Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935With this book, Cheryl Hicks brings to light the voices and viewpoints of black working-class women, especially southern migrants, who were the subjects of urban and penal reform in early-twentieth-century New York. Hicks compares the ideals of racial uplift and reform programs of middle-class white and black activists to the experiences and perspectives of those whom they sought to protect and, often, control. In need of support as they navigated the discriminatory labor and housing markets and contended with poverty, maternity, and domestic violence, black women instead found themselves subject to hostility from black leaders, urban reformers, and the police. Still, these black working-class women struggled to uphold their own standards of respectable womanhood. Through their actions as well as their words, they challenged prevailing views regarding black women and morality in urban America. Drawing on extensive archival research, Hicks explores the complexities of black working-class women's lives and illuminates the impact of racism and sexism on early-twentieth-century urban reform and criminal justice initiatives. |
Contents
African American Urban Life and the Multiple Meanings of Protection in the City | |
Urban Reform and Criminal Justice | |
Rehabilitation Respectability and Race | |
Thank God I Am Independent One More Time | |
Notes | |
Other editions - View all
Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in ... Cheryl D. Hicks No preview available - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
activists Affidavit African American argued arrested Arthur Harris Auburn August August 16 behavior believed black communities black families black female black people’s black reformers black working-class Campbell Campbell’s city’s colored girls Colored Women committed court criminal justice system delinquent domestic Doty Dunbar employers employment Enoch family’s gender Hampton Harlem Harris History Blank HNCF husband Ibid immigrant institutions interracial Investigation Joan Nestle Jones Jones’s Kellor labor letter from Inmate’s live Lucy Cox minor laws Moore Moore’s moral mother National Urban League Negro Norris parents parole officer police officers prison administrators probation problems prostitution racial segregation rehabilitation relationships respectability response revealed sister social South state’s Superintendent Amos Baker Tenderloin tion Victoria Earle Matthews W. E. B. Du Bois white reformers White Rose Mission white women woman workers working-class working-class black working-class women York Age York Amsterdam York City York’s young black women young women