Black women’s groups demanded equal segregated facilities before demanding desegregation

Evidence

At the WC meeting in 1908, Burroughs again demanded equal yet separate facilities: “The women of this Convention will never be reconciled to the toilet arrangements on the cars. Everybody else may get tired of talking about it, but we are at least going to say that we don’t like it, because it is indecent. We want a separate toilet for colored women, just as they have a separate toilet for white women. We want basins, soap and towel. We pay the same fare and are entitled to the same treatment.”! As a result of her speech a committee of three women was appointed to go to Washington and present a petition to the Interstate Commerce Commission. The failure of the government to respond positively prompted yet another petition for equal toilet facilities in 1910. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1010

Categorization

• XREF: Nannie Burroughs’ equal-separate demands echo the politics-of-respectability strategy Higginbotham is tracing — public decorum claims as a route to equal treatment — connecting to the book’s own core thesis. — connects to: Black Baptist women escalated from demanding equal separate accommodations to rejecting segregation outright. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 1008; Black activists moved from demanding equal segregation to demanding its abolition — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 1012; Even in the 1600s segregationist and assimilationist positions divided over Black capability — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 111

Broader Connections

• Black activists moved from demanding equal segregation to demanding its abolition #corroborates (0.92) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1012
• Even in the 1600s segregationist and assimilationist positions divided over Black capability #corroborates (0.72) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 111