Black church women equated respectable public behavior with group advancement

Evidence

This educated female elite, frequently consisting of teachers or wives of ministers associated with educational institutions, promoted middleclass ideals among the masses of blacks in the belief that such ideals ensured the dual goals of racial self-help and respect from white America. Especially in the roles of missionary and teacher, black church women were conveyers of culture and vital contributors to the fostering of middle-class ideals and aspirations in the black community. Duty-bound to teach the value of religion, education, and hard work, the women of the black Baptist church adhered to a politics of respectability that equated public behavior with individual self-respect and with the advancement of African Americans as a group. They felt certain that “respectable” behavior in public would earn their people a measure of esteem from white America, and hence they strove to win the black lower class’s psychological allegiance to temperance, industriousness, thrift, refined manners, and Victorian sexual morals. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 93

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the book’s central coinage — the politics of respectability defined as equating public behavior with individual self-respect and group advancement.
• SEED: The middle-class black elite teaching Victorian morals to the black lower class as a strategy of racial self-help is an angle worth isolating for an essay.
• XREF: connects to: Black church women were central to the church’s public role as racial self-help — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 37; Biblical reinterpretation opened the public realm to black Baptist women. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 596; Black Baptist women leaders bridged church and secular reform networks — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 829 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Biblical reinterpretation opened the public realm to black Baptist women. #expands (0.75) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 596
• Black Baptist women leaders bridged church and secular reform networks #expands (0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 829