly 14 (Spring 1974): 1–12.

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49. Des Jardins, Women and the Historical Enterprise in America, 42–43. 50. Ira Rich Kent to Marie Kimball, July 8, 1931, Papers of Marie Goebel Kimball courtesy of the University of Virginia Special Collections Library. 51. Marie Kimball to Ira Rich Kent, July 10, 1931, Papers of Marie Goebel Kimball courtesy of the University of Virginia Special Collections Library. 52. Ira Rich Kent to Marie Kimball, July 21, 1931, Papers of Marie Goebel Kimball courtesy of the University of Virginia Special Collections Library. 53. For a complete list of Kimball’s pseudonyms see “List of Publications,” n.d., Papers of Marie Goebel Kimball courtesy of the University of Virginia Special Collections Library. 54. Marie Kimball to Curtis Thacker, Mar. 7, 1952, TJMFA. 55. Marie Kimball to Julian P. Boyd, Dec. 10, 1953, TJMFA. 56. Marie Kimball, “Feast Days at Monticello,” McCall’s, Nov. 1955, 42–47. The article was published posthumously. 57. Marie Kimball to Frank K. Houston, Oct. 7, 1950, TJMFA. 58. Frank K. Houston to Marie Kimball, Sept. 14, 1950, TJMFA. Emphasis added. 59. Marie Kimball to Frank K. Houston, Oct. 7, 1950, TJMFA. 60. For further development of this topic see Megan Stubbendeck, “Massive Resistance and the Jamestown Festival of 1957,” presented at the Virginia Forum, April 14, 2007, in the possession of the author. 61. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). 62. For a discussion of how public history sites primarily portray conservative visions of the past and present, see Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996); Richard Handler and Eric Gable, The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg (Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 1997); and Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig, eds., History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).

“Women Did Everything Except Run” Black Women’s Participation in the 1959 Volunteer Ticket Campaign in Memphis, Tennessee El i zab e t h G r i t t e r

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folks has there been so much ‘politics’ talk in the air,” observed Nat D. Williams, a long-time black journalist in the city. “Under every vine, fig tree, and many cotton stalks[,] conversations are swirling around the subject of politicians, political candidates, and political side-taking, like whirlpools in the Mississippi River.”1 Local Civil Rights leader Maxine A. Smith remembers, “It was a fight. It was a galvanizing fight. It was a call to arms for black people. We didn’t let up.”2 Martin Luther King, Jr., even lent his support to the battle. At the “Freedom Rally” of five thousand Memphians, he exclaimed that he “had never seen such enthusiasm at a meeting of Negroes” and was “delighted beyond power of words to see such magnificent unity.”3 What was taking place to generate such enthusiasm and unity? Four black men were running for city positions as the “Volunteer Ticket” in Memphis in 1959. Blacks represented one-third of the vote. Because each candidate faced three or more white opponents, a unified black vote and split white vote could result in victory. More than a political campaign, the endeavor was a milestone in the freedom struggle of black Memphians and generated widespread interest. Not only Dr. King made an appearance on behalf of the “Volunteer Ticket,” but also Little Rock Civil Rights leader Daisy Bates. In addition to extensive local press coverage, the campaign received national media attention, including from the New York Times, Pittsburgh Courier, and Washington Post.4 When Election Day arrived, a record number of blacks and whites cast ballots. Black women were essential to the operation of the Volunteer Ticket effort. They had multifaceted roles, from that of formal leaders who were a visible ev er b e fo re i n t he mem o ry o f li vi ng Me mph i s’ c o lo re d

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public presence and had organizational clout to “bridge leaders” who connected the candidates with voters to grassroots activists who put campaign strategies in place.5 As Maxine Smith recalls, “women did everything except run.”6 Black women threw fundraisers and spoke at them, held organizational leadership positions, engaged in voter registration and education, provided crucial administrative support, and mobilized youth. While men served more frequently as formal leaders, women and youth formed the infrastructure that got out the vote, utilizing the public spaces and institutions of their segregated community. The electoral activity of these black women changed not only the city but also the South. The Volunteer Ticket campaign marked a new era in the human, civil, and political rights struggle of black Memphians. It built up a momentum that eventually overturned de jure segregation and resulted in black political representation. Moreover, these women’s efforts were part of a larger freedom movement that led to the demise of the Jim Crow system and transformations in southern politics, two developments that resulted in a more democratic and inclusive region.7 Situated on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, Memphis lies just north of Mississippi. Arkansas is to its west, and the rest of Tennessee stretches eastward. It is located in Shelby County. In 1959, almost 500,000 people lived in the city, and blacks represented 37 percent of the population. With cotton as the chief crop, Memphis served as the agricultural and business center of the MidSouth. It also was recognized as one of the nation’s cleanest cities throughout the 1950s. Behind this veneer of physical beauty, however, existed a social, economic, and political order structured by white supremacy. The heart of black Memphis was Beale Street, where theaters, restaurants, law offices, and other establishments were located. But as soon as blacks turned the corner from Beale onto Main Street, which ran through the heart of downtown, they confronted a culture where nearly every public and private accommodation was segregated, including schools, parks, restaurants, hospitals, and transportation systems.8 One former Memphian recalls that “For Whites Only” and “Colored” signs were more numerous than magnolia trees, and black Memphians especially seem to remember that they were allowed only one day per week at the zoo.9 They also faced limited employment opportunities. Most black males worked as operatives, laborers, and service workers, while white men overwhelmingly outnumbered them in white-collar professions. Black females mainly occupied domestic and private service jobs, and white women dominated the field of clerical work.10 White control extended to the government, as no black had held city office since the late nineteenth century. Despite the Jim Crow system, black Memphians had a long tradition of voting. No statewide white primary was one reason why this was the case. These

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were the days of the “Solid South,” in which a one-party system prevailed that largely shut out blacks. Because of the dominance of white Democrats, a primary win virtually meant election. Thus, the white primary, which restricted primary voting to whites, was the most powerful disenfranchisement measure in the South. Tennessee and North Carolina were the only two southern states that never had a white primary statewide. Though most southern blacks were disenfranchised because of the primary and other methods, black Memphians saw limited resistance to voting and even encouragement for it.11 They faced the poll tax, but this measure hardly proved an obstacle because of Edward H. Crump. “Boss” Crump controlled a political machine that dominated Memphis politics from the time he became mayor in 1910 until his death in 1954. As historian J. Morgan Kousser observes, “In large part, [Crump] was public opinion and government. Memphis became, in effect, Crumpdom. In the four mayoral elections from 1931 to 1943, Crump-backed candidates polled almost 99 percent of the votes . . . a record of one-man control unmatched in any large city in American history.”12 Crump controlled not only every important office in Memphis and Shelby County, but also the seats of a member of Congress and the two U.S. senators in the decade and a half before 1948. He was the most influential figure in state government as well.13 To maintain his power, Crump had an elaborate campaign organization; he ensured that the poll tax was paid for blacks and used city employees and other “friends” to marshal black and white voters to the polls.14 Though black Memphians did not have full political independence, they engaged in sustained electoral mobilization as well as labor and Civil Rights activism. They formed political clubs, engaged in voter registration and education work, and endorsed candidates. Women were involved in all these efforts even before they gained the right to vote.15 Blacks also wielded some political leverage. By voting for certain candidates, for example, they secured better public services, such as street improvements. Blacks achieved positions of leadership in the Republican Party, including Lt. George W. Lee, who headed the local organization in the 1940s.16 In addition, a powerful labor movement developed in the 1930s and 1940s that saw some gains, and black unionists, male and female, challenged Jim Crow practices in the workplace. During World War II, these laborites and other black Memphians were part of the rising tide of Civil Rights activism in the country as they were determined to fight for the democracy at home that black soldiers were battling for abroad. The local NAACP branch’s membership rose ten times during the war, and black Memphians protested police brutality, bus segregation, and other injustices. These Civil Rights efforts continued in the post-war era.17 Black political mobilization and other forms of activism always were lim-

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ited, however, by the maintenance of the Jim Crow system and dominance of the Crump machine. Boss Crump denied blacks participation in the local Democratic organization and cracked down on efforts that threatened his control or the social order, whether these activities were engaged in by blacks or whites. Black and white laborites, black Civil Rights activists, white political opponents, and even prominent black Republicans faced harassment, violence, and even death at the hands of his machine. A businessman himself, he opposed labor activism because it threatened to get in the way of the low wages that the city promoted to attract industry. Businessmen, not friendly to unions, also supported and funded his machine. In addition, Crump and his cronies consistently engaged in flagrant violations of civil liberties that often connected with issues of race.18 In 1947, for instance, they faced outcry from white and black citizens for not allowing the Freedom Train in Memphis. Carrying documents related to America heritage, such as the Mayflower Compact, the train only made stops in places where local officials adhered to its policy of integrated viewing of its exhibits. Because the city administration did not agree to this policy, the train organizers cancelled Memphis’s stop.19 Even with all these disadvantages of the Crump machine, however, Maxine Smith says that at least blacks were acclimated to vote.20 Only when a local political faction broke with Crump in 1948 did both black and white Memphians begin to experience freedom from the city machine. White liberal reformers, white and black laborites, and black political activists threw their support behind Estes Kefauver for U.S. Senate and Gordon Browning for governor, and men and women of all economic levels participated in the rebellion. Browning and Kefauver became the first candidates not backed by Crump to win major offices in decades, and Beale Street rejoiced. These local and state political fissures paralleled and related to national developments. Following the surge of black activism in the postwar years not only in Memphis but also across the South, President Truman called for Civil Rights measures including eliminating the poll tax and making lynching a federal offense, though he did not advocate abolishing de jure segregation. When his proposals were adopted as the first-ever Civil Rights plank in the party platform at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, the Dixiecrats, a splinter group dedicated to the maintenance of segregation, walked out. Crump was against Truman’s proposed measures and supported the Dixiecrats, whereas Kefauver backed Truman and opposed the poll tax.21 Black Memphians seized the new political opportunities opened to them as a result of the 1948 developments. J. E. Walker, a prominent businessman and political leader, ran for the school board in 1951; he was the first black to seek local office since the early twentieth century. Black Democratic and Republican leaders joined forces to organize the Citizens Nonpartisan Voter

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Registration Committee, and the number of black voters rose from 7,000 to 19,608 during Walker’s campaign.22 Young attorney Benjamin Hooks managed his bid. “Interest in the campaign was high. There was a new pride in the black community in the city,” Hooks recalls. “Everywhere, people were talking about the Walker candidacy. In beauty parlors, barbershops, offices, at church and social club meetings, on street corners, and around dinner tables, the talk was about the election.”23 Walker’s campaign team said that his election would be “an example to the North and Russia that democracy works in the South.”24 In these Cold War years, when progressive social organizations faced repression and charges of communism by governmental authorities, black political activism represented U.S. democracy at work and resistance to it went against the country’s image as a beacon of freedom. Even so, the Crump organization took some steps against Walker’s candidacy. Machine loyalists distributed, for instance, flyers in white neighborhoods that emphasized his race, and Crump threatened to run Walker out of the city if he did not withdraw his candidacy.25 Walker ended up losing the contest, but not solely because of the opposition of Crump. More importantly, not enough black voters existed to elect him and not enough whites were willing to vote for him. Nevertheless, the campaign was a victory in other ways. As Walker had said, “Whether I’m elected or not, I still can’t lose.”26 The Nonpartisan Committee played an important role in increasing black voter registration in the 1950s and 1960s, and the bid helped lay the foundation for the increased black political mobilization to come. The year 1954 marked Crump’s death and the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled school segregation unconstitutional. With no successor to take Crump’s place, a leadership vacuum existed and various groups sought power in Memphis. Blacks took advantage of this situation to further step up their political and Civil Rights activism, and a new generation of black leaders led the way. Chief among them were Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., and Laurie Sugarmon; H. T. Lockard; Vasco and Maxine Smith; Jesse H. Turner, Sr.; A. W. Willis, Jr.; and Benjamin Hooks. Most were Memphis natives and had graduate degrees from the North; southern schools had not accepted them because of their skin color. The men were World War II or Korean War veterans. Maxine Smith was a college professor before having a son, and Laurie Sugarmon completed her bachelor’s degree at Wellesley.27 By the mid-1950s, these leaders all had come to Memphis and become involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch and the Bluff City and Shelby County Council of Civic Clubs, a strong network of black civic organizations that had formed during Walker’s campaign with an initial goal of increasing black voter registration.28 It had continued to engage in political efforts as well as direct-action

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activities, including a successful boycott of the Commercial Appeal, the city’s morning daily, for its discriminatory coverage of blacks.29 The council represented thirty thousand registered voters by 1959.30 Inspired by the Brown ruling, this group of leaders turned to litigation as one of their major strategies for Civil Rights. Maxine Smith remembers about Brown, “It was like the Emancipation Proclamation to us. It was just that important.”31 Lockard, the NAACP chapter’s president and head of its legal committee, spearheaded a flurry of lawsuits for desegregation of Memphis State College, the public library system, the city bus service, and other accommodations.32 Willis, Hooks, and Russell Sugarmon assisted him with these cases, and Turner served as a plaintiff. While the suit against Memphis State was pending, Laurie Sugarmon and Maxine Smith applied for admission to its graduate school but were turned down even though Sugarmon had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Smith had received her bachelor’s degree from Spelman at age 19 followed by a master’s degree from Middlebury.33 After this incident, they became involved in the NAACP branch as the only female board members.34 Smith also chaired its membership committee, spurring the chapter’s rise in membership from a low of 818 in 1954 to 2418 in May 1959.35 Despite its growth during World War II, the NAACP branch as well as labor activism had declined in large part because of Cold War pressures.36 While these leaders challenged segregation in the courts, they also engaged in sustained electoral mobilization; they saw politics as their other major tool for civil rights. After Walker’s candidacy, more blacks ran for public office, but none won and only one black received a political appointment. Their candidacies succeeded, however, in contributing to a growing black political consciousness and stimulating black voter registration. Registration efforts accelerated in 1958 when W. C. Patton, a voter education director for the national office of the NAACP, came to Memphis and worked out of its chapter office. Because Alabama had outlawed the organization, Patton had moved from Birmingham. Smith had become a full-time volunteer for the local branch by this time, and Patton served as her voter registration mentor. Their work helped result in the registration of more than fifty thousand blacks by 1959—more than seven times the number in 1951.37 “I think we were ripe for seeking all things,” Smith recalls. “We were very uncomfortable being completely segregated in all walks. This was pre-sit-in movement. We saw the ballot as the voice of our people.”38 As blacks grew in voting strength, whites tried to limit their electoral power. Rev. Roy Love, a popular black minister, nearly was elected to the school board in the 1955 city election. The top four vote getters won seats, and he had come in fifth. In an attempt to deter blacks from winning office, Memphis officials ensured the law was changed to have candidates run for specific

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Â� positions rather than at-large seats. Despite the opposition of black leaders, it took effect before the next city election in 1959.39 Right away, Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., and other black leaders schemed to manipulate the new law to their advantage. Blacks comprised about a third of the vote, so they figured that blacks had a good chance of winning office if several white candidates sought one post; a splintered white vote and unified black vote could result in victory.40 As a result, Sugarmon, Hooks, Love, and Rev. Henry Clay Bunton, a wellknown black minister, decided to make bids in the 1959 election.41 Local elections were nonpartisan, so they ran as independents. All faced three or more white opponents. Vying to become one of the five most powerful city officials, Sugarmon was a candidate for public works commissioner. Memphis had a commission form of government in which the mayor and four commissioners administered the city government, served as policymakers, and controlled the city’s budget.42 Hooks stood for juvenile court judge. Bunton and Love sought school board posts and made school integration the number-one plank in their joint platform. Despite the Brown decision, schools remained segregated in Memphis, as was the case nearly everywhere in the South. Because of the extent of the black candidacies, black male leaders of both political parties decided to come together to support their campaigns and the idea of a unity ticket was born, a ticket that would allow for the pooling of resources and spark the political interest of black Memphians.43 They called the slate the “Volunteer Ticket” because of Tennessee’s nickname, the “Volunteer State.”44 The Volunteer Ticket effort marked an unprecedented community-wide attack against white domination. Blacks wanted not only to destroy the Jim Crow system and have their voice heard in government, but also to prove their decency, dignity, and respectability in a culture that deemed them inferior, subservient, and disreputable. They wanted better lives for themselves and their children as well as public service improvements, increased job opportunities, and harmonious race relations. They also wanted to liberate whites from racism and prejudice.45 “What Negroes have in mind is to fight until hell freezes over and if necessary skate across on ice to freedom,” proclaimed campaign chairman Lt. George W. Lee at the Freedom Rally to deafening applause.46 “In those days . . . blacks were not fragmented to the point we are now,” Smith recalled some forty years later. “We had nothing. We wanted everything. . . . We knew we were going somewhere. . . . There was a ray of hope that we would get out from under the yoke of complete discrimination and racism.”47 The Volunteer organization quickly formed as the campaign structure. Men held the top leadership positions with the exception of women controlling the youth committee. Representing a cross section of black leadership,

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some one hundred blacks served on campaign committees. Independent voters and members of the local black Democratic and Republican organizations, the Shelby County Democrat Club and Lincoln League, made up the ranks of those who put campaign strategies in place. Women and youth primarily composed the large contingent of grassroots workers.48 Though not as significant as the Volunteer organization, the Leadership Council played an important role as well. Formed to facilitate unity and cooperation among black leaders for the election, it included representatives from more than seventy black civic, business, labor, religious, women’s, veterans,’ and fraternal organizations. The council endorsed black and white candidates, held a few large meetings, and made some public statements. Like the Volunteer organization, for the most part black men were formal leaders and women served in support functions.49 Women provided crucial administrative help for the Volunteer Ticket in these organizations and elsewhere, carrying out the behind-the-scenes work necessary for the campaigns to run smoothly. Lola Lee managed the Volunteer Ticket headquarters, and Geneva Evans served as its secretary. It became a busy place as the office workers answered the constantly ringing phones, mailed campaign literature, and arranged speaking appearances for the candidates. “You find the same hustle and bustle in the private offices of the candidates. Their phones ring continuously and their office help, plus extra girls are kept moving at a fast pace,” reported the Memphis World, a black weekly. “And, it doesn’t stop there. The candidates find it necessary to hold open house at their own homes. The phones ring there, too, and scores of people ‘just drop by’ to talk about the approaching election.”50 With television just coming onto the scene, face-to-face communication between the candidates and voters was especially important, and women arranged it. Candidates spoke and met hundreds of voters at Coke (Coca Cola) and lawn parties, both of which were informal gatherings of usually twenty to thirty people at private homes. Women hosted these events and gave speeches. Coke parties increased from four to five weekly at the beginning of the campaign to as many as eight a day by its end.51 At civic club meetings and rallies, candidates met potential voters as well; women served as rally chairs and club officers.52 Candidates perhaps made the most appearances at churches, and women, the mainstay of the church, promoted these engagements.53 Women also did the on-the-ground work that reached voters one-on-one. They played invaluable roles in the Volunteer organization’s extensive ward and precinct network. An army of more than eleven hundred workers stepped forward in seventy-eight precincts. Working-class women formed the majority of these activists and often served as precinct club leaders. Using maps

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obtained from the city engineer’s office, precinct workers developed and walked canvassing routes in their areas. Along with campaign literature, they took with them “Volunteer cards” to record residents’ availability to help in the effort, marking down which citizens would serve on a telephone committee or pass out handbills. They also noted whether people would labor as poll workers, transport voters to the polls, or take care of children on election day. They solicited campaign contributions and volunteers as well as ascertained which voters needed a babysitter or a ride to the polls.54 At the Volunteer headquarters, campaign workers monitored tasks such as raising money and lining up transportation to the polls with a flow chart that counted the days down to election.55 The ward and precinct organization also was involved in voter registration efforts along with civic clubs, churches, the Memphis NAACP, and the Citizens Nonpartisan Voter Registration Committee. Smith recalls: We knocked on doors. We went through churches. The precincts gave us the neighborhood structure, and it also included organizations. Churches were given a program. Greek Letter organizations were a group. Everybody was given a goal and a program. We had very active civic clubs in those days that had the same sort of structure in a sense as a precinct club that the political group had. They were neighborhood-oriented so we had two shots at the same neighborhood. . . . We had labor organizations. We used everything that was organized with a big percent of black citizens. . . . We walked the streets. We maybe had some telephoning. But it was perhaps almost totally face-to-face contact.

Nonpartisan Committee workers stationed themselves in the halls of the Shelby County Courthouse, where they urged blacks who came in to obtain a driver’s license or take care of other matters to register to vote.56 At Bunton’s church, Mrs. Dunn said about its voter registration drive, “We are going all out to help our leader as we are so very proud of his leadership.”57 Smith and other activists also taught citizens how to use voting machines. All this work paid off: nearly 7,000 blacks registered to vote, an average of about 140 per day, during the campaign.58 Lillie J. Wheeler was one of the precinct workers involved in the Volunteer Ticket effort. She lived in the LeMoyne Gardens housing project and was a leader of her neighborhood civic club and a member of the NAACP and Nonpartisan Committee. She says, “I am proud to say that I was . . . a grassroots worker . . . because that’s where the activities are. You’re not out there for publicity or to be seen but to work hard to get something done.”59 Wheeler threw Coke parties, raised money, and took her young children along when canvassing neighborhoods, figuring it was part of their education. An active

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churchgoer, she also prayed for the success of the candidates. Like other precinct workers, she gave citizens a list of voters in their neighborhood if they wanted one. These citizens were responsible for talking to these voters and their friends to get support for the Volunteer Ticket.60 “I think everyone has influence over five or ten people,” Wheeler says. “Some may say three but I say five or ten. When you talk to that five to ten, you tell them to talk to their friends and relatives, and then it keeps going like a chain.”61 Johnnie Mae Peters was another working-class woman who was a precinct worker. She served as a volunteer at the NAACP branch in the mid-1950s. A leader of the Parent Teacher Association at her neighborhood school, she traveled in 1956 to Montgomery, Alabama, for a PTA convention and participated in the bus boycott. She remembers that the PTA, civic clubs, political leagues, churches, NAACP, and Nonpartisan Committee, all of which she was a member, cooperated with one another in electoral efforts. Her church, for example, would supply chairs and help furnish food for her Coke parties. Additionally, Peters coordinated a babysitting service, a concern that men may have missed. She recruited youth to baby-sit at her home so that citizens could go vote or work at the polls.62 Peters, Wheeler, and Smith all recall that more women participated in political efforts than men. Smith remembers, “As usual, we were the mass in the background.”63 Wheeler points out that many women worked at home, which provided them with a degree of time and flexibility. Perhaps most significantly, women were willing to do the crucial, behind-the-scenes campaign tasks. Wheeler compares these political activities to “housework,” saying that men did not believe that either was their responsibility.64 Russell Sugarmon recalls that men put up campaign signs, made speeches, and provided transportation, but only women served in secretarial capacities.65 “The women were the muscle. The women were the driving wheel,” he says. “The men made the noise, and the women did the work. Except for a few of us, I thought the noise didn’t matter. I thought the people who mattered were the ones . . . doing the grunt work.”66 The female precinct workers faced a number of challenges in carrying out their work. It was hard, taxing, and time consuming to engage in voter registration, education, and participation activities. They had to convince some blacks that their votes mattered and get others to overcome the “Crump mentality” of being told how to vote.67 They also faced men who resented working under them. Wheeler, Peters, and Jennie Betts, another precinct worker, all agreed, however, that this latter problem did not impede their efforts significantly. Wheeler says, “It wasn’t anything we weren’t used to so we knew how to handle it. I always believed in catching flies with honey rather than Â�vinegar.” She would try to make men feel important and like a leader. Peters

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and Betts found it effective to take a “hard line” with men. As Peters put it, “You talked to them and you let them know what you mean and mean what you say and they don’t mess with you.”68 A more considerable problem appears to have been class divisions.69 Betts and Wheeler remember widespread resentment among working-class, mostly uneducated blacks toward Sugarmon and the other candidates because of their middle-class status. According to Betts, a better word is “jealousy” rather than “resentment.”70 Wheeler remembers that “people kind of resented those who had a penny,” and they would say that Sugarmon was “born with a silver spoon in his mouth” because he did not have to chop cotton. “But he went to school, and he worked hard,” she says. “[H]e was always anxious to learn, and then he was anxious to share what he learned with others.”71 The precinct workers were responsible for trying to smooth over these differences. Betts told voters that the black candidates were trying to improve the economic condition of all blacks by bringing them up to their middle-class position. Wheeler pointed out that the candidates were not wealthy people, she personally liked them, and they “just didn’t have to do a lot of things like we had to do to get ahead.” She said that they could achieve the same status as the candidates if they worked hard and got an education. Despite such pleas, a number of blacks still refused to vote for the Volunteer Ticket candidates.72 During the campaign, at least a few women engaged in both grassroots and formal leadership activities. Laurie Sugarmon, for example, directed the Volunteer Ticket Youth Committee, which Smith co-chaired. With headquarters at the Elks Lodge on Beale across from the Volunteer organization, the Youth Volunteers energetically supported the ticket by canvassing neighborhoods, sponsoring campaign events, and participating in political rallies.73 Sugarmon, who had encouraged her husband to run in the first place, also organized ward and precinct lists and planned Coke parties.74 When her husband was late to speaking engagements, she filled in for him, and she sometimes gave remarks alongside him, earning praise for her articulateness from the Commercial Appeal.75 The Tri-State Defender even profiled her in an article titled “Mrs. Sugarmon Proves that Woman Has Place in Politics.” Detailing her campaign activities, it said, “Some women may believe that politics is an exclusive man’s world, but not Mrs. Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr.” The black weekly quoted her saying, “I feel that women should take a very active interest in politics because politics is not just a man’s game.”76 Another prominent female leader was Willa McWilliams Walker, a teacher and community activist. By supporting Frances Coe, the white incumbent school board member, instead of Bunton, she received public criticism from the Leadership Council and Interdenominational Church Movement, a black organization that endorsed candidates. Walker told the Memphis World that

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she backed Coe because of her good relationship with black teachers and work to improve the school system. “As much as I would like to see Negroes take their rightful places in our city government, I shall never vote for a Negro just because he is a Negro,” she declared. “I shall always vote for a qualified person, not to supplant a qualified person because of race, creed or color. I have nothing to gain as an individual. My vote is not for the sale for money, a job, or a promotion. And anyone who dares call me an ‘Uncle Tom,’ I shall call him for what he is.”77 As her statement indicates, blacks not supporting the Volunteer Ticket candidates were deemed “Uncle Toms” and faced vociferous criticism. She and other blacks also evidently had on their minds the memory of the days of Crump control when the political machine paid some blacks for their votes and gave them other political rewards as well. Women played crucial roles in the two major fund-raisers for the Volunteer Ticket: the Freedom Rally and the Freedom Banquet. The biggest event was the Freedom Rally at Mason Temple, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahalia Jackson shared top billing for their appearances. Men took the lead in planning it, women sold the one-dollar tickets through the churches, and church choirs united to sing at the rally. King exclaimed that black votes for the Volunteer Ticket would show that the “whole Negro race, not just a few agitators, just want to be free” and “give impetus for our whole Civil Rights struggle to every Negro in the United States.”78 For the Freedom Banquet, held just six days before the election at Beale Street’s Club Ebony, women took an unusually visible role. Daisy Bates spoke, and two women co-chaired the banquet. As a result of women selling the ten-dollar tickets, some four hundred blacks, representing social, fraternal, political, labor, and civic circles, attended. Bates, who came as a volunteer, tied the Memphis crusade to the anti-colonialism movement and Little Rock school desegregation battle, saying that these efforts were part of the same struggle. Like King, she urged the crowd to back the Volunteer Ticket, saying that if the children who integrated “Little Rock’s high schools could walk through threatening, hissing mobs to carry through a principle, surely you people here in Memphis can get up and walk three blocks to cast a vote on behalf of freedom.” Widely heralded as a success, the banquet netted an estimated three thousand dollars. All in all, the Volunteer Ticket campaign raised some twenty thousand dollars, which mainly came from blacks of very modest means.79 To be sure, Bates’ starring role was atypical. Men usually were the center of attention and gave the major remarks at large political events. Bates, in contrast, was the keynote speaker and the spotlight of banquet publicity. Praising her as a dynamic speaker, the Volunteer Ticket’s Lt. Lee had urged all Memphians to hear her.80 Similarly, Jackson had received publicity on the same level as King in promotions for the Freedom Rally. Bates is better known

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as a local Civil Rights leader and Jackson as a gospel singer, but the publicity and newspaper coverage for these events suggest that their public saw them as national Civil Rights leaders.81 Though their political activism was unconventional, Bates and Sugarmon expressed conventional gendered interests for it. As Bates told her audience, “I am an angry young woman in a hurry . . . in a hurry for a decent education and better opportunity for my children and your children.”82 Sugarmon noted that one could not separate the struggles of women from the struggles of blacks.83 She told the Tri-State Defender: The decisions which our lawmakers form affect every phase of a woman’s life—her children and their well being, her home, her property, her husband’s job—and specifically I believe that any woman who does not champion the cause of Civil Rights, be it through politics or some other medium, is not worth[y of] the name mother. The challenge today is not to die, but to live. No mother should be willing to bring children into the world to be a slave. I want my children to live a better life in the South than I did as a child.84

By revealing maternal motivations, Bates and Sugarmon tempered their militancy in stepping out into the “male” political arena They tapped into a prominent strain in female activism worldwide: women invoking and using their status as mothers and caretakers in order to legitimize and justify their efforts to create a better society.85 Similarly, black female Memphians mainly adhered to social convention by taking up grassroots work and allowing men to occupy formal leadership positions. At the same time that these women conformed to social standards, they also challenged racial and gender norms through their political activity. As the Tri-State Defender reported, politics largely was considered the domain of men. Nat D. Williams, the black columnist and political observer, wrote that Russell and Laurie Sugarmon “equally symbolized the future,” and that black women displayed an “unusual outpouring of interest” in the campaign.86 Indeed, the political work of these black female Memphians not only furthered the Civil Rights movement but also served as a precursor of the feminist movement. The black community, however, limited its potential in the campaign in not permitting more women to serve in roles beyond grassroots ones. The Freedom Banquet’s success, for instance, attests to women’s achievement in nontraditional campaign positions, as does the activism of Laurie Sugarmon. While these women and other black Memphians rallied to support the Volunteer Ticket candidates, white Memphians mobilized against their campaign. They pressured white office seekers to “thin their ranks,” engaged in

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get-out-the-vote efforts, and threw their support behind strong white candidates. “Keep Memphis City Government White” became their rallying cry, and the black candidates faced harassment and death threats. Some whites tried to bribe precinct workers to support white office seekers, but Wheeler, Betts, and others refused. As Betts says, you “don’t sell your integrity for nothing.” Black women who spent two weeks furiously typing canvassing lists of registered black voters—lists that Russell Sugarmon called “the unspectacular heart of any campaign”—saw their work go missing. All these efforts to defeat the black candidates resulted in an even greater push from the black community to elect them.87 On election day, more than forty black churches held sunrise prayer services, women prepared breakfast for the voters, and the parishioners marched to the polls dressed in their Sunday best. More than eleven hundred black campaign workers converged at area headquarters and the polls on this hot, humid day. Youth Volunteers served as babysitters and transported voters to the polls. While some blacks completed a final telephone canvass of black voters, poll workers distributed campaign literature and sample ballots that marked the Volunteer Ticket candidates and endorsees. Blacks voted all day long, and “[w]omen really loaded the voting lines.” Though the polls closed at 7 p.m., those in line still could vote, and lines around the block resulted in many wards staying open until past 10 p.m. Black Memphians came out in record numbers, and the Volunteer Ticket candidates received an incredible 89 to 95 percent of their votes. But these efforts were not enough to elect them. Whites turned out in unprecedented numbers to defeat the black office seekers, who all came in second. Each received less than 2 percent of white votes.88 Black support provided the balance of power, however, for the election of two city commissioners, who eventually provided blacks with jobs, took steps to improve conditions at the black public hospital, and supported the integration of the zoo, library system, museums, and buses.89 Despite the loss at the polls for the black candidates, the Volunteer Ticket campaign marked a watershed in the black freedom struggle and local politics in Memphis, laying the groundwork for future political, civil rights, and economic gains. “We won everything but the election,” Russell Sugarmon said.90 “It was a democratic activity. There were more people expressing themselves than ever. What we won was a politicized group who didn’t want to stop,” he later recalled.91 After the election, Sugarmon and other leaders made the Volunteer organization permanent by restructuring the Shelby County Democratic Club (SCDC) into a solid, precinct-based organization.92 Women continued to serve largely as precinct leaders and workers and in clerical positions, and Peters, Wheeler, Betts, Smith, Sugarmon, and Walker all participated in the club.93

