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...
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