Black Women in White America

Table Of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Notes on Sources

An Introduction, by Mary McLeod Bethune

1. SLAVERY
Purchase and Sale
Bill of Sale of Abraham Van Vleeck (1811)
Mrs. Blankenship Wishes to Buy a Slave Girl (1863)
Moses Grandy’s Wife Is Sold (1844)
A Slave Dealer’s Sale Receipts (1863)
A Mother Is Sold Away from Her Children
A Slave Mother Succees in Returning to Her Family (1846)
A Slave Shams Illness to Stay with Her Husband (1847)

Tell It Like It Was
Daily Life of Plantation Slaves
The Slaves’ Garden Plot (1836)
A House Slave’s Family Life (1861)
A Seamstress Is Punished (1839)
The Daily Life of House Slaves (1839)
I Wasn’t Crying ‘Bout Mistress, I Was Crying ‘Cause the White Bread
     Was Gone, Martha Harrison

The Struggle for Survival—Day-to-Day Resistance
Sneaking an Education:  Memories of a Contraband, Susie King Taylor
Foolin’ Massa: Memories of a Contraband
She Finally Went to School That One Night, Josephine Thomas White
A Slave Woman Runs a Midnight School, Milla Granson
A Slave Mother in Business
Fight, and If You Can’t Fight, Kick
A Mother Purchases Her Daughter
Ransoming a Woman from Slavery (1859)
Stephen and Juba (1838–1839)

A Woman’s Fate
The Way Women Are Treated (1839)
The “Breeder Woman”
The Nursing Mothers (1836)
A Slaveholder’s Wife Listens to Her Slaves (1838–1839)
The Slaveholder’s Mistress
A Slaveholder Confides to Her Diary
The Story of Nancy Weston as Told by Her Son (1868)

On the Road to Freedom
The Rescue of Jane Johnson (1855)
Dramatic Slave Rescues (1855, 1857)
The Case of Margaret Garener (1856)
The Called Her “Moses,” Harriet Tubman (1860)
An Ingenious Escape, Ellen Craft (1848)

2. THE STRUGGLE FOR EDUCATION
Learning to Teach
Teaching School to Keep Alive, Maria W. Stewart (1832)
Establishing a Girls’ Department in the Institute for Colored Youth,
       Sarah Mapps Douglass (1853)
Teaching to Become an Educator, Fannie Jackson Coppin (1869)
Methods of Instruction, Fannie Jackson Coppin (1913)

Teaching the Freedmen
A Teacher from the North, Charlotte Forten Grimké (1863)
A Former Slave Teaches Black Soldiers, Susie King Taylor (1862)
Teachers Wanted (1865)
Reports from the Field (1866–1869)
Administration of Freedman’s Schools (1871)
An Example of Teaching Materials Used in Freedmen’s Schools in Virginia in (1870)
Catechizing Freedmen Children (1869)
They Would Not Let Us Have Schools (1871)
Schooling in the Jim Crow South, Septima Poinsetta Clark (1916–1928)

School Founders
A Progress Report from the Founder of the Haines School, Lucey Loney (1893)
Fund Raising for the Palmer Memorial Institute, Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1920–1921)
The National Training School for Girls Appeals for Funds, Nannie Burroughs  (1929)
A College on a Garbage Dump, Mary McLeod Bethune (1941)
Another “Begging” Letter, Mary McLeod Bethune (1930)

3. A WOMAN’S LOT
Black Women are Sex Objects for White Men
The Married Life of Georgia Peons (1901)
We Are Little More Than Slaves (1912)
No Protection for Black Girls (1904)
Their Rage Was Chiefly Directed Against Men (1963)
The Final Solution (1911, 1914)

The Myth of the “Bad” Black Woman
The Accusations Are False, Fannie Barrier Williams (1904)
A Colored Woman, However Respectable, is Lower Than the White
         Prostitute, Anonymous (1902)
In Defense of Black Women, Elsie Johnson McDougold (1925)

The Rape of Black Women as a Weapon of Terror
The Memphis Riot (1865)
KKK Terrror During Reconstruction (1871)
Defend Black Women—And Die!
    The Lynching of Berry Washington (1919)
    The Case of Mrs. Rosa Lee Ingram and Her Sons (1947–1959)

Black Women Attack the Lynching System
Let There Be Justice, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1891)
How to Stop Lynching (1894)
A Red Record, Ida B. Wells Barnett (1895)
Lynching from a Negro’s Point of View, Mary Church Terrell (1904)
The Anti-lynching Crusaders (1923)

4. MAKING A LIVING
Doing Domestic Work
I Live a Treadmill Life, Anonymous (1912)
Slave Markets in New York City (1940)
The Domestic Workers’ Union (1937)
Organizing Domestic Workers in Atlanta, Georgia, Dorothy Bolden  (1970)

From Service Jobs to the Factory
An Army Laundress at War, Susie King Taylor (1864)
Black Women in the Reconstruction South, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1878)
The Negro Woman Worker:  1860–1890, Jean Collier Brown (1931)
The Tobacco Workers, Emma L. Shields (1921)
Two Million Women at Work, Elizabeth Ross Haynes (1922)
Women of the Steel Towns, Mollie V. Lewis (1938)
A Black Union Organizer, Sabina Martinez (1941)
Organizing at Winston-Salem, North Carolina (1947–1951)
     Estelle Flowers
     Luanna Cooper
     Moranda Smith
It Takes a While to Realize That It Is Discrimination, Florence Rise (1970)

