The Postwar Black Women's Club Movement

The Intersection of Gender, Race, and American Political Development, 1940–1960

Bibliographic Data

ID6409972
AuthorsA Lanethea Mathews-Gardner (Muhlenberg College, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume31
Issue3
Pages260-285
Publication date2010-07-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueWomen & Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0195-7732 • E-ISSN: 1540-9473
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1554477x.2010.496644
OpenAlexW2017241691
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited12

This article examines the intersection of race, gender, and American political development in the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in the mid-twentieth century. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the NACW was one of the last remaining autonomous Black organizations that could truly be called “civic.” Membership was decentralized, active, and widespread among female citizens who might not otherwise be engaged in public affairs. Political change and subsequent developments in African American and women's organizations in the mid-twentiethh century encouraged NACW leaders to begin considering new approaches to organizing Black womanhood. The collective identity that defined NACW clubwomen's public activism as local, nonpolitical, and nonpartisan eventually gave way to more deliberately nationalized, partisan, and political forms. This article argues that NACW clubwomen worked in solidarity and shared common goals with other African American and civil rights organizations, but faced a transformation unique to women's clubs, one that involved questions not only about who would participate in public life, but also about how and through what kinds of organizations. The struggles of the NACW to integrate the collective identities that defined their race and their gender, on the one hand, with forms, and, on the other hand with strategies of organization are particularly useful for thinking and theorizing about contemporary forms of intersectionality

Aesthetics · Club · Grassroots · Identity (music · Intersectionality · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Sociology · Solidarity · Voluntary association · American History and Culture · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Public Administration · Race, History, and American Society

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