Women's Activist Organizing in US History

Dawn Durante is the editor in chief at the University of Texas Press and the compiler of 100 Years of Suffrage: A University of Illinois Press Anthology.

• Preface ixIntroduction: The Difference that Difference Makes 1Deborah Gray White1 “To Cast Our Mite on the Altar of Benevolence: Women Begin to Organize” (Excerpt) 13Anne Firor Scott2 “‘There Sho’ Was a Sight of Us’: Enslaved Family and Community Rituals” 33Daina Ramey Berry3 “The Daily Labor of Our Own Hands” 60Lara Vapnek4 “Latin Women from Exiles to Immigrants” 86Nancy A. Hewitt5 “Performing and Politicizing ‘Ladyhood’: Black Washington Women and New Negro Suffrage Activism” 111Treva B. Lindsey6 “‘It Was the Women Who Made the Union’: Organizing the Brotherhood” 138Melinda Chateauvert7 “Nurse or Soldier? White Male Nurses and World War II” (Excerpt) 158Charissa J. Threat8 “‘Black Beauticians Were Very Important’: Southern Beauty Activists and the Modern Black Freedom Struggle” 180Tiffany M. Gill9 “Organizing for Reproductive Control” 205Anne M. Valk10 “Things Fall Apart; the LGBT Center Holds” (Excerpt) 235Deborah Gray WhiteList of Original Publications 251Contributors 253Index 255

"This anthology represents the distance that scholarship has come since the last quarter century of the twentieth century. White middle-class women are no longer the starting point of all feminist scholarship and we now consider how various variables intersect and overlap to influence identity. And for all kinds of reasons, this is something to celebrate."--Deborah Gray White, from the Introduction "Social work educators will find . . . an opportunity to expose students to nuances of the historical realities of social change that were not covered in traditional public education history courses. . . . Durante and all authors from the text provide us with an intriguing starting point for deep discussions with our students, colleagues, mentees/mentors, and ourselves as we look to the future of the work of women activists." --Affilia