Homes On-the-Road, Terrorized Cabins, and Prophetic Nightmare-scapes: Emma J. Ray's Unsettling Western Fantasies

This essay examines the Iowa Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (IFCWC) campaign to operate a house for African American women at the University of Iowa from 1919 to 1950. (1) It seeks to add to a growing body of literature which focuses on African American philanthropy and collective black economic enterprises. An examination of the experiences of African American women at the University of Iowa and the IFCWC Home campaign offers an interesting case study that builds on recent research work on African American Women's philanthropy. (2) The IFCWC's economic enterprise developed because between 1913 and 1946, the University of Iowa barred African American students from campus and some student activities. The experiences of African American women at the University of Iowa are unique for two reasons: 1) the house they occupied was one of a few dormitories in the nation owned and operated by a formally organized group of African American women; and 2) the campaign to maintain the IFCWC Hom e provided mostly middle-class African American women students with the organizational, intellectual, and leadership skills necessary to become the next generation of black women activists. In general, the experiences of African American college women at predominantly white coeducational institutions in the early twentieth century are unique because white women often had the guidance and support of white women administrators and/or faculty. (3) African American women, on the other hand, had to look outside the university for such mentors and role models. The question remains then, how did the alliance with the IFCWC help to keep students connected to the African American community; and how did the community respond? How did limited employment prospects that resulted from race and gender prejudice help to bring about a sharply focused movement to make a college education available to a number of Iowa's young African American women? I contend that the IFCWC prepared African American women at the University of I owa to assume positions of leadership in organizations such as the IFCWC, National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the Order of the Eastern Star (OES), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a host of other local and regional civil rights organizations. (4) Upon graduation, these women also assumed responsibilities in their local communities in their effort to the race. This work places African American women's lives at the center of inquiry in a preexisting historiographical paradigm which often excludes them through a preoccupation with African American men and white women. A few scholars, such as Linda Perkins, Elizabeth Ihle, Jeanne Noble, and Ellen Lawson, have completed various studies on African American women's higher education. Other scholars, such as Amy Thompson McCandless, offer thorough and insightful comparisons of the southern white and southern black women's education in the twentieth century. Outside the works by this small group of historians, the experiences of college educated African American women have been marginal. Particularly missing from current studies is any examination of African American women in the midwest. (5) Although African American women's historiography has recently focused on Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, these works avoid any elaborate discussions of African American women's history in midwestern states west of the Mississippi River su ch as Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa. (6) To be sure, this study is not only specific to Iowa, but to African American women who attended the University of Iowa. I contend that racism did not paralyze these women's struggle for equality. They transformed their experiences with racism into a call for social activism, racial uplift, and service to their communities. (7) As Kevin Gaines, Stephanie Shaw and other scholars point out, although African Americans agreed on the ideal of uplift they did not always agree on what types of behavior were appropriate. …

In this essay I consider major themes in the scholarly treatment of African American women's religious history and explore how particular emphases in the broader field of African American religious history have marginalized women's experiences and contributions. I argue that mobilizing African American women's religious history and placing it at the center of our historical inquiry allows us to interrogate themes and foci that structure the accepted narrative of African American religious history. Moving beyond an approach that simply adds women to that accepted story, I suggest ways in which examining African American women's religious experiences might open up rich areas for research and new ways of conceiving the very shape of the field.

