Black Baptist women read middle-class propriety as a demand for full inclusion, not submission.

Evidence

On the contrary, their efforts validated, according to black Baptist women, full inclusion and equal justice in American society. Their allegiance to middle-class values, if evidence of white cultural domination, was no less evidence of their commitment to transcend oppression. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 457

Categorization

• XREF: Directly frames the politics of respectability thesis — assimilationist-seeming conduct read as protest. Connects to the reader’s whole purpose for this book. — connects to: Black Baptist women’s columns openly challenged domestic and marital norms — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 375; Black Baptist women publicly demanded progressive social-service ministries — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 807; A separate women’s body allowed black Baptist women to speak for themselves, not men. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 689 (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The core paradox of respectability politics in two sentences: conformity as resistance, marking the agenda that would later be debated against Booker T-style accommodation.

Broader Connections

• Black Baptist women’s columns openly challenged domestic and marital norms #expands (0.85) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 375
• A separate women’s body allowed black Baptist women to speak for themselves, not men. #exemplifies (0.82) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 689
• Black Baptist women publicly demanded progressive social-service ministries #expands (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 807
• Black Baptist women theologians rejected feminine weakness in favor of womanly power. #corroborates (0.74) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 597
• Black Baptist women escalated from demanding equal separate accommodations to rejecting segregation outright. #exemplifies (0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1008
• Black Baptist women invoked biblical heroines to justify denominational gender parity #exemplifies (0.71) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 594