Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

A Righteous Discontent tells a neglected story of black Baptist women by offering a “gender perspective” on the rise of black denominational hegemony in the period from 1880 to 1920. During this era, which “has come to be known simultaneously as the ‘woman’s era’ and the ‘nadir’ in American race relations” (1), black Baptist women were actively involved in efforts toward gender equality and racial uplift. It was through the church that these women exercised their talents and zeal to overcome the oppression of gender inequality and racial discrimation. In Higginbotham’s view, the church became such an instrument of racial and gender self-help, precisely because it was “the only space truly accessible to the black community” in the post-Reconstruction South (7). The church became their “public sphere,” so by looking at the role of women in the black Baptist church in this era, she offers us a window into the African American woman’s experience in this difficult period of American history.

Chapters two through five cover the period from 1880-1900, from the beginnings of widespread educational efforts for black women to the flourishing of “feminist” perspectives among leading black women. Chapters six and seven cover the period from 1900-1920, describing events from the rise of the women’s own national convention to their efforts to combat the problems of urbanization. Throughout the story, the overlapping gender- and race-consciousness of these black women dominates, as they struggle to be allies with and separate from both men of their own race and the white women of the North.

Chapter two describes how northern white women in the American Baptist Home Mission Society worked with black women to create what Higginbotham calls the “Female Talented Tenth.” This Female Talented Tenth was a contingent of black women who could, having been educated at schools supported and run by northern whites, in turn disseminate the fruits of their learning throughout the black communities. Not surprisingly, the motives of the two groups were not identical: northern whites were concerned with issues of national security, and they were also motivated by resolving their own guilt over the practical consequences of having withheld education from blacks (e.g. black women couldn’t read the Bible to their children); blacks, on the other hand, were primarily concerned with gaining respect and uplift as a race, one of the perceived barriers to which was the discontinuity between the freedman’s manner of living and the Victorian middle class ideals of whites. In the opinion of many African Americans, gaining “respect, even justice, from white America required changes in religious beliefs, speech patterns, and manners and morals.” The liberal arts and moral education received by the Female Talented Tenth at schools such as Spelman in Atlanta (founded 1881), enabled them to work for reform in their own communities, a reform that was seen as beneficial both by whites and this group of educated blacks. At a time when the teaching profession was increasingly belonging to women, this effort gave black women the opportunity to become part of the new black middle class and have an immense impact on their communities. This notion of a “Talented Tenth” and women’s role in it received explicit support from prominent whites such as Henry Morehouse and T.J. Morgan (both secretaries of the ABHMS), as well as prominent blacks such as W.E.B. DuBois (evidencing the differences between his approach to reform and that of Booker T. Washington). The financial support of the Rockefellers (”Laura Spellman Rockefeller”) contributed significantly to the success of the infrastructure supporting these efforts.

Chapter three, “Separatist Leanings,” turns to the rise of the black Baptist convention movement, which developed in the context of “an emergent black nationalism” during the 1880’s and 90’s. Here we find a clear discussion of Higginbotham’s approach to the church as a forum of “racial self-help,” the institution through which blacks expressed their racial solidarity and efforts for uplift. Although there had been some efforts at cooperation between blacks and northern whites through the ABHMS, these efforts continued to support inequality. The fact that hiring policies of the ABHMS kept blacks out of teaching and administrative positions — to say nothing of the whites’ movitation to use the Talented Tenth as a “buffer” group — contributed to a growing disenchmantment with the persistence of racial inequality. The educated black leaders responded in a number of ways, with the various currents supporting “the racial struggle for denominational hegemony” (58). To the dismay of many white leaders (including Morehouse and Morgan), they began establishing their own schools. Black women also began holding state conventions, organized especially around the need to support missions and those black Baptist-owned schools. The Kentucky convention, organized in 1883 to support education, is a good example of the power of the women’s conventions. This convention kept Simmons University in Louisville afloat and contributed to its distinctively African American identity. Most of the leaders of these women’s conventions were trained at schools established by the whites in the ABHMS.