Background & Objectives: Prior research has documented significant racial disparities in adherence to breast cancer screening recommendations, use of breast-conserving surgery by early stage breast cancer patients, and breast cancer mortality. Decision making about breast cancer prevention options among high risk women has been less thoroughly studied, and racial differences remain mostly unexplored in this arena. The current study employs semi-structured interviews and inductive analytic methods to explore prevention decision making among African American and White women. Its core objective is to investigate the degree to which decision-making processes and outcomes differ across racial groups, and the specific content of these differences, in order to support interventions and programs to facilitate empowered, preventive decision making. Methods: In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 African American and 30 non-Hispanic White women at elevated risk of breast cancer. Allowing women to speak in their own words, these interviews explore women's perception of their risk status; the sources and content of risk information they have obtained; their understanding and consideration of prevention options; decision-making processes; decision-making networks, psychosocial well-being; and women's use of financial, time, and energy resources in coping with risk and prevention. Interviews ranged in length from 30 to 140 minutes and were professionally transcribed. Transcribed data are analyzed through grounded theory methods, using the NVivo 10 software package for qualitative data. Results: High risk African American women's experiences are distinct from those of their White counterparts in a range of ways, including the following. (1) African American women are much less frequently aware of the existence of prophylactic surgeries and chemoprevention options are clinically recommended for women at their own level of risk. (2) Among women who do know about these prevention options, African American women are less likely to consider or undertake prophylactic surgeries or chemoprevention to lower their breast cancer risk. (3) A much higher proportion of African American women have experienced several different types of cancer among their loved ones. These women tend to perceive of themselves as at risk for cancer in general, and not to perceive a specific high risk for breast or ovarian cancer. (4) African American women experience considerably more financial limitations on their ability to access health care and engage in specific prevention activities. Most have been uninsured for some period, and have had at least one health care decision affected by financial constraints. (5) African American women are considerably more likely to reference faith, spirituality, and religion in discussing their perceived risk of cancer and their attitudes toward prevention behavior. Conclusions & Implications: High risk women's narratives reveal substantial racial differences in perceptions, feelings, and choices related to breast cancer prevention. African American women who are clinically determined to be at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer are less likely than similar White women to understand this specific risk, to know about prevention options that could lower the risk, or to consider using these options even when they do know about them. The processes through which African American women navigate risk and prevention are also more heavily influenced by religious faith and financial constraint than those of White women. These distinctions merit further investigation, and confirmation with larger samples. Ultimately, knowledge of such inter-group differences may contribute to tailored interventions to support empowered and health-protective decision making among women at elevated risk. Citation Format: Tasleem J. Padamsee, Anna Muraveva, Electra D. Paskett. Racial Differences in Prevention Decision Making among Women at High Risk of Breast Cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Ninth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2016 Sep 25-28; Fort Lauderdale, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2017;26(2 Suppl):Abstract nr A52.

More History Than Myth:African American Women's History Since the Publication of Ar'n't I a Woman? Jessica Millward (bio) "History is supposed to give people a sense of identity, a feeling for who they are, and how far they have come. It should act as a springboard for the future. One hopes that it will do this for Black women, who have been given more myth than history." —Deborah Gray White1 At the time of its initial publication in 1985, Ar'n't I a Woman? was among a small, though significant, number of works focusing on the experiences of slave women in the United States.2 Calling critical attention to the world of female slaves, White interrogated stereotypes and historical inaccuracies about bondwomen by highlighting their experiences from childhood to adulthood. At the heart of White's study was the argument that life under bondage fostered an alternative definition of womanhood for African American women.3 Chattel slavery produced life conditions fundamentally separating White and African American women in the United States, prior to and after the Civil War. While White and Black women may have lived under a paternal, patriarchal structure, race-based experiences nonetheless divided them. As the first book focusing entirely on slave women, it is not surprising that Ar'n't I a Woman? continues to be one of the most important books ever produced on the subject. In the two decades since the publication of Ar'n't I a Woman? the study of African American women's history has gained considerable prominence in the American historical canon. African American women's intellectual work, historical contributions, social circumstances, and political participation are noted in countless articles, manuscripts, and dissertations.4 Discussions of African American women's nearly four-hundred-year existence in what became the United States reach back into the colonial era and rush forward into the twenty-first century. Much of this turn in the literature owes a great intellectual debt to questions raised and synthesized in Ar'n't I a Woman? Although White's work centered on slavery, the scholarly questions articulated by White continue to guide the writing of Black women's history in general. In particular, scholars focus their attention on three broad categories: the first being the long-standing debate on race and feminism; the second articulating the relationship between resistance, activism, and power; and the third centering on violence, sexuality, and the body. These topics respond to particular social and historical circumstances such as [End Page 161] slavery, emancipation, and welfare reform; however, they are not historically specific. Rather, they are salient currents in the dialogue between the myths surrounding African American women and their actual lived histories in the United States. Pervasive stereotypes about African American womanhood permeate social, political, and economic realities in the twenty-first century and inspire scholars to aggressively dismantle the notion that all Black women fit into one of three categories presented by White: the asexual mammy, the hot-tempered sapphire, and the wonton jezebel. In doing so, the canon of studies produced in the generations after Ar'n't I a Woman? highlights the multiplicity of African American women's identities in the United States. Race and Feminism Feminism(s), like the writing of Black women's history, is multilayered. Just as scholars realize that a taxonomy of differences based on class, educational attainment, and political orientation orders relationships between African American and White women, they also produce differences among Black women. Thus for historians of African American women, articulating the relationship between feminism and the writing of Black women's history is as challenging now as it was for White in 1985. White found that Black women came to their protofeminist consciousness through lived experiences in bondage. Slave women did not have access to such formal institutional frameworks as the church and educational settings. Rather they fashioned a distinct worldview that aided them as they negotiated their new lives after the Civil War. Thus while White women endured their own "race-determined sexism," writing African American women's history forces scholars to investigate how race determines their feminist consciousness.5 The African American community...