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Within a few years, black Memphians made dramatic strides politically and saw some Volunteer Ticket goals fulfilled. In 1960, black electoral support for county candidates resulted in the taking down of “For Whites Only” and “Colored” signs from public facilities and the hiring of the first black deputy sheriffs.94 Black votes also provided the balance of power in Shelby County for the primary victory of Sen. Kefauver against an avowed segregationist; he went on to win in November. Jesse Turner, Sr., won a spot on the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee, cracking white control of the party organization and meriting New York Times coverage.95 For the presidential race, the first integrated women’s political event was held for the John F. Kennedy campaign.96 In contrast to 1956, when most black Memphians voted for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 70 percent voted for Kennedy. As a result, Kennedy campaign staff ensured that Russell Sugarmon and all the precinct leaders received personalized invitations to the inauguration. Residents of the Foote Homes, a public housing project, raised funds so that their precinct leader, Druzy Anderson, could go. The Democratic club became the largest and most influential black political organization in Memphis by 1961, consisting of sixty-five precinct clubs with some having as many as one hundred members. Sugarmon and other male leaders expanded their organization statewide in 1962 by forming the Tennessee Voters Council, which mobilized blacks in senatorial, gubernatorial, and presidential races. Black electoral power led to a number of black political appointments in the city as well.97 These years also saw the rise of the direct-action movement in Memphis. College students initiated the sit-ins in March 1960, sparking a twenty-month campaign that local activists called the “freedom movement.” “It was like somebody threw a light on material that had been soaked with some kind of inflammable matter,” Russell Sugarmon remembers. “It really spread like mad.” Black Memphians from all walks of life conducted marches, boycotts, sit ins, and pickets in order to end segregation and employment discrimination. The ward and precinct political organization provided the structure for communication and mobilization of the freedom movement, and political and direct-action leaders and activists overlapped. Peters provided food for the protestors, and Wheeler, Betts, Smith, and Laurie Sugarmon engaged in direct action. Russell Sugarmon, Hooks, and other NAACP lawyers defended those arrested. Smith coordinated the protests through the office of the NAACP chapter, which grew to be the largest in the South with 5,200 members in May 1960. Named the branch’s executive secretary in 1961, Smith began the start of a four-decade-long tenure in that position as the most visible and prominent Civil Rights leader in Memphis. In November 1961, the directaction protests were called off after private and public facilities desegregated,

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including eating places and the bus and library systems. Elementary schools underwent token integration that same year, and increased job opportunities soon followed. The NAACP and SCDC were the two major Civil Rights organizations in Memphis, so strong that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Congress of Racial Equality did not have much of a presence.98 The mid-1960s saw a combination of social, economic, and political gains for black Memphians tempered by tokenism, ongoing discrimination, and structural barriers. The New York Times reported in April 1964 that Memphis had “made more progress toward desegregation with less strife than any other major city in the Deep South,” a remarkable achievement especially given that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not passed until that summer. The new law, for which the local NAACP branch had advocated, banned discrimination in public accommodations. The NAACP chapter president, Jesse Turner, remarked that same year, however, that most of the Civil Rights gains in the city were token and halfhearted. All legal barriers to integration were removed by 1965, but the Memphis NAACP worked through a combination of litigation, political and direct action, negotiation, and letter writing to eradicate remaining discriminatory practices and press for more economic opportunities for blacks. Taking advantage of the Civil Rights Act’s Title VII provision, which banned racial discrimination by employers and unions, the chapter, along with black unionists, filed complaints to the federal government.99 These years also saw increased black labor activism as well as anti-poverty organizing. Blacks achieved some economic gains. More entered customary white jobs and supervisory positions than ever before, for instance. Yet, Smith observed, “[C]overt resistance in the form of tokenism and appeasement has in many instances thwarted our [employment] efforts.”100 Black electoral mobilization in Memphis peaked in influence in 1964, leading to a sea change in local and state politics and having an impact on the national political scene. As the Republican Party turned toward the anti-civilrights stance of its presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964, more than 99 percent of black Memphians voted for Democrats in state and national elections. Their votes provided the balance of power to force out the incumbent congressman in favor of one supportive of integration and to elect an all-Democratic delegation to the state legislature, including A. W. Willis, Jr., the first black elected to the body in the twentieth century. H. T. Lockard won a seat on the Shelby County Court, the forerunner of the County Commission, in the first successful black bid for local public office in more than fifty years.101 “Shelby County political traditions, which once seemed as indestructible as the pyramids, are beginning to teeter in the shockwave of [the] awesome Negro vote,” reported the Commercial Appeal.102 In addition,

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the Tennessee Voters Council provided the structure for the black vote statewide to be the decisive factor in the election of Democrats in the presidential and senatorial races.103 More black political gains came in the mid-1960s, but a new run-off law proved to be restrictive. Lyndon B. Johnson and his Democratic Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enabled more than a majority of southern blacks to become registered voters by outlawing disenfranchisement measures. More black Memphians won public office, including Hooks and Russell B. Sugarmon. In 1967, Willis became the first black in the South to run for mayor in a major city, though he was unsuccessful. That year, the NAACP chapter and SCDC supported the change of city government to a mayorcouncil system in which seven of the council seats were district positions and six were at-large seats. Two blacks were elected to the city council from majority black districts, and one was elected from a nearly majority black district. Despite black opposition, however, Memphis voters passed a run-off law in 1967 that required that candidates for city offices receive the majority of the vote. It precluded blacks from holding many of these positions because not enough whites, who continued to make up most of the population, were willing to vote for blacks.104 The late 1960s saw the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the “Black Monday” movement. King came to the city to support sanitation workers protesting poor working conditions, low pay, and racist supervisors. Their strike mobilized black Memphians, who saw in them “a reflection of their own rage about ongoing racial injustice and their own quest for liberation.” Smith served on the strike’s coordinating committee, and “workingclass women [were] at the heart of the strike support movement.” 105 When King was shot to death on April 4, 1968, Memphis burst into riots that spread throughout the country. The mayor reached a settlement with the strikers only after King’s murder.106 To protest the lack of school integration, Smith and Laurie Sugarmon led the Black Monday movement in 1969. In a controversial move, black students stayed home from school on Mondays. Because school funding was based on average daily attendance, these actions proved quite effective, resulting in the seating of black school board representatives, black administrators, and eventually the first black superintendent. After her supporters persuaded her to run, Smith became the first black female elected to a city position when she won a school board seat in 1971; she went on to chair the board.107 Sugarmon also personally experienced black educational gains. A specialist in Spanish literature, she joined Memphis State University in 1967 as its first black faculty member. Working for the school that had once denied her admission, she pressed for more black staff members.108 Since the 1960s, black Memphians continued to make important but limit-

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ed political gains. The electoral activities of the 1950s and 1960s laid the foundation for the rise of black public officials, including the Harold Ford family. Only two blacks, however, had won positions citywide by 1991 because of the run-off measure and ongoing racial tensions. It took the repeal of the run-off law that year for the city’s first black mayor, Willie Herenton, to be elected.109 Receiving few white votes, he won with the help of Smith, Wheeler, and other longtime activists. Herenton was re-elected to a record fifth term in 2007, but the race was compared to that of 1991 for its racial polarization; again, he received scant white support, even though a substantial number of whites had come to back him previously in elections.110 As of 2008, black men and women held the majority of the seats on the city council and school board. In contrast to 1959, when whites made sure no blacks became public officials, they now often had to choose which one to elect. The run-off repeal, a majority black population, and ongoing black electoral mobilization were three key factors that accounted for these black political achievements.111 Yet, these victories were double-edged. More black women had won public office than ever previously, but black men had been elected in greater numbers and to more powerful positions. Furthermore, at least sixty-six Memphis lawmakers, judges, council members, and public employees faced corruption charges from 2000 to 2007, casting a negative light on black and white city officials.112 Despite Civil Rights gains, black and white Memphians also saw the continuation of economic and social divisions, and these tensions had an impact not only on the city but also on county politics and life. Some developments, however, revealed that polarization and inequality were lessening. Blacks entered white-collar professions and graduated from high school and college in increasing numbers, but they remained both in poverty and affected by crime in numbers disproportionate to their population in the early twentyfirst century.113 In 2006, the FBI even reported that the city was the metropolitan area with the highest violent crime rate in the United States.114 Though the Black Monday movement was successful, many white Memphians negatively responded to the advent of busing in the 1970s, fleeing to the suburbs and forming “segregationist academies.” As of 2008, Memphis public schools were overwhelmingly black, and county schools were predominately white. In contrast to the city, whites made up the majority of the county population and held the most seats on the county council and county school board. These reflections of racial polarization did not contribute to decreasing black-white tensions. However, county voters elected a black mayor, A C Wharton, for the first time in 2002, which indicated racial division was diminishing, and 64 percent cast their ballots for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Young citizens of Shelby County also were more likely to vote for someone of the opposite race.115

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In the early years of the twenty-first century, Smith, Sugarmon, Wheeler, and Peters all remained dedicated to their lifelong pursuit for civil rights. Smith served as a school board member and NAACP executive secretary until 1995. In her retirement, she continued to engage in voter registration work and chaired the national education committee of the NAACP. From 1994 to 2006, she sat on the Tennessee Board of Regents, where she expanded educational opportunities for blacks and women. She was awarded the 2003 Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum, the nation’s highest Civil Rights honor.116 Sugarmon—later known as Miriam DeCosta-Willis— had a successful career in academia. After working for Memphis State, she went on to teach at Howard University, LeMoyne-Owen College, and George Mason University before retiring in 1999. She mentored women and blacks and authored several books and articles, including some on Memphis black history. After her retirement from her jobs as a school crossing guard and cashier, Peters served on the boards of the Shelby County Democrat Party, Shelby County Community Action Agency, and Area Legal Services. She continued her longstanding practice of keeping voter registration and NAACP membership cards readily available in her car and home. And Wheeler retired from her career as long-time director of an area Head Start center. She carried on with her voter registration activities, targeting high school students just eligible to vote and working to secure voting rights for ex-felons. Though these four women worked for and saw major civil rights and political gains for blacks, they remained aware at the beginning of the twenty-first century that the freedom struggle was ongoing and unfinished. “I’m a born optimist,” Smith says. “We’re going to win this thing. I won’t see it. But I’m so grateful for having been a part of it.”117 All in all, the Volunteer Ticket story provides hope for the future. It shows how women and men creatively mobilized to achieve change against tremendous odds. It is a small story, but one of profound magnitude. —— 1. Williams, “Politics in the Air,” Tri-State Defender (hereafter TSD), July 18, 1959, 7. 2. Smith, interview by author, transcript, Oct. 9. 2000, Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (hereafter SOHP), 9. All the SOHP interviews also are available at the Memphis and Shelby County Room at the Memphis-Shelby County Public Library and Information Center. 3. Burleigh Hines, “5,000 Bury Uncle Toms at Rally,” TSD, Aug. 8, 1959, 1. 4. This author examined the election coverage of Memphis’s two white dailies, the Commercial Appeal (hereafter CA) and Memphis Press-Scimitar (hereafter PS); its two black newspapers, the TSD and Memphis World (hereafter MW); and the Nashville Tennessean. For national coverage, see: “National Interest in Our Election,” PS, Aug. 20, 1959, 3; “Can Memphis Negroes Elect City Officials?” Jet, Jul. 30, 1959, 14; “Memphis Could Elect 4 Negroes,” Pittsburgh

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Courier, Aug. 15, 1959, 5; “Negro’s Campaign Jars Memphis in Battle for Major City Post,” New York Times, Aug. 16, 1959, 70. 5. This study’s understanding of female participation is particularly inspired by Kathryn L. Nasstrom, “Down to Now: Memory, Narrative, and Women’s Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta, Georgia,” Gender and History 11, no. 1 (Apr. 1999): 113–44; Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long? African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). An excellent theoretical essay on women in politics is Guida West and Rhoda Lois Blumberg, “Reconstructing Social Protest from a Feminist Perspective,” in Women and Social Protest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3–35. 6. Smith, interview by Laurie B. Green, tape recording, Aug. 17, 1995, Behind the Veil Collection (hereafter BTV), Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. 7. Southern black women’s formal political activity before the 1960 sit-in movement is an under-explored area of scholarship. Works that address it include: Ann Short Chirhart, Torches of Light (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005); Ann D. Gordon et al, eds., African American Women and the Vote (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997); Christina Greene, Our Separate Ways (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Nasstrom, “Down to Now”; Megan T. Shockley, We, Too, Are Americans (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004); Steven F. Lawson, “From Boycotts to Ballots,” in Civil Rights Crossroads (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 97–118; Steven F. Lawson, “Civil Rights and Black Liberation,” in Nancy A. Hewitt, ed., A Companion to American Women’s History (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002), 397–413. 8. For a vivid and eloquent description of this juxtaposition, see Elaine Lee Turner, interview by Laurie B. Green, tape recording, Memphis, Aug. 22, 1995, BTV. 9. Gloria Wade-Gayles, Pushed Back to Strength (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 2. 10. Gloria Brown Melton, “Blacks in Memphis, Tennessee, 1920–1955: A Historical Study” (Ph.D. diss, Washington State University, 1982), 292, 296. 11. The Supreme Court ruled the white primary unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright (1944), and southern black voter registration jumped from no more than 5 percent of eligible blacks before the decision to 25 percent by 1958. Despite the primary’s abolition, however, poll taxes, literacy tests, violence, intimidation, and other methods continued to prevent most southern blacks from voting in the 1950s. Donald R. Matthews and James W. Prothro, Negroes and the New Southern Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966), 17–18; Michael J. Klarman, “The White Primary Rulings: A Case Study in the Consequences of Supreme Court Decisionmaking,” Florida State University Law Review 29, no. 55 (Fall 2001): 55–107; Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Darlene Clark Hine, Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas, 2d ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003). 12. Kousser, Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 143, 146. 13. V. O. Key, Southern Politics (New York: Vintage Books, 1949), 59; Silliman Evans, Letter to V. O. Key, Nov. 10, 1949, V. O. Key Papers, Box 58, Folder: Comments 1 of 2, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. The two biographies of Crump are G. Wayne Dowdy, Mr. Crump Don’t Like It: Machine Politics in Memphis (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), and William Miller, Mr. Crump of Memphis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964). 14. For an in-depth discussion of Crump’s organizational techniques, see Elizabeth Gritter, “Black Politics in the Age of Jim Crow: The Story of Memphis, 1889 to 1954,” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in progress). 15. Annette E. and Roberta Church, The Robert R. Churches of Memphis: A Father and Son Who Achieved in Spite of Race (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, 1974), 35, 96, 106, 125, 154–55; Laurie B. Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle

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(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 15–19; Annette E. Church, Letter to Barnes Carr, Feb. 22, 1966, Robert R. Church Family Papers, Box 39, Folder 12, Special Collections (hereafter SC), University of Memphis; J. E. Walker, Letter to E. W. Hale, Oct. 31, 1940, E. W. Hale Collection, Box 19, Folder: Election Misc.-Nov. 1940–41, Memphis-Shelby County Room (hereafter MSC), Memphis-Shelby County Public Library and Information Center. 16. David M. Tucker, Lieutenant Lee of Beale Street (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971); Roger Biles, Memphis in the Great Depression (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986); Randolph Meade Walker, “The Role of Black Clergy in Memphis during the Crump Era,” West Tennessee Historical Society Papers (hereafter WTHSP) 33 (1979): 29–47; Ralph J. Bunche, The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR, ed. Dewey W. Grantham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 73, 493–502; Walter P. Adkins, “Beale Street Goes to the Polls” (Master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1935); Melton, “Blacks in Memphis;” Gritter, “Black Politics.” 17. Michael K. Honey, Black Workers Remember (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality. 18. Among the sources that detail Crump’s repression are Honey, Black Workers Remember; Honey, Southern Labor; Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality; Biles, Memphis in the Great Depression; Loyal Tennesseans League, “Edward H. Crump Public Enemy No. 1,” (Memphis: Loyal Tennesseans League, 1932), Church Family Papers, Box 4, Folder 44. 19. For an in-depth discussion of the Freedom Train incident, see Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality, 112–32. 20. Smith, interview by author, transcript, Memphis, July 26, 2004, SOHP, 4. 21. On the 1948 election, see Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Numan V. Bartley, The New South, 1945–1980 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 74–104; Key, Southern Politics, 58–59, 70–75; David M. Tucker, Memphis since Crump: Bossism, Blacks, and Civic Reformers, 1948–1968 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980), 40–60; Honey, Southern Labor, 248–52; Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality, 136–41; Samuel B. Hollis, interview by author, tape recording, Memphis, June 14, 2004, SOHP. 22. Kousser, Colorblind Injustice, 146. 23. Benjamin L. Hooks with Jerry Guess, The March for Civil Rights: The Benjamin Hooks Story (Chicago: American Bar Association Publishing, 2003), 50–51. 24. “Walker To Take Plea To White Memphians,” unidentified newspaper clipping, Oct. 7, 1951, Watkins Overton Papers, Box 7, Folder 30, SC. 25. Melton, “Blacks in Memphis,” 318–9; Christopher Silver and John V. Moeser, The Separate City: Black Communities in the Urban South, 1940–1960 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 86. 26. Ibid., 318. 27. For an examination of this group of leaders, see Sherry L. Hoppe and Bruce W. Speck, Maxine Smith’s Unwilling Pupils: Lessons Learned in Memphis’s Civil Rights Classroom (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007); Elizabeth Gritter, “Local Leaders and Community Soldiers: The Memphis Desegregation Movement, 1955–1961” (honors senior thesis, American University, 2001). 28. “Council Is Formed by 20 Negro Clubs,” unidentified newspaper clipping, Jul. 8, 1951, Overton Papers. 29. Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality, 204–7; Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., interview by author, tape recording, Memphis, July 30 2004, SOHP; Gritter, “Local Leaders,” 47–48; William E. Wright, Memphis Politics: A Study in Racial Bloc Voting, Eagleton Institute Cases in Practical Politics, no. 27 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 10.

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30. “O. Z. Evers To Address Council of Civic Clubs,” MW, July 11, 1959, 1. 31. Shirley Downing, “Desegregation Ruling’s Impact Called Monumental,” CA, May 15, 1994, B1. 32. For a profile of Lockard, see Elizabeth Gritter, “Memories of H. T. Lockard,” Southern Cultures 14, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 106–16. 33. The authorized and only biography of Maxine Smith is Hoppe and Speck, Maxine Smith’s Unwilling Pupils. For shorter profiles, see Tom Martin, “Maxine Smith,” Memphis Magazine 5, no. 2 (May 1980): 24–33; Elizabeth Gritter, “Maxine A. Smith,” in African American National Biography, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn B. Higginbotham, Vol. 7 (Oxford University Press 2008), 290–91. Laurie and Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., were divorced in 1966, and she later married A. W. Willis, Jr., and became known as Miriam DeCosta-Willis. For a profile, see Keith Parent, “Independent Study on Dr. Miriam DeCosta-Willis,” African Americans at Hopkins Project, http://afam.nts.jhu.edu/people/decosta_willis/parent.pdf (accessed Jan. 31 2007). 34. Smith, interview, 2000, 5–6. 35. Gloster B. Current, Letter to H. T. Lockard, Feb. 10, 1955, Papers of the NAACP, Group II, Box C186, Folder: Memphis NAACP 1951–55, Manuscript Division (hereafter MD), Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; “Meeting [Minutes] of the Executive Board, Memphis Branch NAACP,” Memphis NAACP Branch, 5 May 1959, Maxine Smith Papers, Box 3, Folder 2, MSC. 36. Honey, Black Workers Remember; Honey, Southern Labor; Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality, 183–91. 37. Smith, interview, 2000, 6; Smith, interview, 2004, 2–4. Patton remembers that Memphis was one of his top branches for voter registration. William C. Patton, interview by Tywanna Whorley, transcript, Birmingham, June 14, 1994, BTV. Also see Manfred Berg, The Ticket to Freedom: The NAACP and the African American Right to Vote (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005); Papers of the NAACP, Group III, Box C145, Folders: Memphis NAACP 1958 and 1959, MD; John H. Bracey, Jr., and August Meier, eds., Papers of the NAACP, Supplement to Part 4, Group III (Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1995), microfilm, 3:722–9, 763–94, 801–2, 806. 38. Smith, interview, 2000, 8–9. 39. City elections were held every four years in Memphis. Elizabeth Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade for Freedom’: The Volunteer Ticket Campaign in the 1959 City Election in Memphis, Tennessee” (Master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005), 19. 40. Wright, Memphis Politics, 8. 41. On the 1959 election, see Wright, Memphis Politics; Silver and Moeser, Separate City, 92–97; Kousser, Colorblind Injustice, 138–69; James B. Jalenak, “Beale Street Politics” (honors senior thesis, Yale University, 1961); Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade’”; Gritter, “Local Leaders,” 33–39. 42. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 20–22. 43. Wright, Memphis Politics, 9. 44. Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., phone interview by author, handwritten notes, April 10, 2001. 45. This assessment is based on the author’s oral histories and examination of local press coverage on the election as described in note 4. 46. “Dr. King Urges Memphians to Elect Negro Candidates,” Birmingham World, August 5, 1959, 1. 47. Smith, interview, 2000, 7, 25. 48. Wright, Memphis Politics, 9–10; “Freedom Rally Souvenir Program,” July 31, 1959, Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., Personal Papers, Memphis, Tennessee, copy in author’s possession. 49. Wright, Memphis Politics, 11; “Leadership Council Seeks Negro Unity,” MW, 25 Jul. 1959, 1. 50. “Six Negro Candidates Busy Day and Night,” MW, July 18, 1959, 3. 51. Wright, Memphis Politics, 25; “Coke Parties Arranged for Sugarmon, Hooks, Bunton and

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Love Drive Workers,” MW, July 8, 1959, 1; Jennie M. Betts, interview by author, tape recording, Memphis, June 28, 2004, SOHP; Lillie J. Wheeler, interview by author, transcript, Memphis, June 28, 2004, SOHP, 3,6; Johnnie Mae Peters, interview by author, tape recording, Memphis, June 29, 2004, SOHP; O. Z. Evers to Address Council of Civic Clubs,” MW, July 11, 1959, 1. 52. “Mrs. Coe Speaks at No. Memphis Rally,” MW, Aug. 8, 1959, 2; “Civic Club to Sponsor Rally,” MW, Aug. 15, 1959, 3. 53. “Parkway Gardens to Hear Volunteers,” MW, July 29, 1959, 3; “Sugarmon, Others Slated to Talk at Princeton,” MW, July 15, 1959, 2. 54. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 37. 55. Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., interview by author, Memphis, June 25, 2004, handwritten notes in author’s possession. 56. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 30–1. 57. “How Memphis Worships: Mt. Olive C.M.E. Cathedral,” TSD, July 25, 1959, 9. 58. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 32. 59. Wheeler, interview, 2. 60. Ibid.; Sugarmon, interview, June 25, 2004. 61. Wheeler, interview, 39. 62. Peters, interview. 63. Smith, interview, 2004, 15. 64. Wheeler, interview, 25. 65. Sugarmon, interview, July 30, 2004. 66. Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., interview by author, tape recording, Memphis, June 19, 2004, SOHP. 67. Peters, interview, 2004; Smith, interview, 2004, 4. 68. Wheeler, interview, 26; Betts, interview; Peters, interview. 69. On race, class, and gender in Memphis, see Sarah Casey Lineback, “African American Women in the Memphis Civil Rights Movement: The Intertwining Influences of Race, Class, and Gender” (senior thesis, Rhodes College, 2007). 70. Betts, interview. 71. Wheeler, interview, 8. 72. Ibid. 8–9; Betts, interview; Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 40. 73. For a more in-depth discussion of the Youth Volunteers, see Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 38, 47–48. 74. “Mrs. Sugarmon Proves that Woman Has Place in Politics,” TSD, Aug. 29, 1959, 3. 75. “Sugarmon’s Wife Takes the Stage,” CA, Aug. 6, 1959, 10. 76. “Mrs. Sugarmon Proves,” TSD. 77. “Mrs. Walker Criticized for Endorsing Candidates,” MW, Aug. 15, 1959, 1. 78. Jackson was forced to cancel her appearance because of a death in her family. “Ministers to Sponsor Political Rally July 31,” MW, July 11, 1959, 1; “Martin Luther King, Mahalia Jackson to Appear at Rally,” MW, July 15, 1959, 2; “Freedom Rally Souvenir Program,” Sugarmon Personal Papers; “Distributes 20,000 Tickets for Political Rally, July 31,” MW, July 22, 1959, 3; “Expected 20,000 at Mass Meet Come July 31,” TSD, July, 25 1959, 2; Jay Hall, “‘Want to Be Free’ Is Chant at Big Negro Political Rally,” CA, Aug. 1, 1959, 13; “Dr. King Urges Memphians to Elect Negro Candidates,” MW, Aug. 5, 1959, 1 79. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 56–57; Nat D. Williams, “Leader Says She’s an Angry Woman in Hurry,” TSD, Aug. 22, 1959, 5. 80. “Large Crowd Expected to Hear Daisy Bates,” MW, 15 Aug. 1959, 1. 81. For an essay on the leadership of Bates and other gendered analyses about the civil rights movement, see Peter J. Ling and Sharon Monteith, eds., Gender and the Civil Rights Movement (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004). 82. Williams, “Leader Says.”

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83. Some activists and scholars have called this concept “womanism.” Elsa Barkley Brown, “Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of Saint Luke,” in Vicki L. Ruiz and Ellen Carol DuBois, eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994), 269. 84. “Mrs. Sugarmon Proves,” TSD. 85. On gendered concerns of female activists, see M. Bahati Kuumba, Gender and Social Movements (Walnut Creek, Ca.: AltaMira Press, 2001); Martha Ackelsberg, “(Re)conceiving Politics? Women’s Activism and Democracy in a Time of Retrenchment,” Feminist Studies 27, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 391–418; Temma Kaplan, “Female Consciousness and Collective Action,” Signs 7, no. 3 (Spring 1982): 545–66; Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920,” in Ruiz and DuBois, eds., Unequal Sisters, 85–110. 86. Nat D. Williams, “Dark Shadows,” TSD, Aug. 8, 1959, 7; Nat D. Williams, “Aug. 20 Autopsy Given by Nat D.,” TSD, Aug. 29, 1959, 1. 87. On white opposition, see Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade.’” Sugarmon’s quote is from p. 51 of the thesis, and Betts’s quote is from the author’s oral history of her. 88. The total turnout marked a 50 percent increase over the prior record. At least 69 percent of registered voters cast ballots, including 63 percent of black registrants. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 59–60. 89. Blacks voted for Jimmy Moore in order to oust an outspoken segregationist. They backed John T. Dwyer because they thought that he could stand up to Henry Loeb, a staunch segregationist, who was virtually uncontested in his bid for mayor. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 60–61; Jalenak, “Beale Street Politics,” 136. 90. L. F. Palmer, Jr., “We Won Everything but the Election,” TSD, 29 Aug. 1959, 9. 91. Sugarmon, interview, 2000, 13–4. 92. Ibid., 14, Sugarmon, interview, June 25, 2004. 93. This assessment is based on the author’s exploration of the Shelby County Democratic Club papers in the possession of Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., (copies in author’s possession) and in his collection at the Special Collections of the University of Memphis. Unfortunately, no archive of the organization’s papers exists beyond these two sources. 94. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 64. 95. “Memphis Democrats Elect Negro,” New York Times, Aug. 6, 1960, 8. 96. Josephine Burson, interview by author, tape recording, Memphis, July 28, 2004, SOHP. 97. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 64–65. 98. Ibid., 63; Gritter, “Local Leaders,” 41–42, 47–74; Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality, 226, 232–50; Lucille Black, Letter to Maxine Smith, May 19, 1960, Papers of the NAACP, Group III, Box C186, Folder: Memphis NAACP 1960, MD; Hoppe and Speck, Maxine Smith’s Unwilling Pupils; Benjamin Muse, Memphis (Atlanta: Southern Regional Council, 1964), 7–8, 12. 99. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 67–68; Maxine A. Smith, “Memphis Branch NAACP Annual Report 1964,” Dec. 23, 1964, Papers of the NAACP, Group III, Box C146, Folder: Memphis, TN, branch 1936–65, MD, 8–9. On the NAACP’s employment efforts, see, for instance: Maxine A. Smith, “Annual Report Memphis Branch NAACP 1965,” Dec. 23, 1965, 11–3, and Maxine A. Smith, “Memphis Branch NAACP Annual Report 1967,” undated,4–8. Both documents are located in: Papers of the NAACP, Group IV, Box C30, Folder: Memphis Branch 1966–69, MD. On the efforts of black laborites and anti-poverty activists, see Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality, 258–75. For a broader study, see Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: the Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006). 100. Muse, Memphis, 36–42;Smith, “Memphis Branch NAACP Annual Report 1967,” 1. 101. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 66–67; “Analysis of the Negro Votes in Shelby County Received by Democratic Nominees, November 3, 1964,” undated, Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr., Papers, Box 1, Folder 7, SC.

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102. William Thomas, “Moment of History Lies Buried Beneath Ballots,” CA, Nov. 8, 1964, Vertical File Collection, Folder: Memphis-Elections, 1964, MSC. 103. “Analysis of the Negro Votes.” 104. Jonathan I. Wax, “Program of Progress: The Recent Change in the Form of Government in Memphis,” Part 1, WTHSP 23 (1969): 81–109; Jonathan I. Wax, “Program of Progress: The Recent Change in the Form of Government in Memphis Part 2,” WTHSP 24 (1970): 74–96; Kousser, Colorblind Injustice, 173–80; Marcus D. Pohlmann and Michael P. Kirby, Racial Politics at the Crossroads (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996), 111–15. 105. Laurie B. Green, “Battling the Plantation Mentality: Consciousness, Culture, and the Politics of Race, Class and Gender in Memphis, 1940–1968” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1999),” 395, 281. 106. On the sanitation strike, see: Michael K. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007); Joan Beifuss, At the River I Stand: Memphis, the 1968 Strike, and Martin Luther King (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1989). 107. Gritter, “Local Leaders,” 92–93; Kira V. Duke, “To Disturb the People as Little as Possible: The Desegregation of Memphis City Schools” (Master’s thesis, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, 2005), 26–32; Smith, interview, 2000, 25–26. 108. Memphis State College had changed its name to Memphis State University by this time. “Miriam DeCosta-Willis Biography,” The HistoryMakers, http://www.thehistorymakers. com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=510&category=Artmakers (accessed Jul. 30, 2009). 109. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 70–71. 110. Jacinthia Jones, “Herenton Stays Strong in Black Precincts—Chumney, Morris Split Vote in Majority-White Areas, “ CA, Oct. 11, 2007, A1; Tom Charlier, “Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton Seized a Record Fifth Term Thursday, but He Won It with His Lowest Support Level Ever,” CA, Oct. 5, 2007, A1; Jacinthia Jones, “Three-way Race Provides Plurality for Incumbent,” CA, Oct. 5, 2007, A1; Blake Fontenay, “Coming Apart at The Polls—Election Results Seen as Crucial—Whoever Wins the Hotly Contested City Races, There Will Be Healing To Do,” CA, Sept. 30, 2007, V1. 111. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 70–71. 112. Chris Peck, “Why a Candidate’s Past Matters,” CA, Sept. 30, 2007, V4. 113. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 71. 114. Peck, “Why a Candidate’s Past Matters.” 115. Gritter, “‘This Is a Crusade,’” 71–2; Thomas Jordan, “Voting along Racial Lines a Habit That’s Hard To Break,” CA, 30 June 2002, A1; Zack McMillan, “Official Tally Is In: Obama Took 63.4 Percent of Shelby County Vote,” CA, Nov. 17, 2008, www.commercialappeal.com (accessed Dec. 12, 2008). 116. On these years of Maxine Smith’s civil rights activism, see Hoppe and Speck, Maxine Smith’s Unwilling Pupils. 117. Smith, interview, 2000, 32.

