Leaders of Their Race: Educating Black and White Women in the New South

Abstract

At the 1895 Atlanta Exposition, the symbol of the New South, visitors encountered a Women's Building, which included a room dedicated to the Lucy Cobb Institute, a women's secondary school founded in Athens in 1859. Nearby, but on the outskirts of the park, visitors toured the Negro Building, which was largely organized by African American women associated with Spelman Seminary. In Leaders of Their Race, Sarah H. Case compares the history of both schools to assess the intersection of race, gender, and education in a changing South. While many of the differences in the aims and approaches of the schools between 1880 and 1925 stemmed from the region's rigid racial hierarchy, Case emphasizes the surprising similarities between Lucy Cobb and Spelman, as both schools framed the preparation of women leaders in the modern South around staunch efforts to regulate female sexuality and preserve women's respectability. Founded as largely a finishing school for southern elites, Lucy Cobb grew to include a more rigorous liberal arts curriculum that prepared southern white women for public roles as diverse as serving the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, teaching, and participating in journalism and, occasionally in later years, politics. Based mostly on institutional records, Case's portrait emphasizes the key role of female school administrators such as Mildred Rutherford who forged modern roles for southern women while, paradoxically, leading a school that defended the traditional “ideals of southern womanhood, white supremacy, and upper class hegemony” (p. 16). Lucy Cobb graduates embraced public and privileged roles that did not include support for women's suffrage.