Black Baptist women’s conventions financed black educational institutions

Evidence

By 1890 the women’s convention had proved itself a great success. Women met in churches and homes throughout the state and called their individual branches University Societies. The Kentucky women’s convention claimed representatives from almost every black Baptist church in the state and publicized its activities, fund-raising goals, and meetings in the black Baptist-owned newspaper American Baptist, which was published out of Louisville. Between 1883 and 1900 the women’s convention contributed over $12,000 to the school. It achieved its goal of erecting a girls’ dormitory—thereby permitting women students, although packed five or six to a room, to live on campus. In 1901 State University retired its floating debt largely as a result of the work of Kentucky black Baptist women and a matching contribution from the American Baptist Home Mission Society. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 308

Categorization

• XREF: Charts the material economic power that underlay the women’s projected moral authority—connects to the book’s general argument about respectability as leverage. — connects to: Poor black women’s small donations financially sustained their national institutions — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 746; Church conventions gave poor Black women their only travel and intellectual growth outlets — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 768; Poor unlettered black women sustained the training school through small grassroots gifts — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 999 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Black Baptist women made education the race’s central hope through moral suasion and fund-raising #expands (0.90) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 316
• Baptist women’s campaigns induced poor blacks to redirect money to schools #exemplifies (0.85) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 316
• Northern Baptist colleges created the educated black women who led the convention movement. #complicates (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 119
• Separate female institutions gave black Baptist women greater authority #qualifies (0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 389