African American Women and Christian Activism: New York's Black YWCA, 1905-1945

239 Pages·1998·11.797 MB·English

by  Judith Weisenfeld

African American Women
and Christian Activism

African American Women
and Christian Activism
NEW YORK'S BLACK YWCA, 1905-1945
J U D I TH WEISENFELD
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England 1997
To the memory of James M. Washington,
with gratitude for his faith in me and my work
Copyright © 1997 by Judith Weisenfeld
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weisenfeld, Judith.
African American women and Christian activism : New York's Black
YWCA, 1905-1945 /Judith Weisenfeld,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-674-00778-6
1. YWCA of the City of New York—History—20th century.
2. Church work with Afro-Americans—New York (State)—New York.
3. Young women—New York (State)—New York—Religious life.
I. Tide.
BV1393.B58W45 1997
267'.59747 Γ0996073—dc21 97-21901
Acknowledgments
I HAVE BENEFITED from the support and assistance of many people
in the course of researching and writing this book. Archivists and li-
brarians at the New York City Young Women's Christian Association,
the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Association, the
Princeton University Library, the Columbia University Library, and
the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York
Public Library proved invaluable in the research phases. The Ford
Foundation, the Fund for Theological Education, Barnard College,
and the Ann Whitney Olin Foundation all supported my work over the
past few years.
Friends and colleagues at Princeton, especially Albert J. Raboteau,
John F. Wilson, Eugene Lowe, Albert G. Miller, and Timothy Fulop,
read and commented on the dissertation that contributed to this larger
project. Linda Green, Zita Nunes, Maggie Sale, Karen Van Dyck, Pris-
cilla Wald, and Angela Zito could not have been better colleagues or
friends in providing strong, caring readings in the wonderfully encour-
aging atmosphere of our writing group. Without question, their
thoughtful criticism has marked this book for the better. The friendship
and intellectual exchange I have shared with Terry Todd have anchored
me for many years. I also want to thank Diane Burhenne, Celia
Deutsch, Martha Hodes, Richard Newman, Michele Rubin, and Debo-
VI Acknowledgments
rah Valenze, as well as Margaretta Fulton at Harvard University Press,
for their advice and support. And Timea Szell's humor and enthusiasm,
her unfailing care, and her high scholarly standards have enriched me
and my work in countless ways.
Contents
Introduction
1 "Bend the Tree While It Is Young": Institutional
Alliances/Institutional Appropriations
African American Women and the Politics of Racial Uplift
YIVCA Social Reform Work 21
African American Women and the National YWCA 33
2 "If One Life Shines": African American Women
in Networks
Laying an Activist Foundation 39
Conflicting Visions 49
3 "The Home-Made Girl": Constructing a Mobile
Private Space
Racially Charged Public Space 66
Racialized and Gendered Public Space 75
At "Home" in New York 79
Performing the Private in Public 83
4 "We Are It": Building on the Urban Frontier
"Harlem Rides the Range " 94
viii Contents
Toward a "Room " of Their Own 100
Internal Frontiers 115
5 "Interwoven Destinies": Wars at Home and Abroad 121
The Crisis of the World 124
"The Girl You Leave Behind" 133
An Urban Homefront 143
6 "A Grand Place": Black America's Community Center 156
A Community Center 161
Educating for Christian Democracy 172
Christianizing City Politics 178
Girls' Work 182
Leadership Training 188
7 "Against the Tide": Interracial Work and Racial Conflict 191
Notes 203
Index 227
Introduction
9 HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Pauli Murray recounts one of
the most significant decisions of her early life in choosing to move from
Durham, North Carolina, to New York City in 1928 to attend college.
Seeking to avoid the humiliations of additional years of segregated
education in the South, Murray enrolled at Hunter College, living with
relatives in the predominantly white neighborhood of Richmond Hill,
Queens. In the spring of her first year in college, she welcomed the
opportunity to move into the Emma Ransom House residence of the
African American Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) on
West 137th Street in Harlem.1 Her cousin, the director of the resi-
dence, offered her part-time work at the switchboard and elevator.
Murray recalled, "That summer at the YWCA was a heady experience
for an eighteen-year-old—no schoolwork to burden me, no accounting
to anyone for my goings and comings, no restraints on time as long as I
was in by midnight, and a whole city to explore in my free hours."2 In
addition to the pleasure of her newfound freedom and the enjoyment of
contact with other young African American women studying and work-
ing in the city, Murray also remembered the importance of interacting
with the women who staffed this YWCA. These women, she wrote,
provided "role models in the pursuit of excellence." Indeed, Murray
had many female role models in her life, from her schoolteacher aunt
who adopted her to Hunter College faculty, to the staff of the YWCA,
2 AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND CHRISTIAN ACTIVISM
all of whom contributed to her development as a civil rights activist, a
lawyer, and eventually one of the first women to be ordained an Episco-
pal priest in the United States. She pays moving tribute to the deep
influence of all these women in her life. The YWCA provided a par-
ticularly inspiring atmosphere at that time in her life: "None of these
women would have called themselves feminists in the 1930s, but they
were strong, independent personalities who, because of their concerted
efforts to rise above the limitations of race and sex and to help younger
women do the same, shared a sisterhood that foreshadowed the revival
of the feminist movement in the 1960s."3
Although her achievements made her extraordinary, Murray at the
same time was typical of the kind of young woman to whom this
YWCA reached out. Orphaned at a young age, she nevertheless grew
up embraced by a loving family whose members emphasized the poten-
tial for her to be anything she chose in spite of the restrictive and
humiliating realities of the Jim Crow South. Once when Murray com-
plained to her aunt about their poverty relative to more affluent black
residents of Durham, her aunt retorted angrily, "Your family stands
with the best. It's not what you have but what you are that counts."4
Murray's family impressed upon her the importance of standing with
"the race" and of understanding American history and the place of
African Americans within that history. With the strong grounding pro-
vided by her family, Murray set out to achieve beyond the boundaries
set by the racism of segregation in the South.
Murray's arrival in New York City in the late 1920s marked for her
and for many other African American migrants a new kind of freedom
not possible in the South. She recalled, "That first trip to New York
[to visit colleges] had been the most exciting experience of my young
life. .. . Most of all I was impressed because we could sit anywhere we
chose in the subway trains, buses, and streetcars, and there was no
special section for colored people in the movies. I knew then that some-
day I would live in New York."5 The excitement of the North, of New
Yirk, and of college rapidly became tempered by the harshness of the
Great Depression, however. As a poor student in difficult times, Murray
found the atmosphere of the YWCA particularly nurturing and suppor-
tive and an integral part of the excitement of New York City.
As the personal interactions and contacts at the YWCA proved sig-
nificant for her, so too did the spiritual grounding of the institution and