Black Baptist women publicly demanded progressive social-service ministries

Evidence

The convention movement among black Baptist women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries encouraged and, at times, demanded a progressive ministry which was sympathetic to social reform. The minutes of the Woman’s Convention pronounced scathing critiques of the unprogressive and unprepared ministry. The women went on record in their denunciation of churches that refused to include social salvation in their program of saving souls. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 807

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates the internal-policing mechanism central to the reader’s stated interest in respectability politics — women disciplining their own clergy rather than presenting a unified front. — connects to: Black Baptist women read middle-class propriety as a demand for full inclusion, not submission. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 457; Black missionary women’s public speaking directly contested white stereotypes of immorality and childishness — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 483; Black Baptist women’s church work absorbed secular Progressive-era sociological methods — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 791 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Black Baptist women prioritized preventive over rescue social work #qualifies (0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1508