Organizing Breadmakers Kathryn Dunaway’s ERA Battle and the Roots of Georgia’s Republican Revolution Robin Morris

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n 1 974, G eo rgi a stat e le gi slato r s r ece i v e d an ea r ly Vale nt in e

from some special constituents. A group of women opposing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) wrapped individual loaves of freshly baked bread and added the note: “From the breadmaker to the breadwinner.”1 The occasion was the first floor vote on the ERA in the Georgia House. The previous year, the amendment had sunk in subcommittee. Now, amid a swell of support from other states, the stakes were even higher. By the time the amendment reached the Georgia House in January 1974, thirty states of the necessary thirty-eight had ratified the amendment. The gift of bread sent a strong message to legislators preparing to vote. The legislator as the “breadwinner,” assumed to be male, made money to support a housewife and children. The “breadmaker,” assumed to be female, stayed at home to convert that into something nourishing. The gift and its written note told the legislators all they needed to know about the ERA. Only housewives had time to bake individual loaves of bread, and housewives needed protection. That time, the Georgia House defeated the amendment 104–70, but the ERA battle in Georgia was only beginning.2 Shortly after the vote, Kathryn Dunaway, chair of the Georgia STOP ERA (Stop Taking Our Privileges ERA) campaign, wrote a thank you note to Mr. Chester Gray of Mom’s Bakery in Atlanta, “for the donation of the many small loaves of your delicious bread. . . . Through your generosity we were able to impress upon the lawmakers that we breadmakers depend on the bread winner and we want our laws to remain as they now protect us.” With all of the letter writing, lobbying, and phone calls against the ERA, “we breadmakers” had not had time to bake the bread.3 161

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A few days later, Phyllis Schlafly, national STOP ERA chairman, mailed one of her regular alerts to all state leaders, sharing some of the most effective practices employed by local groups. Schlafly congratulated the “Stop ERA girls” in Missouri and Arizona for their innovative “Bread Project.” The practice of giving loaves to legislators seemingly could not lose: “All the legislators loved it, the publicity was fabulous, our girls had lots of fun and the project put the libbers on the defensive.”4 Not only had the Georgia women not had time to bake the bread, but they had not even needed to come up with the idea. The combination of a national network and local action meant that each state organization could direct total energy into the state-level defeat of ERA. Atlantan Kathryn Dunaway was central to an extensive national network of conservative women who worked to defeat states’ ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. In the previous decade, Dunaway had established her own conservative network through her involvement in the Republican Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Methodist Church, among others. At every opportunity, Dunaway reinforced her political activism with the image of the “breadmaker.” On her membership application to the Sandy Springs Women’s Club, Dunaway checked Voice, Cooking, and Flower Arranging as her talents. Under “Other Talents,” she wrote “Government.”5 She even had experience combining interests in baked goods and politics when she helped organize “Bake for Barry” cake sales to raise funds for the 1964 Goldwater campaign.6 In her 1976 speech in the Georgia Mother of the Year contest, Dunaway first described her duties as mother of three, grandmother of five, and former Boy Scout and Blue Birds leader. Then she cast herself as a trailblazer, Georgia’s first “temporary female Boy Scoutmaster.” She even scared off a bear “with my only weapon a flashlight.” Her weapons against the ERA were more substantial, and the danger was just as significant, she told her audience. The legislation threatened the family, “which has been the strength and foundation of all nations since God instituted the family,” Dunaway recounted. She closed her Mother of the Year speech by stating, “May this blight never come to our great nation, and may our womanhood and motherhood continue to be revered and our families preserved.”7 Despite a strong letter of recommendation from Speaker of the Georgia House Tom Murphy, Kathryn Dunaway did not become the Georgia Mother of the Year. However, she did inspire women across the state to fight the ERA. As Murphy’s letter praised her, “Mrs. Dunaway not only has opinions. She acts.”8 Dunaway also inspired others beyond conservative opinion and into political action. Ultimately, Dunaway and her troops found success by repeatedly defeating the ERA in the Georgia legislature. Moreover, their success in recruiting voters, mobilizing grassroots supporters, and electing conservative

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candidates helped guarantee Georgia’s prominence in future conservative movements. The search for the roots of the southern conservative counterrevolution has primarily focused on race and religion. Nixon relied on racial politics in his Southern Strategy to defeat George Wallace in 1968. Before that, Barry Goldwater’s message of states’ rights guaranteed southern electoral votes. As a lifelong southerner, Kathryn Dunaway knew about civil rights work and suspected that many of those involved in the Civil Rights movement also advocated communism.9 However, she found her own political stride in her work against the ERA. Historian Matthew Lassiter recently reconsidered the concept of the “Southern Strategy.” If, as he suggests the focus on the “topdown ‘Southern Strategy’ . . . misses the longer-term convergence of southern and national politics around the suburban ethos of middle-class entitlement,” likewise, a focus on the “top-down ‘Southern Strategy’” misses the gendered convergence of southern local and national politics.10 While racial politics and religious fervor may have made the South unique, the politics of gender smoothed a path for the region to re-enter the national conservative movement. Southern business was already integrating into national, and indeed, global markets. Television was uniting Americans under media images that portrayed homogeneity.11 Southern politics, then, was not far behind in blurring regional distinctiveness. Moreover, Georgia could serve as a bellwether for the nation’s gender politics. State STOP ERA co-chair Lee Wysong explained that Georgia was critical because of its early legislative session from January through March. She explained, “if one state passed [ERA], then at least one of the others that had not passed it would and it would go through [to ratification].”12 The ERA was not immune from the domino effect, and Georgia became a hot battlefield. Unlike busing, voting, or desegregation, the ERA allowed southern legislators to support a conservative issue without mentioning race. The STOP ERA message told legislators that nay votes meant protection for all women and families. Moreover, the ERA mobilized women to political activism at levels not seen since suffrage six decades earlier.13 In Georgia, conservative women’s activism around the ERA at the state level reached legislators at local, state, and national levels. And Georgia proved a key state in national conservative strategy. After all, the state that voted for Goldwater in 1964 produced Jimmy Carter, winner on the 1976 Democratic ticket, even as it brought his southern evangelism to national attention. The tension between Democratic and Republican tickets extended to the ERA battle. Both the pro- and anti-ERA forces focused on Georgia as an important prize, and the state drew both feminist leaders and Phyllis Schlafly regularly.

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The Georgia STOP ERA campaign emphasized a dual model of grassroots and national political culture in which gender issues led the political agenda. Recent histories have subsumed gender as a building block in the national story of late-twentieth-century conservatism. A focus on women in the ranks of national leadership provides valuable information into the changing make-up of political parties, but it obscures the incalculable contributions of women at the grassroots level. However, a study of the grassroots participation likewise misses the large national sweep. Thus, an examination at the state level of women’s conservative politics provides the missing link. Kathryn Dunaway’s activism was the hinge connecting Schlafly to local women all over Georgia.14 Kathryn Dunaway had a strong record as a political organizer long before the ERA battle. She opposed the United Nations since its establishment, and she particularly resented the presence of the international organization on American soil. More locally, she worked against the fluoridation of Atlanta’s water supply in the early 1960s.15 In 1964, she opposed the Civil Rights Act as “90% Federal control.”16 In support of her foreign policy beliefs, Dunaway sent a donation to the conservative Americans for National Security.17 The next year, the Georgia Conservative Council invited Dunaway to attend their state conference in Macon.18 John and Kathryn Dunaway were early promoters of conservative Republican politics in Georgia. Whereas a primary focus on civil rights may have resulted in continued support of Georgia’s famously segregationist Democrats, the Dunaways’ central concern of national defense led to their conversion to the Republican Party. Significantly, when Georgia went for segregationist George Wallace’s Independent Party ticket in the 1968 presidential election, Kathryn Dunaway remained with the Republican Party and Richard Nixon. As a teenager, Kathryn Fink moved with her family to Atlanta in 1919. When the family did not have money to fulfill her wish to go to college, she went to work for Sears Roebuck. She attended a nearby Methodist Church where she met John Allen Dunaway, a law student six years her senior who had worked as a soda jerk to put himself through Emory Law School. The two married in 1928. Over the next decade, the Dunaways had two sons and a daughter. As John built his career in corporate law, Kathryn raised the children and took care of their Atlanta home and taught children’s Sunday School at Peachtree Road Methodist Church. Her only foray into campaigning while her children lived at home was to support her husband’s successful bid for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1940–1942. At the time, John Dunaway was a Democrat like most other Georgia politicians.19 The Dunaway household maintained a political focus. In an application

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requiring third-person voice, Dunaway described her early political activity thus:“Since 1928 has voted in each and every election—generally Democratic— until 1960 when she joined and began working for the Republican Party.” That same year, her youngest son graduated college and married. With no children at home, Dunaway focused her attention on growing the Republican Party of Georgia.20 In 1963, Dunaway signed up as a charter member of the North Fulton County Federation of Republican Women. She became president of the chapter in 1965 and planted six more Republican Women’s Clubs throughout the Atlanta area. Her success in growing the Atlanta party led to her election as an officer of the Georgia Federation of Republican Women (GFRW). When she attended the National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW) meeting that year, she did not go alone. Georgia was no longer solidly Democratic, and she brought a busload of thirty-six women to prove it. With sixty-two new affiliate groups, the GFRW won the 1966 NFRW Silver Tea Service Award for the largest net gain of new clubs in that year. Along with her work in the GFRW, Dunaway actively supported “all Republican candidates during . . . city, county, state, and national elections since 1963.” Dunaway also honed her skill of political baking when she promoted “Bake for Barry Cake Sales” and other fundraisers for Goldwater. Dunaway’s state network of Republican women grew every year.21 Perhaps the most important connection Kathryn Dunaway made in her early years with the Republican Party, however, was with national conservative leader Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly had run for Congress from Illinois on a strong national defense platform in 1952. In 1964, Schlafly published A Choice, Not an Echo, which is frequently credited with securing the Republican presidential nomination for Barry Goldwater that year. Of course, Kathryn Dunaway had a copy of the book.22 On consecutive days in 1965 the two women testified against disarmament before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Dunaway greeted chairman Senator William Fulbright and the committee with “salutations from the deep South and from that state, which after 100 years, voted Republican again for Barry Goldwater.” She described herself as “a mother, a grandmother, and a conservative . . . dreadfully frightened with the trend of Socialism I find in our government.” Already, she tied her role on the home front to her interest in global politics.23 Two years later, Dunaway organized Georgia and other southern states in Schlafly’s campaign for presidency of the NFRW and accompanied Schlalfy on the Georgia leg of her 1967 speaking tour. Schlafly recognized Dunaway’s efforts as “truly dedication above and beyond the call of even your famous southern hospitality” and thanked her “for your constant and loyal support.”24 Though Schlafly lost the NFRW presidency in a contested election,

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Dunaway’s support of her friend never swayed. She wrote President Nixon and urged him to appoint Schlafly to an “appropriate position” in his administration.25 In 1973, Schlafly invited Dunaway to join her fledging Eagle Council, a forerunner of the Eagle Forum, which would serve the purpose of creating “a liaison of women leaders from all over the country.” Schlafly had discriminating standards for the invitations. She included only personal friends, proven leaders in conservative movements, and other women who “have demonstrated not only their adherence to sound moral, patriotic, and conservative principles, but also good judgment and discretion.” Dunaway fit every category. She flew to St. Louis for the inaugural meeting, which included media training, leadership development workshops, and “specific techniques on how to achieve our objectives.” The weekend activities targeted leaders at the local level who could recruit and educate women at the grassroots level. Schlafly was clear that, “The EAGLE COUNCIL will not usually feature ‘name’ speakers. The emphasis throughout will be on developing leadership from within the Council.”26 That year, when Schlafly searched her national network for STOP ERA state organizers, she already had her field marshal in Georgia. Dunaway assumed the role of Georgia chairman in late 1973 and quickly set to work appointing one STOP ERA chairman for each congressional district of Georgia.27 After the ERA left the U.S. Congress, the front line shifted to state legislatures. Schlafly had to have trustworthy officers in each battle. In June 1974, Schlafly rewarded Dunaway’s success in stopping the ERA by appearing at an Atlanta Victory Luncheon to raise funds for further Georgia STOP ERA work.28 Dunaway’s years of conservative activism eased the burden of recruiting initial local members and enabled the state STOP ERA to focus immediately on the legislators. For example, Mrs. J. Tom Morgan of Columbus knew Dunaway from their work on the Goldwater campaign. Morgan happily supported STOP ERA, though she lamented, “I do so miss all our good old conservative friends. We’re sorta outcasts among the Socialist Republicans here.”29 Other women came from Dunaway’s vast connections with the DAR, Georgia Women’s Clubs, and Republican Party. STOP ERA capably used the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade to recruit abortion opponents to the anti-ERA crusade. An undated Eagle Forum pamphlet titled “The Abortion Connection” showed two strings wrapping around each other into one rope. One side was labeled “abortion” with the other, “Equal Rights Amendment.” The pamphlet quoted North Carolina senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr., “I think there is no doubt of the fact that the ERA would give every woman a constitutional right to have an abortion at will.” Law professors from University of Texas and Notre Dame supported Ervin’s

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view. The pamphlet also quoted abortion rights and ERA supporters like feminist Betty Freidan and Congresswoman Bella Abzug before telling readers, “The abortionists want to lock abortion forever into the U.S. Constitution through ERA.”30 The women at Georgia’s grassroots certainly got the message. In 1973, Mary Kelly mailed Dunaway information on abortion and fetus research, but promised the ERA material would soon follow.31 Dunaway strove to convey that her issues were local Georgia women’s issues, and she bristled at accusations that her STOP ERA group had affiliations with the John Birch Society, a secretive, anticommunist organization founded in 1958. She encouraged members to write letters protesting ABC network’s decision to allow a January 22, 1977, news piece insinuating that STOP ERA grew out of the conservative extremist John Birch Society.32 Dunaway’s files betray no personal affiliations with the John Birch Society, though pro-ERA forces did have legitimate reason to suspect connections between STOP ERA and John Birch. North Carolina’s STOP ERA chairman Dorothy Malone Slade was a member of the John Birch Society and recruited her STOP ERA grassroots legions from that network of conservatives.33 Indeed, Dunaway’s co-chair, Lee Wysong, had been an active member of the John Birch Society in Atlanta.34 In addition to positioning itself as a grassroots group, the Georgia STOP ERA wanted to reach the housewives and women in blue-collar professions, whom they believed the feminist movement ignored in favor of middle-class professional women. Wysong spoke about the women who lacked the education and training for white- and pink-collar jobs and benefited from protective labor legislation in blue-collar work. In the next breath, she addressed the full time homemaker’s legal status and access to Social Security. The STOP ERA message used social and economic language to address women who felt alienated from mainstream feminism.35 Though Phyllis Schlafly and the national organization created the language for local STOP ERA work, Dunaway translated the national message for Georgia’s women. Through newsletters, speeches, radio spots, and press releases, STOP ERA of Georgia warned women that the Equal Rights Amendment would make them subject to the draft and combat duty, “legally responsible for 50% of the financial support of her family,” and would make illegal lower insurance rates for women. The end of sex-segregation would “create havoc” in prisons.36 STOP ERA National Media Chairman Elaine Donnelly assured a crowd of Georgia women, “ERA will not end war.” Immediately, she followed with the fear that the ERA would open the military draft to women and would require women to serve in combat positions. Hearing Donnelly, Georgian Pam Bettis questioned, “How will my femininity be protected where on the combat field there is no provision for privacy?”37

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The real crisis of women being drafted was the challenge to woman’s chastity. In a later press release, Dunaway herself challenged the pride of American men asking, “Have the men of this nation sunk so low that they are willing to have their daughters, sisters, and wives shipped to a foreign country to fight a war while the men keep the home fires burning? I think not!”38 In her juxtaposition of gender roles, Dunaway highlighted the absurdity she saw inherent in the Equal Rights Amendment. Men would become women and women would become men. The example of the military clearly showed the threat to traditional gender roles. Women needed protection. Femininity needed protection. Men needed to be courageous and defeat the ERA threat to American womanhood.39 The ERA also jeopardized motherhood. Schlafly explained that the ERA would result in “government-funded abortion, Federal child-care, and reverse discrimination for women and against men.”40 In her regular speech, Dunaway also warned that the ERA would give constitutional ground for the Roe decision and would open the path for homosexual marriage and adoption. Abortion threatened what women of STOP ERA saw as traditional motherhood. If the ERA required equality, then it required women to bring financial support to the family. The only way a woman could do that was to be unburdened by child care responsibilities, which meant either abortion or child care. Worst of all, she warned, the amendment usurped state power in Section Two that read, “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” She ended her speech with the assertion, “American women have the best life ever enjoyed in history. Let’s keep it that way!”41 To speak directly to Georgia women, Dunaway linked the ERA with other timely Georgia legislation, including bills regarding divorce law and abortion rights.42 Like Schlafly, Dunaway deemed the ERA unnecessary since antidiscrimination statues already existed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Opportunity Act of 1972.43 Moreover, those pieces of legislation addressed specific issues of discrimination. The ERA, broad in nature, left much to interpretation. Section One of the amendment read, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”44 Georgia STOP ERA co-chair Lee Wysong handled all debates for the organization since she was less likely than Dunaway to lose her temper with the pro-ERA forces. In a statewide debate, Lee Wysong warned that the vagueness of the amendment meant that the real meaning would be interpreted by the Supreme Court, which had already abolished “the loyalty oath for people who had to work in defense plants” and school prayer. A similarly menacing interpretation loomed with ratification since “[t]he full effects of the ERA will not be known until the Supreme Court gets a hold of it

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and then it will be too late.” The real unpleasantness of the ERA, then, might not have been imagined even by STOP ERA.45 Wysong warned that once the amendment became a part of the Constitution, the Supreme Court justices would determine its meaning and state legislators and local voters would be powerless. National and local STOP ERA relied on the voices of average female constituents to convince legislators to vote against the amendment and to encourage other women to join the movement. Recognizing that many of the women lacked experience in public speaking, STOP ERA provided training. Kathryn Dunaway received media training as well as evaluations of her speaking at a national Eagle Council event. The evaluations reveal that Dunaway had a soft voice, but her enthusiasm made up for that.46 She applied her training immediately, appearing regularly on Atlanta radio and television programs. During a nine-month period in 1978, she appeared on four television shows and eight radio programs.47 Dunaway dispensed media tips to other Georgia women to prepare them for outreach opportunities. She told them to be prepared with facts, to avoid losing their temper, and to maintain good posture. Beyond that, women should cover their knees, cross legs at the ankles, and wear solid, bright colors. They should wear skirts, and women over forty should not show any neck on television.48 The STOP ERA strategy went beyond the message to include delivery. They delivered a message about ERA with their words and about femininity with their appearance. From her kitchen table, Dunaway managed to head up a powerful network of women who did the job of telephoning, copying, and writing letters. Volunteers typed letters that she wrote out longhand.49 John Dunaway, an attorney in private practice, provided legal counsel when needed and more often supported his wife by taking small copy jobs to his office.50 In STOP ERA newsletters, Dunaway regularly encouraged women to write their legislators. Before the 1977 legislative session, she mailed members fillin-the-blank postcards to complete and return to their state senators. The Georgia STOP ERA office also created petitions that members circulated around the state. Several women from outside Dunaway’s established networks wrote to ask how they could work against the ERA. Lena Fay Parish of Atlanta had already called her representative and senator, but asked if there was more she could do. In a letter addressed “Dear Sir,” Ann Murray of Chamblee requested more information so that she could write to her state senator. Angelynn McGuff of Stone Mountain sent $4.50 for flyers that she planned to distribute to five hundred mailboxes. From Sandersville, Dorothy Jones wrote with an update of the positions of the legislative candidates in her district. Dunaway and the volunteers responded to the letters with information or tasks ranging from circulation of flyers or petitions to arranging

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coffees for sympathetic candidates.51 The women of STOP ERA also dispersed information to their women friends. Dunaway encouraged Georgians to keep the lines of communication simple and personal: “Set up a telephone line— you call 5, they call 5, they call 5, etc.”52 Many Georgia women felt as if the politics of the ERA had been foisted upon them by outsiders, and they wrote to Dunaway to thank her for representing them. After the 1974 vote, Jean Stovall of Lawrenceville had thought that both sides of the ERA battle were “a bunch of kooks” until she read about Georgia STOP ERA in the Atlanta Constitution. She wrote Dunaway saying, “You think and reason just like I do. And WE are certainly sane, aren’t we?!”53 Betty Bass of Atlanta expressed gratitude “for all you did for all of us happy housewives. . . . I’m only sorry for the women who unknowingly are trying to force all of us out of our God-given role.”54 Louise Younger of East Point congratulated Dunaway on the 1974 ERA defeat and predicted, “I feel that victory in Georgia spells doom for the ERA as a National issue. Let us hope it will soon be dead.”55 The Georgia legislature rejected the ERA every year from 1974 through 1981, but the women of STOP ERA never assumed victory. Hence, they maintained a vigorous political structure that could easily mobilize voters. In August 1974, Schlafly encouraged state chairmen to seize the opportunity of the campaign season to persuade state legislative candidates to oppose ERA. Specifically, she directed “two or three women who live in the candidate’s district should go to discuss ERA with the candidate. . . . Tell the candidate that the women in his district strongly oppose ERA.” She suggested that the women use her newsletters for information, but that they should put the message in their own words.56 After the elections, Dunaway redirected her troops from campaigning to lobbying. Dunaway demanded that the women collect “first hand information on every Legislator concerning his stand on ERA, and this means that each one must be contacted personally.” The women set out to “convince the undecided—and especially the newly elected members—of the evils of this amendment.” The women also continued recruiting grassroots supporters “by getting into churches, civic and social clubs, etc . . . they, too, should be encouraged to voice opposition to their representatives.”57 The efforts of Georgia women, orchestrated nationally but played out locally, had the important effect of convincing state legislators that ERA was a local issue. Both state and national legislators responded to STOP ERA pressure. Georgia Senate Minority Leader Paul Coverdell lauded Dunaway for “the great amount of citizen work you are putting into this project.”58 Several candidates for state office returned a STOP ERA questionnaire polling attitudes on the amendment. Agnes Domingo, Republican candidate in District 26, thanked Dunaway for working against ERA and assured her, “My commit-

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ment to equal opportunity does not include this dangerous constitutional amendment.”59 Martha Elrod, candidate for House District 71, opposed the ERA, which she believed to be “the direction the humanist [sic] are leading our country” and pledged her support in the fight “againest [sic] these whitewashed communist [sic]. I believe this is the direction the Lord has led me in.”60 Senate district 51 candidate Leonard Brown likely thrilled Dunaway with his response, “I not only will vote against the Equal Rights Amendment, but I will also take a last ditch stand in opposition to it. The main reason I am in the state senate race is because our present state senator voted for the amendment.”61 Once Dunaway gathered legislative responses, she then told STOP ERA workers which candidates should receive their support. Dunaway also campaigned for statewide and national candidates who would not vote directly on ERA but still shaped Georgia’s path. In 1978, Dunaway declared that John Stokes should defeat incumbent Sam Nunn for U.S. Senate, that Republican Rodney Cook should receive gubernatorial votes, and that newcomer Newt Gingrich should receive sixth congressional district votes.62 Once they had helped elect legislators, the STOP ERA women held their Congressmen’s feet to the fire on conservative women’s issues. President Gerald Ford established the National Commission for the observance of International Women’s Year (IWY). As a supporter of ERA, Ford proposed, “Let 1975, International Women’s Year, be the year that ERA is ratified.”63 He allotted five million dollars for IWY activities in his proposed budget. The IWY commission would oversee plans for individual state IWY meetings, culminating in a national IWY meeting in Houston, Texas, in 1977. After some debate, Congress agreed to the five million dollar allocation but added a restriction that the funds could not be used for lobbying purposes. Women of the Eagle Forum, STOP ERA, DAR, and other conservative groups first fought the apportionment of tax-payer funds. Kathryn Dunaway sent a letter of protest to Georgia’s U.S. senator Sam Nunn, who replied that he had favored only three million dollars. In a statement that did little to dissuade Dunaway, Nunn mentioned that the five million was a compromise from the ten million that the National Commission requested.64 Working through other conservative networks, Dunaway also introduced a resolution at the Georgia Republican Party Convention to request that the president and Congress “immediately cease funding and abolish the International Women’s Year Commission.”65 Ford’s appointments to the National Commission did not please ERA opponents. Commission chair was Republican ERA advocate Jill Ruckelshaus. Ford also appointed Senate ERA sponsor Birch Bayh and House ERA sponsor Martha Griffiths. Feminist congresswoman Bella Abzug sat on the committee with media personality Barbara Walters.66 Schlafly was not invited. As if the

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five million dollars was not insult enough, the pro-ERA composition of the committee guaranteed the vehement opposition of conservative women to IWY. As a final affront, the National Commission proclaimed ratification of ERA its “highest priority.” The National Commission acted on that priority with the January 1976 establishment of ERAmerica, co-chaired by television star Alan Alda and feminist Margaret Heckler.67 Spinning the losses to their advantage, though, STOP ERA forces adopted the position of the underdog, relying on the funding and goodwill of private citizens to battle big government. The National Commission for IWY divided up funds among the states. Each state established an IWY commission and used the money to execute state-level meetings to address various women’s issues including day care, employment practices, health care, and, of course, the ERA. Georgia’s share of the national funds totaled $66,252. Schlafly encouraged STOP ERA state organizations to hold garage sales, bake sales, and craft bazaars to raise 5 percent of their state’s federal allocation to fund the local fight against IWY.68 Though they could not prevent the state meetings, the conservative women seized upon the opportunity to show their strength. The state meetings also tested the quality of the interstate networks developed in the first five years of STOP ERA. Quickly, Schlafly appointed Rosemary Thompson of Illinois as head of the International Women’s Year Citizens’ Review Committee (IWY CRC) that organized state-level watchdog groups. The IWY CRC functioned secretly in attempts to monitor the state IWY meetings for violations. Attendees might identify outwardly with STOP ERA or a local women’s club, but they functioned also as secret observers for IWY CRC.69 Since neither Eagle Forum nor STOP ERA had representation on the National Committee, Thompson told state organizers to register all conservative groups on the state IWY mailing lists and to recommend conservative women speakers to the state IWY planning committee.70 Kathryn Dunaway received an appointment to the Georgia Coordinating Committee on the Observance of International Women’s Year, and she was the only one of the thirty-seven women to be listed by her husband’s name, Mrs. John Dunaway.71 After the conference, she admitted that she had made some friends on the committee despite her being the only member opposed to ERA and abortion rights.72 Georgia’s state IWY meeting was May 6–7, 1977, the third out of the fifty meetings. As one of the first states to host a conference and a state that had not ratified IWY, Georgia’s meeting held much significance for both pro- and anti-ERA women. Dunaway drilled her troops for the IWY, while Schlafly flew to Atlanta the month before Georgia’s meeting to host a training workshop at the First Baptist Church of Atlanta.73 Dunaway received reports from

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women in Vermont, the first state to hold an IWY meeting, and incorporated their lessons into the Georgia training. Before the meeting, Dunaway appointed at least one person to sit in on each panel of the meeting, and she chose a workshop leader for each session. The workshop leader was responsible for debating the conservative view during the discussion period. For courage, Dunaway recommended the “Buddy System for support” so no woman would be alone with the women’s lib forces. For documentation, she advised use of tape recorders.74 Additionally, each of the CRC delegates received three workshop observation forms to record events, discrepancies, and unfair practices in sessions. In particular, the women were to watch for “anything calling for more government control,” “violations of Roberts Rules of Order,” “anything which will take rights away from people under the guise of ‘doing good,’” and “half-truths or twisted truths.”75 The workshop forms asserted, “Do not be intimidated,” but reminded the participants to “maintain your dignity at all times—even if you are treated rudely. A soft voice and a smile work miracles.”76 Their secret weapon was their femininity. Dunaway anticipated that many of the conservative attendees had never been in a debate with a self-identified feminist. She prepared them for the worst, but reminded them to be ladies no matter what unladylike behavior they met.77 IWY CRC delegates could rest in between sessions in the hospitality suite in a hotel room at the Marriott. There, they could relax with a cup of coffee in the company of like-minded women. Because IWY CRC’s activities were clandestine, women had to be escorted by “someone we know” or should have been able to show their CRC sign when asked. National CRC chair Rosemary Thompson reminded women “to avoid talk about our activities on elevators or at lunch.”78 Participants reported all observations of discrimination against them in the hospitality suite. National IWY CRC chair Rosemary Thompson and co-chair Elaine Donnelly compiled all the observations to report at a press conference at the Georgia IWY meeting close.79 Dunaway also told her delegates what to expect regarding voting. All attendees at the meeting would vote on national IWY resolutions on topics ranging from ERA to health care to job training. The Georgia IWY CRC warned, “Affirmative votes on these questions will add support to the IWY program.” Therefore, to avoid “an increase in government spending and government interference,” the CRC told its delegates to vote “(A) Strongly Disagree, (B) Disagree, or (C) Neutral” on all issues.80 Additionally, participants voted on a slate of delegates to represent Georgia at the National IWY conference in Houston. Members could obtain the list of approved STOP ERA delegates in the hospitality suite.81 After each state meeting, organizers mailed out firsthand accounts of what

