Gateway to Equality

In Gateway to Equality Keona K. Ervin presents the history of black women's struggle for equality from the Great Depression until 1969. During the 1933 Funsten Nut Strike in St. Louis, black women pursued economic goals, learning to become central actors in the struggle for workers' rights. Subsequently, black women domestic workers learned to recast the Urban League into a worker organization and create a “customized service provider–client relationship” (p. 55). While economic improvement was their primary goal, domestic workers also sought to end “sexual harassment, rape, and solicitation for sex work” (p. 61). The St. Louis Housewives' League and the Colored Clerks' Circle, in turn, launched, respectively, “don't buy where you can't work” campaigns, and direct action demanding “‘jobs, white-collar and skilled jobs, if you please,’ for black women specifically” (p. 92). A qualitative shift begins in the fourth chapter away from examining large numbers of black women, and toward looking at a few women who used their experiences for personal advancement. While the St. Louis March on Washington Movement is well covered, the emphasis on individual triumphs detracts from the accomplishments of the whole. We learn about Ora Lee Malone, a black woman trade unionist, who was nominated for the Sojourner Truth Award, and Marian Oldham, who helped found the St. Louis chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality and launched campaigns to increase black employment. Other dynamic black women covered are Frankie Freeman, a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People attorney, and DeVerne Lee Calloway, a state senator who lobbied for African American rights. Finally, the last chapter focuses on Jean King and the 1969 rent strike against the St. Louis Housing Authority. Unfortunately, the author does not mention what these personal accomplishments did to lift up the black underclass

Black women · Dignity · Economic Justice · Harassment · League · Political science · Pride · Sociology · White (mutation · Gender Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society