Black Baptist women reframed church idleness as a cause of juvenile crime

Evidence

Emphasizing the “formation” of character, rather than its “reformation,” the women argued that churches must provide recreation and job placement services as a deterrent to idleness and crime. Under the section “How to Employ Your Idle Churches and Your Idle Children,” Burroughs’s annual report for 1912 advocated the use of church buildings as recreational outlets for youth during the summer months. She pointed out that the overwhelming majority of children from poor, working-class black homes had no access to playgrounds, while thousands of churches stood vacant during the great part of each week. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 817

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s published trees-as-infrastructure pieces and to ‘politics of respectability’: the church deployment of institutional resources against idleness mirrors how oppressed groups convert civic assets into self-discipline machinery. — connects to: Black Baptist women’s church work absorbed secular Progressive-era sociological methods — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 791; Black Baptist women publicly demanded progressive social-service ministries — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 807

Broader Connections

• Black Baptist women publicly demanded progressive social-service ministries #expands (0.82) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 807
• Black Baptist women’s church work absorbed secular Progressive-era sociological methods #expands (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 791