White Baptist women, not men, were the strongest supporters of black women’s higher education.

Evidence

Among the ranks of white Baptists, the strongest support for black women’s higher education came from women themselves. In 1880 the then three-year-old Woman’s American Baptist Home Mission Society, based in New England, narrowed its general purpose of evangelization to the education of women among the freedpeople, immigrants, Indians, and settlers on the western frontier. The New England women’s most lasting accomplishment, and the effort to which they attached their greatest pride, was the establishment of Atlanta Female Baptist Seminary in 1881, renamed Spelman Seminary in 1884. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 171

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did the New England Baptist women narrow their mission specifically to educating women among the freedpeople? This gender- and race-specific philanthropic channel is worth tracing further.
• XREF: connects to: Female Baptist convention delegates numbered few but were highly educated — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 1231