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had happened. They reported successes and failures as well as recommendations for other state IWY CRC groups. Macon’s Beverly Adams described the Georgia IWY attendees as fitting into one of two distinct categories: “those representing the traditional family viewpoint and the private enterprise system, and those advocating a unisex legal structure with dependence on government intervention and control.” Adams, appalled that no one led the Pledge of Allegiance before the meeting, fell into the former group.82 Gwen Metzger, a nurse and mother from Decatur, complained that her views on sex and sexuality were not represented at the workshops on community health and “Development of Personhood.” As a supporter of abstinence, she was unhappy with the advocacy of contraception for teenagers. Metzger took offense at the suggestion that she read the Hite Report on sexuality so that she might have “sexual fantasies and masterbate [sic].” She concluded her report, “This IWY Conference did not represent me.”83 Filling four legal pages, Dunaway’s report outlined irregularities ranging from materials missing from some participants’ registration packets to suspected voting fraud. In one instance, she alleged that three vote counters had only two calculators, leaving the third to keep count in her head. Dunaway reported that keynote speaker Bella Abzug openly endorsed the ERA and even read a telegram of support from President and First Lady Carter. Dunaway offered reports on individual workshops upon request, but asserted, “There was active suppression of views different from IWY.” Finally, she requested an accounting of the expenses of the conference, both of the federal funds allocated to Georgia and the registration funds. In another attempt to cut IWY off at its knees, she requested a Congressional investigation into the use of federal funds in “violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 and Section 9 (authorization and appropriation) of Public Law 94–167,” which barred lobbying with IWY funds.84 Dunaway’s report, then, was not merely a list of complaints, but a citizen’s report of suspected illegal activities. Dunaway, like IWY CRC participants across the country, sent her report to Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who assembled an ad-hoc committee of senators and representatives to hear and evaluate the complaints lodged against IWY. CRC members referred to their perceived IWY violations of law by the name “Abzugate,” blending the name of Congresswoman Bella Abzug with the recent Nixon scandal of Watergate. To make a point of contrast with the federally funded IWY, those giving testimony before the Helms committee paid their own expenses to Washington.85 Dunaway joined the many women who testified before the Helms committee in September 1977, still in time to plead for the cancellation of November’s national IWY conference.86 Rosemary Thomson called the Helms hearings “an exciting two days of spiritual unity for several hundred women and a few men dedicated to traditional

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moral values.”87 If the women felt alienated from their state conferences, at least they found a conservative home on Capitol Hill. Georgia’s IWY CRC reports served as a guide to women in other states for monitoring their own state meetings. The most important pieces of advice they sent were, “WATCH FOR INFILTRATION” and “REMAIN LADIES AT ALL TIMES.”88 Likewise, Georgia received reports from other state IWY CRC groups. Though the state meeting was over, Georgia women used the reports from other states to encourage legislators to cease funding for IWY or to cancel the national IWY meeting in November. Dunaway received and recirculated reports from Mississippi, Florida, Minnesota, and Oklahoma, among others.89 One of the most circulated IWY CRC reports originated at the Hawaii meeting. IWY CRC member Helen Priester described a workshop entitled “Coming Together” that entailed a modern dance piece depicting lesbians “showing the audience how they make love in a pay toilet!” Dancers proceeded to pin on paper penises that a dancer portraying a doctor then snipped off.90 Dunaway mailed copies of Priester’s report to her representatives at all levels. Georgia State Senator Charles Wessels wrote that he supported the ERA, but found the Hawaii tale “abhorant [sic].” Lieutenant Governor Zell Miller found the report “most shocking.” U.S. Senator Sam Nunn and Governor George Busbee acknowledged receipt of the information, but offered more restrained responses.91 Schlafly rehashed the Hawaii dance in her National Defense report in the DAR national magazine.92 The portrayal of lesbian love and male castration demonstrated in Hawaii bolstered the IWY CRC claim that state meetings did not represent conservative women. The vivid account played well with legislative and grassroots audiences. At the end of each state IWY meeting, attendees elected state representatives to the National IWY meeting in Houston that November. IWY CRC reports indicated that the conservative women in most states believed that the elections were rigged to favor pro-ERA and pro-abortion delegates. Dunaway and her state IWY CRC coalition complained that the Georgia elections unfairly resulted in a slate heavily weighted against them. Yet, their stories shared with other IWY CRC groups, Eagle Forums, and state STOP ERA organizations helped women elsewhere strategize. Conservative women won the majority of the delegate spots in Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Utah.93 The interstate networks of IWY CRC showed the conservative women’s grassroots strength. For example, lessons learned in Vermont allowed Georgia to tweak its planning to include a hospitality suite. Georgia then showed other states how to maximize the role of the suite in planning. Any woman in any state could read the reports from other states and forward the most explicit examples of militancy, lesbianism, or injustice to their own legislators. With the IWY, local women worked on interstate networks for national impact. As

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Rosemary Thompson celebrated, “While the libs may call each other ‘sisters,’ it is evident that our bond is the real way of sisterhood as the Lord intended!”94 As the state IWY meetings kicked off in 1977, the National Organization for Women (NOW) enacted a boycott of all fifteen states that had not ratified the ERA. One year later, over one hundred organizations had joined, agreeing not to hold national conventions in any unratified states. The Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau estimated that the boycott by NOW and NOW-sympathizers would cost the city a projected $167 million in tourism and convention business. ERAmerica placed the loss to Atlanta at $21.3 million in 1979.95 Dunaway responded to the boycott of her state by asking all STOP ERA friends to visit Georgia. Speaking to a crowd of Atlanta broadcasters in the spring of 1978, Dunaway challenged, “Will Atlanta, Georgia and other states sacrifice their womanhood for a few more greedy dollars? Or are we willing to advertise our city as the most beautiful, the most hospitable city in America filled with exciting historical and fun areas?”96 Despite the boycott, Dunaway managed to persuade legislators to keep the ERA from a floor vote in 1977. In 1978, the amendment died in the Judiciary Committee.97 Simultaneously, Dunaway began writing national and state legislators to reject all proposed legislation from the IWY meetings. She warned that IWY proposals regarding childcare, health care, and job training “can only add to the woes of women, who like men suffer from the by-products of inflation in the form of broken homes, child abuse, domestic and other forms of violence, and loss of economic security.”98 She carefully linked women’s social issues to universal economic underpinnings. Interestingly, the Georgia state legislators repeatedly opposed the ERA at a time when the legislature was solidly Democratic and even after Governor Jimmy Carter became president. Carter publicly supported the ERA during his 1976 campaign and as president. First Lady Rosalyn Carter traveled around the country to support the ERA. 99 The Congressional passage of ERA in 1972 allowed seven years for thirtyeight states to ratify the amendment. By the Fall of 1978, the ERA appeared doomed. Just after the national IWY, U.S. News and World Report observed that the ratification movement “seems to be running out of steam” as it was unable to get the final three states needed.100 Yet, Schlafly, Dunaway, and other conservatives found they had another battle to fight. Pro-ERA organizers recognized that they would not get the three additional states needed prior to the March 1979 deadline. As they lobbied Congress for extra ratification time, the STOP ERA forces organized to fight extension. Dunaway had to refocus her energy to implement a battle plan not against the ERA, but against time extension for the amendment. She broke the exten-

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sion news to her STOP ERA supporters in May 1978, lamenting, “The plain fact is that, whatever you already did on this subject was NOT enough!” She challenged, “Whatever you did before must be multiplied by 100 times within the week after you receive this letter if this crooked ERA Time Extension Bill is to be defeated!” Dunaway told friends to cancel Memorial Day plans to “devote full time” to the defeat of ERA extension. In outlining the strategy, though, Dunaway told women not to argue against ERA, only against ERA extension. At this critical time, “we don’t care whether he is pro or con on ERA. We only care that he vote against the . . . Time Extension Bill.”101 Dunaway mailed a letter opposing extension to Senator Herman Talmadge, who replied that he “carefully noted [her] position” and would consider it if the bill came for vote on the floor.102 As extension loomed, Schlafly asked her Eagle friends not to give her holiday or thank you gifts, but to put their money into the defeat of the ERA. Defeat of ERA was the only gift she really wanted.103 Schlafly declared a Nationwide Day of Prayer on July 9, 1978, to counterbalance NOW’s same-day march in Washington in support of extension. Schlafly encouraged Eagle Council members to “pray to stop the extension of the ERA time limit, to stop the killing of the unborn, and to stop the moral decline in America.”104 In addition to their dedication and femininity, the women of STOP ERA believed they had God on their side. Their campaign attracted followers from the growing Christian Right movement, and the rising religious political action reinforced the STOP ERA message. In October 1978, Schlafly wrote her STOP ERA friends to declare time extension “the Unfairness Doctrine.” She compared the pro-ERA forces to “a losing football team demanding that a fifth quarter be played to give them time to catch up—but allowing only the losing side to carry the ball and score.”105 Once the extension bill passed, though, Schlafly played the role of the winning football coach and told Eagle Forum members, “STOP ERA IS WINNING THE BATTLE. . . . The very passage of the Extension Bill proves that the ERAers know they cannot ratify in 3 more states by the March 22, 1979 deadline. The Extension Bill is a confession of failure.”106 A congressional subcommittee held hearings on the subject of extension in August 1978. First, they had to determine if Congress had the authority to extend the ratification window. Once the committee affirmed that it did, they then listened to testimony for and against the extra time. Rather than another seven years, however, Congress allotted just over three additional years and set a new deadline of June 30, 1982.107 President Carter supported and signed a resolution granting time extension for the ERA.108 Despite losing that battle, Schlafly celebrated victory in the original seven-year period with the “End of an E.R.A.” gala. Recognizing Dunaway’s value to the campaign, Schlafly invited her friend to walk in with her and to sit at the head table.109

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Years before the South voted Republican at the local level, southern legislators defeated the ERA. They listened to arguments crafted by Phyllis Schlafly, one of the most powerful national conservative leaders. Yet, the legislators heard Schlafly’s words in southern women’s voices. They did not hear the Solid South cracking in the background. Conservative women and gendered issues cracked the Democratic hold and opened a path for a region to join national conservative dialogue. Near the end of the ERA battle, Fred Schlafly, Phyllis’s husband, praised Dunaway: “I love to tell Phyllis and the other wonderful girls in all the states which have defeated ERA that your work is even superior to what everyone else did because you have stopped ERA in Carter’s own state for eight hard fought years. What you have accomplished should be described as the greatest political victory of the second half of the twentieth century.”110 During the last few years of the STOP ERA battle, Dunaway fought stomach cancer privately and the amendment and federal encroachment publicly. Sometimes, the two struggles overlapped, as in 1978 when she directed her husband to write a letter on her behalf. Sam Nunn had replied to one of Dunaway’s letters with a standard form letter. As the irate Mrs. Dunaway left for the hospital, John Dunaway wrote Nunn at her request, “Mrs. Dunaway is quite concerned over the fact that although she has been State Chairman of the Stop ERA force now going into its seventh year, you write her as if she were totally unfamiliar with the status of matters in Georgia.” Dunaway knew her status in Georgia’s grassroots politics and demanded respect, even as she went into “perhaps serious surgery.” 111 Kathryn Dunaway died from stomach cancer in 1981, having led several annual defeats for the ERA in Georgia. Lee Wysong assumed the role as chairman of Georgia STOP ERA, organizing an instructional workshop and letterwriting campaign to defeat the amendment once again in the 1981 session. The Georgia legislature honored Dunaway with resolutions commemorating her political and social contributions to the state. News of Dunaway’s passing and the legislative commemoration topped the Georgia Eagle Forum’s Eagle’s Eye newsletter. On the top of the Dunaways’ copy, Eagle Forum president Sue Ella Deadwyler wrote, “Hello John! God bless you! I thank the Lord that Kathryn taught me how to work the Capitol!” 112 Through her leadership and mentoring, Dunaway guaranteed that her troops would continue to fight the conservative battles in Georgia. —— 1. “Stop ERA’s Katherine [sic] Dunaway Spends Her Time Rallying Her ‘Girls,’” Atlanta Constitution, May 2, 1979, B1. 2. Press Release from Georgia STOP ERA, n.d., Folder 3, Box 7, Kathryn Fink Dunaway

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papers, Manuscript and Rare Book Library, Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA (hereafter Dunaway Papers). 3. Kathryn Dunaway to Chester Gray, Feb. 6, 1974, Folder 20, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 4. Phyllis Schlafly to Stop ERA Chairmen, Feb. 14, 1974, Folder 19, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 5. Application for Sandy Springs Woman’s Club, Folder 8, Box 2, Dunaway Papers. There is no date on this application. 6. “Biographical Sketch,” Folder 13, Box 2, Dunaway Papers. 7. “Georgia Mother’s Committee, Mother of the Year 1976,” Folder 8, Box 2, Dunaway Papers. 8. Tom Murphy to Georgia Mother’s Committee, Nov. 7, 1975, Folder 10, Box 2, Dunaway Papers. 9. Parents Concerned with Education to Gov. Carl Sanders, 1965, Folder 10, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. There is no specific date on this letter, but the conference to which it refers is 1965. Dunaway also collected clippings which connected Civil Rights workers to communism such as “US Negro Joins Reds at 93” Miami Herald, Nov. 23, 1961, 12C, Folder 7, Box 8; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Civil Rights: The Danger Ahead,” Atlanta Journal, Dec. 3, 1964, Folder 18, Box 8, Dunaway Papers. 10. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 3–4. 11. Donald G. Mathews and Jane Sherron De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), xi. 12. Lee Wysong, interview with the author, Atlanta, Ga., Aug. 19, 2006. Tapes and transcripts in possession of the author. 13. Matthews and DeHart, ix. 14. Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Catherine E. Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2006); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Mathews and De Hart. 15. National Committee Against Fluoridation, Inc. to Supporter, Apr. 20, 1963; Letter from Bernard L. Lefoley to Edward A. McLaughlin, Aug. 11, 1961; Letter from Bernard D. Hirsch to M. A. Mott, Sept. 7, 1961, Folder 5, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 16. Kathryn Dunaway to Sen. Hubert Humphrey, Mar. 2, 1964, Folder 6, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 17. Americans for National Security to Dear Patriot, Apr. 30, 1964, Folder 14, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 18. Georgia Conservative Council to Kathryn Dunaway, Oct. 4, 1965, Folder 14, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 19. “Biographical Sketch,” n.d., Folder 13, Box 2. While there is no date on this sketch, the latest dates listed indicate that it was probably written in 1965 or 1966. “Governmental Activities of Kathryn Fink Dunaway,” n.d., Folder 29, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 20. “Biographical Sketch,” n.d., Folder 13, Box 2. Dunaway Papers. 21. Ibid. NFRW news release, Sept. 18, 1966, Folder 10, Box 7, Dunaway Papers. 22. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 47–61; Carol Felsenthal, Phyllis Schlafly: The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1981) 151–62. Dunaway’s two copies of A Choice, Not an Echo are in Box 15, Dunaway Papers. 23. Dunaway testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Feb. 22, 1965, Folder 2, Box 3; Schlafly testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Feb. 23, 1965, Folder 20, Box 8, Dunaway Papers. 24. Phyllis Schlafly to Kathryn Dunaway, Oct. 30, 1967, Folder 8, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 25. Harry S. Flemming to Kathryn Dunaway, Jan. 24, 1970, Folder 3, Box 1, Dunaway Papers.

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26. Phyllis Schlafly to Kathryn Dunaway, July 23, 1973, Folder 11, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. This is a form letter, but Schlafly hand-wrote “Kathryn” in the salutation. Emphasis in original. 27. Kathryn Dunaway and Lee Wysong to Dear Friend, Oct. 27, 1973, Folder 3, Box 1, Dunaway Papers; “Stop ERA’s Katherine [sic] Dunaway Spends Her Time Rallying Her ‘Girls’” Atlanta Constitution, May 2, 1979, B1. 28. Kathryn Dunaway and Lee Wysong to Friend, June 1, 1974, Folder 23, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 29. Mrs. J. Tom Morgan to Kathryn Dunaway, Jan. 14, 1974, Folder 25, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 30. “The Abortion Connection,” published by the Eagle Forum, no date, Folder 1, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. The quotes of this pamphlet are listed as 1975, so the piece likely came out in 1975 or 1976. 31. Mary Kelly to Kathryn Dunaway, Nov. 8, 1973, Folder 27, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 32. Letter to Georgia STOP ERA from Kathryn Dunaway, Jan. 26, 1977, Folder 24, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 33. Matthews and DeHart, 59–60. 34. Wysong interview. 35. “Transcription of Tapes Made During the ERA Debate on Saturday, May 7, 1977 at the IWY Conference Held in Atlanta, Georgia at the Sheraton-Biltmore Hotel,” Georgia International Women’s Year Meeting, May 7, 1977, Folder 13, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 36. “ERA—Unnecessary, Undesirable, and Uncertain,” Folder 1, Box 7, Dunaway Papers. This is the text of Dunaway’s article against the ERA for the Emory Law Journal in the Fall of 1977. 37. “Transcription of Tapes Made During the ERA Debate on Saturday, May 7, 1977 at the IWY Conference Held in Atlanta, Georgia at the Sheraton-Biltmore Hotel,” May 7, 1977, Folder 13, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 38. Kathryn Dunaway, “Press Release from STOP ERA of Georgia,” Jan. 16, 1980, Folder 17, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 39. Matthews and De Hart, 163–165. 40. Phyllis Schlafly to Friend, Sept. 1977, Folder 2, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 41. “Outline for Speech,” n.d., Folder 8, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 42. “The Proposed New Divorce Code for Georgia,” July 1978, Folder 6, Box 6, Dunaway Papers; “Who’s Kidding Whom,” Press Release from Mrs. Kathryn Dunaway, Pro-Family Coalition, July 2, 1979, Folder 13, Box 6, Dunaway Papers. 43. “ERA—Unnecessary, Undesirable, and Uncertain,” Folder 1, Box 7, Dunaway Papers. 44. While the text of the amendment is in many documents both for and against the ERA, the text I used in this case is in Leslie Gladstone, Government Division, “Equal Rights Amendment (Proposed): Issue Brief Number IB74122,” Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Major Issues System, Date Originated 10/18/74, Date Updated 12/31/80. 45. Wysong interview; Lee Wysong quoted in “Transcription of Tapes Made During the ERA Debate on Saturday, May 7, 1977 at the IWY Conference Held in Atlanta, Georgia at the Sheraton-Biltmore Hotel.” May 7, 1977, Folder 13, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 46. Evaluations of Kathryn Fink Dunaway, n.d., Folder 5, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 47. “Registration for Eagle Council/Eagle Forum/STOP ERA Conference,” 1978, Folder 8, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 48. “Tips When You Go on Television,” n.d., Georgia STOP ERA, Folder 5, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 49. Kathryn Dunaway to Hon. Don Edwards, May 13, 1978, Folder 3, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. The notation at the bottom reads “KFD:uvh (unpaid volunteer help).” 50. Kathryn Dunaway to John Dunaway, Folder 4, Box 6. Kathryn attached a scrap of paper

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reading “John, please copy (2) and send 1 to Jill attached envelope.” Kathryn Dunaway to John Dunaway, Folder 9, Box 4. 51. Lena Fay Parish to STOP ERA, Jan. 17, 1974, Folder 26, Box 1; Ann Murray of Chamblee to STOP ERA, Jan. 17, 1974, Folder 26, Box 1; Angelynn McGuff to Kathryn Dunaway, n.d., Folder 26, Box 1; Mrs. Allen (Dorothy) Jones to Kathryn Dunaway, Dec. 27, 1973, Folder 26, Box 1; Mrs. William R. (Betty) Bass to Kathryn Dunaway, Jan. 31, 1974, Folder 27, Box 1; Erin Sherman to Kathryn Dunaway, Feb. 11, 1974, Folder 27, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 52. Kathryn Dunaway to unnamed, no letterhead, Oct. 9, 1978, Folder 7, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 53. Mrs. Jean (R. K. Stovall) to Kathryn Dunaway, March 19, no year, Folder 27, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. Stovall mailed this letter to the Atlanta Constitution offices, which forwarded it to Dunaway. Postmarked 1974. 54. Betty Bass to Kathryn Dunaway, Jan. 30, 1974, Folder 27, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 55. Louise (Mrs. John Preston) Younger, Jan. 30, 1974, Folder 27, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 56. Phyllis Schlafly to STOP ERA Chairman, Aug. 13, 1974, Folder 2, Box 7, Dunaway Papers. 57. Kathryn Dunaway and Lee Wysong to STOP ERA members, Nov. 1974, Folder 2, Box 7, Dunaway Papers. 58. Paul Coverdell to Kathryn Dunaway, Oct. 30, 1976, Folder 12, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 59. “Questionnaire for Candidates for the Georgia Legislature,” completed by Agnes Domingo, n.d., Folder 3, Box 7, Dunaway Papers. 60. Martha (Mrs. Marty) Elrod to Kathryn Dunaway, Aug. 19, 1980, Folder 7, Box 2, Dunaway Papers. 61. “Questionnaire for Candidates for the Georgia Legislature,” completed by Leonard Brown, n.d., Folder 3, Box 7, Dunaway Papers. 62. Kathryn Dunaway to unnamed, Oct. 9, 1978, Folder 7, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 63. Gerald Ford, “Remarks Upon Establishing the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year, 1975,” Jan. 9, 1975, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Gerald Ford, Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, 1975, Book I—January 1 to July 17, 1975, (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1977), 25. 64. Sam Nunn to Kathryn Dunaway, May 20, 1976, Folder 1, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 65. Resolution introduced at Republican Party of Georgia, n.d., Folder 18, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 66. Phyllis Schlafly, “Federal Financing of a Foolish Feminist Festival,” Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine (112:3, March 1978), 192. 67. “International Women’s Year Commission—Report on ERAmerica Formation,” Jan. 15, 1976, Subject File 1976–1982, Box 132, Records of ERAmerica, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 68. STOP ERA Fundraising Project, n.d., Subject File 1976–1982, Box 124, ERAmerica, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. There is a copy of this also in Folder 2, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 69. Rosemary Thompson to IWY Citizens’ Review Chairman, May 1, 1977, Folder 1, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 70. Ibid. 71. Georgia Coordinating Committee on the Observance of International Women’s Year, Folder 22, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 72. Kathryn Dunaway, “A Dissenting View,” May 24, 1977, Folder 16, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 73. Kathryn Dunaway to Friend, April 7, 1977, Folder 10, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. Schlafly came to Atlanta April 20. The First Baptist Church of Atlanta’s pastor was (and still is) Charles

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Stanley, who testified against the ERA before the Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee in January 1977. Dunaway to Stanley, Jan. 17, 1977, Folder 7, Box 2, Dunaway Papers. 74. “Instructions for Workshop Leaders,” Folder 1, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 75. Ibid. 76. “IWY Workshop Report Form,” Folder 1, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 77. “Instructions for Workshop Leaders,” Folder 1, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 78. Rosemary Thompson to Citizens’ Review Chairman, June 5, 1977, Folder 2, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 79. “Instructions for IWY Conference,” n.d., Folder 1 Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 80. Citizens’ Review Committee for IWY Handout to Georgia Delegates, Folder 1, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 81. “Instructions for IWY Conference” no date, Folder 1, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 82. Beverly Adams, “Bella’s Roadshow,” Folder 21, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 83. Gwen Metzger to “To Whom this May Concern,” Folder 16, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 84. Kathryn Dunaway and Elizabeth R. Benning (CRC co-chairman), “Overall Evaluation of Georgia Women’s Meeting for the Observance of International Women’s Year,” n.d., Folder 1, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 85. “Congress and the Abzugate Scandal: Who is to Be Held Responsible?” Folder 1, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 86. Kathryn Fink Dunaway to Jesse Helms and Members of the Committee of the Hearing on IWY, Sept. 14, 1977, Folder 9, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 87. Rosemary Thompson to Citizens’ Review Committee Chairman, Sept. 26, 1977, Folder 2, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 88. Georgia Eagles to Eagles in Other States, “Be Prepared for the IWY Meetings,” n.d., Folder 9, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 89. “Mississippi: Awake and Aware,” Folder 7, Box 4; Florida IWY conference program, Folder 7, Box 4; Newsletter of Oklahoma Eagle Forum, Folder 20, Box 4; Minnesota Women’s Meeting, Folder 8, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 90. Helen Priester report to IWY CRC of Hawaii, July 11, 1977, Folder 11, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 91. Zell Miller to Kathryn Dunaway, Aug. 29, 1977; Charles Wessels to Kathryn Dunaway, Sept. 1, 1977; Sam Nunn to Kathryn Dunaway, Oct. 13, 1977; Governor George Busbee to Kathryn Dunaway, Aug. 30, 1977, Folder 1, Box 4, Dunaway Papers. 92. Schlafly “Federal Financing of a Foolish Feminist Festival,” Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine, (112:3, March 1978), 194. 93. “Why Women’s Lib is in Trouble,” U.S. News and World Report, Nov. 28, 1977, 29. 94. Rosemary Thompson to CRC Members, July 5, 1977, Folder 2, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 95. Press Release from Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, n.d., Folder 3, Box 1, Dunaway Papers; Barbara Grogan to Pat Antonisse, June 19, 1979, Administration File, 1976–1982, Box 31, Records of ERAmerica, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. 96. Kathryn Dunaway speech to Georgia Association of Broadcasters, Inc., April 20, 1978, Folder 3, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 97. “Status of ERA Ratification,” April 8, 1978, Administration File, 1976–1982, Box 7, Records of ERAmerica, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Other states not ratifying by the time of this publication are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia. 98. Kathryn Dunaway and Betty Benning to Mr. Congressman and Mr. Legislator. April 15, 1978, Folder 13, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 99. Burton I. Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 111–12.

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100. “Is Time Running Out on ERA’s Chances?” U.S. News and World Report, Nov. 28, 1977, 32. 101. Kathryn Dunaway to STOP ERA friend, May 23, 1978, Folder 3, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 102. Herman Talmadge to Kathryn Dunaway, June 5, 1978, Folder 13, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 103. Phyllis Schlafly to Eagle, July 22, 1978, Folder 8, Box 3, Dunaway Papers. 104. Phyllis Schlafly to Eagle Council, June 29, 1978, Folder 16, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 105. Phyllis Schlafly to STOP ERA Friend, Oct. 1978, Folder 18, Box 6, Dunaway Papers. 106. “Extension Proves ERA is Losing,” Eagle Forum Newsletter, Oct. 1978, Folder 18, Box 6, Dunaway Papers. 107. Barbara Milner, “Dream of Equal Rights Amendment Not Forgotten,” Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, June 30, 2004, A5. 108. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 253–55. 109. Phyllis Schlafly to Kathryn Dunaway, March 17, 1979, Folder 3, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 110. Fred Schlafly to Kathryn Dunaway, Jan. 3, 1980, Folder 11, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 111. John Dunaway to Sam Nunn, June 22, 1978, Folder 1, Box 1, Dunaway Papers. 112. Eagle’s Eye, Feb. 27, 1981, Folder 12, Box 4, Dunaway Papers.

“Look for the Union Label” Organizing Women Workers and Women Consumers in the Southern Apparel Industry M i ch e ll e H ab e r lan d

I

n

1975

th e

In t ernat i onal

L a d i es

G ar m ent

Wo r ke rs

U ni o n

(ILGWU) label became one of the most widely recognized symbols in the history of the American labor movement. Of all the strikes and strategies the United States apparel unions have utilized since World War II, none has been as popular or more readily recognized than the ILGWU song and television commercial entitled, “Look for the Union Label.” Created by an innovative advertising team in 1975, the jingle was dubbed “The cry of the American labor movement” and was featured on a host of contemporary television programs. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then the ILG must certainly have been proud when the cast of Saturday Night Live parodied the wellknown commercial that featured a diverse group of mostly women members of the ILG sending a message of solidarity by singing in unison. Although the commercial itself aired only sixty times between 1978 and 1985, it did much to increase awareness of the union label and to encourage consumers to consider the workers that made their clothing. A few years before the ILG launched its “Look for the Union Label” advertising campaign, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) initiated a boycott against Farah Manufacturing, a leader in the production of men’s apparel located in El Paso, Texas. Like the ILGWU, the ACWA relied on a national campaign that encouraged consumers to boycott Farah products until Willie Farah recognized the right of his largely Latina workforce to be represented by the union. In both the Farah boycott and the ILGWU label campaign, the moral and political dimensions of consumerism, or purchasing power, were paramount. In addition, both apparel unions used the boycott strategy to advance their organizing efforts in the South, where many 184

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runaway, nonunion companies had relocated decades earlier. The role of women as the primary consumers of the household placed them in a critical position to determine the success or failure of the unions’ campaigns. These two important consumer actions did not spontaneously develop in the 1970s. Instead, both the ILGWU and the ACWA drew on a long history of organized consumer actions both within and beyond the clothing industry itself. The history of this type of consumer protest provides a context for the Farah boycott and the ILGWU’s “Look for the Union Label” campaign. Few contemporaries of these two famous campaigns recognized that the origins of the union label strategy dated back to the nineteenth century.1 Fewer still realized that the union label first developed as a way of excluding certain groups of workers from an industrial labor pool. In 1875 a group of San Francisco cigar makers faced increased competition from lower-waged Chinese cigar workers. The group called itself the Cigar Makers’ Association of the Pacific Coast and devised a distinctive white label to be placed on cigar boxes that would help consumers identify the source of manufacture. The label read: “CIGAR MAKERS’ ASSOC’N. The cigars contained in this box are made by WHITE MEN. This label is issued by authority of the Cigar Makers’ Association of the Pacific Coast and adopted by law.”2 Rather than being primarily an expression of class solidarity or a guarantee of quality, the cigar makers’ label was a tool of racial exclusion, a way of competing with what white cigar makers deemed to be an inferior (and yet, still threatening) group of workers.3 The union label strategy was successful in San Francisco, and other unions soon adapted the strategy to the needs of their own industries. Male can makers, for example, used the union label—or, in their particular case, a stamp on the bottom of their cans—to combat the encroaching threat that machinery and less expensive women workers posed to their dominance of the can industry. Their label promised “hand-made” quality and sanitary conditions, but it also was a way to combat the deskilling of their craft and the threat posed by lower-waged female machine operators.4 Throughout the course of United States history, the boycott has proven to be one of the most effective and popular consumer actions. Typically, boycotts have taken three primary forms. A standard boycott encourages consumers to stop doing business with a single company whose behavior or politics are objectionable. Buying according to a label is another common but more complicated strategy of a boycott. The label on a product indicates compliance with a specific standard of production. This strategy relies on consumer preference for labeled goods and, hopefully, results in a boycott of non-labeled goods. Another third variation of consumer action is the secondary boycott. This type of boycott occurs when a group of workers target a second firm, most likely a retailer or distributor, in an effort to get the second firm to cease

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doing business with the primary producer with whom consumers or unionists have a dispute. The apparel industry, with its complicated structure of contractors, jobbers, distributors, and retailers was—and continues to be— particularly vulnerable to this type of boycott. The right to boycott has a long history in the United States. Far from being the exclusive tool of organized labor, the earliest American boycotts were tools of popular political protest. During the Revolution, Americans staged boycotts to express their displeasure with the English administration of the colonies. In addition to the legendary tea boycotts of the Revolution, wealthy women patriots refused to wear English-made cloth and created public and political statements by wearing less finely made domestic cloth. They held public spinning demonstrations to declare their support for the patriot cause. Even as far back as the Revolutionary era, women were understood to be responsible for determining a significant portion of the household’s consumption. The “politicization of the household economy” through the purchase or boycott of certain products depended in large measure upon the loyalty of women.5 The Revolutionary-era boycotts were, in large part, created and carried out by women. By the turn of the twentieth century, both of the primary garment workers’ unions, the ILGWU and the United Garment Workers (UGW), included a label program in their initial charters. When meeting in 1900 to establish the ILGWU as the national union of the women’s clothing industry, delegates authorized a union label. The label concept was nothing new to the women’s clothing industry in 1900. Tailors’ and cloakmakers’ associations had adopted labels to identify their garments in the late nineteenth century and brought their experiences to the ILGWU convention.6 However, the union label programs of the decades prior to World War II received spotty enforcement and were therefore generally unsuccessful. The apparel unions’ difficulty with their label campaigns was not unusual for the times. Union leaders of various industries often found it hard to obtain rank-and-file cooperation. From the clothing industry to the entertainment industry, union label officers complained and even cited individual unionists or their family members for patronizing manufacturers or performers that were nonunion. In 1910 the director of the ILGWU’s earliest union label program, Pauline Newman, complained that it was difficult to agitate for the label because “[a]t union meetings you find men only. For, sad as it is, it is nevertheless a fact that the great mass of working women are not organized as yet. And can not be reached at the meeting.”7 The tension between union loyalty and the grim reality of stretching meager wages in an emerging age of consumption was great. In addition, the label campaign’s indirect contribution to improving working conditions—especially when compared to the more immediate and visible

