Black Baptist feminists shared the age’s essentialist gender ideology.

Evidence

Like other Americans, the Baptist thinkers accepted a priori the notion of certain intrinsic differences between the male and female identity. The dominant thought of the age embraced an essentialist understanding of gender; it ascribed to womanhood a feminine essence that was virtuous, patient, gentle, and compassionate, while it described manhood as rational, aggressive, forceful, and just. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 628

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘politics of respectability’ concept - women claimed power through the very feminine virtues the ideology assigned them. — connects to: Black racial idealization repurposed essentialist traits to negate white superiority — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 669