Until There Is Justice

Until There Is Justice chronicles Anna Arnold Hedgeman's life and her “vital role in more than six decades of racial justice efforts” (p. 2). A biography of Hedgeman is well overdue; like Ella Baker, Pauli Murray, and countless other African American women, Hedgeman has remained largely invisible despite her crucial role in the long civil rights movement. Jennifer Scanlon captures the historical significance of Hedgeman's shifting, complex career and offers important new insights into American politics across the twentieth century. Anna Arnold imbibed the ideology of racial uplift and Protestant respectability as a child in a predominantly white Minnesota town. Her perspective on racism and racial identity evolved markedly in the 1920s, first during a stint teaching at Rust College in Mississippi and then directing chapters of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in the Midwest and Northeast. Exposed for the first time to black poverty and labor exploitation, and frustrated by the task of “finding ways to explain white Christian hypocrisy to white people,” Arnold took a position as secretary of the Harlem YWCA (p. 50). In the thriving culture of Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s she found personal refuge, intellectual growth, and a network of accomplished and committed African American women. She investigated domestic “slave markets,” mobilized white YWCA board members to demand that local stores hire black women, integrated Brooklyn's relief bureau, and won greater equity in the city's civil service system

Biography · Economic Justice · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · White (mutation · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Religious studies · Religious Studies