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improvements brought by strikes, organizing, and Progressive Era legislation—made it difficult to gain label support among rank-and-file unionists. Some argued that the label campaigns were evidence of union leaders’ collusion with employers, as in the case of the UGW, who apparently granted label privileges to several firms that did not employ union workers and paid substandard wages. This dispute, along with other allegations of corruption, led to the establishment of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) by a splinter group of the UGW.8 Throughout most of the twentieth century, the ACWA focused on the men’s clothing industry, while the ILGWU concentrated its efforts on women and children’s clothing. As unions and workers began to implement more and more boycotts, and the newly formed National Consumers League created the White Label, employers sought the assistance of the federal government to combat potential union gains. In 1895, business executives gathered in Cincinnati, Ohio, to create the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Solidarity across craft lines had proven beneficial to unionists, especially with respect to boycotts; employers suspected the same would be true for them as well. And, indeed it was. The combination of industrialists from a wide variety of economic sectors resulted in a very powerful organization. Not surprisingly, the AABA was created specifically to respond to a boycott in the apparel industry. The famous 1902 Danbury Hatters’ Case, Lawlor v. Loewe, in which Dietrich Loewe refused to recognize the United Hatters union, not only led to the creation of a new organization, the American AntiBoycott Association, but it also resulted in a Supreme Court decision that restricted boycotts across state lines. The United Hatters vigorously boycotted Loewe’s distribution network and promoted their boycott from Connecticut to Virginia and all the way to the west coast. Union organizers and rank-andfile members attacked any establishment that sold hats made by Loewe’s scab workers. In response, the AABA amassed a powerful lobby of attorneys who argued that boycotts across state lines constituted a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act because, just as certain combinations of employers were illegal, so were combinations of workers. Ultimately, the courts agreed and ordered the hatters to pay three times the actual damages sustained by Loewe.9 As a result of the efforts of these two organizations, the NAM and the AABA, the federal government restricted the legality of boycotts and other consumer actions. Thus began the legal history of boycotts in the United States. During the Great Depression and the New Deal and beyond, Congress passed a variety of legislation that both curbed and expanded the right to engage in secondary boycotts. The arguments against secondary boycotts were based on two principles. First, that secondary boycotts violated an important principle of

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the Gilded Age: the free flow of capital. Second, that boycotts represented a dangerous threat to the economic security of the nation as they could result in the mobilization of workers across a number of industries and geographic areas. With the passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Act (1932) and the Wagner Act (1935), Congress expanded the right to engage in secondary boycotts.10 However, in 1947 the passage of Taft-Hartley Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) brought that period of freedom to an end. Senator Taft specifically designed the prohibition on secondary boycotts to protect “the business of a third person who is wholly unconcerned in the disagreement between an employer and his employees.”11 Still, the courts had some difficulty in determining just what situations constituted secondary boycotts. Finally, in 1959, the Landrum-Griffin amendments provided the courts with an expanded and clearly enunciated definition of what behavior constituted a secondary boycott.12 Ironically, the Landrum-Griffin Amendments actually offered an exception to the ban on secondary boycotts for a few industries, apparel among them.13 In 1946, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) initiated Operation Dixie, a broadly conceived organizing drive that focused on industrial workers in the South. With a confidence inspired by the booming post–World War II economy and increased union membership levels, both the ACWA and the ILGWU set out to organize southern garment workers, many of whom toiled in runaway shops for much lower wages than their northern counterparts.14 Although they employed different organizing strategies, both the ACWA and the ILGWU used boycotts and union label campaigns to address the difficulties of organizing in the South. Both union strategies identified women as arbiters of consumer spending. The post–World War II boycotts and union label campaigns in the clothing industry also reveal an evolution in the attitudes of male union leaders toward women as workers and political actors. The ACWA was the first to use a label campaign to reinforce its postwar hold on the men’s apparel industry. At its 1948 annual convention in Atlantic City, the ACWA dedicated a half a million dollars to the promotion of their union label with the express intention of promoting public support for ACWA-made clothing. Union president Jacob Potofsky explained to rankand-file representatives that the union would direct its appeal to fellow CIO unionists as well as the general public through radio promotions and advertisements in trade and popular journals.15 In addition to boosting the demand for union-made goods among consumers and merchants, the ACWA leadership also envisioned the union label as a way of organizing reluctant southern garment factories, thereby bringing the South into the ACWA fold. Charles Weinstein, director of the national union label effort, argued that the union label would represent “a guarantee

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against the return of the sweatshop . . . [and] an effective safeguard against the few chiselers who still seek to undermine standards” in the men’s clothing industry.16 Those “chiselers” resided in the South. At a 1954 meeting of the CIO Council of Rochester, New York, one union label worker explained how “money from Rochester consumers is going to non-union firms, mostly in the South, where living and working conditions for the employees are very much lower than in Rochester. This undermines the standard of living here.”17 Union activists perceived nonunion firms in the South as a threat to those hard-won union standards in the North and elsewhere and looked to the union label campaign as a way to combat that threat. Indeed, the campaign was somewhat successful. While touring through the South in 1951, Bessie Hillman, then vice president of the ACWA, made the southern connection to the national union label campaign clear: “We are urging people not to buy clothes unless they carry the union label. . . . Most of these [shops that have contractual relationships with the ACWA] are in the North . . . but last year four Southern firms signed up with us. Now we are putting all our energy on getting other Southern firms into the union.”18 In Atlanta, one southern-born unionist remarked, “There can be no real prosperity where labor is exploited . . . and the South must not try to go forward as the refuge of non-union industry.”19 Many of the ACWA’s first postwar label advertisements were intended for women. Although union leaders were not prepared to give women an equal place in positions of leadership in the ACWA, they did recognize that women would play an important role in a successful boycott of nonunion made men’s and boys’ clothing. As the ACWA’s union label campaign matured and expanded in the decade after its inception, the appeals became more sophisticated. The union enlisted the assistance of advertising firms that used modern marketing techniques to win label loyalty from both union activists and average consumers. Advertisement after advertisement highlighted the role of women in purchasing or influencing the purchase of men’s apparel. To reach this female audience, the ACWA placed an extended series of advertisements in McCall’s, Woman’s Home Companion and other journals that marketed to women. One advertising industry journal proclaimed that these advertisements would “be aimed directly at women [since] . . . they purchase more than 50% of men’s shirts and almost all the boys’ shirts”20 A handbook distributed by the national union label office in New York City urged local label workers to include “Women as well as men . . . on [their union label committees], since it is well known to retailers that women have a tremendous influence on all the family’s shopping.”21 The union recognized that the success of the label campaign rested, at least in part, on the support of women consumers. But the advertisements themselves reflected a traditional Â�conceptualization

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of the role women could play in the labor movement. Although the ACWA apparently envisioned women as potential targets of their label campaign, the union also tended to focus on a traditional and domestic role for women. Throughout the postwar era, women comprised approximately 80 percent of the workers in the American apparel industry.22 Yet union leaders developed advertisements for the union label campaign that virtually ignored the participation of its female members. Many advertisements suggested that wearing suits bearing the ACWA label increased a man’s sexual desirability among women. One 1953 cartoon featured two men in an office reading the famous Kinsey report on American sexuality. The caption read, “ninety-nine point ten percent of women prefer men with Amalgamated Union Labels in their suits.”23 The series of union label advertisements placed in women’s journals in 1955 also highlighted women’s domesticity. One ad read, “Nobody has an eye for a good buy like the ladies. . . . [T]hat’s why they now look for the Amalgamated Union label when they shop for shirts for the men in their family. Leave it to the ladies to know how spot a good buy. They have a feel for fashion and quality, an instinct for getting their money’s worth.”24 Another ACWA appeal played on the image of a wife taking money from her husband’s pocket. It portrayed women, especially in their capacity as wives, as a drain on family resources. The advertisement featured a man buying a suit and talking to the salesman about his wife, who appears in the background checking for the union label in a man’s suit jacket. The caption read, “When a wife looks in her husband’s pockets before he buys a suit—to make sure the Amalgamated label is there—she’s reversing the old family ‘custom.’ Instead of taking money out, it’s like putting money into the pocket!”25 All in all, the ACWA’s union label advertisements portrayed women in either domestic or sexual situations. The sexual overtones of some advertisements belittled women, while others depicted women only as agents of the household, not workers, and certainly not unionists. In these ways, the ACWA effectively undermined the potential of its own advertising campaign—much of which was directed at women consumers—by reinforcing a solely domestic role for women, despite the fact that the majority of the union’s membership was female. The ACWA’s women members may very well have desired the middle-class domestic ideals portrayed in the union label advertisements, but that was an ideal that the circumstances of their lives could not afford. Ultimately, the union’s emphasis on women’s domesticity certainly reflected an unequal conceptualization of gender roles. The ILGWU’s postwar label campaign bore a strong resemblance to the ACWA’s efforts. When the union announced the establishment of its own Union Label Department in 1958, an experienced advertising firm was hired to publicize the advantages of the ILGWU label to fellow unionists and the

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general public.26 The union promoted its new initiative by having the wife of New York state’s governor, Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller, sew the first union label into a woman’s garment and, just a few years later, Eleanor Roosevelt fastened the eleven billionth label to another union-made garment. And like the ACWA, leaders in the ILGWU hoped that the union label campaign would help them increase their membership by eliminating runaway shops.27 The union believed that the South’s right-to-work laws and local pro-business governments made the region a haven for such businesses.28 Both the ILGWU and the ACWA hoped that their union label campaigns would make the products from these non-union runaway shops less desirable by increasing consumer demand for union-made garments. In time, they hoped, these nonunion shops would find that to create demand for their products and stay in business, they would need to use the union label. In short, they would find a contractual relationship with the ACWA or the ILGWU preferable to not having one. Another similarity between the two unions’ label campaigns was their focus on women consumers. Although the representations of women in the early ILGWU label campaign advertisements reflected the domestic and traditional features of femininity, later appeals featured a different perspective. In the early years of the ILGWU’s union label campaign, the union promised to meet the needs of women consumers “for reliable information on fashion.” A model speech written by the Union Label Department explained how the ILGWU would hire fashion experts to explain the fundamentals of “How To Dress Well, How To Combine Colors, How To Dress Economically, [and] How To Tell the Difference Between Fads and Fashions.”29 In this way, the ILG’s label campaign was aimed directly at women consumers through an appeal based on fashion. In the early 1970s a “Wage Record Book” distributed by John Denaro, director of the Union Label Department, suggested an advertising campaign at odds with the female majority of ILGWU members. Several pages of this booklet, intended for use by garment workers to keep track of the number of pieces completed and piece rates, stressed the substantial buying power of union members in all industries saying, “It’s simple. The trade union membership of this country spends some $100,000,000,000 annually. . . . That’s alot [sic] of money and a lot of power.” But the unionists to whom the ILG directed this appeal were men, not women. Various slogans and missives printed on the pages throughout the fill-in section of the booklet not only reinforced a domestic image of women consumers, but they also depicted women as wives of unionists, not union members themselves. One page read, “The women of America hold the pursetrings [sic] and are the big buyers of retail goods in our country. As wives of union members they can help most

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by spending union-earned money for goods and services produced by other union members.”30 The intended audience for this booklet and union label appeal was the ILGWU’s own membership, and yet the union’s appeal was to the wives of union members, not the women unionists themselves. In 1970, 81 percent of garment workers in the United States were women, and the union’s membership reflected that figure.31 Ironically, the appeal not only excluded women workers, but it also suggested that “union-earned money” was money earned by men, not women. However misguided the ILGWU and the ACWA may have appeared in the early stages of their respective postwar label campaigns, especially with respect to the images of women workers and unionists, the later versions of these campaigns incorporated images of women as consumers, workers, and union members. The most famous of these more inclusive and representative appeals was the familiar ILGWU jingle, “Look for the Union Label.” Created in 1975, after feminism had become a political force in America, the series of commercials featuring ILGWU members themselves singing the praises of buying union-made women’s garments was an instant success. Americans and the labor movement itself embraced the song. By featuring women apparel workers in the commercials, the appeal mechanism was clear: Women urged other women to buy union-made garments. This portrayal of women as workers and as active union members marked a departure from the inappropriate and unrealistic appeals of previous years. The “Look for the Union Label” song was an appeal by women workers to women consumers, who could be one and the same group. The lyrics of the “Look for the Union Label” jingle were well-known to an entire generation of Americans. The song begins with one white woman walking on stage singing a cappella, “Look for the Union Label.” As she continues singing, the camera spans wide and she is joined by a multi-ethnic chorus of workers. Look for the union label when you are buying that coat, dress or blouse. Remember somewhere our union’s sewing, our wages going to feed the kids, and run the house. We work hard, but who’s complaining? Thanks to the I.L.G. we’re paying our way! So always look for the union label, it says we’re able to make it in the U.S.A.!32

The message conveyed by both the lyrics and the women themselves is one of pride. Marking a departure from earlier visions of women in the union’s

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advertisements, the workers in this commercial were strong and confident and, as the song explains, they were working for their families, “to feed the kids and run the house.” Underscoring the reality that the majority of families in the late 1970s required two incomes “to run the house,” the women represented by the “Look for the Union Label” commercial contributed significantly to the household economy. Moreover, they were proud of what they did. “We work hard, but who’s complaining,” the women sang. The women represented by the ILGWU’s commercial were the breadwinners for their families, with their wages not going to superfluous purchases, but to “feed the kids and run the house.” The ILGWU’s new campaign placed women front and center, as both the producers and consumers of women’s clothing. The advertisement also played a leading role in the ILGWU’s effort to combat the increasing availability of cheaper imported clothing with its new Buy American campaign. The version of the commercial most often played on network television opened with a modestly dressed white man explaining the situation of the apparel industry in a folksy manner. “There used to be more of us in the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, but a lot of our jobs disappeared because a lot of the clothes Americans are buying for women and kids are being made in foreign places.” He closed his introduction with a none-too-subtle message, “[W]hen our jobs go, we can’t support our families or pay our taxes or buy the things other Americans make. Think of that when your label says import instead of union.”33 The concluding lines of the “Look for the Union Label” song reminded viewers to always look for the union label: “It says we’re able to make it in the U.S.A.!” This commercial marked the beginning of what would become a popular movement across the United States to save its industry through the purchasing power of American workers. Throughout the 1980s, few American businesses and industries were immune to the implications of the Buy American crusade. The ACWA’s boycott of the Farah Manufacturing Company also marked a departure from the domestic emphasis of the ACWA’s previous label campaign. In March of 1972, twenty-six workers protested their low wages, lack of job security, and oppressive work environment by walking off their jobs at the Farah Manufacturing plant in El Paso, Texas. Despite their requests, management refused to meet with them, and they were summarily fired. Within a few weeks, the company also fired workers at the Farah plant in San Antonio for supporting the protest initiated by their colleagues in the Northwest Plant. By the end of May, a group of four thousand workers, most of whom were Mexican American women, had walked off their jobs at Farah. And, in so doing, they began one of the most remarkable and, indeed, tragic chapters in the history of labor solidarity in the South. Their strike, their solidarity and later, their union identity cost them much. Soon after the initial dismissals,

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the ACWA dispatched organizers to El Paso and other Farah plant locations to organize workers and help them seek redress for their grievances. Within a month after the strike had officially begun, the ACWA launched an impressive national boycott of the Farah Manufacturing Company’s products. This boycott was one of the most successful in the history of the American labor movement, as evidenced by its widespread popularity and the attention of the national media. Many observers pointed to the boycott as the critical factor in the union and workers’ victory over Farah. Ultimately, the union’s victory at Farah was diminished by the fact that few of the original strikers were rehired as the company fell on hard times in an era of increasing foreign competition.34 Like the ILGWU, the ACWA advertisements promoting the boycott and the images portrayed in the national media by the union suggested a strongly female and militant image of women unionists on the strike lines at Farah. Newspapers and television programs across the country featured pictures of Mexican American women on the strike lines at the Farah plants.35 The General Secretary-Treasurer of the ACWA called the boycott of Farah Manufacturing “without [a] doubt, the most successful such campaign in American labor history.”36 And the cover of The Farah Strike Bulletin and the Spanish-language Viva La Huelga, both published by the ACWA, routinely portrayed the significantly female strike force in militantly strong stances.37 Thus, the two primary apparel industry unions had come to realize the intrinsic value of their women members. Through their largely female membership, the clothing unions had direct access to a significant portion of the consuming public. As impressive and initially successful as the Farah strike and boycott may first appear, the reality of the situation was quite different. For although the strike did result in a union contract and numerous NLRB decisions in the workers’ and union’s favor, the end result was that most of the Farah plants closed by the mid-1980s, and the Mexican American women who had worked so hard to achieve union recognition and better working conditions lost their jobs. Although there is controversy over the lasting effects of the strike and boycott of Farah, one thing is certain: the boycott dealt a serious blow to the financial health of Farah Manufacturing Company and figured prominently in the company’s decision to sign a contract in 1974. Exact figures vary, but according to the company’s own financial report, Farah suffered an $8.3 million loss for the fiscal year of 1972.38 Women garment workers were at the heart of the successes that the ILGWU and ACWA earned in the 1970s because union leadership recognized them as both loyal unionists and successful boycott supporters. The Farah boycott and the “Look for the Union Label” campaigns signaled

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another step toward a more racially and ethnically inclusive representation of women garment workers. For the first time, the publicity surrounding the campaigns featured the ethnicity of women garment workers. Earlier advertisements sought to reach an almost exclusively white, female audience by appearing in journals read by white women and highlighting a white version of domesticity. Even during the early Civil Rights movement, union leaders of both the ACWA and the ILGWU overlooked the importance of including black and Latina women among the targets of their boycott and union label campaigns. No series of union label advertisements by either the ACWA or the ILGWU appeared in the black press during the first postwar label campaigns. This was despite the fact that in 1966, the first year for which reliable industry-wide data exists, just over 8.5 percent of garment workers were African American. By 1978, African Americans accounted for over 15 percent of garment workers.39 The percentage of Latinas in the domestic apparel industry was also significant, just under 10 percent in the same year.40 Furthermore, the South—an area identified by both the ILGWU and the ACWA as critical to the clothing unions’ future and the focus of organizing activity during the union label campaigns—contained the largest concentration of African American workers and the highest concentrations of Latina workers outside of California.41 Whether as a result of the growing presence of minority women in garment worker ranks or simply as a response to the civil rights movement and a new national discourse on ethnicity, the Farah boycott and ILGWU “Look for the Union Label” commercials went out of their way to celebrate pluralism. The boycott literature featured Latina women on the front lines of the strike at the Farah manufacturing plants, and the “Look for the Union Label” emphasized the multicultural aspects of the ILGWU membership by featuring women of color in their commercials. The ACWA advertised in Spanishlanguage newspapers and printed strike bulletins and pamphlets in Spanish.42 The ethnic diversity of apparel workers appeared to be a strength or, at the very least, not a detriment to the larger goal of increased labor organization in the clothing industry, especially in the South. Although the successes were short-lived, these new representations of women in the union label and boycott campaigns signaled the potential for a new role for women in the American labor movement. It was no accident, of course, that this new perspective on women in the labor movement and workplace coincided with a growing Women’s Movement and national debates over “equal work for equal pay” and reproductive rights. From the earliest efforts of the ACWA to encourage consumer identification with its union label to the contemporary “Made In America” campaigns, unions struggled with the role women would play in these strategies and, indeed, what role

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they would play in the larger labor movement. The ACWA and ILGWU came to understand that women garment workers wielded a great deal of power in their dual roles of scrupulous consumer and loyal unionist. Indeed, the successes of those campaigns were due, in large part, to the solidarity of women garment unionists. In later years, the apparel industry would use the lessons learned from the boycott —and label movements to lead the ranks of organized labor and condemn foreign imports with the famous “Made In America” slogan. But women workers would make slow progress in gaining access to the upper echelons of union leadership in these years, despite their three to one majority in the garment workforce. Labor organizers repeatedly underestimated the strength of women workers in the South. They undervalued their participation in the unions that they belonged to. And in so doing, organizers missed a great opportunity, and hurt the very people they were supposed to help.

Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Minorities and Women in Private Industry, 1966–1980

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Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Equal Employment Opportunity Report: Job Patterns for Minorities and Women in Private Industry, 1966–1980

Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Equal Employment Opportunity Report: Job Patterns for Minorities and Women in Private Industry, 1966–1980

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—— 1. Dana Frank is one of the first scholars to pay attention to the undercurrents of exclusion behind labels and boycotts in United States history. Throughout her study of the “Buy American” movement, she traces the history of anti-immigrant sentiments behind labels and boycotts. Dana Frank, Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999). 2. Quoted in Ernest R. Spedden, The Trade Union Label (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1910), 10. 3. Although this conclusion certainly seems clear from both the label itself as well as the perceptive analysis offered by Spedden, other accounts dismissed this obvious aim of the cigar makers’ label. For example, in his most recent history of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, Gus Tyler argues that the first union label was an expression of class solidarity by the cigar makers and a guarantee of production under sanitary conditions. He makes no reference to its racial aims. On the other hand, Spedden argues in his dissertation on the trade union label that the stamp’s success was due to the fact that “The anti-Chinese feeling was strong and the [cigar makers’] association availed itself fully of this aid.” See Gus Tyler, Look for the Union Label: A History of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (Armonk, N.Y., and London: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1995), 291. Spedden, The Trade Union Label, 11. 4. Spedden, The Trade Union Label, 16–18. 5. Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986, 1980), 37–38. 6. Louis Levine, The Women’s Garment Workers: A History of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (New York: B.W. Huebsch, Inc., 1924; repr., New York: Arno & The New York Times, 1969), 103; Tyler, Look for the Union Label, 291; Carolyn Daniel McCreesh, Women in the Campaign to Organize Garment Workers, 1880–1917 (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1985), 47. 7. Quoted in Tyler, Look for the Union Label, 291–92. Dana Frank discovered that union officers sanctioned rank-and-file members of a Seattle musicians’ union when their wives attended performances in nonunion theaters. She further argues that the patterns of citations and fines in union records prove that “men could not control the consumption patterns of their wives and also suggests the possibility that men used their supposed lack of control over their wives to escape punishment for their own transgressions” (Frank, Consumer Organizing, 119). 8. Carolyn Daniel McCreesh argues that the UGW’s label policy and its “dedication to business union principles” made the union susceptible to accusations of collusion with employers and corruption. Furthermore, she places the dispute over the administration of the UGW label at the heart of the break-up of the UGW and the establishment of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA). In addition, UGW label officials often complained that it was too difficult to organize women clothing workers and would issue labels employing less-expensive and nonunion female sewers. In 1950 the ACWA-authorized history of the union explained the split from the UGW by emphasizing the refusal of the UGW to support several strikes. UGW leaders repeatedly adhered to a business unionism philosophy and ordered striking workers back to work. See McCreesh, Women in the Campaign, 48, 82, 118, 120–24, 196–97; Hyman H. Bookbinder and Associates, To Promote the General Welfare: The Story of the Amalgamated ([New York]: Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 1950), 24. 9. William E. Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1989, 1991), 63–65, 92–93. For more on the Danbury Hatters case, see Daniel R. Ernst, “The Danbury Hatters’ Case,” in Christopher L. Tomlins and Andrew J. King, eds., Labor Law in America: Historical and Critical Essays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

Women Workers and Consumers in the Southern Apparel Industry 199 10. The author is particularly indebted to Joe McMann, the Assistant Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board in Atlanta, Ga., for his gracious assistance and insightful understanding of the evolution of federal regulation of secondary boycotts. Joe McMann, telephone interview by author, Sept. 9, 1998, notes in author’s possession. The best treatment of the legal history of secondary boycotts is Ralph M. Dereshinsky, Alan D. Berkowitz, and Philip A. Miscimarra, The NLRB and Secondary Boycotts, rev. ed., Labor Relations and Public Policy Series, no. 4 (Philadelphia: Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, 1981, 1985), passim, esp. pp. 2–3. 11. Quoted in Dereshinsky, et al., The NLRB and Secondary Boycotts, 3–4. 12. Dereshinsky, et al., The NLRB and Secondary Boycotts, 5–6. 13. For the prohibition on secondary boycott see National Labor Relations Act, U.S. Code, Title 29, Chapter 7, Subchapter II, sec. 8b4. 14. The phenomenon of runaway shops figures centrally in the history of organized labor in the South. The overall trend southward began in the Northeast in the early 1930s, when large textile and garment companies considered a move to the South, where labor costs were less expensive and where the obstacles brought about by organized labor could be avoided. Industrial capitalists looked at the Piedmont region of the South as an opportunity to make their industry more efficient and profitable. A few decades later, the textile and garment industries were again heading south, this time to Mexico. Tami J. Friedman explores the runaway phenomena in her work on the southern carpet industry. See Friedman, “‘What Price Industry?’: Southern Organizing and the Runaway Shop, 1946–1966,” Paper presented at the 10th Southern Labor Studies Conference, Williamsburg, Va., Sept. 25–28, 1997; Friedman, “Fashioning a Favorable Business Climate: The Industrialization of Greenville, Mississippi,” Paper presented at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Atlanta, Ga., November 5–8, 1997. For a discussion of the ways in which southern communities attracted runaway industry see James Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936–1980 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982). See also, Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, & the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994). 15. See the Foreword of Volume 13 of the ACWA Redbook reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Part III: ACWA Scrapbooks and Press Releases, 1910–1961 (Maryland: University Publications of America) Reel 8: Frame 0078. The Daily News Record, one of the primary garment industry trade publications, also reported on the opening of the ACWA’s union label campaign. See “Parley Approves $500,000 for ACW Label Promotion,” Daily News Record, (May 14, 1948), reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Part III: ACWA Scrapbooks and Press Releases, 1910–1961 (Maryland: University Publications of America) 8:0272. 16. See July 13, 1949, New York Times article reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records . . . Part III, 8:0274. 17. See “CIO Plans Drive For Union Labels,” Rochester [New York] Times Union (Feb. 16, 1954), reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records . . . Part III, 9:0777. 18. Byron Riggan, “Clothing Workers Struggle to Bring Labels to South,” Birmingham [Alabama] Post-Herald (April 28, 1951), reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records . . . Part III, 8:1124. “Union Label Drive Helps ACWA Crack 4 Big Open Shop Holdouts,” CIO News, California Edition (Dec. 18, 1950), reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records . . . Part III, 8:0315. 19. “South Has Much to Offer Industry, Meacham Says,” Atlanta Journal (Aug. 31, 1951), reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records . . . Part III, 8:1136. 20. The David J. Mendelsohn Advertising Agency developed a series of advertisements for

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the ACWA in 1955 that “present the union in warm human terms . . . [And] featured . . . individual men and women who make the clothing—people who are typical of the skilled craftsmen who are members of the union.” For a discussion of the use of modern advertising techniques see, “Union Label Promoted as Quality Trademark,” Printers’ Ink (Dec. 2, 1955), reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Part I: Papers of Sidney and Bessie Hillman, 1911–1970 (Maryland: University Publications of America) 25:0036. 21. Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Union Label Campaign Guidebook (New York City, 1953), 1, reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records . . . Part 1, 24:0967. 22. See the figures at the end of this essay for a graphic representation of this point. According to the United States Department of Labor, women accounted for 78.7 percent of apparel workers in January 1960, the first year for which such data exists. In 1970 the figure had risen to 80.7 percent. By January of 1990, 81.1 percent of apparel workers in the United States were female. See U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 1993 Handbook on Women Workers: Trends and Issues ([Washington, D.C.]: U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 1994),111, 118–25. See also, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment, Hours, and Earnings, United States, 1909–94, Volume II ([Washington, D.C.]: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1994), 1126, 1158–59. 23. “Stitches,” Advance (15 December 1953) reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records . . . Part III, 9:0776. 24.”Look for the Amalgamated Union Label,” (ca. 1955) reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records . . . Part I, 25:0026. 25. “It’s the Only Time My Wife Goes Through My Pockets,” (ca. 1955) reprinted in Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Records . . . Part I, 25:0108. Sue Davidson discusses the traditional perception of women as an economic liability in the introduction to A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike. She argues that despite the fact that women “took in boarders, sewed, and engaged in other market activities . . . the idea that women were primarily consumers and nurturers grew after [the] mid-[nineteenth]-century.” The result was an undervaluation of women’s contribution to the family economy as well as a misunderstanding of women workers as “transitory” and pliable to the needs of management. See Joan M. Jensen and Sue Davidson, eds., A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike: Women Needleworkers in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), xii. 26. Tyler’s most recent history of the ILGWU dedicates only a handful of pages to the union’s most famous label campaign. However, Tyler offers a compelling, insider’s perspective on the origins of the label and its transformation from a union label campaign to a “Made In America” campaign. Tyler himself helped with the union label campaign and held various other positions of leadership in the ILGWU. Tyler, Look for the Union Label, 291–97. During its postwar campaign the ILGWU employed the services of at least two advertising agencies: Duyle, Dayne, Bernbach and the Solow/Wexton agency. Tyler, Look for the Union Label, 294. See also, “How Labor Uses Advertising,” Advertising Age (21 November 1971), in Box 3061, Folder 5, “Union Label Department, 1973–1975,” International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Southeast Regional Office (hereafter, ILGWU-SERO) Records, 1945–1978, Southern Labor Archives, Special Collections, Pullen Library, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Ga. (hereafter SLA). 27. Pauline Newman, an early union label officer, recognized the connection between organizing women workers and the union label campaign. At the 1910 ILGWU convention she explained how the compulsory use of a union label would work to gain women members for the union: At union meetings you find men only. For, sad as it is, . . . the great mass of working women are not organized as yet. And cannot be reached at the meeting. . . . [S]ociety women and

Women Workers and Consumers in the Southern Apparel Industry 201 women’s clubs were rather anxious to have me come and speak before them. These women have a strong influence upon the big department stores. . . . Through contact with these women I next got the opportunity to speak in the churches; so reaching a great number of unorganized women (Quoted in Tyler, Look for the Union Label, 292).

