Church conventions gave poor Black women their only travel and intellectual growth outlets

Evidence

For women disadvantaged by race, gender, and low income at the turn of the twentieth century, the convention’s annual sessions afforded an opportunity to transcend narrow social and intellectual confines and become exposed to new personalities and ideas that negated racist and sexist stereotypes and limitations. For women, many of whom were domestic servants, the communally paid travel to the yearly conferences presented their only opportunity to venture outside their state. Women from cities such as Atlanta and Birmingham and women from small towns such as Rebecca Pitts’s home of Uniontown traveled to new and different cities, heard thought-provoking speeches, met leaders of national prominence, and networked with one another. The annual conferences nurtured women’s intellectual growth and self-esteem, since reports and speeches were delivered by women delegates and convention officers as well as by guest speakers. Armed with new ideas and perspectives, delegates returned to their homes eager to convey what they had heard. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 768

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the mobility and education functions of Black institutional life, resonating with the reader’s broader interest in how marginal groups build counter-publics for self-development. — connects to: Ordinary poor black women practiced quotidian self-sacrifice to fund their church societies — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 312; Black Baptist women’s conventions financed black educational institutions — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 308; Meeting spaces let black Baptist women define themselves against racist depiction — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 854 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Meeting spaces let black Baptist women define themselves against racist depiction #expands (0.82) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 854
• Black Baptist women’s conventions financed black educational institutions #exemplifies (0.80) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 308
• Ordinary poor black women practiced quotidian self-sacrifice to fund their church societies #expands (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 312
• Black women needed a separate feminist intellectual tradition #expands (0.76)
• The black women’s movement grew out of the church’s separate institution-building #expands (0.75) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 237