Reviews
"South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times—Volume 2 brings together distinguished historians who vividly recapture representative black and white South Carolina women. The articles are lively and the editors ground them in deep historical context that belies any notion of a stagnant state from Reconstruction to World War II. Read any one of these and you will want to read all."
—Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History, Yale University
"While the experiences of the women featured in South Carolina Women range widely in time and circumstance, the essays collectively testify to the power of patriarchy and slaveholding to construct social and gender norms and the pervasiveness of tragedy and hardship in the lives of South Carolina women . . . Anyone interested in further contextualizing southern and women's history will find valuable insights and analysis in each essay."
"Charting women’s social activism from the Civil Wars years until the eve of World War II, the compelling essays in South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times—Volume 2, are long overdue. The women profiled in these pages were involved in concerns as diverse as freedmen’s education and woman suffrage, historic preservation and medical care. Through their initiatives, they transformed South Carolina and, at the same time, did much to expand the opportunities and possibilities for the women who came after them."
—Bernard E. Powers Jr., author of Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885
"Offers fourteen thoughtful articles on South Carolina women of significance who made diverse contributions to the state, region, and nation during the era bounded by the 1860s and the 1930s."
—Journal of American History
"The fourteen essays in South Carolina Women, Volume 2, examine various black and white women who played critical roles in reshaping the economic, social, and political landscape of post-Civil War South Carolina. Together the essays suggest that whether these women embraced traditional Victorian concepts of womanhood or broke with those conventions to claim power as 'New Women,' they all secured power for themselves as they helped create a new society."
—Megan Taylor Shockley, Journal of Southern History
Description
The volume begins with a profile of Laura Towne and Ellen Murray, who founded the Penn School on St. Helena Island for former slaves. Subsequent essays look at such women as the five Rollin sisters, members of a prominent black family who became passionate advocates for women’s rights during Reconstruction; writer Josephine Pinckney, who helped preserve African American spirituals and explored conflicts between the New and Old South in her essays and novels; and Dr. Matilda Evans, the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in the state. Intractable racial attitudes often caused women to follow separate but parallel paths, as with Louisa B. Poppenheim and Marion B. Wilkinson. Poppenheim, who was white, and Wilkinson, who was black, were both driving forces in the women’s club movement. Both saw clubs as a way not only to help women and children but also to showcase these positive changes to the wider nation. Yet the two women worked separately, as did the white and black state federations of women’s clubs.
Often mixing deference with daring, these women helped shape their society through such avenues as education, religion, politics, community organizing, history, the arts, science, and medicine. Women in the mid- and late twentieth century would build on their accomplishments.
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Cloth |
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Paper List price: $24.95 978-0-8203-2938-3 1/1/2010 |
Marjorie Julian Spruill is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina. Valinda W. Littlefield is an assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina. Joan Marie Johnson is a lecturer at Northeastern Illinois University.