28. Gilbert Gall’s full-length study of the passage and implementation of Right-To-WorkLaws, both before and after the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, reveals a concentration of anti-union sentiment throughout the southern states, most especially North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas. Gall, The Politics of Right to Work: The Labor Federations as Special Interests, 1943–1979 (New York and Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1988). James Cobb’s work on the pro-business activities of southern towns and cities in the postwar era argues that city councils throughout the South promoted the desirability of their towns as the location of new industry with promises of tax breaks, plentiful and stable labor forces, and even commitments to provide custom-built manufacturing facilities. James Cobb, The Selling of the South. ILGWU Union Label Department, “Speech,” n.d., ca. 1960–65, Box 3061, Folder 5, “Union Label Department, 1973–1975,” ILGWU-SERO Records, 1945–1978, SLA. 29. ILGWU Union Label Department, “All About Our Label,” n.d., ca. 1960–65, Box 3061, Folder 5, “Union Label Department, 1973–1975,” ILGWU-SERO Records, 1945–1978, SLA. 30. Emphasis added. ILGWU Union Label Department, “Wage Record Book,” n.d., Box 3061, Folder 5, “Union Label Department, 1973–1975,” ILGWU-SERO Records, 1945–1978, SLA. 31. U.S. Department of Labor, Employment, Hours, and Earnings, 1126, 1158–59. 32. Paula Green of the advertising firm wrote the Union Label Song at the ILGWU’s request. Paula Green, “Look for the Union Label,” UNITE HERE! Website, http://www.unitehere.org/ resources/song.asp (accessed Nov. 15, 2006). 33. Quoted in Frank, Buy American, 137. 34. However, it is important to note that although the ACWA had made some inroads into various departments of the five Farah plants in Texas and New Mexico prior to the work action in 1972, the strike was initially the product of the workers’ own initiative. It was only after the strike had begun that the ACWA came in to help run it. The best study of the Farah strike and boycott comes from a team of multidisciplinary scholars who interviewed approximately thirty Farah strikers and employees in 1977. Twenty years later Emily Honig completed a follow-up study in which she traced the lasting effects of the strike experience for a handful of former Farah employees. See Laurie Coyle, Gail Hershatter, and Emily Honig, “Women at Farah: An Unfinished Story,” in Jensen and Davidson, eds., A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike, 227–77. Emily Honig, “Women at Farah Revisited: Political Mobilization and Its Aftermath Among Chicana Workers in El Paso, Texas, 1972–1992,” Feminist Studies 22:2 (Summer 1996): 425–52. 35. Mary Frederickson concludes that there are two dominant images of women in southern labor history: the image of the self-sacrificing, often maternal heroine and the victimized girl striker. She further argues that union leaders were quick to highlight the vulnerability of young women workers in the South. Mary Frederickson, “Heroines and Girl Strikers: Gender Issues and Organized Labor in the Twentieth Century South,” in Robert H. Zieger, ed., Organized Labor in the Twentieth-Century South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 84–112. 36. Quoted in Kenny Lapides, The Battle of the Boycott: Free Speech for Labor (New York: Center for United Labor Action, 1974), 2. 37. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, The Farah Strike Bulletin (New York: Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 1973). Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Viva La Huelga (El Paso, Texas: Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 1973). See also the Spanish-language leaflet intended to attract support for the Farah boycott. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, “Viva La Huelga: No compre panatlones Farah,” 1972, Box 789, Folder 17, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Southern Region Records, 1939–1976, SLA.

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38. George Meany announced in a letter to AFL-CIO unions that in contrast to a profit of $6 million for the 1971 fiscal year, Farah reported an $8.3 million loss for the 1972 fiscal year. “Meany Presses Farah Boycott Until Victory,” The Farah Strike [Bulletin?], (New York: Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, [ca. 1973]), 2. However, after interviewing Farah employees and strikers, Coyle, Hershatter and Honig offered a different story in their study, “Women at Farah.” They contend that the 1974 contract is best understood as the union’s caving in to company demands and fears of plant relocations abroad. “In an attempt to prevent industries from leaving the country, many unions such as the ACWA have adopted the strategy of bailing out the company in times of financial hardship. As recent events at Farah suggest, this may often be done at the expense of the workers.” Furthermore, they cite a widespread belief among workers that they had been left out of negotiations leading to the 1974 contract and that the “decision to end the strike had been made in New York [not El Paso]” (Coyle, Hershatter and Honig, “Women at Farah,” 263–64, 275 n.8, 277). 39. In 1966 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published its first report on patterns of employment by race and sex. This report continues to be an invaluable source for tracing the occupational history of several different groups in American history. Still, the data presented in these reports is somewhat problematic. From the very beginning of the series of reports in 1966, employers were only required to submit data to the EEOC if they employed more than 100 or more people. The United States garment industry is comprised of mostly smaller establishments and thus many of these firms are not (and were not) required to submit data to the EEOC. The average number of employees in an apparel industry firm is less than fifty. U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Equal Employment Opportunity Report No. 1: Job Patterns for Minorities and Women in Private Industry, 1966 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966), 119–29; U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1978 Report: Minorities and Women in Private Industry (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980), 23–25. Elaine Wrong discusses the shortcomings of EEOC data. Elaine Gale Wrong, The Negro in the Apparel Industry, The Racial Policies of American Industry Series, no. 21 (Philadelphia: Industrial Research Unit, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1974), 2. See graphs at the end of this essay. 40. For overall ethnicity and racial trends in the apparel industry, see graphs at the end of this essay. 41. Wrong argues that as apparel manufacturers moved southward they initially repeated the textile industry’s pattern of employing largely white laborers. By 1950 and 1960, however, black employment increased in southern cities. Wrong, The Negro in the Apparel Industry, 22–23, 32–45. 42. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Viva La Huelga, passim. See also the Spanish-language leaflet intended to attract support for the Farah boycott. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, “Viva La Huelga: No compre panatlones Farah,” Box 789, Folder 17, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Southern Region Records, 1939–1976, SLA.

The “Modern-Day Medea” Susan Smith and the National Media K e i r a V. W i ll i ams

O

n November 4, 1994, an angry mob greeted the nation’s most

infamous mother, Susan Smith, at the Union County, South Carolina, courthouse for her bond hearing. The previous evening, Smith had broken hearts around the world when she confessed to murdering her two young sons, aged 3 and 14 months, by rolling her car, with the boys strapped securely in their car seats, into a nearby lake. Her tearful confession brought an abrupt end to the nationwide search for Michael and Alex Smith, who had been missing since Susan had reported being carjacked by a black male on a country road nine days earlier. The American public was shocked and outraged. Shouts of “Baby Killer!” and “We believed you!” rang through downtown Union, making it clear that Smith had committed two crimes: the murders and nine days of lies.1 Overnight, the inconsolable young woman who had tugged the heartstrings of parents across the nation turned into “the most hated woman in America.”2 The various public representations of Smith—the grieving mother, the southern racist, the scheming slut, the mill worker, the religious small-town girl, and the psychologically damaged daughter—are best understood within the larger context of the rise of cultural and political conservatism and the late-century “backlash” against the social movements of the 1960s. Susan Faludi has famously argued that late-twentieth-century America witnessed a “backlash,” or an “attempt to retract the handful of small and hard-won victories that the feminist movement did manage to win for women.”3 The coverage of the Susan Smith case fit into Faludi’s model of antifeminist backlash, as well as within the growing popularity of “family values” conservatism. Observers ranging from small-town newspaper readers and letter writers to aspiring Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich wielded images of Susan Smith 203

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to their advantage, making her case the battleground for gendered political issues such as child abuse, abortion, single motherhood, and the reduction of welfare benefits. “Susan Smith,” the image, was not simply a product of journalistic sensationalism in a tabloid age; she was a cultural and political tool, part and parcel of the growth of conservative politics that characterized the end of the twentieth century. The political realignments of the 1970s through the 1990s resulted in a new form of conservatism that was subtle in its emphases on race, gender, and class. Political scholars argue that the victories of the various social movements of the 1960s—primarily the Civil Rights movement and second-wave feminism—necessitated a shift in the official politics of race and gender. But socially conservative politicians of the late twentieth century did not so much denounce their former prejudices as develop a complicated code to disguise them. Historian Glenn Feldman calls this code the “new racism,” a distinct set of images that replaced overt racism, featuring “clever and thinly disguised references to ‘law and order,’ welfare, quota, taxes for ‘social programs,’ food stamps, ‘states’ rights and local government,’ urban decay, ‘big government,’ crime, and ‘personal responsibility.’”4 Add to this the growing popularity of the language of “family values”—a morally loaded term that essentially calls for a return to traditional patriarchy—and the political code of the 1990s featured what can be deemed the “new sexism” as well. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “pathological” African American families of the 1960s and Reagan’s “welfare queens” of the 1970s and 1980s easily transformed into Newt Gingrich’s “personally irresponsible” poor mothers of 1995; these terms shone with a veneer of morality meant to disguise their inherent racism and sexism. Mothers were a particular target in this conservative political realignment, and Susan Smith was no exception. In fact, the targeting of a specific mother as representative of national, cultural, and historical ills was not a new tactic; historian Ruth Feldstein points out that the pathologization of motherhood for political gains was a “staple” of American politics throughout the twentieth century. Attacks on motherhood, and specific groups of mothers, firmly and irrevocably entered the domain of conservative politics in the 1960s. Ruth Feldstein describes this trajectory in her analysis of the confluence of race and motherhood at mid-century: “As liberals began to abandon a psychosocial narrative of citizenship that wed political and psychological health to maternal behavior, conservatives increasingly adopted this narrative as their own. Maternal failure, social and emotional pathology, and damaged citizens became the mantra for anti-welfare, anti-civil rights, and anti-feminist postures.”5 A violent mother like Susan Smith fit into this political tradition almost effortlessly, serving as the poster woman for deviant motherhood and conservative political solutions to this perceived problem.

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Despite the label of “liberal media,” journalists colluded with the code of the new racism and sexism of “family values” conservatism, especially in the case of Susan Smith.6 Public representations of Smith placed her along a distinct hierarchy of motherhood defined by race and class. Media studies scholar Susan Douglas dubbed this reactionary trend the “new momism,” in which the proper American mother was a white, middle-class, happily married, primary caretaker who was utterly fulfilled by devoting her entire life to her children (as opposed to the neglectful feminist working mothers of the 1970s or crassly careerist “supermoms” of the 1980s.). This “new momism” was essentially a cultural trap; because mothers were idealized as the greatest influences on the nation’s children, they were consequently blamed for a host of social ills, especially the “new” social problems of single motherhood, welfare, and crime.7 The “new momism” was integral to the return to traditional patriarchy envisioned by proponents of “family values.” For the first nine days of her national fame, Susan Smith presented herself as an ideal “new mom” grieving for her lost boys, and the media followed her lead. Smith, however, was never completely in control of her public image, her actively duplicitous performance of motherhood notwithstanding. The media played a key role in constructing the “Susan” Americans were to consume. In media coverage and other public responses to Susan Smith’s confession of infanticide, the images of her had more explanatory power than the tragic realities of the case. These images circulated at a dizzying pace; within nine days of her entrée into the national consciousness, representations of Smith had taken several forms. She was an ideal, small-town American wife and mother, a single mother going through a nasty divorce, a violent woman who fatally abused her children, an irresponsible teenager trapped by pregnancy in a marriage she never really wanted, and, finally, a social-climbing slut who murdered her children in a bid to bed the richest bachelor in town. Each of these images had the combined effect of turning Susan Smith into a media commodity, placing her as a stock character in familiar narratives of gender, race, and class. These images performed the crucial cultural work of establishing sensible public narratives according to contemporary discourses of motherhood. Media studies scholars argue that the media often transmits information through an underlying narrative form rather than through actual content or details. Alan O’Connor argues that media narratives illuminate subtle “patterns of culture,” inviting the audience “to understand the world in certain ways, but not in others.”8 Every news story is “framed” to encourage its audience to accept one narrative over other possible readings; alternatives are occasionally indicated and then rejected, but they are more often simply left out of the frame altogether. Deconstructing the frames—in this case, the images of Susan Smith after her confession—reveals how a person or event

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is “named” in the media and how that definition shapes public responses.9 Each image of Susan Smith thus entailed a distinctly familiar script, forming a public narrative even before all of the facts of the case were known. Initially, the idealized motherhood in the coverage of the Susan Smith drama successfully aided her performance of maternity for the cameras. Through skillful video footage and sound bites, reporters constructed an appropriately maternal image of Smith. The first and most visible characteristic that most Americans knew about Smith was her race. On the first news segments devoted to Smith’s story, the dark sketch of the alleged carjacker faded into the bright feminine photograph of Susan, a plain, pale woman with an enormous white bow in her hair. This montage immediately positioned the story within a familiar racial code: “black” stood for crime, danger, and evil, while “white” stood for feminine, maternal innocence. Smith’s whiteness subtly but significantly aided her case; black mothers had historically been coded as deviant mothers, most famously in the 1965 Moynihan report and more recently in the conservative characterization of black mothers as “welfare queens.”10 Photographs of Susan Smith and her two sons, who were shown most often together in a white wicker chair in front of a white background, underscored her whiteness, which meant that she was not immediately recognizable as a deviant mother.11 Positioning Smith within the “new momism” also required a subtle emphasis on her marital status. Initial media reports consistently positioned Smith as a wife and mother, although it was common knowledge in Union that Susan and David Smith were in the midst of a nasty divorce. Susan rarely granted interviews without her husband, David Smith, and more often than not, they were actually touching—holding hands, or supporting each other in front of a bank of microphones. Strategic shots of Smith with various men—her husband, the sheriff, and another investigator, all in one two-minute segment— showed the American public that she was, like all good mothers, within the proper realm of white male protection.12 Susan Smith needed a stable marriage to ensure public sympathy. The troubling specter of single mothers loomed large on the political landscape of the second half of the twentieth century. For decades, academics and politicians had consistently blamed black “matriarchs” for perceived dysfunction within black family structures, most notably in John Dollard’s 1937 Caste and Class in a Southern Town and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 The Negro Family: A Case for National Action.13 Both texts relied upon the “bad mother” image of the hypersexual black woman who had “too many children too early,” a problem that generally resulted in child neglect if not outright abuse.14 Predictably, the root of this pressing social problem was the sexual activity of black women.15 These maternal sexual deviants were, more often than not,

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single mothers who had either never had husbands or had run them off, and their neglect and/or abuse of their many children had come to be seen as a widespread problem by mid-century. It is a short leap from Moynihan’s oversexed “matriarchs” of the 1960s to Reagan’s “welfare queens,” an image the president honed throughout the 1980s. Although the rhetoric of single motherhood had a distinct racial code, by the 1980s, it encompassed working white mothers as well. Indeed, the most famous pop cultural example of a “bad mother” is a white, wealthy celebrity: Faye Dunaway’s unforgettable portrayal of Joan Crawford in the 1981 film Mommie Dearest.16 The film’s primary subject is Crawford’s alleged abuse of her adopted children, and its timing is telling: Dunaway’s Crawford was careerist, narcissistic, and more interested in men and her career than in her children. In other words, she was the anti–“new mom,” a perfect “backlash” feminist, although the film, of course, never uses that term. Like the “welfare queens” who starred periodically in political discourse, “Mommie Dearest” was selfish, sexual, and out of control, and the favored targets of her rages were her children. Both served as cautionary tales to the average American mothers who avidly consumed this “mother-blaming” discourse through seemingly innocuous pop cultural and media outlets. By the early 1990s, class, single motherhood, and violence were linked firmly enough in popular discourse to spark a debate between the vice president of the United States and a popular television character. In the summer of 1992, as Susan Smith tried to reconcile with her husband in preparation for her second child, Dan Quayle argued that single mothers on welfare essentially caused the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict. The “lawless social anarchy” that characterized the urban violence was, according to Quayle, “directly related to the breakdown of family structure, personal responsibility and social order in too many areas of our society.” The absence of fathers and the “illegitimacy rate” in many poor families underscored how “quickly civilization [could fall] apart.” Single mothers on welfare substituted their assistance checks for husbands and produced, essentially, criminals. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” Quayle argued. “Where there are no mature, responsible men around to teach boys how to be good men, gangs serve in their place. In fact, gangs have become a surrogate family for much of a generation of innercity boys.” Lest the American public surmise that mothers were blameless in this scenario, Quayle concluded: “Marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus, and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong.”17 The message was clear: poor single women who bred wantonly to receive more welfare support neglected their children, who, without the civilizing influence of fathers, grew up to become the violent men who were wreaking havoc on the nation’s urban centers.

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The race of these mothers remained unspoken in his speech, but the racial code of the language of welfare was well known. Lest he sound like a racist, Quayle went on to target the popular television character Murphy Brown, an unmarried, wealthy, white woman who had recently given birth: “It doesn’t help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown—a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid, professional woman— mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’”18 Quayle’s attack on mothers received plenty of negative press, and his party was voted out of the White House just a few months later. But single and poor mothers on welfare surely lost this battle; Quayle’s images, even his actual language, became legislative reality in the welfare reforms of 1995. The political rhetoric and policies that targeted single and working mothers were distinctly racially and class-coded, but, if Quayle’s tirade against Murphy Brown is any indication, any mother was fair game. In the context of this constant attack on single mothers, it was important that Smith appear in print and on television as the maternal half of a happily married couple. According to the late-twentieth-century maternal mythology and the logic of “family values” conservatism, single mothers simply could not be Good Mothers; they had to be good wives, as well. Together, holding pictures of their two sons, Susan and David Smith represented the all-American white nuclear family for the eager television cameras. Susan Smith’s perceived class status was closely related to her marital status in journalistic narratives. The family huddled at Susan’s parents’ suburban ranch house during the investigation, and media accounts focused on this family home rather than Susan and David’s much more modest brick home across town where they had lived with their sons. Reporters never mentioned that the large house that comprised the setting for many interviews was not the home in which Susan and David had raised their missing boys, but rather the home of Susan’s much more well-to-do stepfather. Interviews with locals added to this visual “proof ” of the Smiths’ appropriate middle-class status. On location in Union a few days after Susan reported her sons missing, ABC’s Mike von Fremd reported that the Smiths were “well-liked” in the small town, quoting a local woman who informed America that Susan “came from a very good upbringing.”19 In these first days of sympathetic coverage, reporters did not mention Susan Smith’s secretarial job, although many brought up her husband’s managerial position at a local grocery store. Smith, in these reports, was solely a mother and a wife, despite the fact that she had worked before and throughout her marriage. Working mothers, like single mothers in 1990s America, were special targets, characterized by the media along a spectrum ranging narrowly

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from pitiful to neglectful or even abusive.20 With the possible middle-class exceptions of the television character Murphy Brown and of Marcia Clark, the prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson case, working mothers were generally perceived as lower-class and thus, according to the illogic of the new momism, they were necessarily “unfit” mothers.21 The conservative messages of the “new momism” pervaded the media, even conventionally liberal outlets. In 1988, Ms. Magazine published a “Special Mothers Issue,” and readers were clearly meant to pity, not identify with, working mothers. In the first article, a professor and mother of three experienced “transcendence” at the hospital birth of her first grandchild. A glowing drawing of a grandmother, mother, and baby accompanied the piece. The following article brought readers back to stark reality with harsh, red-tinted photographs of Cherryl Bellefleur, the subject of that month’s “Tracking the Dream” series. “Twice married, twice divorced,” proclaimed the headline sadly, “Cherryl lives with her son Jessie in a trailer she may lose. She longs for a real house and a relationship with a good man.”22 Readers may well have felt sympathy for Cherryl, but there was no question which mother readers would rather be; couched between the touching stories of two upper-middle-class mothers, Cherryl was clearly not the maternal image readers were meant to emulate. Advertisements also hammered home the particular cultural dangers of being a poor working mother. A two-page Chevy ad, placed in the middle of “Cherryl’s Story,” featured a white mother with a baby in soft focus, imploring consumers: “Don’t spend the next six years wondering if you did the right thing.”23 The image was the ultimate contradiction of the stark photographs of cigarette-smoking, coffee-drinking, prematurely aging Cherryl and her son Jessie in their cramped trailer. The next article in the magazine completed the back-to-the-home message of the “new momism.” Under the headline “Careers and Kids,” the author asked, “Many of today’s most successful women stayed home to raise their children—Are young mothers now trying to do too much?”24 The obvious answer to the question was “yes.” In 1990s America, mothering was a full-time job, and mothers were professionals whose children took up all of their time.25 The supposed choice of the 1980s—career vs. “mommy track”—was, according to scholar Diane Eyer, no longer an option: “The supermom of the 1980s who managed to stagger into the ’90s [was] told that she just can’t ‘have it all’ and presumably she should feel guilty for continuing to try.”26 This was not simply a heavily promoted cultural prescription for maternal behavior. The legal system increasingly enforced this prescription as well, as seen in the attempt by California courts to give custody of O. J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark’s two sons to her ex-husband because she was spending too much time on the “trial of the century.”27

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To be a Good Mother, then, was to be a mother who did not work outside the home. Although Susan Smith had worked outside the home since her high school graduation, before she had children, her occupation was not news until her confession of double homicide. The original “Susan Smith” viewed by Americans in the first week of her national fame could not have been further from the maternal stereotypes of Marcia Clark, the “supermom” who tried to “have it all,” or Cherryl, the stressed-out, working-class mother who led her son in the early morning darkness from their trailer to his day care.28 In the Smith case, the middle-class images of Susan and David as a traditional nuclear family amounted to a mandate for ’round-the-clock coverage. Susan Smith was not just typical, she was ideally suited for widespread public sympathy. Within a few days, however, these images began to fall apart in the glare of the national spotlight and an increasingly frustrating investigation. Journalists were getting bored with the lack of new clues, and they challenged each other to change the narrative.29 Several days into the media coverage, Smith’s maternal mask began slowly to unravel, but in order for the public to begin to conceive the “inconceivable,” journalists had to dismantle the image of “Susan Smith, the Good Mother” they had constructed over several days of intensive coverage. This deconstruction featured a chronology of strategic attack points that simultaneously unpacked the ideal image and created a new, oppositional “Susan Smith” for public consumption. Days before she ever admitted to harming her children, Smith had transformed into an “antimother”: single, working-class, and—perhaps most damning of all—sexually active. In a matter of days, reporters “outed” Susan’s impending divorce, detailed her dysfunctional childhood, and lowered her perceived class status, paving the way for the more sinister images that followed. The initial point of attack was Susan Smith’s role as a wife, an image the media had promoted widely. During those “Desperate Hours,” as NBC called its October 28 report, Bob Dotson revealed that the couple had been separated for months and had filed for divorce just days before the alleged carjacking.30 Although the Smiths’ legal separation surprised viewers across the nation who had been following the case for three days, their custody case and impending divorce were public record and well-known local melodramas. When journalists decided to publish the information, it spread through media outlets like wildfire, causing irrevocable damage to Smith’s maternal image. The Smiths were much more sympathetic figures if they appeared to be a stable, nuclear family. To “out” their impending divorce three days into the national coverage made it seem as if they had deceived the public about their marriage. Even worse, it provided a plausible motive to kidnapping: a Â�possible

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custody battle between mother and father. Repositioning Susan Smith as a soon-to-be divorcée had distinct implications for how the public understood her as a mother.31 The “new” information about the Smith’s failed relationship damaged the intertwined marital and maternal images of Susan, a key step toward making Susan herself a suspect that anticipated her confession by several days. CBS also reported on the Smiths’ impending divorce that day, linking it to other evidence of “deviance,” such as the problems with the lie detector tests the couple had taken. That night, NBC’s Bob Dotson emphasized the rarity of carjackings in rural areas in his report on the Smith’s divorce, thereby reframing the “stranger danger” of previous coverage as public paranoia that diverted attention from the Smith family. In less than two minutes, Susan Smith’s story had transformed from “every mother’s nightmare” to an extremely rare, suspicious occurrence.32 The following day, October 29, 1994, four days into the investigation, the local, state, and national media simultaneously launched an attack on Susan Smith. Readers learned that Smith had failed a lie-detector test and that her alibi had fallen apart under police questioning. NBC’s final words on this first day of explicit suspicion pitted the frustrating nationwide search against the embattled image of Susan Smith, the Good Mother: “There is still no evidence in this case after four days of searching—only a mother’s word.”33 Susan Smith, in this report, was no longer “every parent” or even “every mother,” but just “a mother,” and an increasingly suspicious one at that. The old tag of the collective “fear of parents everywhere” had become, in a few short days, the overwhelming public scrutiny of one mother in particular. By Monday, October 31, a week into the investigation, all of the televised reports openly challenged Susan Smith’s story. These reports, however, did not focus on the seemingly obvious problem of the many factual discrepancies in her story of the night of the carjacking. Rather, journalists challenged Smith herself, attacking her public identity, which, we should remember, the media had largely helped to create. Barry Glassner argues that journalists did not just rewrite; the actually had to “invalidate” many of their own previous reports in order to “recast” Susan.34 A few short features revealed that, just as many viewers were beginning to suspect, there were many proverbial skeletons in this seemingly ideal family’s closet. Viewers learned that less than three weeks before the boys’ disappearance, the court awarded Susan custody of her sons following her application for divorce on the grounds of her husband’s adultery. Smith’s unstable marriage echoed her own troubled childhood, according to NBC’s Bob Dotson. He revealed that Smith’s father killed himself after his own divorce from her mother, when young Susan was just six years old. Dotson ended the segment by saying that people were questioning everything about the case, “even the parents”—but the extreme close-up of Susan Smith

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left no doubt in viewers’ minds which parent they should be questioning.35 It was the first time viewers had seen shots of Susan alone, without a male protector, and the effect was devastating to her maternal image. The reports revealing Smith’s troubled family life were only the beginning of Smith’s precipitous fall down the social ladder in public representations. It was an impressive media feat: the growing suspicion of Susan Smith had very little to do with actual evidence or new clues. Through the subtle but sophisticated manipulation of gender- and class-based images, the media made Smith a suspect with little aid from the ongoing investigation.36 Although the family spokesperson repeatedly told reporters gathered outside Smith’s parents house that Susan and David Smith did not have the “emotional strength” to face the media, the increased suspicion of journalists and frustrated law enforcement officers forced Susan to do something she reportedly did not want to do: speak for herself.37 In a press conference on Wednesday, November 2, 1994, eight days after she had reported the carjacking, the family spokesperson read a message from Susan and David Smith detailing the agony of life without their stolen sons.38 Major image clean-up continued the following day, when the couple appeared on national television to sanitize the image of Susan Smith as the Good Mother. Americans awoke to Susan and David Smith holding hands in her stepfather’s living room, live via satellite to all three major network morning shows. Looking directly into the cameras and into the homes of millions of Americans, Smith put forth her most impassioned defense of motherhood yet: It’s very difficult to understand right now why anybody would want to take anybody else’s children away from them, and I find it very difficult to handle not being there for my babies. I’ve been there for them from day one, and the hardest part is not knowing, I mean just not knowing . . . . Since day one I’ve known everything, everywhere they’ve gone, I knew where they were, and this one time there’s absolutely nothing I can do and that’s very painful.39

In this monologue (David Smith, shell-shocked, barely spoke), Susan Smith presented herself as the ideal mother the nation had rallied around for days. In her speech, like a good “new mom,” she had virtually no identity without her sons. Yet Smith herself apparently knew that the damage to her image was already done. No new evidence had emerged, but that very afternoon, Susan Smith tearfully confessed to double homicide. On the stand nine months later, Union County Sheriff Howard Wells described a pathetic Susan as she confessed to her horrifying crime. Wells told the crowded courtroom that he prayed aloud that “all things would be revealed in time,” then he told Susan

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quietly, “It’s time.” Smith blurted out “My children are not all right,” and she asked for Wells’ gun in a last desperate suicidal gesture. She told Wells that “she had never felt so low in her life,” that she was “depressed,” and that she’d intended “to go down that ramp with her children.”40 Smith then wrote out her infamous confession, and Wells prepared for the announcement that would shock the world. All of the major television networks had a live feed to the press conference in front of the Union County Courthouse that evening at 5:30 p.m. A crowd of hundreds received Wells’s news; there was an “audible gasp” amongst the mixture of locals and reporters as Wells announced Smith’s arrest.41 Smith’s confession was the lead story on all three major networks that evening, and the question of motive was on everyone’s minds. As one commentator put it, had the father killed the boys, the public response may well have been a “national shrug.”42 But maternal infanticide, accompanied by a nine-day performance of ideal motherhood, was simply unacceptable, and Americans searched for answers. In the days following Smith’s confession, journalists scrambled for new scripts that would explain the horrific crime. There were two opposing options for reading Smith’s story at the crucial moment following her confession. Susan Smith could serve as a poster woman for the public destruction of the myth of the Good Mother—the revelation that single mothering coupled with a history of depression and family dysfunction might drive some women to infanticide could have exposed the “new momism” as an oppressive, retrograde set of impossible prescriptions. Infanticide, while still horrible, was a comprehensible crime according to this narrative. Criminologists offer an alternative way of reading the case: Smith’s action fit the narrative of “altruistic infanticide,” in which a mother kills her children because she genuinely believes they will be better off dead. Susan Smith wrote of serious suicidal thoughts in her confession: “I felt I couldn’t be a good mom anymore but I didn’t want my children to grow up without a mom. I felt I had to end our lives to protect us all from any grief or harm.”43 Altruistic infanticide generally involves a depressive disorder in the mother (Susan Smith was diagnosed as clinically depressed in her teens after her first suicide attempt) and “acute feelings of failure to measure up to society’s standards of good mothers and/or wives.”44 Here, then, was a means of reading Smith’s crime that clearly challenged the overwhelming pronatalism of the “new momism.” The second option was, as one scholar points out, using Susan Smith to teach the American public a more conservative “lesson about gender,” providing “a cautionary tale for and about women that reveals the fragility of the family and motherhood” in the wake of the insidious results of the secondwave feminism that included, but were not limited to, women abandoning

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motherhood for selfish careerism, sexual promiscuity, legalized abortion, and general “declining morality.”45 That is, Smith could be understood as a tragic representative of the problems of the modern version of motherhood as an American institution, or she could be seen as the ultimate maternal aberration, Public Enemy Number One of “family values.”46 The public overwhelmingly chose the latter, the post-confession media scripts followed an astonishingly tidy order: reporters first positioned Smith as a single mother whose abuse of her children turned fatal, then as a sexually frivolous young woman whose abortions in the past indicated that she had never wanted or loved her children, and, finally, combining the omnipresent issues of class and sexuality, Susan Smith became an oversexed, working-class mother who chose a wealthy boyfriend over her children. Following the live announcement of Smith’s confession by Sheriff Wells, Tom Brokaw hesitantly voiced his visible shock. His voice shaking, he reminded viewers: “She appeared just this morning grieving on national TV, saying she could not imagine how anyone might think she was a suspect.”47 The case quickly transformed from a “whodunit” to the question of motive. Even as the public and the media reeled from Wells’s announcement, CBS reporters offered viewers a narrative to fit the new image of Susan Smith. Mere seconds after the live footage of Sheriff Wells, a spokesperson from the National Center for Missing and Abducted Children told CBS’s Randall Pinkston that infanticide generally occurred in two contexts. Usually, he argued, such violence results from an attempt “to cover abuse,” or “it’s for emotional reasons—someone who has a romantic interest and the other partner is not interested in the child.”48 Perhaps unwittingly, this expert had scripted the two images of Smith that would dominate the news over the coming months. Horrible as it was, the framework of child abuse rendered the idea of maternal infanticide legible; Susan Smith was different from other violent mothers only because her consistent abuse turned fatal. Other reporters quickly jumped to this conclusion as well. In the days immediately following Smith’s confession, the pressing question of motive was often followed by national child abuse statistics. There was a crucial flaw in this model of motive: no one who knew Susan Smith could furnish any evidence of prior abuse toward her boys. In fact, Unionites consistently supplied quotes about what a good mother Smith had always been. But the template of the abusive mother made cultural sense; it “solved” the case by slotting Smith into a familiar subset of bad mothers. In lieu of actual evidence of abuse in Smith’s past, reporters simply referenced other cases, using experts and national statistics for validity. They interviewed various experts who seemed unable to differentiate between the two crimes of child abuse and infanticide, arguing that abusive and homicidal parents share