The idea of using literature in the history classroom is not new. In a recent class I experimented with this methodology, exploring how literary works could be used to examine the intersections of race, class, and gender (along with skin color and even hair texture) in African American women's experiences in the United States.' The students in this small class were primarily seniors, and roughly 70 percent were African American women. The remaining 30 percent included a single African American male, and male and female students of European descent. The majority of the students had taken courses in either black studies or African American history, so most entered the course with at least a baseline knowledge of African American history. The summer and fall before teaching the course, I spent a great deal of time reading and selecting the material. I wanted works that were interesting, well written, and sophisticated but still accessible to undergraduates. I wanted to teach the course thematically but also chronologically when possible. In order to reach back into the eighteenth century, I chose to begin with an examination of The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley, a poet who gave birth to the black female literary tradition during her short life (1753-1784). We would then move rapidly through time to land finally in the 1 990s with the popular novel by Terry McMillan, Waiting to Exhale. I initially intended that all ten books in the course be fictional, but, after agonizing for several weeks, I decided to include several nonfiction works as well. These late additions seemed especially suitable for discussions of family dynamics and urban poverty, as well as black women's organizational and club involvement. Each week I began the class with a mini-lecture discussing possible themes for

Women who have had a cesarean section (C-section) and become pregnant again may choose to have a planned repeat cesarean delivery (RCD) or vaginal birth after a cesarean (VBAC). This study aimed to characterize the pregnancy and birth experiences of African American (AA) women who had a successful VBAC, failed VBAC, or RCD. Eligible participants (N = 25) self-identified as AA, had a C-section and a subsequent birth(s) in the past 12years, and were educated past high school. Each participant was individually interviewed via phone call. The Sort and Sift, Think and Shift method was used to evaluate interview transcripts to minimize researcher bias and emphasize the voices of the participants. The resulting themes included the impact of providers on pregnancy and childbirth satisfaction, the value of autonomy in maternal health decision-making, and the role that racism plays in AA women's birth experiences. Although some participants recalled a positive experience, the presence of limited autonomy, lack of support, and negative experiences with providers indicate that birth after a prior C-section for AA women can be improved. Providers should address their own racial biases and utilize the shared decision-making approach when their patients decide between a VBAC and RCD to improve patient satisfaction.

