Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in Black Baptist Church 1880-1920

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Summary: a foray into black women's activism in the Womens Convention
Review: Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham asserts that southern black women, through their participation in the National Baptist Convention fostered agency, activism, women's rights and racial dignity during the post-Reconstruction era of Jim Crow. Intrisic to her thesis is that while black women utilized the Baptist church as a support stucture against racism and poverty, they also worked to raise the status of the black race as a whole and black women specifically. One of the most important insights in this book, is an in-depth analyiztion of the feminization of religion. However,while Higginbotham's thesis is stong and engaging, altering the hereto academic focus away from prominent black Baptist activists to a wider, regional phenomenom of group participation, ultimatley her study contains a few theoretical holes. There is little critical analysis of the opposition that black women faced in their endevores, such as the creation the Womens Convention, a subsiderary of the larger National Baptist Convention. Also, there is no sense of the black "masses," consistantly refered to as such, that these women tried to help. "Masses," in this case indicates a monolith rather than an increasingly diversified group of people. Ellaboration on both of these points would have greatly improved the complexity of Higginbotham's study, as well as left the reader a great deal more informed. Over all, Righteous Discontent is a valuable source for anyone seeking information on race, gender and relgion at the turn of the century. Higginbotham's treatment of the subject is tactful and engaging, uncovering a little known but important facet of African American history.

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Summary: Religion and Scholarship at its finest!
Review: Evelyn Higginbotham shows us that this is not a man's world anymore with her book on the role of women the Black Baptist Church. Her writing is fluid and detaied, and she provides various examples to illustrate her points. This is the definitive text for learning about the roles that the Black Baptist church in African-American society.

Rating:
Summary: Righteous Blah
Review: If I could give this book zero stars, I would. Higginbotham is not the feminist scholar she once was, and her writing needs more perspective. The book suggests that she's spent too long in the ivory tower. Too much post-modern psycho-babble in this volume.