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the general problem of “having no control.” “How could she do it?” asked a reporter for the Washington Post the day after Smith’s arrest. She listed child abuse statistics, arguing that while Smith’s actions were not “understandable on the level of logic,” the murders were “the extreme version of something we do understand, which is child abuse.”49 The emphasis on “young mothers and stress” allowed Smith to fit easily into sex- and class-based ideas about motherhood.50 Although violence is generally depicted as a male phenomenon, the fearsome figure of the abusive mother was a notable cultural exception in the twentieth century. Perhaps the most famous of the abusive mothers were the “moms” described by Philip Wylie in his 1942 Generation of Vipers. Much like Susan Smith in post-confession media coverage, “Mom,” according to Wylie, was a uniquely “American creation” whose unconditional love for her sons thinly masked her own power-hungry narcissism. Beware the overprotectiveness of American mothers, Wylie warned his readers: “The spectacle of the female devouring her young in the firm belief that it is for their own good is too old in men’s legends to be overlooked by any but the most flimsily constructed society.”51 Motherhood, in Wylie’s characterization, was an institution fraught with peril for America’s children, especially her sons. Although Wylie’s Freudian, castrating “moms” were implicitly white, at mid-century, in John Dollard’s and Daniel Moynihan’s famous texts, “mother-blaming” overwhelmingly targeted African American mothers under the guises of academia and social policies.52 By the mid-1990s, The Nation’s Katha Pollitt argued that single mothers were the “demons of the moment, blamed for everything from crime to the deficit,” and this stereotype was built upon a discernible subtext of sex and abuse.53 Child abuse, like single motherhood, had come to be seen as a “national emergency” by the 1990s.54 According to this cultural logic, the “abusive mother” script in the Smith case seemed almost overdetermined despite the utter lack of evidence. Smith, a confessed child-murderer, had the class characteristics of a stereotypical “bad mother” in 1990s America. She was the product of a dysfunctional home. She was a working mother in the middle of a messy divorce whose past low-paying workplaces included a grocery store and a textile mill. Through strategically placed statistics, expert sound bites, and comparisons to other abuse cases, the media recast “Susan Smith, the child abuser” as a working-class “antimadonna” among the ranks of pregnant teens and welfare queens.55 In these reports, infanticide was the endpoint of the dangerously slippery slope of child abuse, the result of single mothers’ inability to manage outside stressors, namely their finances and/or their boyfriends. Violence against children seemed connected to three major identifying characteristics: the young age of the offending mother, her financial worries, and, her sex life. Child

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abuse and child homicide were not problems that should concern all parents; they were individual problems of young, broke—read “unfit”—mothers like Susan Smith. The cultural focus on these kinds of mothers in the early 1990s was part and parcel of the growing popularity of “family values” conservatism, meant to further demonize mothers who did not fit into the patriarchal family ideal as well as obscure the very real problems of absent fatherhood, intimate partner violence, and impending slashes in welfare to single mothers. The label of “abusive mother” had specific connotations of sex, race, and class; these details remained unspoken, but the code was clear in reports alleging that Susan Smith abused her sons. Within a few weeks of Smith’s arrest, the abusive mother script fell apart on its own inaccuracy. Susan’s estranged husband finally put it to rest in an exclusive interview with Katie Couric twelve days after Susan’s confession. Couric invited David Smith to NBC’s Dateline to address the “haunting” question: “How could she do it? How could Susan Smith kill her own children?” Between sobs, David Smith flatly denied any allegations of maternal abuse. “Susan, she was great, she really was,” he told Couric before a watchful nation. “She was a very dedicated, devoted mother to the children.”56 By the time David Smith dispelled the abusive mother script, the media and the public had found a new peg for Susan Smith when her confession prompted responses from anti-abortion, or “pro-life,” groups. Many media outlets added fuel to this “pro-life” fire when they erroneously reported that Susan Smith had an abortion in her teens and married David Smith when she discovered she was pregnant so as to avoid having another one. Under the headline “Abortion, Lost Lover Seen Spurring Mother’s Actions,” The Boston Globe listed several contributing factors to Smith’s disturbed mental state, including her “wealthy boyfriend’s” “sudden departure” to London and “an abortion she had as a teen-ager which deeply depressed her.” Her recent breakup with Tom Findlay represented the “culmination” of a tragic life, although some tragedies apparently affected Smith more than others: “If the suicide of her father, Harry Vaughan, had traumatized her, she never showed it. She did become profoundly depressed in her senior year after undergoing an abortion. . . . A law enforcement official said that Smith brought up the abortion during her confession to the murders.”57 The message was clear: Smith was a selfish, promiscuous girl whose teenaged abortion foreshadowed her later crimes. Opponents of abortion responded angrily, arguing that infanticide and abortion were interchangeable. One editor argued that Susan Smith could not be blamed for being confused by such an “ambiguous society” that “supports mothers as they decide whether to allow their children to live.”58 Readers across the nation agreed in letters to editors, asking why the American public was not similarly outraged by every abortion.59 In a sarcastic missive entitled

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“Feminists Must Unite Behind Susan Smith,” a North Carolina man wrote that when Smith decided to kill her sons, she was just enacting her “right to choose when she has children.” He concluded: “It was a long, hard fight obtaining the inalienable right to tell a woman that it’s OK to kill your children; we must not go back on 20 years of progress.”60 Placing blame for social problems on feminism—in this case, incredibly, blaming feminism for Susan Smith—was a primary characteristic of the “backlash.” Conservative observers easily targeted Susan as yet another reason to chip away at abortion rights, a trend that gained momentum throughout the 1990s.61 The controversial issues of abuse and abortion were sensational but shortlived in the coverage of the Smith case; there was simply no evidence of either in Susan’s past. Within just a few days of her confession, the implications of violence in the abusive image and sex in the abortion narrative easily combined into a new stereotype: Susan became the oversexed, socially climbing single mother. Journalists trotted out experts to confirm the emerging image. The day after Smith’s arrest, the Atlanta Journal Constitution quoted a professor of social work who argued that the “motive [to infanticide] is often to attract a new husband.” As he told the reporter, the script of women killing their children for their new boyfriends (or, as he put it, “you get a new fella entering the picture”) constituted something of a modern epidemic.62 Within days, public representations of Susan Smith had made a swift transition from the ideal mother to the scheming slut—literally, from madonna to whore. The increasing conflation of class and sexuality in the Smith case had historical counterparts, especially in images of the South. Many authors have written about the sexual, violent, backwards, “barbaric” image of the South, especially in terms of class. Most recently, historian James Cobb analyzes how southern writers like Bobbie Ann Mason, Larry Brown, and Rick Bragg have unflinchingly addressed violence in their struggles with what might be a “disappearing” regional identity.63 In southern literature, this violence is often intimately intertwined with class-based ideas about sexuality. The hypersexual poor woman who trades sexual favors for material goods has long served as the regional counterbalance to the venerable “lady” icon in southern writing. In Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road, the monosyllabic, harelipped Ellie May virtually rapes a prostrate neighbor while her enterprising family steals his bag of turnips. South Carolina novelist Dorothy Allison argued that poor women, including the women of her family, are already sexualized by virtue of their “white trash” status: “My cousins and I were never virgins, even when we were.”64 From the trashy Slatterys of Gone with the Wind (1936) to the violent Southern Gothic of the title character of Larry Brown’s Fay (2001), the sexual deviance of working-class southern women, especially young women, is a well-worn trope in modern American culture. The Slatterys pop up in

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the very beginning of Gone with the Wind, as Scarlett’s saintly mother goes to tend to the labor and delivery of one of the Slattery women. The last the reader sees of them is when “trashy” Emmy Slattery “marries up” to the O’Hara’s former overseer, confirming what readers already suspected: sex is currency for lower-class women. Larry Brown’s Fay, on the other hand, is a tragic but not altogether likable character who, at the tender age of seventeen, leaves a string of broken men and dead bodies in her wake when she runs away from an abusive Mississippi home.65 But the image of the working-class, oversexed criminal woman was not just a regional character; it has been used in at least two widely publicized infanticides, beginning with the 1965 case of Mrs. Alice Crimmins, a working-class New York mother who was accused of murdering her two children after she reported them kidnapped from their Queens apartment. The evidence against Crimmins was circumstantial and based solely on her sexuality.66 The case was a pop cultural phenomenon for decades, inspiring several films and launching the career of novelist Mary Higgins Clark with her 1992 Where Are the Children?67 Another famous crime writer, Ann Rule, renewed public interest in this “Sexpot on Trial” image of infanticide when she published a bestseller on the Diane Downs case in 1987.68 Downs was accused of shooting her three children (one fatally) in 1983 in what she claimed was a carjacking by a stranger. Like Crimmins, Downs was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison and she also enjoyed a long run as a pop cultural icon. Twelve years after the trial, Rule’s book on the case inspired a 1989 television miniseries—”Part Fatal Attraction, Part Mommie Dearest”—complete with a drunken, leather-clad Farrah Fawcett as the offending mother.69 Reporters assigned to the Susan Smith case latched onto this sexy criminal image, and to date they have not loosened their tight hold. Reports fed off of each other, combining issues of class, gender, and sexuality to provide a portrait of Smith as a lifelong sexual deviant and social climber. On Sunday, November 6, 1994, three days after Smith’s confession, the Atlanta Journal Constitution laid out the new narrative. Smith’s father—”an unemployed textile worker”—committed suicide when she was just six years old, enabling her mother to marry a “prominent investment broker.” Young Susan grew up in an upper middle-class household, but her sexual behavior in her teens precipitated a freefall down the social ladder. After discovering she was pregnant at nineteen, she married David Smith and moved into a “modest brick home.” The couple worked at the Winn Dixie, where Susan could often be found confronting her husband publicly about his alleged extramarital affairs.70 All of these images—the teenage pregnancy, the age at which they married, their low-paying jobs, the value of their house, the state of their marriage, and the public spats—positioned Susan Smith clearly within the lower classes.

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The reports focusing on class and sexuality prefigured what was to become the “boyfriend motive,” in which Susan killed her sons to be with a man who did not want children. Speculation about such a motive began to circulate the day of her confession when CNN reported that local police had in their possession a break-up letter from Susan’s boyfriend claiming that he did not want a family. Sources described him only as “wealthy.”71 By the following day, his identity had leaked to the press: he was Tom Findlay, the son of Susan’s boss at the textile mill, known around Union as “The Catch.” With this information, the interconnections between class and sexuality became immediately clear to American viewers.72 Reports focused on the line in Smith’s confession that mentioned her break-up with Findlay to the exclusion of her other motivations, among them depression, suicidal thoughts, and the overwhelming feeling that she could no longer “be a good mom.”73 The “poor girl, rich man” narrative eclipsed all others and became the shorthand way of understanding the case. Although the break-up letter had been in police possession for most of the investigation, it acquired singular explanatory power in post-confession coverage. Reporters cited it as the “smoking gun” that “broke the case.”74 It was perhaps inevitable that reporters would begin to refer to Susan Smith as a “modern-day Medea” in reference to Euripides’ ancient tale of betrayal and infanticide. It was, Newsweek pointed out, a longstanding cultural prototype of “how much evil can lurk in even a mother’s heart—something we’ve known for 2,300 years.”75 The fictional Medea slew her two sons upon learning that their father, Jason, planned to remarry and exile her without her children. Although Medea is commonly depicted as murdering her sons out of revenge, to hurt the cheating Jason, the violence in the play stemmed from maternal desperation as much as marital anger. Medea murders to save her sons the pain of motherlessness, an impulse that Susan Smith confessed to as well in her written statement.76 It is a tragedy in which Jason, not Medea, is both the adulterer and the seeker of a wealthier partner.77 In their coverage of the Susan Smith drama, the media took some definite liberties with the Greek classic. Reports ignored Smith’s relationship with her sons and focused instead on her much more scandalous romance with Tom Findlay. Moreover, David Smith had been openly involved with a co-worker for months by the time of the murders. In the Susan Smith version of what reporters had begun to call the “Medea Syndrome,” rejection by a former lover, not her husband, spurred her actions.78 The media called upon another classic script when they referenced Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (1925), which featured the peculiarly American crime of murders that severed “ties of affection” for “the purpose of upward mobility.”79 Journalistic interpretations of Dreiser’s classic combined with their loose readings of Medea to produce

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the necessary elements of class, sexuality, and violence. Under the headline “Bid to Climb Social Ladder Seen in Smith’s Fall to Despair,” the Boston Globe reported that the murders were the result of Susan’s “desperation to jump from the listing boat of the working class.”80 The narrative, according to one South Carolina reporter, was simple. A single mother “on the fringe” of the working class, with only “two hundred dollars in her bank account,” Susan saw Tom Findlay as a representative of “life beyond Union County.” She murdered her children to replicate her mother’s successful social climbing and “marry up.”81 The image had staying power; months after Smith’s confession, Newsweek featured in its centerfold an extreme close-up of Susan’s tearful face opposite a map of Tom Findlay’s father’s estate, with the hot-tub where Susan had allegedly cavorted “before Tom dumped her” circled in red.82 With “Susan Smith” now shorthand for “feminine evil,” conservatives easily donned the mantle of righteous accusers, using the case as the representative of various perceived social problems. Smith reigned as the front-page poster child for the issues of single motherhood, child abuse, and abortion for several days. In the context of legislated “mother-blaming,” Susan Smith almost effortlessly became a part of the official politics of sex, motherhood, and economics. Newt Gingrich, the U.S. Representative of a conservative suburban Atlanta district, became a household name in 1994–1995 as one of the primary authors of the federal overhaul of the welfare system. Gingrich explicitly attacked Susan Smith in his bid for Speaker of the House, which he won the week after her confession during the “revolutionary” Republican takeover of Congress. At a party in Buckhead, a wealthy, white section of Atlanta, two days before the elections (three days after Smith’s arrest), Gingrich made what he characterized as some “offhand” comments. Susan Smith, he argued, was an example of “what’s wrong with America”: “How a mother could kill her two children, 14 months and 3 years, in hopes that her boyfriend would like her, is just a sign of how sick the system is.”83 He continued: “I can capture everything [Republicans] are trying to do in a sense by referring to this weekend’s unbelievable tragedy in South Carolina, to getting at the root causes of the decay in our society.”84 In other words, according to Gingrich, Democrats were responsible for creating the environment that allowed social “decay” in the form of Susan Smith. In case his message was unclear, Gingrich concluded: “I think people want change, and the only way to get change is to vote Republican.”85 In an interview the following evening, Gingrich dodged Tom Brokaw’s observation that the Smith family of South Carolina were people who “embraced his philosophy” of social conservatism and “family values.”86 In fact, Susan’s stepfather was a member of the Christian Coalition and the Republican Party of South Carolina who had actively campaigned for

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Pat Robertson for president six years earlier and had run unsuccessfully as a Republican for state representative.87 Union County, full of sleepy, small towns and boasting over one hundred churches within the county lines, embodied the Republican family ideal in the 1990s. Ignoring these inconvenient details, Gingrich extended Susan Smith’s political significance even further: “I do believe there is a direct connection between the general acceptance of violence, the general acceptance of brutality, the general decline of civility in this society, and the patterns of the counterculture when Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society began in the late ’60s.”88 Leaving aside the fact that the conservative, small-town, church-going Smith family could probably not be any less “countercultural,” the connections Gingrich made between the Republican political philosophy of the 1990s and the popular negative images of Susan Smith are telling. A key part of the famous Republican’s 1994 “Contract with America” was the “Personal Responsibility Act,” which, in addition to a general decrease in spending on welfare programs, denied the extension of aid to teen mothers and to women who had additional children while on welfare.89 A large part of the “Contract” was specifically aimed at blaming poor mothers for contemporary social problems. According to the logic of the reforms, welfare mothers were “renegade” because they were single.90 The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) rewarded married mothers on welfare while targeting single mothers’ sexuality and reproductive rights, punishing women without husbands. The new welfare system, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), required paternity establishment, child support enforcement, and at least thirty hours of work outside the home per week of unmarried mothers on welfare. Married mothers, on the other hand, did not have to meet any of these requirements to qualify for assistance. Some states provided cash incentives to TANF mothers who married; others established “family caps” that prohibited unmarried women who had more children while on welfare from receiving more state assistance. The federal TANF program offered “illegitimacy bonuses” to some states that reduced the number of births out of wedlock, denied assistance to unmarried teen mothers, and, apparently in compensation, funded abstinence-only sexual education programs.91 Here, then, was the Reaganite image of “welfare queens” made into legislated reality. The reforms hinged on controlling poor women’s sexuality and reproductive capabilities as the solution to the socioeconomic problems described by Dan Quayle in his famous diatribe against Murphy Brown just a few years earlier. Mothers like Susan Smith were thus already targets, whether or not they committed crimes, because of their working-class, single status and alleged

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sexual misbehaviors. Gingrich did not need to spell out these connections in his incendiary campaign speeches. He used the code of the “new racism” and sexism; by referencing a boyfriend, “counterculture,” and the welfare state in this interview, Gingrich subtly characterized Susan as one of the infamous “welfare queens,” or an oversexed, lower-class single mother whose abuse of the welfare system was outweighed only by her violent crimes, which were, according to Gingrich’s historical model, products of the same corrupt democratic system. Never mind, apparently, that Susan Smith had never been on welfare, or that she had been raised in a socially and politically conservative, middle-class household. Although journalists later ridiculed Gingrich’s linking of Smith with politics, he won the election two days after he made these comments, and newspaper editors published letters from supportive constituents. The root cause of the Smith tragedy—child abuse, abortion, and welfare—was, according to conservative rhetoric, unrestrained maternal desires. One reader defended Gingrich: “How different is killing innocent babies through abortion than what Susan Smith did? . . . Gingrich was right about the Union case.”92 Gingrich’s message became a running mantra in conservative editorials over the next few weeks. One writer targeted the welfare system, comparing Susan Smith to parents who “brought children into the world, were intrigued with them for a few weeks or months, then ignored or abused them and wished them away,” and so turned to the all-too-generous social services system to absolve themselves of responsibility.93 Although this sexualized, trashy image of Susan Smith was certainly one that sold, the negative coverage of the Smith case was not just juicy journalism, placed on front pages for the purposes of idle consumption. These images, rather than the actual facts of the case, made Susan Smith newsworthy, but they also had a distinct political purpose. Public representations did not have to correspond with the facts of the case: Susan Smith was never a middle-class housewife, she never had an abortion, she was not abusive or on welfare, and Tom Findlay was only one among a host of reasons Susan Smith was depressed enough to kill her sons. But these representations of Susan Smith did correspond with familiar images of deviant womanhood in the late twentieth century. The negative, sexualized, class-based image of Susan—the “boyfriend motive”—was a political tool of the increasingly deafening discourse of “family values” conservatism that overwhelmed the possibility of alternative readings of the case. Scholars of motherhood argue that the figure of the “bad mother” has long “served as a scapegoat, a repository for social or physical ills that resist easy explanation or solution.”94 In the case of Susan Smith, the misogynistic, racist, and classist conservative attack on modern motherhood masqueraded under

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the banner of “family values,” traditional morality, and government-downsizing. Glenn Feldman argues that Newt Gingrich “perfected the art of the new racism” in the 1990s, but it is important to note that he was promoting a “new sexism,” as well. Deconstructing the public representations of Susan Smith allows us to crack the code, so to speak, of the new political language of the late twentieth century along the lines of gender, class, and race. Susan Smith was, and is, such a fascinating public figure because of what her case, and the many public uses of it, can teach us about the state of gender, race, class, and politics at the end of the twentieth century. —— 1. Charles M. Sennott, “In SC, Fury Over Deaths: Coroner Says Two Boys Drowned,” The Boston Globe, Nov. 5, 1994. ABC reported that Smith received “death threats” in jail the weekend following her confession (ABC Evening News, Nov. 6, 1994). 2. Julene Snyder, “You Talkin’ to Me?,” July 12, 1995, http:// www.well.com/~julene/columns/susan.html, accessed July 29, 2009. 3. Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women (New York: Crown Publishers, 1991), xviii. 4. Feldman, “The Status Quo Society, the Rope of Religion, and the New Racism,” in Feldman, ed., Politics and Religion in the White South (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2005), 302. 5. Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930– 1965 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 169. 6. Edward Herman, “Media and the US Political Economy,” in John Downing, Ali Mohammadi, and Annabelle Srebeny-Mohammadi, eds., Questioning the Media: A Critical Introduction (London: Sage Publications, 1990), 76. 7. Douglas and Meredith Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women (New York, NY: Free Press, 2004), 3. 8. O’Connor, “Culture and Communication,” in Downing et al., Questioning the Media, 34, 36. Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels call this trend “agenda setting”: “The news may not succeed in telling us what to think, but it does succeed in telling us what to think about” (Douglas and Michaels, The Mommy Myth, 179). 9. This brief description of frame analysis is taken from Brian L. Ott and Eric Aoki, “The Politics of Negotiating Public Tragedy: Media Framing of the Matthew Shepard Murder,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5, No. 3 (2002), 485. 10. Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White, 169. 11. NBC Evening News, Oct. 26, 1994. 12. Ibid. 13. John Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988 [1937]); Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” in The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy, ed. Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967). 14. Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White, 27, 143. 15. Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town, 153, 144. 16. Directed by Frank Perry, Paramount Pictures (USA), 1981. 17. Quoted in John Fiske’s Media Matters: Everyday Culture and Political Change (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 68–69.

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18. Ibid, 69. 19. ABC Evening News, October 28, 1994. 20. Diane Eyer The Mommy Myth: How Our Culture Blames Mothers for What’s Wrong with Society (New York: Times Books, 1996), 17–18. 21. Douglas and Michaels, The Mommy Myth, 151, 174. 22. Kathy Dobie, “Cherryl’s Story,” Ms. Magazine, “Special Mothers’ Issue,” (May 1988), 42. 23. Chevrolet Advertisement, Ms. Magazine, “Special Mothers’ Issue,” (May 1988), 46–47. 24. Edith Fierst, “Careers and Kids,” Ms. Magazine, “Special Mothers’ Issue,” (May 1988), 62. 25. Douglas and Michaels, The Mommy Myth, 151. 26. Eyer, Motherguilt, 8. 27. Ibid., 12. 28. Dobie, “Cherryl’s Story,” 44 (photograph and caption). 29. Jeanne Boylan, Portraits of Guilt: The Woman Who Profiles the Faces of America’s Deadliest Criminals (New York: Pocket Books, 2000), 174). 30. NBC Evening News, Oct. 28, 1994. 31. Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1999), 95. 32. NBC Evening News, Oct. 28, 1994. CBS and the New York Times reported on the impending divorce for the first time that day (CBS Evening News, Oct. 28, 1994; Rick Bragg, “An Agonizing Search for Two Boys,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 1994). 33. NBC Evening News, October 29, 1994. 34. Glassner, The Culture of Fear, 95. 35. NBC Evening News, Oct. 31, 1994. 36. Twila Decker Davis, interview by author, July 24, 2007. 37. Chris Burritt, “Parents’ Emotional Plea to Missing Boys: ‘Be Brave, Hold on to Each Other’; Search Continues in South Carolina Carjacking Case,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nov. 1, 1994). 38. “Parents Aching to Hug Sons Again,” The Spartanburg (South Carolina) Herald-Journal, Nov. 2, 1994. 39. NBC Today Show, November 3, 1994. 40. South Carolina v. Smith, 2516. 41. Anna Brown, “Mother Charged,” The Union (South Carolina) Daily Times, Nov. 4, 1994. 42. Deborah Halter, “Susan Smith Becomes Moral Scapegoat of a Nation,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Nov. 13 1994. 43. The full text of Smith’s confession is available at http://www.teleplex.net/shj/smith/ ninedays/ssconf.html, accessed July 28, 2009. 44. Anna Wilczynski, Child Homicide (London: Greenwich Medical Media Ltd., 1997), 55–56. 45. Cheryl I. Harris, “Myths of Race and Gender in the O. J. Simpson and Susan Smith Trials—Spectacles of Our Times,” Washburn Law Journal 35 (1996), 229. 46. Douglas and Michaels, The Mommy Myth, 167; Marouf Hasian, Jr., and Lisa A. Flores, “Mass Mediated Representations of the Susan Smith Trial,” Howard Journal of Communication 11 (2000), 163. 47. NBC Evening News, Nov. 3, 1994. 48. CBS Evening News, Nov. 3, 1994. 49. Elizabeth Kastor, “The Worst Fears, the Worse Reality: For Parents, Murder Case Strikes at Heart of Darkness,” Washington Post, Nov. 5, 1994. 50. NBC Evening News, Nov. 18, 1994. 51. Wylie, Generation of Vipers (Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 1942), 197, 198. 52. Ruth Feldstein coined the term “mother-blaming” in Motherhood in Black and White. 53. Katha Pollitt, “Subject to Debate,” The Nation, 27 (March 1995), 408. 54. Jan Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

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1999), 33. 55. Douglas and Michaels, The Mommy Myth, 20. 56. Quoted from Dateline on NBC Evening News, Nov. 15, 1994. 57. Charles M. Sennott, “SC Tragedy Has Roots in Troubled Life: Abortion, Lost Lover Spurred Mother’s Actions,” Boston Globe, Nov. 6, 1994. 58. “Death and the Mother’s Choice,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Nov. 17, 1994. 59. “Tell Us What You Think: TV Turned Tragedy into Ratings Circus” (Letters to Editor), Atlanta Journal Constitution, Nov. 17, 1994; C. Diane Horton, “Death and the Mother’s Choice” (Editorial), The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Nov. 17, 1994, Section B, p. 9; David Kirk, “Why Doesn’t Nation Mourn for Those Aborted?” (Letter to the Editor), (Greensboro, N.C.) News and Record, Nov. 19, 1994; Judy House, “Anti-Abortion Advocates Should Redirect Energies” (Letter to the Editor), (Greensboro, N.C.) News and Record, Nov. 20, 1994. 60. Chris Elder Liberty, “Feminists Must Unite Behind Susan Smith” (Letter to the Editor), (Greensboro, N.C.) News and Record, Nov. 11, 1994. 61. William Saletan documented this slow erosion of rights in Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 62. Don Melvin, “A New Mom’s Love Often Tied to Child Killings,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, November 4, 1994. 63. COBB 64. Caldwell, Tobacco Road (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1932), 18; Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (New York: Dutton Books, 1995), 36. 65. Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, (New York: MacMillan, 1936); Brown, Fay (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Press, 2001). 66. Kenneth Gross, The Alice Crimmins Case (New York: Knopf, 1975). 67. In addition to Where Are the Children? (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), books about the case include Gross’s true-crime work, cited above, as well as George Capozi, Jr.’s Ordeal by Trial (New York: Walker & Company, 1972) and Dorothy Uhnak’s The Investigation (New York: Pocket Books, 1978). Films include A Question of Guilt (Polygram Video, 1978), starring Tuesday Weld, and Where Are the Children? (Columbia Pictures, 1986). 68. Ann Rule, Small Sacrifices (New York: Signet Books, 1987). The term “sexpot on trial” was used by Front Page Detective to describe Alice Crimmins (http://www.trutv.com/library/ crime/notorious_murders/family/crimmins/8.html, accessed July 29, 2009). 69. S. Bryan Hickox, prod. Small Sacrifices (Troy, Mich.: Anchor Bay Entertainment, Inc., 1989). 70. Chris Burritt, “Mother Charged With Murder: The Unraveling Life of Susan Smith; She Felt World Disintegrating,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, November 6, 1994. 71. Gary Henderson, “Mother Confesses; Two Boys are Dead,” Spartanburg (South Carolina) Herald-Journal, Nov. 4, 1994. 72. NBC Evening News, Nov. 4, 1994; ABC Evening News, Nov. 4, 1994; CBS Evening News, Nov. 5, 1994; South Carolina v. Smith, 2683. 73. http://www.teleplex.net/shj/smith/ninedays/ssconf.html. 74. Adam Pertman, “Mother Held in SC Killings,” Boston Globe, Nov. 4, 1994. 75. Jerry Adler and Ginny Carroll, “Innocents Lost,” Newsweek, Nov. 14, 1994. 76. Wilczynski, Child Homicide, 93. 77. Euripides, Medea and Other Plays (New York: Penguin Books, 1963). 78. Abigail Trafford, “The Medea Syndrome,” Washington Post, Nov. 8, 1994. 79. Nancy McIlvaine Donovan, “Susan Smith: An American Tragedy Narrative Retold,” Dreiser Studies 34, no. 1 (summer 2003), 58. Reporters did not specifically reference Dreiser as they did Euripides, but many perhaps unwittingly called the case an “American Tragedy.” See, for instance, “American Tragedy: How Could She Have Done It,” Roanoke (Virgina) Times, Nov. 9, 1994.

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80. Charles Sennott, “Bid to Climb Social Ladder Seen in Smith’s Fall to Despair,” Boston Globe, Nov. 8, 1994. 81. “Smith Case Reveals Dark Side of Union,” Charleston (South Carolina) Post & Courier, Jan. 1, 1995. 82. Mark Peyser and Carla Koehl, “No Vacancy,” Newsweek, July 10, 1995. 83. Richard Whitt, “Gingrich Fires Back Over His Susan Smith Remarks,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, Nov. 19, 1994. 84. NBC Evening News, Nov. 7, 1994. 85. “American Tragedy,” Roanoke Times. 86. NBC Evening News, Nov. 7, 1994. 87. Linda Russell, My Daughter, Susan Smith (Brentwood, TN: Author’s Book Nook, 2000). 88. NBC Evening News, Nov. 7, 1994. 89. The full text of the “Contract with America” is available on the U.S. House of Representatives website at www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html. 90. As Diane Eyer has argued, “behind all the venom currently directed at ‘welfare mothers’ is an agenda that posits all renegade mothers as the cause of our social problems.” (Eyer, Motherguilt, 14). 91. Gwendolyn Mink, “Violating Women: Rights Abuses in the Welfare Police State,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 577, no. 1 (2001), 79–93. 92. Dr. Win Pound, “TV Turned Tragedy into Ratings Circus,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, Nov. 17, 1994. 93. Jo-Ann Clegg, “Susan Smith Should Pay Dearly: Unfit Parents Should Take Heed,” Virginia Beach Beacon, Nov. 11, 1994. 94. Molly Ladd-Taylor and Lauri Umansky, eds., “Bad Mothers”: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 22.

About the Contributors

Stacey Hor s tm an n G at t i received her doctoral degree from Emory University in 2000 after completing a dissertation entitled “Political Apprenticeship of Southern Women: The Political History of White Women’s Organizations in Georgia, 1880–1920.” She is currently an assistant professor of history at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York. Her current research projects focus on the political activities of women’s organizations in Georgia and New York during the Progressive era and the 1920s. El izabeth Gr it t e r is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She previously published interviews of Civil Rights leader Julian Bond and social documentary photographer Billy E. Barnes in the journal Southern Cultures. She is currently working on a dissertation that uses Memphis, Tennessee, as a case study to explore black political mobilization in the urban South in the Jim Crow era.

is associate professor of history at Georgia Southern University. She received her Ph.D. from Tulane University and is currently finishing “Striking Beauties: Garment Workers in the United States South, 1937– 1980,” the first book-length study of the southern apparel industry and its workers. At Georgia Southern, Michelle leads courses on a variety of subjects, including working-class history, the United States in the 1960s, the New South, and globalization and United States labor and capital. She is also in the beginning stages of another project tentatively titled “The Right to Boycott,” which will consider the meanings and impact of consumer actions in American history.

Michelle Hab e r la n d

A. L ee Lev ert is an independent scholar with a J.D. and an M.A. in History. In addition to publishing a variety of articles on Louisiana culture and history, 227

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she has worked for the Louisiana State Museum and the Historic New Orleans Collection. has spent most of her life in Florida, pursuing her own education and research interests in the state. She received a B.A. and and M.A. in history from the University of West Florida, and a Ph.D. from the University of Florida. She teaches American history at the University of Florida and is developing an article related to food preservation and Progressivism. She is also adapting her dissertation into a manuscript focused on reform by and for rural women in the modern South.

