Gender and Jim Crow - Political Activism Book Review

Gender and Jim Crow - Political Activism by Middle Class, African-American Women

Conventional wisdom paints the period between the late 19th century to the 1950s as a time of racial discrimination and violence for African-Americans in the southern states. However, in Gender and Jim Crow, Glenda Gilmore presents an account of how white supremacist politics were also mediated by gender, and how this period of racial discrimination was also marked by political activism on the part of middle class African-American women.

In the early parts of the book, Gilmore illustrates how gender was used as a tool in Jim Crow segregation. White men in North Carolina, for example, justified white supremacy and disenfranchised black men by raising the specter of the black rapist and appealing for the safety of white women in their homes. This pushed black men into what Gilmore termed a "vortex of silence" (134).

Black women, on the other hand, found themselves cast in a different role, as "clients" to the state.This gave middle class African-American women a chance to act as "diplomats" to the white community, participating, albeit on a limited scale, in some areas of civic and political life.

Gilmore skillfully teases out how in a region where both race and gender were used as tools of social control, the ideal of vulnerable Southern womanhood that served to disenfranchise black men ironically helped black women affect public policy,

This was because African-American women were able to take advantage of the gap between white and black gender ideals. The ideology of white Southern womanhood itself was a very restrictive role, one that black women did not aspire to for several reasons. First, the realities of black women's lives made white ideal of womanhood impossible. There were substantial differences in their education, and economic need meant that unlike white women,….....