Remembering Alton Parker Hornsby, Jr., 1940–2017

Introduction and Purpose The literature is becoming replete with studies that address the issue of sexism in the lives of women seeking full participation in the academy (Aguirre, 2000; Finkel, Olswang, & She, 1994; LeBlanc, 1993; Sandler, 1993). Volumes upon volumes record the injustices and frustration women have faced in higher education. There have been numerous reports of wage inequities, vague publishing expectations, ambiguous tenure requirements, limited access to certain academic disciplines, lack of mentorship and networking opportunities, and exclusion from strategic decision-making positions (Burgess, 1997; Finkel, et al., 1994; Warner & DeFleur, 1993). In much of this research, women are classified as a singular group not taking into consideration the impact that race may contribute to any one of these variables if the whole group were broken down into separate ethnic groups and investigated. For instance, based upon the long and turbulent history of race relations in the United States, a person would be remiss to assume historical ideologies (inferior vs. superior) created by a White male patriarchal system have no bearing on the experiences of African American and other women of color in higher education today (Amott & Matthaei, 1996). However, this is not to imply that White female academicians have not suffered because of the system in existence; rather, it simply infers that because of their ethnicity, their academic experiences have not been shaped by the intersections of race and gender as have those of women of color. It is precisely these overlapping socio-cultural factors (e.g., race, gender) that require an examination of the experiences of African American women to be placed within the proper social and political contexts in which their realities are constructed (Collins, 1990; Hurtado, Milen, Clayton-Peterson, & Allen, 1999). A number of studies have attempted to explain the status of African American women in higher education. However, what generally occurs in many of these studies is that the experiences of Black women are compared to those of other women, usually White women, to verify whether or not they are meeting some arbitrary standard of normalcy in the academy (Miller & Vaughn, 1997). Naturally, these findings will explain the experiences of some African American women in higher education. However, they are limited in their analysis because they do not take into account the legacy of race and gender relations in shaping the lives of African American women in society in general and in higher education more specifically (Collins, 1990; Gregory, 1995). Furthermore, these studies do not reveal how African American women interpret their experiences in predominantly White institutions, nor do they allow the women to discuss how socio-cultural issues affect their overall academic citizenship. These studies are also limited in their representation because they fail to consider the variation in responses that will be obtained from any two Black women as a result of their individual differences and personal experiences (Collins, 1990; Hurtado et al., 1999), which will ultimately influence how the women respond to interactions in their academic roles (Holmes, 1999). The purpose of this article is to present findings of a qualitative study conducted to investigate the academic experiences of selected African American women faculty employed by four-year predominantly White institutions. I started this line of inquiry as a graduate student attending a large predominantly White institution. As an African American woman, I was concerned with the small number of African American women faculty I encountered during my graduate program. Of equal concern was the lack of literature regarding Black women in the academy, as well as the substance of the available literature. I was particularly interested in examining the women's experiences within the context of race and gender because extant literature suggests that these constructs shape the academic roles of African American people in higher education (Collins, 1990; Thompson & Dey, 1998; Turner, Myers, Creswell, 1999; Miller, & Vaughn, 1997). …

