From Library Journal
In a detailed morphology of free black women's experiences in antebellum reform, historian Yee shifts the genesis of radical antislavery from the Garrisonians to blacks and finds free black women present at the creation. Women abolitionists joined together in community building, political organizing, and building private and professional female networks. In doing so, they discovered that to gain a public audience they needed simultaneously to act like "true women" in working for moral reforms such as temperance and education while also stepping out of conventional "middle-class" female roles to speak and write against slavery. Such activism led toward women's rights, yet blacks abjured association with white reformers unsupportive of racial uplift. Racism among reformers propelled black women reformers toward separate action and identity. Yee's complex argument demands serious attention from those trying to unravel the contradicions in the reform tradition. Recommended for university libraries.
- Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
