Black women traveled North within women’s missions, so interracial contact ran both directions
Evidence
Despite Moore’s example and that of other northern white missionaries committed to cooperative efforts in southern black communities and schools, interracial contact did not occur solely on southern terrain, as is often assumed, with the introduction of the white missionary. If one looks at the white missionary in the South as the only point of contact, a range of other contact points is overlooked, and it is this broader, more representative picture that was truly exceptional for its time. Women’s missions created structured avenues along which black and white women traveled together, heard each other’s voices, and learned of each other’s struggles and values. The white missionary, journeying South to teach the freedpeople, is but one component of a complex network that took black women into the North as well. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 480
Categorization
- XREF: Corrects the default picture of one-way white-southward missionary contact, relevant to the broader paradoxes in respectability literature where contact is presumed unidirectional. — connects to: Black and white women’s contact flowed north as well as south through missions. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 480; Northern white women’s racial motives diverged from black women’s without blocking cooperation. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 539; White and black Baptist women’s missionary work created cross-racial sisterhoods — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 430 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Black and white women’s contact flowed north as well as south through missions.
#corroborates(0.97) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 480 - Segregation confined black-white female contact to the servant-served relation
#complicates(0.82) - White and black Baptist women’s missionary work created cross-racial sisterhoods
#expands(0.80) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 430 - Northern white women’s racial motives diverged from black women’s without blocking cooperation.
#qualifies(0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 539