Anna J. Cooper, in Bert James Loewenberg and Ruth Bogin, eds., Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American life: Their Words, Their Thoughts, Their Feelings (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), pages 324-328.
Now I would that my task ended here. Having shown that a great want of the world in the past has been a feminine force; that that force can have its full effect only through the untrammeled development of woman; that such development, while it gives her to the world and to civilization, does not necessarily remove her from the home and fireside; finally, that while past centuries have witnessed sporadic instances of this higher growth, still it was reserved for the latter half of the nineteenth century to render it common and general enough to be effective; I might close with a glowing prediction of what the twentieth century may expect from this heritage of twin forces--the masculine battered and toil-worn as a grim veteran after centuries of warfare, but still strong, active and vigorous, ready to help with his hard-won experience the young recruit rejoicing in her newly found freedom, who so confidently places her hand in his with mutual pledges to redeem the ages. . . .
Others ask questions too, sometimes, and I was asked a few years ago by a white friend, “How is that the men of your race seem to outstrip the women in mental attainment?” “Oh,” I said, “so far as it is true, the men, I suppose from the life they lead, gain more by contact; and so far as it is only apparent, I think the women are more quiet. They don’t feel called upon to mount a barrel and harangue by the hour every time they imagine they have produced an idea.”
But I am sure there is another reason which I did not at that time see fit to give. The atmosphere, the standards, the requirements of our little world do not afford any special stimulus to female development.
It seems hardly a gracious thing to say, but it strikes me as true, that while our men seem thoroughly abreast of the times on almost every other subject, when they strike the woman question they drop back into sixteenth century logic. They leave nothing to be desired generally in gallantry and chivalry, but they actually do not seem sometimes to have outgrown that old contemporary of chivalry--the idea that women may stand on pedestals or live in doll houses (if they happen to have them), but they must not furrow their brows with thought or attempt to help men tug at the great questions of the world. I fear the majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education. . . . The three R’s, a little music and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity.
Fannie Barrier Williams, “The Club Movement Among Colored Women of America,” in J. E. McBrady, ed., A New Negro for a New Century (Chicago: American Publishing House, c. 1900), pages 379-384.
Afro-American women of the United States have never had the benefit of a discriminating nature concerning their worth as women made up on the good and bad of human nature. What they have been made to be and not what they are, seldom enters into the best or worst opinion concerning them.
In studying the status of Afro-American women as revealed in their club organizations, it ought to be borne in mind that such social differentiations as “women’s interests, children’s interests, and men’s interests” that are so finely worked out in the social development of the more favored races are but recent recognitions in the progressive life of the negro race. Such specializing had no economic value in slavery days, and the degrading habit of regarding the negro race as an unclassified people has not yet wholly faded into a memory.
The negro as an “alien” race, as a “problem,” as an “industrial factor,” as “ex-slaves,” as “ignorant,” etc., are well known and instantly recognized; but colored women as mothers, as home-makers, as the center and source of the social life of the race have received little or no attention. These women have been left to grope their way unassisted toward a realization of those domestic virtues, moral impulses and standards of family and social life that are the badges of race respectability. They have no special teachers to instruct them. No conventions of distinguished women of the more favored race have met to consider their peculiar needs. There has been no fixed public opinion to which they could appeal; no protection against the libelous attacks upon their characters, and no chivalry generous enough to guarantee their safety against man’s inhumanity to woman. Certain it is that colored women have been the least known, and the most ill-favored class of women in this country.
The club movement among colored women reaches into the sub-social condition of the entire race. Among white women clubs mean the forward movement of the best women in the interest of the best womanhood. Among colored women the club is the effort of the few competent on behalf of the many incompetent; that is to say that the club is only one of the many means for the social uplift of a race. Among white women the club is the onward movement of the already uplifted.
The consciousness of being fully free has not yet come to the great masses of the colored women in this country. The emancipation of the mind and spirit of the race could not be accomplished by legislation. More time, more patience, more suffering and more charity are still needed to complete the work of emancipation.
The training which first enabled colored women to organize and successfully carry on club work was originally obtained in church work. These churches have been and still are the great preparatory schools in which the primary lessons of social order, mutual trustfulness and united effort have been taught. The churches have been sustained, enlarged and beautified principally through the organized efforts of their women members. The meaning of unity of effort for the common good, the development of social sympathies grew into women’s consciousness through the privileges of church work.
Still another school of preparation for colored women has been their secret societies. “The ritual of these secret societies is not without a certain social value.” They demand a higher order of intelligence than is required for church membership. Care for the sick, provisions for the decent burial of the indigent dead, the care for orphans and the enlarging sense of sisterhood all contributed to the development of the very conditions of heart that qualify women for the more inclusive work of those social reforms that are the aim of women’s clubs. The churches and secret societies have helped to make colored women acquainted with the general social condition of the race and the possibilities of social improvement. . . .
The clubs and leagues organized among colored women have all been more or less in direct response to these appeals. Seriousness of purpose has thus been the main characteristic of all these organizations. While the National Federation of Woman’s Clubs has served as a guide and inspiration to colored women, the club movement among them is something deeper than a mere imitation of white women. It is nothing less than the organized anxiety of women who have become intelligent enough to recognize their own low social condition and strong enough to initiate the forces of reform.
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