"Sacrifices and sufferings of True Americans": Black Women's Nationalism and Activism in Philadelphia, 1863-1901
Open Access
- Author:
- Hayashida-Knight, Christopher Howard
- Graduate Program:
- History
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- November 13, 2017
- Committee Members:
- William Alan Blair, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
William Alan Blair, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Lori D Ginzberg, Committee Member
Amy S Greenberg, Committee Member
Lorraine Dowler, Outside Member - Keywords:
- black
women
African-American
Philadelphia
Gilded Age
Reconstruction
feminism
activism
nationalism
patriotism
neighborhood nationalism
African American
politics
racism
sexism - Abstract:
- This dissertation presents and analyzes the contributions of African American women in Philadelphia during and after the Civil War. Women there wrestled with the gaps between their theoretical legal rights and their lived realities, helping to shape black female intellectual and protest traditions that remain evident to this day. Black women’s political power was not as limited as it may seem due to their lack of suffrage; while their electoral power at the national and state level was severely hindered, their influence at the scale of their churches, their neighborhoods, and in the context of their local benevolent work was quite potent. It was in their work at this “small” scale that black women articulated their visions of national citizenship and their claims to American freedom and prosperity. From the 1860s through the early twentieth century, African American women grew a localized ethic of care into national institutions that cared for black people and promoted their equal access to opportunity. During the Civil War, black women joined black men in debating the possible outcomes of black enlistment in the Union Army, ultimately deciding that violence and the risk of death were worth the potential gains in civil and social rights that victory could bring. In the decade after the war, formerly enslaved southern African Americans moved North; women and girls faced poverty and incarceration while faced with severely limited economic opportunities and even fewer public resources. For these women, physical survival was the first “freedom struggle.” Wealthier women whose families could provide access to education became a vital part of private and religious benevolent work that supported the poor. They also made it their work to present their community in the best light possible, combating racism during Philadelphia’s preparations for the 1876 Centennial World’s Fair. Embracing the highest ideals of their nation, black women advocated for their full inclusion in American life, including the imperialist project of spreading American-style democracy and capitalism throughout the globe at the turn of the twentieth century. Archival sources include local and regional newspapers from the period, letters, diaries, family paper collections, maps, photographs, and state and federal census and institutional data.