Black women embraced domestic training partly to counter stereotypes of promiscuity.

Evidence

Mothers’ training schools emphasized subjects such as housekeeping tips, care of the sick, hygiene, marital responsibilities and child rearing, and literature for parents and children.’ While such emphasis tended to promote and reinforce the dominance of the father and the patriarchal family, black women’s societies viewed “mothers’ training” as important to family stability and to perceptions of black female respectability at a time when white society viewed black women as innately promiscuous and undeserving of protection from insult and even rape.® During the 1890s the idea of training women for parenthood was not perceived as contradictory to the emphasis on black higher education or equal rights. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 473

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows respectability politics operating concretely: domestic ideology adopted partly as a defensive response to racist sexual stereotypes.
• XREF: connects to: Cross-denominational church societies trained black women as community leaders. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 107; Black women’s schools made domestic refinement the special burden of their students — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 166

Broader Connections

• Cross-denominational church societies trained black women as community leaders. #exemplifies (0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 107