Kelly Min or

is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Yale University. This article is part of the research for her dissertation, “But the Woman Is the Heart: Southern Women’s Grassroots Conservatism, 1945–1994.” Robin Mor r is

Me gan Stu bbe n d e c k is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia. She specializes in Cold War–era culture with a particular interest in the complementary relationship between nation-building and public history. She has done extensive work on historic sites throughout the United States and detailed research on specific commemorative events, such as the Jamestown Festival of 1957.

is Courtesy Assistant Professor of History at the University of Oregon. She grew up in central Arkansas and earned an undergraduate degree in history from Ouachita Baptist University. She holds a master’s degree in historical theology from Yale University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in American history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a student of Donald G. Mathews. She has taught American history courses at Willamette University, Oregon State University, and Murray State University. Re gina D. Su l l i va n

is on the faculty at Loyola University of New Orleans. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2007. Her research interests are gender, crime, and southern culture. Keira V. W il l ia m s

Index

Abortion, 175, 204, 214, 216–17, 220, 222 Abzug, Bella, 167, 171, 174 Adams, Beverly, 174 Adams, John, 129 Adams, W. W., 25 Addams, Jane 6, 42–44, 46–47, 62, 69, 89, 100 Advertisements, 9, 123, 188–91, 193–95, 209 African Americans, 2, 4, 13, 98–99, 126, 130, 137, 195. 208; education and, 153; girls, 96, 98; identity and, 13; neighborhoods and, 99–100, 102; poverty and, 74 Agriculture, 71, 82, 89 Albermarle Female Institute, 14 Alcohol, 43 Alda, Alan, 172 Allen, Catherine B., 25 Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), 184–85, 187–96, 199n, 201-2nn Amalgamated Union Labels, 190 American Anti-Boycott Association (AABA), 187 American Cookery, 129 Americanization, 70 American Red Cross, 22, 80 American Revolution, 38n,162, 186 Americans for National Security, 164 American Tragedy, 219 Anderson, Druzy, 150 Antiabortion, 27, 166–68, 172, 216–17, 220, 222 Anticolonialism movement, 147 Anticommunism, 123 Antilynching campaign, 21

Antipoverty organizing, 151, 159n Antisuffrage, 45–46, 52, 55, 59–62, 66n Appalachia, 88 Area Legal Services, 154 Armor, Mary Harris, 50 Armstrong, Annie, 24 Atkinson, Ethel, 79 Atlanta Constitution, 54, 170 Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, 176 Atlanta Cotton States Exposition, 47 Audubon Park (New Orleans), 99, 107 Babbitt, Kathleen, 83 Baby Boom, 88 “Backlash”: gender, 9, 203, 207, 217; racial, 111; social, 203 “Bake for Barry,” 162, 165 Baptist newspapers, 18, 20, 23 Barclay, James, 15, 34n Barclay, Thomas, 32n Barclay family, 32n, 34n Bass, Betty, 170 Bates, Daisy, 136, 147–48 Bayh, Birch, 171 Beale Street (Memphis), 137, 139, 146–47 Bellefleur, Cherryl, 209 Berner (Mrs.), Robert, 56–57 Bettis, Pam, 167 Betts, Jennie, 145–46, 149 “Black Monday” movement, 152–53 Black politics, 136–54 passim Black, Nellie Peters, 54 “Blackface,” 110, 116n

229

230

Index

Blacks. See African Americans Blassingame, John, 2 Bluff City and Shelby County Council of Civic Clubs, 140 Boll weevil, 87 Boston Globe, 216, 220 Boycott, 122, 186; African American, 141, 145, 150; anti-ERA, 176; consumer, 185– 89, 194–96, 198n, 199n; feminist, 176; labor, 9, 184–89, 193–96, 198n, 199n Boyd, Julian P., 129 Bragg, Rick, 217 “Bread Project,” 8, 161–62 “Breadwinner,” 193 Breckinridge, Madeline McDowell, 53 Brekus, Catherine A., 37n Brokaw, Tom, 214, 220 Brown, Elsa Barkley, 4 Brown, Larry, 218–19 Brown, Leonard, 171 Browning, Gordon, 139 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 8, 96, 140 Bunton, Henry Clay, 142, 144, 146 Busbee, George, 175 Busing. See Public transportation Bus segregation. See Segregation Byrd, Hiram, 79–80, 91 Caldwell, Erskine, 217 Calloway, James, 61 Candler, Rev. Warren, 48, 61–62 Carjacking, 203, 206, 210, 211, 218 Carter, Jimmy, 163, 176–78 Carter, Rosalyn, 174, 176 Child abuse, 276, 204–7, 209, 214–17, 220, 222 Child care, 168 China, 5, 11, 16–17, 19, 20–21; Pingtu, 11, 17–20, 22–23, 25. See also Civil war Cholera, 86 Christian Coalition, 220 Christian Right, 177 Church denominations: Baptists, 11–12, 18–19, 22, 25–27, 37n, 41n; Catholics, 35n; Methodist Episcopalians, 18, 48; Methodists, 18–19; Presbyterians, 20, 101 Cigar Makers’ Association of the Pacific

Coast, 185 Citizens Nonpartisan Voter Registration Committee, 140, 144–45 Civil rights, 4, 97, 139, 141, 147, 149, 151, 153–54, 163–64; activism/activists, 136, 138–40, 148, 150; attorneys, 103; movement, 4, 7–8, 97, 100, 111–12, 115n, 148, 151, 163, 195, 204; strategies, 141 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 151, 164, 168 Civil war, American, 2, 16, 35n, 59; Chinese, 22, 24 Clark, Marcia, 209–10 Clark, Mary Higgins, 218 Class, 1, 52, 68, 146, 185, 198n, 204–5, 207–8, 212, 214–17, 223; lower-, 209, 218; middle-, 43, 44, 75, 89, 97, 146, 163, 167, 190, 205, 208–9, 222; sexuality and, 217– 20, 222; upper-, 4, 97; working, 96, 101, 104, 112n, 143, 145–46, 152, 210, 214–15, 217–18, 220, 221 Clay, Laura, 4, 50, 56 Clinton, Catherine, 2, 3 Cobb, James, 201n, 217 “Coca Cola parties,” 8, 143–46 Coe, Frances, 146–47 Cold War, 7, 118, 120, 123–24, 131, 140–41 Coles, Robert, 106, 115n Colonial Williamsburg, 123 Columbia University, 100 Commercial Appeal, 141, 146, 151 Communism, 120, 123, 140, 163 Community Chest, 101, 103 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 101, 188–89 Congress of Racial Equality, 151 “Contested terrain,” 97 Contraception, 174 “Contract with America,” 221 Cook, Rodney, 171 Cookbooks, 12, 123 Cooking, 101–2, 119, 129–30, 162 Coombs, Joy, 103–4, 107–8, 112n Corn and Tomato Clubs, 71, 75 Cotton, 71, 96, 104, 136–37, 146 Counterculture, 221–22 Country Life Movement, 73 Couric, Katie, 216 Cox, Karen, 58

Index Crime, 153, 203–6, 212–16, 219, 221–22. See also Carjacking; Kidnapping; Murder; Rape Crimmins, Alice, 218 Crump, Edward H., 138–140, 145, 147 Cuban refugees, 88 Cully, Eva, 82 “Culture of resistance,” 15, 35n Danbury Hatters’ Case, 187 “Dateline,” 216 Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), 163, 166, 171, 175 David J. Mendelsohn Advertising Agency, 199-200n Davidson, Sue, 200n Davis, Jefferson, 58 Day care, 172, 210 Deadwyler, Sue Ella, 178 DeCosta-Willis, Miriam. See Sugarmon, Laurie Deference, 83–84, 98, 105 Democracy, 70, 110, 123–24, 137–38, 140, 149, 222 Democratic: leaders, 8, 139; organizations, 139, 143, 149–52, 163, 165, 176, 178 Democratic National Convention, 139 Desegregation, 141, 147, 149, 151, 163 Des Jardins, Julie, 128 “Dew itch.” See “Ground itch” Dillard, Lella, 50–51 Diphtheria, 85 Disenfranchisement, 138, 152, 155n Divorce, 168, 205–6, 209–11, 215, 224n Dixiecrats, 139 Dollard, John, 206, 215 Domesticity, 7, 35n, 53, 63n, 75, 90, 99, 119–21, 123, 125–32, 190–91, 193, 195. See also Cooking; Housekeeping Domingo, Agnes, 170 Donnelly, Elaine, 167, 173 Dotson, Bob, 210–11 Douglas, Susan, 205 Downs, Diane, 218 Dreiser, Theodore, 219 Dromedary, 123 Duke University, 121

231

Dunaway, Faye, 207 Dunaway, John Allen, 164, 169, 178 Dunaway, Kathryn, 8, 161–78 passim Dunn (Mrs.), 144 Eagle Council. See Eagle Forum Eagle Forum, 166, 169, 171–72, 175, 177–78 Education, 14, 27, 46, 52, 57, 60, 62, 87, 105, 148, 152; black, 152, 154; federally funded, 64n, 154; female, 3, 4, 13–16, 21, 35n, 43–44, 48, 70, 128, 154, 167; health, 73, 75–77, 79, 86; higher, 128; patriotism and, 119, 121, 124–25, 130; sex, 221; voter, 137–38, 141, 145–46. See also individual institutions Eighteenth Amendment, 51 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 150 Election: of 1948, 139; of 1964, 151, 162–63, 165; of 1968, 163–64; of 1976, 163, 176; of 2008, 153 Electrification, 87 Elks Lodge (Memphis), 146 Elrod, Martha, 171 Emancipation Proclamation, 141 Equal Opportunity Act of 1972, 168 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), 8, 161–78 passim Equal Suffrage Party of Georgia, 44, 55, 59 ERAmerica, 172, 176 ERA Time Extension Bill, 177 Ervin, Sam J., Jr., 166 Ethnicity, 195 Euripides, 219 Evangelism, 15–17, 22, 26, 38n, 163 Evans, Geneva, 143 Extension Service, 68, 70, 85, 91 Eyer, Diane, 209, 226n Faludi, Susan, 203 Family, 119, 120, 162, 189, 213 “Family Values,” 203–5, 208, 214, 216, 220, 222–23 Farah Manufacturing, 184–85, 193–95, 2012nn Farah, Willie, 184 Farham, Christie Anne, 3 Fay, 217–18 “Feast Days at Monticello,” 122, 129

232 Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, 174 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 153 Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), 78, 81, 84 Federal Farm Housing Survey, 86–87 Federal Wage and Hour Law, 112n Feldman, Glen, 204, 223 Feldstein, Ruth, 204 Felton, Rebecca Latimer, 4, 47, 61, 64n Female Medical College, 14 Feminine character, 18, 118, 121, 128–29, 131, 206; unfeminine, 17, 129, 220 Feminism, 192, 204, 213 Feminists, 5, 8, 41n, 44, 69, 148, 163, 167, 171–73, 203, 205, 207, 217; anti-, 9, 167, 217 Findlay, Tom, 216, 219–20, 222 Fink, Deborah, 83 Fink, Kathryn. See Dunaway, Kathryn Fitzpatrick, Ida, 54–56 Florida State Board of Health, 68, 74, 79, 81–82, 85 Food and Nutrition Program, 75 Foote Homes Housing Project, 150 Ford, Gerald, 171 Ford, Harold, 153 Foreign Mission Board, 11, 16–18, 20, 22, 24–28 Foreign Mission Journal, 18–19 Foreign missions, 11–12, 19, 26, 41n Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, 2–3 Frank, Dana, 198n Frank, Edgar, 121 Franklin, Benjamin, 129 Frederickson, Mary, 201n Freedom Banquet, 147–48 Freedom Rally, 136, 142, 147–48 Freedom Train, 139 Freidan, Betty, 167 French Revolution, 128 Friedman, Jean E., 3 Fulbright, William, 165 Gall, Gilbert, 201n Garden Club of Virginia, 125, 129 Gardner, Sarah, 58 Gaston, Dr. James, 23, 25

Index General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 42, 52 Generation of Vipers, 215 Genovese, Eugene D., 2 George Mason University, 154 Georgia Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 61 Georgia Conservative Council, 164 Georgia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 43, 46–47, 55, 58–59, 61–62 Georgia Federation of Republican Women (GFRW), 165 Georgia Woman Suffrage Association (GWSA), 44, 47, 49, 55–56, 59–60 Georgia Woman Suffrage League, 44 Georgia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 42–44, 46–55, 57, 59–62 Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth, 45, 84, 95n Gingrich, Newt, 171, 203–4, 220–23 Glassner, Barry, 211 Godman Guild (Columbus, Georgia), 115n Goldberger, Joseph, 76 Goldwater, Barry, 151, 162–63, 165–66 Gone with the Wind, 217–18 Good Housekeeping, 129 Gordon, Ann D., 4 Grassroots activism, 8, 28, 98, 137, 143–44, 146, 148, 162, 164, 167, 170, 175, 178 Gray, Chester, 161 Great Depression, 79–80, 86, 94n, 187 Green, Elna, 1, 45, 56 Greene, Christina, 5 Griffiths, Martha, 171 Grigsby, Constance Jane, 101, 103 “Ground itch,” 68, 72, 74 Hale, Grace Elizabeth, 59, 116n Harris, Julian, 64n Hatcher, Virginia Snead, 23–25 Hayes, Louise, 57 Head Start, 154 Health care, 69, 82, 85, 95n, 172–73, 176 Heck, Fannie, 24 Heckler, Margaret, 172 Helms, Jesse, 174 Henry Street Settlement, 100–101. See also Settlement houses Herenton, Willie, 153

Index Hewitt, Nancy, 4 “Hidden transcript” (resistance strategy), 98, 106 Hillman, Bessie, 189 Hine, Darlene Clark, 4 Hispanics, 71 Historic preservation, 7, 118, 120, 127 Hite Report, 174 Hobsbawm, Eric, 112n Hollins Institute, 14 Holt, Thomas C., 98 Home Demonstration Agents (HDAs), 9, 68–92 passim, 93n; African American, 73, 83–86 Homosexual marriage, 168 Honig, Emily, 201n Hooks, Benjamin, 140–42, 150, 152 Hookworm, 6, 68, 70–72, 74, 76–80, 85–86, 89, 91, 95n Hope, Eugenia Burns, 116n Housekeeping, 6, 9, 55, 75; social, 6, 42, 43; municipal, 55 House Un-American Activities Committee, 111 Houston, Frank K., 130 Houston, Texas, 171, 173, 175 Howard University, 154 Hull House, 100 Identity, 211–12, 217; Baptist, 26; female, 46, 53, 86; labor, 193; male, 130; political, 45–46, 53; southern, 44 Immigrants, 74, 89, 100, 115n, 198n Infanticide, 205, 213–19 Institute for Research in Social Science, 101 Integration. See Desegregation Interdenominational Church Movement, 146 International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), 9, 184–88, 190–96, 198n, 200-201nn International Women’s Year (IWY), 171–76 International Women’s Year Citizens’ Review Committee (IWY CRC) 172–75 Irish Channel, 100 Jabour, Anya, 34n, 35n Jackson, Mahalia, 147–48, 158n

233

Jefferson, Thomas, 118–19, 122–25, 127, 129–31 Jellison, Katherine, 83 Jim Crow, 7, 8, 44, 94n, 97–99, 102, 105–8, 116n, 137–39, 142 John Birch Society, 167 Johnson, Julia Toy, 20 Johnson, Lyndon B., 152, 221 Juster, Susan, 38n Juvenile delinquency, 7, 96, 102, 109, 111, 142 Kaplan, Enid, 122 Kearney, Belle, 50 Kefauver, Estes, 139, 150 Kelley, Mary, 15, 34n, 38n Kelley, Robin D. G., 97–98, 106 Kellor, Frances, 53 Kelly, Mary, 167 Kennedy, John F., 150 Kent, Ira Rich, 128–29 Kidnapping, 9, 210 Kimball, Fiske, 126–27 Kimball, Marie Goebel, 123, 127–30 King, Rodney, 207 Kingsley House, 7, 96, 99–103, 110–11, 117n. See also Settlement houses Kinsey Report, 190 Kneebone, John T., 111 Korean War, 140 Kousser, Morgan J., 138 Kraditor, Aileen, 45 Kurtagh, Emeric, 100–102, 109–11 Labor, 73, 78, 79, 105, 137, 143, 147, 189, 200-201nn, 202n; activism, 120, 138–39, 141, 151, 159n, 193, 196, 201n; agricultural, 71; child, 4, 43, 57; legislation, 176, 188; movements, 100, 120, 138–39, 184–85, 190, 192, 194–96; organized, 100, 139, 144, 186, 195–96, 198n; unions, 187–89, 194, 196, 198n, 200-201nn; unskilled, 99 Lafitte, Pearl, 81 Lake Ponchartrain, 105 Lamar, Dorothy, 55, 58–59, 61 Landrum-Griffin Amendments, 188 Lane Cotton Mill, 96, 99, 103–5, 112n, 113n

234

Index

Lasch-Quinn, Elisabeth, 100, 114n, 115n Lassiter, Matthew, 163 Latinas, 195 Law, Juliette Gordon, 133n Lawlor v. Loewe, 187 Lawrence, Una Roberts, 22, 24–25, 31n, 34n, 39n, 40n Leadership: church, 18, 26, 27, 28; political campaigns, 138, 140, 142–44, 146, 148; union, 188–89, 194, 196, 201n; women, 8, 18, 45, 49, 52, 58, 62, 84, 86, 137, 144, 146, 148, 164, 166, 178, 189, 196, 201n Leadership Council, 143, 146 Lebsock, Suzanne, 3, 45, 59–60 Lee, George W., 138, 142, 147 Lee, Lola, 143 LeMoyne Gardens Housing Project, 144 LeMoyne-Owen College, 154 Lerner, Gerda, 35n Lesbianism, 175 Lincoln League, 143 Lincoln, Mary Todd, 133n Little Rock school desegregation, 147 Litwack, Leon, 99, 106, 117n Lobbying, 43, 161, 170, 171, 174, 187 Lockard, H. T., 140–41, 151 “Look for the Union Label” Campaign, 8, 9, 184–85, 192–95 “Lost Cause,” 13, 58, 62 Love, Roy, 141–42 Lowe, Rebecca, 53 Lower Garden District. See Irish Channel Lunch programs, 77, 80–81, 85, 94n Lynching, 21, 116n, 139 Mackenzie, Mary Todd, 86 “Made In America” Campaign, 195–96, 200n Malaria, 74, 86, 92n Manchuria (steamer), 23 Marcus, Alan I., 74 Martyrdom narratives, 5, 11, 22, 27 Mason, Bobbie Ann, 217 Mason Temple (Memphis), 147 May, Elaine Tyler, 120 McCall’s, 122–23, 130 McCreesh, Carolyn Daniel, 198n McDougald, Emily, 55, 59 McGuff, Angelynn, 169

McKimmon, Jane, 94n McLendon, Mary Latimer, 42–44, 46–47, 49–60 McRae, Elizabeth, 59, 61 Meany, George, 202n Medea, 9, 219 Media influence, 9, 163, 166, 196, 194, 203–23 passim Memphis Sanitation Strike, 152 Memphis State College, 141 Memphis State University, 152 Memphis World, 143, 147 Mental health, 39n Metzger, Gwen, 174 Mexican American women, 193–94 Miasmas, 76 Middlebury College, 141 Mileur, Jerome, 88 Milkis, Sidney, 88 Miller, Cynthia, 23–24, 40n Miller, Julia, 85 Miller, Zell, 175 Minstrel show, 110, 116n Modern Priscilla, 129 Mommie Dearest, 207, 218 Montgomery, Rebecca S., 4 Montgomery Bus Boycott, 146 Monticello, 7, 13, 118–135 passim Monticello Board of Governors, 124 Moon, Anna Barclay, 31n, 32n, 34n Moon, Charlotte Digges “Lottie,” 5, 11–29 passim, 29n, 30n, 34n Moon, Edward, 32n Moon, Orianna, 14–16, 34n, 35n Moon family, 32n, 34n, 36n. See also Barclay family Moore (Mrs.), S. C., 61 Moore, Jimmy, 159n Moore, Virginia P., 73–74, 77, 86–89 Morgan, Lelah, 40n Morgan (Mrs.), J. Tom, 166 Morgan, Sarah, 55 Mother-blaming, 207, 215, 220 “Mother of the Year,” 162 Mothers: black, 206; poor, 204, 208, 221; single, 206–8, 215–16, 221; teen, 209, 215, 221, unmarried, 221; working, 104, 205–9 Mount Vernon, 119, 123

Index Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 204, 206–8, 215 Moynihan Report, 206 Ms. Magazine, 209 Murder, 152, 203–23 passim Murphy, Tom, 162 “Murphy Brown,” 208–9, 221 Murray, Ann, 169 Murray, Clyde, 114n Nasstrom, Kathryn L., 155n National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), 44, 55 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 141; Memphis Branch of, 138, 140–41, 144–45, 151–52, 154 National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), 87 National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 61 National Civil Rights Museum, 154 National Commission for the Observance of International Women’s Year (IWY). See International Women’s Year National Consumers League (NCL), 187 National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW), 165 National Geographic, 123 National Labor Relations Act, 188 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), 194 National Negro Health Week (NNHW), 85–86, 94n National Organization for Women (NOW), 176–77 National Trust for Historic Preservation, 120 National Woman’s Party, 44 Nationwide Day of Prayer, 177 Necator americanus, 71 Negro Improvement League, 102–3 New Deal, 78–79, 81, 86–87, 89, 187 “New Englandization,” 2 Newman, Pauline, 186, 200-201n “New momism,” 205–6, 209, 212–13 “New racism,” 204–5, 222–23 New South, 1–5 New York Times, 136, 150–51 Nineteenth Amendment, 4, 51 Nixon, Richard, 163–64, 166, 174

235

Norris-LaGuardia Act, 188 North Fulton County Federation of Republican Women, 8, 165 Notre Dame, 166 Nunn, Sam, 171, 175, 178 Nutrition, 6, 71–72, 75–76, 79–82, 88–89, 92n, 93n Obama, Barack, 153 O’Brien, Dellana, 27–28 O’Brien, Michael, 3 O’Connor, Alan, 205 Odum, Howard W., 101 Office of Economic Opportunity, 88 Old South, 2, 3, 13, 57–58, 60–62, 130 Operation Dixie, 188 Organized labor. See Labor; individual organizations Parent-Teacher Association, 80–81, 145 Parish, Lena Fay, 169 Patriotism, 119, 123–25, 131 Patterson, Caroline, 61–62 Patton, W. C., 141 Pellagra, 6, 70–72, 76–77, 79–81, 89, 92n, 93n, 94n Perkins, Hazelhurst, 125–27, 129, 131 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), 221 Peters, Johnnie Mae, 145–46, 149–150, 154 Phi Beta Kappa, 141 Philanthropy, 97, 100 Philippines, 74 Pinkston, Randall, 214 Pioneer missionaries, 12 Pittsburgh Courier, 136 Pledge of Allegiance, 174 Police brutality, 138 Pollitt, Katha, 215 Poll tax, 139, 155n Pompey, B. T., 73 Potofsky, Jacob, 188 Poverty, 6, 68, 70–71, 74, 76, 88, 153 Pregnant teens, 215 Priester, Helen, 175 Progressive Party, 47, 53, 58 Progressivism, 6, 9, 43, 58, 61–62, 64n, 73,

236

Index

91, 110 Prohibition, 43, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 62, 64n, 188 Protests, 106–7, 112n, 150, 152, 185–86, 193 Protofeminism, 3 Public transportation, 98, 108; bus, 99, 141; streetcar, 99, 108, 116n Puerto Rico, 74 Quayle, Dan, 207–8, 221 Race relations, 97–98, 101, 105, 109, 112, 115n, 116n, 142 Race riots, 152, 207 “Racial baptism,” 106 Racial etiquette, 98, 105–8, 111–12, 115n Racial politics, 44–45, 163 Racism, 96–112 passim, 130; crime and, 203, 206, 210, 212; government and, 204; media and, 215; politics and, 136–54 passim Radio, 123–24, 167, 169, 188 Randolph, Martha Jefferson, 123, 125–26, 181 Rankin, Jerry, 28 Raoul, Mary, 55 Rape, 109, 217–18 Rath, Richard, 127 Recipes, 122–23, 129 Red-baiting, 111 Religion. See Church denominations Republican: leaders, 47, 138–39, 170–71, 221; organizations, 8, 58, 139, 143, 151, 162–66, 170, 178, 220–21 “Republican Motherhood,” 119, 124 Republican National Convention, 181 Republican Party, 8, 138, 151, 162, 164–66, 171, 220 Ritterhouse, Jennifer, 116n Riverfront Extension Program, 96–97, 101, 106–7, 111 Robertson, Pat, 221 Rockefeller (Mrs.), Nelson, 191 Rockefeller Foundation, 70 Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, 73 Roe v. Wade, 166, 168 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 191 Roosevelt, Theodore, 47, 53, 58, 62, 64n

Ruckelshaus, Jill, 171 Rule, Ann, 218 Runaway shops, 185, 188, 191, 198n Russia, 140 Rutherford, Mildred, 58–62 Sampson, William, 118 Sandy Springs Women’s Club, 162 Sanitary privy, 68, 76, 78 Saturday Night Live, 184 Scanlon, Jennifer, 133n Schlafly, Fred, 178 Schlafly, Phyllis, 8, 162–68, 170–72, 175–78 School desegregation, 140 School prayer, 168 Scott, Anne Firor, 1–2, 31n, 32n, 44–45 Scott, James C., 98, 105–6 Segregation, 45, 90, 96–112 passim, 115n, 117n, 130, 137–41, 150–51, 153, 159n, 164, 167; bus, 138, 145, 149, 151 Separate but equal, 98 Separate spheres, 3, 16–17, 21, 35n, 54, 84, 119 Settlement houses, 7, 69, 97, 100–101, 110–11, 114n Sexuality, 174, 190, 207, 218, 221; class and, 217, 219–20, 221–22; deviance and, 206, 217–18; fear and, 109; morality and, 43, 48, 210; promiscuity and, 214, 218, 222; race and, 97, 109, 206 Shelby County Community Action Agency, 154 Shelby County Court, 144, 151 Shelby County Democrat Club (SCDC), 143, 149, 151–52 Shelby County Democrat Party, 154 Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee, 150 Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921, 62 Sibley, Jennie Hart, 49–50 Sikes, Anna Mae, 80–81, 94n Slade, Dorothy Malone, 167 Slattery, Emmy, 217 Slaveholders, 13, 32n, 33n, 37n Slavery, 2, 14, 16, 105, 116n, 123, 131, 148 Slaves, 3, 13 Smallpox, 85

Index Smith, David, 206, 208, 210–12, 216, 218–19 Smith, Hoke, 61, 64n Smith, Maxine A., 136–37, 139–42, 144–46, 149–54 Smith, Susan, 9, 203–23 passim, 223n Smith-Lever Act, 75 Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, 35n Smith v. Allwright, 155n Socialism, 58, 165–66 Social Security, 88, 167 Social status, 5, 13, 44–45, 52, 83, 146, 148, 208, 210, 217 Southern Baptist Convention, 5, 11–13, 18, 20–21, 29, 36n, 38n Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 151 Southern Regional Council, 101 “Southern Strategy,” 163 Spedden, Ernest R., 198n Spelman College, 141 Spruill, Julia Cherry, 1 Stampp, Kenneth, 2 Starvation, 11, 22–23, 25–27, 40n States’ rights, 46, 56, 58–59, 64n, 163, 204 Stokes, John, 171 STOP ERA (Stop Taking Our Privileges ERA), 161–83 passim Stovall, Jean, 171 Streetcar. See Public transportation Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 151 Suffrage movement, 1, 4, 6, 42–63 passim, 64n, 163 Sugarmon, Laurie, 140, 146, 148, 150, 152, 154, 157n Sugarmon, Russell B., Jr., 140–42, 146, 149– 50, 152, 157n Susan B. Anthony Amendment, 51, 56, 57 Taft, Robert, 188 Taft, William Howard, 47 Taft-Hartley Amendments, 188 Talmadge, Herman, 177 Taylor, A. Elizabeth, 61 Taylor, George B., 14 Taylor, Henry J., 123–24 Television, 143, 163, 169, 172, 184, 194, 207–9, 212–14, 218

237

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), 221 Tennessee Board of Regents, 154 Tennessee Voters Council, 150, 152 Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 122, 129–30 Thomson, Rosemary, 174 Tilman, Terry, 127 Tobacco Road, 217 Tourism, 121, 176 Tri-State Defender, 146, 148 Troy Female Seminary, 14 Truman, Harry S, 139 Tulane University’s School of Social Work, 100, 108, 110 Tupper, Henry, 17, 19 Turner, A. A., 84 Turner, Jesse H., Sr., 140–41, 150–51 Twelfth Ward, 96, 99, 102 Twelfth Ward Negro Improvement League, 102 Typhoid, 74, 85–86 “Uncle Tom,” 147 Unfairness Doctrine, 177 Union Label Department, 190–91 Unions: corruption, 187, 198n; fines, 198n; leadership, 188–89, 194, 196, 200-201nn United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), 6, 43, 47, 57–58; of Georgia, 43, 46–47, 55, 58–59, 61–62 United Garment Workers Union (UGW), 186–87, 198n United States Congress, 50–51, 53, 56, 120, 138, 151–52, 165–66, 168, 171, 174, 176– 77, 187–88, 220 United States Constitution, 51, 60, 167, 169 United States Information Agency, 124 United States Sanitary Commission, 70, 73 United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 165 United States Senate Judiciary Committee, 176 United States Supreme Court, 96, 140, 155n, 166, 168–69, 187 University of North Carolina, 101 University of Texas, 166 University of Virginia, 14–15

238

Index

U.S. News and World Report, 176 U.S. Public Health Service, 73 Veterans, 62, 140, 143 Violence: class and, 217; domestic, 176, 207, 214–21; political, 139, 155n; urban, 207; white, 99, 155n Volunteer Ticket, 8, 136–60 passim Volunteer Ticket Youth Committee, 146 Von Fremd, Mike, 208 Voter education. See Education Voter registration, 137–38, 140–41, 144–45, 154, 155n, 157n Voting machines, 144 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 152 Wade, Richard, 2 Walker, J. E., 139–41 Walker, Willa McWilliams, 146–47, 149 Wallace, George, 163–64 Walters, Barbara, 171 War on Poverty, 88 Washington, Booker T., 85 Washington Post, 136, 215 Watergate, 174 Weinstein, Charles, 188 Welfare, 204–8, 215–16, 220–22, 226n “Welfare mothers,” 221, 226n “Welfare queens,” 204, 206–7, 215, 221–22 Wells, Howard, 212–14 Wellesley College, 140 Wessels, Charles, 175 West Indies, 74 Wharton, A. C., 153 Whartonby, Elizabeth, 125 Wheeler, Lillie J., 144–46, 149–50, 153–54 Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill, 4, 45, 56, 59

Where Are the Children? 218 White Label, 185, 187 White primary, 137–38, 155n White, Sue Shelton, 4 Wiebe, Robert, 43 Willard, Frances, 47 Williams, Nat D., 136, 148 Willis, A. W., Jr., 140–41, 151–52, 157n Wilson, Woodrow, 56 Woman suffrage. See Suffrage movement Woman’s Missionary Union, 5 Women: African American, 2, 4, 75; lowerclass, 218; middle-class, 4, 43, 45, 120, 167; upper-class, 4; working-class, 148, 145, 152, 210, 214, 215, 217–18, 221 Women’s clubs, 6, 42–43, 45, 47, 52, 57, 82, 165–66, 201n Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 6, 48, 64n Woodward, Mayor, 54 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 78–79, 81, 84 World War I, 43, 69, 74–75, 94n, 95n World War II, 7; relative to health reform, 69, 71, 73; relative to historic preservation, 121, 123, 131, 138, 140–41; relative to labor, 184, 186, 188; relative to segregation, 87, 89–90, 96–98, 100, 102, 111 Wrong, Elaine, 202n Wylie, Philip, 215 Wysong, Lee, 163, 168–69, 178 Xavier University, 103 Young, Cynthia, 122 Younger, Louise, 170