The National Baptist Convention (NBC) was formed in 1895, marking a decisive step in the efforts towards black denominational hegemony. Black baptist women were prominent voices in this national movement, but the convention itself was clearly dominated by the male clergy. Black women did, however, have strong reasons to be confident and assert their competence in relation to their male counterparts. Women’s efforts at the national level were an outgrowth of years of such work on the state level, where they clearly demonstrated their administrative and organizational abilities, and where they became self-conscious of the importance of their role in the black church. The epitome of such work was that of Virginia Broughton in Tennessee. [[Supported by the white women of the WBHMS, her articulate defense of women’s roles and rights even to biblical interpretation and theological investigation was threatening to male dominance. She was, however, apparently intimidating to the point that she helped generate considerable male reactions against such women’s movements.]] The black Baptist presses also played a crucial role in this emergent black nationalism and the distinctive role of women within it. Women had their own columns in these newspapers, and their literature gained a unified, national hearing with the founding of the NBC.

In chapter 4, “Unlikely Sisterhood,” Higginbotham returns to the theme that “divergent motives did not preclude mutual goals” (90). Black and white women were able to work together in a number of ways that “challenged the representations and assumptions articulated by a racist society” (89). The last two decades of the nineteenth century were the era of women’s societies, and within the northern church these societies focused on the missionary effort, especially to southern blacks. As mentioned above, they cooperated with southern black women through educational efforts. They also had a significant impact on the perception of blacks in the north, by sending, through letters and societal literature, positive reports back from the south, and by inviting southern black women to come north and give speeches. In an odd sort of way, the imposition of Victorian middle-class values to the southern black women was complimentary to the latter. On the one hand, it can be seen as cultural imperialism; on the other, it was actually progressive to assume that black women could indeed embody the moral standards and family values embraced by the white middle-class, especially “at a time when white society viewed black women as innately promiscuous and undeserving of protection from insult and even rape” (100). The combined efforts of southern black women and northern white women would help begin to change this perception and create in the north a genuine concern for the welfare of blacks in the south. It is true, however, that northern whites were also driven by xenophobic, anti-catholic concerns that had arisen in the north and threatened to take America away from them. The flourishing of white Victorian values was the only way to safeguard America, and the northern whites wanted to ensure that southern blacks would aid rather than hinder this stabilization of American culture. Higginbotham’s overall assessment of the role of Northern baptist women is positive, as these women worked against prevailing cultural norms in a manner that testified to their sense of obligation to the plight of southern blacks. They urged material restraint in the face of materialism, so more wealth could be distributed to needy southern blacks; and they desired to cooperate with and affirm the value of the blacks at a time when Jim Crow laws were heightened.

It was also in the last two decades of the nineteenth century that black baptist women began taking another serious look at the biblical grounds for their role in the church and society. It is to this that Higginbotham turns in chapter five, “Feminist Theology, 1880-1900.” Emerging from this narrative is a group of women dedicated to remaining within the boundaries of biblical warrant, yet asserting the biblical grounds for gender equality on the very same basis that black men were pressing for racial equality against the claims of racist whites. Among those who advocated “a progressive gendered and racialized representation of orthodoxy,” three major figures were Virginia Broughton, Mary Cook, and Lucy Wilmot Smith. They stressed women’s equality with men in matters related to salvation (e.g. women are not particularly fragile with a weak and untrustworthy nature, and no woman betrayed Jesus in the Gospels!). In addition, they advocated a stronger role for women in the convention movement, in social reforms and education, stressed the societal importance of women’s role in the home, and gave women’s work a significance independent of the work of men. By “fashioning the Bible as an ‘iconoclastic weapon,’ for their particular cause” (149), these women “formed part of a broader trend in liberal theology, which sought to bring the Bible into greater harmony with values and assumptions related to women’s changing status and a variety of other social and scientific developments” (124).

