Black Baptist separatism escalated only after white control blocked black inclusion.
Evidence
Black Baptists’ activities clearly proceeded from such an orientation, but they evolved within the context of conflict with northern white Baptists. In the 1880s blacks grew to resent the American Baptist Home Mission Society’s policies and denounced what they believed to be racism and paternalism in the society’s educational and publication work. Southern black colleges represented sites of intense racial contestation. Black Baptists challenged white domination of colleges and universities on the ground that the growing number of educated black leaders merited greater representation in faculty and administrative positions. When their demand for inclusion in the white-controlled schools met resistance, their cry for racial separatism heightened. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 246
Categorization
- XREF: Reverses or complicates the standard image of black separatism as chosen self-segregation: it arose reactively from a denied demand for inclusion. Connects to Black Marxism’s point about racial nationalism predating and shaping capitalism and to the earlier claim that the Talented Tenth simultaneously attacked caste and disciplined the masses. — connects to: The National Baptist Convention asserted autonomous control of black racial life — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 327; Denominational white control pushed college-educated blacks toward separatism — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 283; Black women organized separately after white women’s racism barred them (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Denominational white control pushed college-educated blacks toward separatism
#corroborates(0.92) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 283 - Black congregations openly rejected white claims that they were unfit for freedom
#expands(0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 435 - Black women organized separately after white women’s racism barred them
#exemplifies(0.72)