Black missionary women’s public speaking directly contested white stereotypes of immorality and childishness

Evidence

Black women’s visits north, with their informative and inspiring speeches, challenged popular stereotypes of an immoral and childlike race. In 1888 at the joint meeting of the New England and Midwestern women, Annie Howard, a black teacher at Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., read, according to the white women, “an excellent paper” on her people’s progress at the school. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 483

Categorization

• XREF: Embodiment of the politics-of-respectability thesis the reader wants: black women performing respectability publicly to refute racist tropes about their race. — connects to: Reading white missionary efforts only as racist paternalism erases Black leaders’ agency — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 436; Close personal contact with blacks itself undermined white missionary racial condescension — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 465; Respectable public self-presentation contested racist stereotypes of black women — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 878 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Respectable public self-presentation contested racist stereotypes of black women #corroborates (0.88) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 878
• Meeting spaces let black Baptist women define themselves against racist depiction #expands (0.82) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 854
• Black Baptist women invoked biblical heroines to justify denominational gender parity #exemplifies (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 594
• Black Baptist women publicly demanded progressive social-service ministries #expands (0.74) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 807