Meeting spaces let black Baptist women define themselves against racist depiction

Evidence

In these assemblies black Baptist women expressed themselves openly and without fear of reprisal. In so doing, a national constituency of black women asserted agency in the construction and representation of themselves as new subjectivities—as Americans as well as blacks and women. They contested racist discourses and rejected white America’s depiction of black women as immoral, childlike, and unworthy of respect or protection. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 854

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Safe space’ as Collins coins it: arena enabling self-definition and counter-discourse.
• XREF: connects to: Black women theorizing together occupies a terrain long denied them; Black missionary women’s public speaking directly contested white stereotypes of immorality and childishness — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 483; Church conventions gave poor Black women their only travel and intellectual growth outlets — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 768 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Black Baptist women infused words like respectability with their own meanings through self-definition #expands (0.92) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1541
• Black Baptist women wielded respectability as a weapon against biological racism #expands (0.85) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 882
• Black Baptist women invoked biblical heroines to justify denominational gender parity #exemplifies (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 594
• Black Baptist women deployed biblical orthodoxy to claim gender equality #exemplifies (0.76) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 563