5. SURVIVAL IS A FORM OF RESISTANCE
Something Told Me Not to Be Afraid, Charlotte Anne Jackson (1865)
Three Times Three Cheers for the Gunboat Boys (1863?)
A Black Woman Remembers Her Father, Anonymous (1904)
A Family Struggles to Keep Going, Frances A. Joseph Gaudet (1868)
A Night Watch, Maria L. Baldwin (1863?)
I Was a Negro Come of Age, Ellen Tarry (1955)
We Want to Live, Not Merely Exist, Mrs. Henry Weddington (1941)
Blue Fork Is the Worst Place I Know, Sarah Tuck (1941)
I Did Not Really Understand What It Meant to Be a Negro, Daisy Lee Bates (1927)
Helping Out Daddy, Louise Meriwether (1967)
Am I My Brother’s Keeper?, Helen Howard (1965)
Having a Baby Inside Me Is the Only Time I’m Really Alive, Anonymous (1964)

6. IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE AND POLITICAL LIFE
A Pioneer Newspaper Woman, Mary Ann Shadd Cory (1852)
Nurse, Spy and Scout, Harriet Tubman (1868, 1898)
Opportunities for the Educated Colored Woman, Eva D. Bowles (1923)
Government Work in World War I, Mary Church Terrell (1917–1918)
“Election Day,” Elizabetgh Piper Ensley (1894)
The Negro Woman in Politics, Mrs. Robert A. Patterson  (1922)
I Accept This Call, Charlotta Bass (1952)
Developiong Community Leadership, Ella Baker (1970)
The 51% Minority, Shirley Chisholm (1970)

7. THE MONSTER PREJUDICE
In the Grip of the Monster
Martyr for Freedom, Amy Spain (1865)
I Believe They Despise Us for Our Color, Sarah M. Douglass (1837)
When, Oh! When Shall This Cease?, Charlotte Forten Grimké, (1855; 1899)
Fighting Jim Crow, Sojourner Truth (approx. 1966)
Suing for Her Rights, Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1921)
The Small Horrors of Childhood, Anonymous (1904)
What It Means to Be Colored in the Capital of the United States,
        Mary Church Terrell (1907)
Traveling Jim Crow, Mahalia Jackson (1966)
The Life and Death of Juliette Derricotte (1931)
There is No Prejudice in Arkansas (1936)
Discrimination on WPA: Black Women Appeal to FDR (1935; 1941)

Freedom—Now!
The Causes of the Harlem Riot, Nannie Burroughs (1935)
Breaking Restrictive Covenants (1948)
The Ordeal of Children, Daisy Bates (1962)
All I Could Think of Was How Sick Mississippi Whites Were, Anne Moody (1968)

8. “LIFTING AS WE CLIMB”
From Benevolent Societies to National Club Movement
The Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston (1832)
The Beginnings of the National Club Movement, Josesphine St. Pierre Ruffin;
      Margaret Murray Washington (1895)
The Ruffian Incident, Fannie Barrier Williams (1900)
Club Activities, NACW Convention (1906)

Interracial Work
Cooperation on a Community Level (1907)
The Colored Women’s Statement (1919)
Speaking Up for the Race at Memphis (1920)
How to Stop Lynchings: A Discussion (1935)

Inside a White Organization—The Young Women’s Christian Association
Eva Bowles Call for Action (1920)
What the Colored Women Are Asking of the YWCA (1920)
Too Much Paternalism in “Y’s” (1920)
Reports by the Secretary For Colored Work, Eva Bowles (1922–1930)
Reminiscenceds of a YWCA Worker, Anna Arnold Hedgeman (1924–1938)

Grass-Roots Work
Plan of Work: Atlanta Colored Women’s War Council, World War I (1918)
The Neighborhood Union, Atlanta, Georgia (1908–1932)
The Story of the Gate City Free Kindergarten Association
The Poor Help Themselves: The Vine City Foundation (1968)
Operation Daily Bread:  The National Council of Negro Women (1969)

9. RACE PRIDE
Throw Off Your Fearfulness and Come Forth, Maria W. Stewart (1832)
Emigration to Mexico, Anonymous (1832)
I Belong to This Race, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1870)
Let the Afro-American Depend but on Himself, Ida B. Wells Barnett (1892)
The South Is Our Home, Amanda Smith Jemand (1901)
Black History Builds Race Price (1933)
Please Stop Using the Word “Negro,” Mary Church Terrell (1882; 1922; 1938)
Glorify Blackness, Nannie Burroughs (1949)
The Only Thing You Can Aspire to is Nationhood, Dara Abubakari
       (Virginia E. Y. Collins) (1970)

10. BLACK WOMEN SPEAK OF WOMANHOOD
What If I Am a Woman?, Maria W. Stewart (1832)
I Suppose I Am About the Only Colored Woman That Goes About to Speak
      for the Rights of Colored Women, Sojourner Truth (1853; 1867)
The Colored Woman Should Not Be Ignored, Anna J. Cooper (1892)
The New Black Woman, Fannie Barrier Williams (1900)
Women As Leaders, Amy-Jacques Garvey (1925)
A Century of Progress of Negro Women, Mary McLeod Bethune (1933)
The Strength of the Negro Mother, Mahalia Jackson (1966)
The Black Woman Is Liberated in Her Own Mind, Dara Abubakari
       (Virginia E. Y. Collins) (1970)
Women’s Liberation Has a Different Meaning for Blacks, Renee Ferguson (1970)
Jim Crow and Jane Crow, Pauli Murray (1964)
Poor Black Women, Patrcia Robinson (1970)
Facing the Abortion Question, Shirley Chisholm (1970)
I Want the Right to Be Black and Me, Margaret Wright (1970)
It’s in Your Hands, Fannie Lou Hamer (1971)

Bibliograhical Notes