Key words: African Americans; Elizabeth Ross Haynes; history, labor, social welfare; As a pioneer social worker, author, politician, woman, and community activist, Elizabeth Ross Haynes constantly advocated and agitated for the rights of African Americans and for the rights of women. In 1937 she challenged her contemporaries with the following question: If Frances Perkins (the Honorable Frances Perkins), secretary of labor, can fill one of the most difficult posts in the Cabinet of the President of these United States--and this she had done superbly despite any criticisms--is to extend and enlarge the opportunity fought for by Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth, especially since the latter could neither read nor write? (Haynes, n.d.) Haynes offered herself as a role model. She involved herself in researching, writing, and speaking about women's labor issues, women's spiritual and Christian growth, women's roles in the political arena, and women's use of all their talents and skills and did these to such an extent that she can be described as a pioneer in the women's movement of the Progressive Era and beyond Like most African American of her time, however, Haynes has been virtually ignored in the study of women's contributions to social welfare history and to the development of social welfare institutions for African Americans and for the larger community. This invisibility of African American in history leaves gaps in social workers' cognition, distorting the knowledge base. As Brown (1989) noted, an even greater problem is that because of the exclusion of African American like Haynes, the concepts, perspectives, methods, and pedagogues of women's history and women's studies have been developed without consideration of the experiences of black women (p. 610). Furthermore, recent efforts to uncover African American women's history occurred parallel to the development of theory. The consequence of this timing is that African American women's history is often couched inside the perspective, which, according to Brown, was designed to omit the experiences of of color. African American generally have held marginal positions in the movement. The misperception is that African American deal either with women's issues or with race issues, and then sequentially, not simultaneously. White have complained that they did not want to dissipate their energies dealing with issues of race, because their time could be better spent addressing issues of importance to all (Giddings, 1984; Smith, 1985). For them, the primacy of female oppression denies the structured inequalities of race. On the other hand, McDougald (1925) stated that the African American woman's feminist efforts are directed chiefly toward the realization of the equality of the races, the sex struggle assuming a subordinate place (p. 691). Some writers (Palmer, 1983; Terborg-Penn, 1983) have argued that the term feminism is partly responsible for the exclusion that African American feel, because feminism puts a priority on gender, not race. To deal with the problem of terminology, author Alice Walker (1983) and others (Hine, 1996; Ogunyemi, 1985) have used the words and to describe the African American female experience. Walker defined womanist as a consciousness that incorporates racial, cultural, sexual, national, economic, and political considerations for all people. Hine believed that womanism speaks to a double legacy of oppression and a resistance movement among African American women. The term may be uncomfortable for some, but its ideals are descriptive of the life careers of many African American pioneer social welfare leaders of the Progressive Era. Leaders such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Janie Porter Barrett, and Birdye Henrietta Haynes knew that their oppressed positions in society resulted from both gender and race and that their struggle must include both, because they were not fragmented individuals but whole and holistic in consciousness and purpose. …

An Examination of African American Women's Lives in Postwar Philadelphia Lisa Krissoff Boehm (bio) Lisa Levenstein . A Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009. xvi + 199 pages. Illustrations, tables, maps, appendix, bibliography, and index. $35.96. This work, a part of the prestigious John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture, edited by Waldo E. Martin and Patricia Sullivan, makes a noteworthy contribution to the growing yet still underserved field of African American women's urban history. Levenstein's work is heartening on a number of levels, and we need more scholars to consider undertaking projects of this type. As I have argued in the Journal of Urban History's special January 2010 edition on teaching ("Adding Gender to American Urban History"), urban historians ought to produce works that cross subfields with greater frequency. Urban historians tend to craft books aimed at a narrow audience and seem hesitant to make theoretical or narrative leaps between genres. This hesitancy denies the field greater readership and historiographical impact. Urban history can be successfully merged with political, economic, environmental, gender, labor, immigration, African American, and other types of history. A Movement Without Marches is simultaneously a book about poverty, African American women, public policy, and postwar Philadelphia. The book openly draws inspiration from the likes of Thomas Sugrue's Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996) and Arnold R. Hirsch's Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1840-1960 (1998). Levenstein makes a very important contribution by studying what she terms "the gendered construction of racialized urban poverty" (p. 5). Levenstein writes about African American women in poverty, a topic that has proved onerous for many academics due to the stereotypes that must be confronted. Levenstein rejects the term "underclass," which "not only paints a false portrait of poor women's goals and values, but it also severely misconstrues their work habits. Regardless of their employment status, women who sought and retained assistance from public institutions were workers, first and foremost, because they labored to care for their households and [End Page 556] their families with few financial resources" (p. 24). Levenstein is upfront about addressing the ways in which the women may have exhibited traits commonly attributed to the underclass, admitting that the women "received public assistance, became pregnant unintentionally, suffered from depression, or used drugs and alcohol" (p. 24). Levenstein could point out here that these traits can be applied to a broad number of Americans—middle class as well as working class—especially when one considers how many Americans have relied on unemployment assistance at some time in their lives or made use of child tax credits or other financial relief. The author notes on page twenty-six that any study of African American women in poverty runs the risk of misinterpretation, given the broad range of negative stereotypes attributed to these women. The nature of the book necessitates a thorough exploration of the women's personal lives, and the author must divulge some unflattering stories. Extensive reliance on court records unearths very sensitive tales; however, Levenstein approaches her work with the utmost sensitivity and need not worry about being misinterpreted. In a clearly prepared table, Levenstein notes how the black population of Philadelphia expanded from 219,599 in 1930 to 529,239 by 1960. Much of this notable increase is due to the movement known as the Second Great Migration, which Levenstein does not refer to by name but mentions fleetingly in a few places in the book. The economic, cultural, and political aspects of the city that lured hundreds of thousands of southern migrants to settle there ought to be contrasted with the startling conditions the migrants encountered in their daily lives in Philadelphia. As return migration remained low, the North must have remained preferable in some ways. Migration studies and narratives, although there are relatively few focused strictly on women, have been a staple of postwar urban and African American history and ought to be further incorporated into this work. Reference to the conclusions of sociologist Stewart Tolnay, who refutes...

