Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps: Black Women's Activism in Rural Arkansas, 1914–1965

Abstract

The field of rural history—especially rural women's history—is one that has seen exponential growth over the past two decades. The newest entry into this field from historian Cherisse Jones-Branch is not only an important contribution to this scholarship, but it also reasserts regional history's importance to the larger context of rural history. Rural women in the South, and especially African American women, were active in civil rights, reform, and activism, helping their communities at the local, regional, or state levels. Many of their stories and names are well known, while others are waiting to be remembered. This was especially evident in Arkansas; African American women sought to change and uplift their communities. These women whom Jones-Branch “lifts . . . from the obscurity of Arkansas rural history” navigated through, fought, and challenged the deep racism and segregation prevalent throughout the state (5). In Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps, Jones-Branch skillfully navigates five decades of these women's achievements, their struggles, and the evolution of their work.The book's main focus, as the title suggests, is on the women themselves. As Jones-Branch emphasizes throughout her book, the women she examines came from different areas of life. Their professions included home demonstration agents, professionals, teachers, club members, and agricultural laborers. They organized, responded, collaborated, and created, but most importantly, their work helped to change Arkansas's rural life. The majority of the women worked collaboratively and were engaged with the individual residents and communities for which they were advocating—in one of her examples concerning home demonstration agents, Jones-Branch notes, “they were mindful of how important it was to respect rural African Americans and earn their trust” (69).During the early to mid-twentieth century, rural Arkansas women faced hunger, health problems, financial and environmental crises, and job scarcity, in addition to the burdens of racism and segregation. Jones-Branch assesses how these women used reforms, education, direct challenges to the status quo of inequality, and other methods to create change and opportunities in their communities. Clubs or organizations like the Arkansas Association of Colored Women and the Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation's Negro Division were either created or existing ones utilized to foster more support, resources, and strength for the communities they were seeking to uplift and help.Jones-Branch follows previous works by LuAnn Jones, Melissa Walker, Rebecca Sharpless, Debra Reid, and Carmen V. Harris, to name a few. This rural and agricultural history literature is echoed in her sources, as well as the extensive primary sources she employs. One of the most fascinating aspects of Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps is that she focuses two of her chapters on mini biographies of two specific women—Ethel B. Dawson and Annie Zachary Pike. These two women had different approaches to their activism. Dawson used religion to encourage rural community uplift and Christian doctrine when defending or justifying her work to help empower African Americans who were working in agriculture as mechanization and farming technology continued to advance. Pike, or “Ms. Annie,” and her husband owned a considerable amount of farmland, with tenants and up-to-date farm technology, and they became politically active at the state level in the Republican Party. She was eventually appointed to the state welfare board, advocated for African American laborers and education, and ran for a state senate seat in the early 1970s.Any criticisms of this book are minor. One example is the brief mention of the 1919 Elaine Massacre early in the book, which is not fully defined until chapter 12 despite falling earlier in the book's timeline. Perhaps a clarification of this significant event would have been helpful to the reader if it had been discussed in an earlier chapter, since this local event is one that continues to reverberate. However, overall, Cherisse Jones-Branch has written a book that is confident in its materials and narrative. More importantly, the book introduces the rural African American women who fought for their neighbors and communities to have better lives and better opportunities against entrenched racism and discrimination. Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps is a welcome addition to the fields of southern women's history, rural history, agrarian history, and African American history.