Chapter 6, “The Coming of Age of the Black Baptist Sisterhood,” tells the story of the rise of the Women’s Convention, Auxiliary to the NBC. Frustrated by the division between reality and the above “feminist” theology, women sought outlets through which they could better utilize their gifts and energy in service of racial uplift. Rather than circumvent their denominational power structure, they pushed for a greater voice within the NBC. Prominent in this movement was Nannie Helen Burroughs, who called for the establishment of the WC-NBC, which was founded in 1900. The WC gave women an independent identity and a self-determined voice. Their stated goals focused on educating women, supporting existing state and local women’s societies, and engaging in fundraising to support education and missions. The road for the WC was not always, as they had to resist calls from the men to abdicate power, as well as weather a publicized battle in their own ranks, between Virginia Burroughs and Nannie Burroughs. Nevertheless, the WC provided women the unprecedented opportunity to travel (for the annual meeting), established gender unity at the national level, and greatly supported the church’s efforts financially. When the devastating impacts of urbanization and the northward move of so many blacks began to be felt, the WC responded by embracing much of the language and methods of the Social Gospel and Progressive Era reforms. They established a settlement house in a slum in Washinton D.C. in 1913, and they commissioned pioneering sociological studies that would provide the base of information they could use to efficiently implement social programs. Such work reflected growing cooperation between the WC and secular women’s societies such as the National Association of Colored Women.

In the final chapter, “The Politics of Respectability,” Higginbotham returns again to black women’s endorsement of the dominant white, Victorian ideals in their efforts to work for the uplift and reform of their own race. They were radical by claiming respectability equal to that of whites, but they were “conservative” in the sense that they were critical of members of their own race for not conforming to the dominant middle-class ideals of society. They worked, often together with white women’s societies, to put down immoral social practices such jazz music, dance halls, and progressive fashions for women, all of which were seen as destructive for society and uplift for blacks. There was a prevailing notion that immorality on the part of blacks was the true cause for white discrimination against them. This put the power of ending discrimination in the hands of the black community itself; by fervently pursuing moral reform and the politics of respectability, blacks could prove themselves worthy, prove white supremecist rhetoric false, and ultimately gain the favor of whites. Led by Nannie Burroughs, the WC trained women for domestic service vocations, emphasizing a respectability that was not dependent upon education but rather industriousness at one’s given vocation. However, if “Burroughs and the Woman’s Convention sided with Booker T. Washington in regard to industrial education, they unequivocally sided with W.E.B. Dubois and the NAACP in regard to civil rights” (221). Together with secular organizations such as the NAACP, the WC pushed for the desegregation of the railroad and women’s suffrage.

Higginbotham convincingly demonstrates the long-neglected but important role of black Baptist women in both the racial uplift of blacks and the fight for gender equality from the 1880’s to the 1920’s. She skillfully weaves together the complicated factors of gender- and race-consciousness. These factors all surround the theme recurring throughout the book: “Black women found themselves in the unique position of being at once separate from and allied with black men in the struggle for racial advancement while separate and allied with white women in the struggle for gender equality” (80). By focusing on women and the church societies through which they exercised their efforts for uplift, Higginbotham avoids the more common approach of focusing on major clerical figures whose efforts were more in the spotlight. Her focus on the church as a political, public forum for blacks does emphasize the social function of the church; yet she is usually clear that the self-understanding of the players in this story was that their social efforts were grounded in deep religious conviction. Indeed, Higginbotham makes it clear that religious and social convictions were not easily separated for these women. Furthermore, on the question of race relations, she handles the role of northern white women with fairness, giving credit where due yet never glossing over the condescension that stood behind some of their efforts.

The only significant criticism of the book should be made against her interpretation of the “feminist theology” in which these women engaged. It is probably too much to say that they were part of the broader movement in Protestant Liberalism, sharing its basic disposition of self-conscious accommodation to changing societal standards (124). It is also certainly inconsistent with their own self-understanding to say that they were “fashioning” or “using” the Bible bolster independently determined conclusions regarding gender equality (implied on 127, 139). This may indeed have been what these women did, but the methodology employed in this chapter — where Gordon Kaufman is privileged with the description of the women’s theological method! — stands in sharp contrast with those of other chapters, where Higginbotham lets these women speak in their own terms and define their own agendas.

Higginbotham’s history of black Baptist women provides an important vantage point from which to view the events of these tumultuous years for American Protestantism. By viewing the world through the eyes of these women, we can see that for millions of Americans the crucial issues were not biological evolution or German higher criticism, but rather basic respect for their race, gender, and their calling to serve.