Teaching Ar'n't I a Woman? Daina Ramey Berry (bio) Each spring semester, I begin my African American women's history class with images of black women from the seventeenth century to the present.1 Students squirm in their seats because the first few slides depict enslaved women in coffles being transported to slave ships. Images of half-naked bondwomen, with agonizing facial expressions, exposed breasts, and children clinging to their ankles, shock the students. Some cringe when the next slide appears. Pictured is an enslaved woman forced to her knees, her arms twisted behind her, while two men stamp a hot iron rod on her shoulder to brand the initials of a slave-trading firm or slaveholder. Moving forward to the twentieth century, students seem relieved to see the familiar image of Hattie McDaniel from Gone with the Wind.2 No more naked bodies, they think; no more distressing photographs. Yet this stereotype is in some ways equally disturbing. I begin this course the same way Deborah Gray White opened Ar'n't I a Woman?—by debunking the myths, stereotypes, and misconceptions of enslaved women as the promiscuous Jezebel, the angry Sapphire, or the loyal Mammy. "In antebellum America," White explained, "the female slave's chattel status, sex, and race combined to create a complicated set of myths about black womanhood": one "carnal, the other maternal."3 I have been amazed by the way students seem comfortable with the Mammy stereotype. "Jezebel," on the other hand, is more difficult for them to discern because it means that they have to consider the sexual exploitation of enslaved women, which makes many students uncomfortable. The Sapphire stereotype, at least for most students, is represented by the domineering black woman they saw in such 1970s television characters as Esther from Sanford and Son or Florence from The Jeffersons. Reflecting on her work in the 1999 revised edition, White noted that "there is now more history than myth" when it comes to our understanding of enslaved women.4 For two decades, scholars have used Ar'n't I a Woman? in survey and seminar courses, enabling students to think about the institution of slavery from a female perspective. In addition to how I have used the book in the classroom, this essay also discusses some of the reasons it remains the premier book adopted in history and African American, women, and gender studies courses at institutions of higher learning. Ar'n't I a Woman? is an instructive tool that I have used and relied on to teach the history of slavery from a gendered perspective. [End Page 139] The first time I assigned this book was in an undergraduate survey course on African American history. I opened the class with the following questions: What was the role of women in West African communities, during the transatlantic slave trade, on board the slavers crossing the Atlantic, and in colonial and antebellum America? Students were stumped because they had not considered that women's experiences differed from men's. They had not considered how a lactating mother had to take care of an infant during the middle passage; how a woman who had recently given birth had to labor in the tobacco, cotton, and rice fields of Virginia, Georgia, or South Carolina; or how women and men employed different resistance strategies. They came to class with the assumption that the enslaved experience was universal. Soon, however, White's scholarship pushed them to consider the lives of enslaved females. Students read Ar'n't I a Woman? in conjunction with Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. In their midterm papers, they discussed the ways in which women and men experienced slavery based on these three readings. Many of them argued, as Harriet Jacobs poignantly expressed in her narrative, that "slavery was terrible for men, but far more terrible for women."5 They analyzed legal cases on Lexis-Nexis that involved bondwomen. Some wrote about the methods enslaved women used to cope with slavery.6 Some organized their essays around the life cycle of female slavery as White...

