Burroughs prioritized internal moral reform over the physical alley conditions

Evidence

Burroughs placed greater responsibility on her own people: “In Washington City there is much talk about getting the seventeen thousand Negroes out of the alleys. To the student of euthenics, who believes that the shortest cut to health is by creating a clean environment in which to live this plan is most feasible, but to do a work that will abide we must first ‘get the alley’ out of the seventeen thousand Negroes, and it will be an easy task to get them out of the alley.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 926

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Burroughs believed exemplary conduct could disarm white prejudice.; Respectability politics blamed black victims for their own oppression — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 923; Crusading moral idealism, denied other outlets, turned inward against external change — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1782 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Crusading moral idealism, denied other outlets, turned inward against external change #expands (0.82) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1782
• Individual moral agency resists being dissolved into larger social movements #expands (0.72)