"StrangeLove": Searchingfor Sexual Subjectivities in Black PrintPopular Cultureduringthe 1950s Leisa D. Meyer Myrtle Hartgrove, Atlanta, GA—Dear Editor: I just finished glanc ing through your first issue of Tan Confessions, and frankly I feel that you've gone to a lot of trouble to waste a lot of valuable paper. What is the point behind the whole thing? Those stories that you call "true to life," are simply impossible. No self-respecting woman with an ounce of decency would allow any of those things to happen to her that you have published as "the truth." You should be ashamed to advertise such trash on the same page with such honorable publi cations as Ebony and Negro Digest. Jane White, Los Angeles, CA—Dear Editor: Thanks a lot for coming out with your new magazine, Tan Confessions. I am a long time buyer of romantic magazines and while I know that they are trash I would much rather spend my money for "colored trash" than "white trash."1 The disparate reactions of myrtle hartgrove and jane white to the firstissue of Tan Confessions indicate that the sexuality rendered in this monthly publication's intimate stories was deeply contested ter rain for African American readers. I seek in this essay to analyze more broadly such contestations, drawing on a range of articles, letters, and responses in black popular culture magazines in the period immedi ately following World War II. Through an interrogation of the negoti ations among individuals and within groups, we can see the complex and diverse sexual subjectivities (or potential subjectivities) of African American women as they are articulated, debated, weighed, explored, FeministStudies38, no. 3 (Fall 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 625 626 Leisa D. Meyer reconfigured, and at times, rejected. What becomes clear through this material is that while there was an explicit and often direct engage ment with white normative cultural presumptions concerning Afri can American sexuality, there were also alternative racialized sexual subjectivities that were explicitly proposed, discussed, and debated within these pages. Myrtle Hartgrove's comments hold up the "decent" and "self respecting" woman as a bulwark against the "trash"—stories of black women's romantic and sexual encounters — offered in the pages of Tan Confessions. Hartgrove's invocation of respectability guards against the longstanding racist trope of hypersexuality and its concomitant insinuation that African American women are not "respectable."2 Many African American women refuted the racist hypersexual image in order to protect themselves and their daughters from its conse quences and also to assert desire and claim their sexuality and sexual subjectivity. Hartgrove here engages in a "politics of respectability"— historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's oft-cited phrase describing African American women's promotion of restrained behavior, espe cially restrained sexual behavior, as a "strategy of reform" during the early twentieth century. For Higginbotham, this strategy enabled African American women to "define themselves outside the param eters of prevailing racist discourses."3 Historian Paisley Harris on the other hand has critiqued this strategy and its consequences, charac terizing the politics of respectability as having a "gatekeeping func tion" that established a "behavioral entrance fee" for membership in African American communities. While this "entrance fee" offered some challenge to hegemonic cultural views of African Americans, it also constructed and maintained status distinctions within African American communities.4 Subsequent studies of African American women's lives and sex ualities have expanded this understanding of the "gatekeeping func tion" of respectability beyond the particular historical moment that Higginbotham explores. As Michele Mitchell suggests in her essay on African American women's history, it is "important to ponder whether African Americanists who theorize gender and sexuality have fomented new silences." She goes on to note her "lurking suspicions" that "certain subjects are avoided because they have been deemed Leisa D. Meyer 627 either dangerous or damaging" and voices her "uneasfe] about the costs attached to this particular quiet."5 Literary scholar Matt Richardson also speaks to the problems of these silences in African American history: The tradition of representing Black people as decent and moral his torical agents has meant the erasure of the broad array of Black sex uality and gendered being in favor of a...

This article conceptualizes the stigmatization process that is associated with the use of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) programs. A symbolic interactionist perspective that delineates the dynamics of stigma is used to frame the experiences of impoverished African American women who participate in such programs. Findings from a series of qualitative focus group interviews are used to assess current discussions of stigma and to inform efforts to reduce stigma. Past research documents that social stigma is associated with the use of public assistance programs (Rank, 1994). Participation in such programs is sometimes used as evidence that recipients hold deviant work orientations and that they should be labeled with a discredited status (Nichols-Casebolt, 1986). In recent years, relative to other public assistance programs, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) has been the most stigmatized of all (Block, Cloward, Ehrenreich, & Piven, 1987). At its inception, the AFDC program primarily served widows and their children. However, over the past three decades, it has shifted from a focus on divorced and separated women and their children to include never-married, African American women and their children (Quadagno, 1994). The inclusion of unmarried women has paralleled the view that AFDC increasingly serves the undeserving poor (Katz, 1989; Kelso, 1994; Mead, 1986; Murray, 1984). Quantitative and qualitative studies provide important insights into the relationship between social stigma and public assistance programs, including AFDC. Quantitative studies have identified key correlates of stigma and their relationship to economic, social, and psychologi cal outcomes (Horan & Austin, 1974; Kerbo, 1972; Lowenberg, 1981; Murray, 1984; Nichols-Casebolt, 1986). Qualitative research has described how AFDC recipients manage imputed stigma in their daily lives (Jeffers, 1967; Rank, 1994; Rogers-Dillon, 1995; Rosier & Corsaro, 1993; Stack, 1974; Valentine, 1978). These bodies of research address important substantive issues in the study of social stigma and public assistance programs, yet the correlational and descriptive nature of their analyses obscure more general dynamics. In light of the increasing denigration of impoverished African American women who use AFDC programs, a broader understanding of the stigmatization process is needed. The primary goal of this study is to conceptualize the stigmatization process that is associated with the use of AFDC programs. Expanding upon existing studies that are largely correlational and descriptive in nature, this article uses a symbolic interactionist perspective to frame the experiences of African American women who use such programs. Four research questions guided this study: 1. How do women perceive social stigma as it relates to their status as AFDC recipients? 2. What have been women's experiences of discriminatory treatment as AFDC recipients? 3. What strategies do women use to manage stigmatized perceptions and treatment? 4. How do women's perceptions and experiences as AFDC recipients affect their attitudes toward government reform efforts? I address several points in the discussion. First, I review qualitative and quantitative studies on stigma and public assistance programs. Second, I discuss how a symbolic interactionist perspective addresses the limitations of existing studies. Third, I describe the sample and research methods. Focus group interviewing procedures are discussed as they were conducted with a sample of African American single mothers who received AFDC. Next, I present findings from the qualitative group interviews using verbatim quotes that highlight women's perceptions and experiences of welfare stigma, as well as resulting coping strategies. I then discuss the implications of the research findings and consider how they inform current theoretical discussions of stigma and efforts to reduce stigma. …

In this article, the authors describe cultural and spiritual traditions within African American women's experience that form the foundation for group counseling strategies. Literature regarding African American women's experience in groups is reviewed. Specific group interventions such as art, music, dance, imagery, journaling, and rituals that aim at transcendence, empowerment, and self-nurturance are explained. Finally, the authors describe the process, activities, themes, and outcomes of an African American Women's Spirituality Group conducted by the third author in which these approaches were employed.

Despite strides made by the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative to improve and normalize breastfeeding, considerable racial inequality persists in breastfeeding rates. Few studies have explored African American women's experience in a Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative system to understand sources of this inequality. Research aim: This study aimed to explore African American women's experiences of the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding at a women's center associated with a university-affiliated hospital that recently achieved Baby-Friendly status. Twenty African American women who had received perinatal care at the women's center and the hospital participated in qualitative interviews about their experiences. Data were organized using the framework method, a type of qualitative thematic analysis, and interpreted to find how African American women related to policies laid out by the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. Three key themes emerged from the women's interviews: (a) An appreciation of long-term relationships with medical professionals is evident at the women's center; (b) considerable lactation problems exist postpartum, including lack of help from Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative sources; and (c) mothers' beliefs about infant autonomy may be at odds with the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. Hospitals with Baby-Friendly status should consider models of breastfeeding support that favor long-term healthcare relationships across the perinatal period and develop culturally sensitive approaches that support breastfeeding beliefs and behaviors found in the African American community.