Ohio History Journal

VIRGINIA R. BOYNTON

 

Contested Terrain: The Struggle Over

Gender Norms for Black Working-Class

Women in Cleveland's Phillis Wheatley

Association, 1920-1950

 

 

 

When Adrien Jean Smith came to live at the Phillis Wheatley Association

(PWA) of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1947, the young unemployed black woman

was hired as a domestic servant by the home for black working women.

Although her work satisfied her employers for a time, Smith's off-hours be-

havior constantly irritated and concerned the black professional staff of the

PWA. In particular, as Assistant Executive Secretary Ethel Storey reported to

Smith's mother in June of that year, "she goes out regularly and visits tav-

erns and has come in many times intoxicated." Not only was "her constant

drinking" unacceptable behavior to the black middle-class women who oper-

ated the PWA, but since she had "stayed out of the building all night" on

more than one occasion, she clearly had rejected the moral authority of the

middle-class women who forbade drinking and set curfews for the working-

class black women who lived at the PWA.¹

Adrien Smith's experience with the Phillis Wheatley Association reflected

the process through which black and white middle-class and black working-

class women contested gender norms for the black working-class women as-

sociated with the PWA. The Phillis Wheatley Association operated in place

of a black YWCA as Cleveland's primary social service agency for black

women during the first half of the twentieth century. Working-class black

women struggled with the white and black middle-class members of the PWA

 

 

Virginia R. Boynton is a Ph.D. candidate at The Ohio State University. She

would like to thank Cindy Wilkey for her helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and

is especially grateful to Dr. Leila J. Rupp for her invaluable advice and encouragement

throughout the research, writing, and revising stages of this project.

 

 

1. Quotations from Ethel S. Storey to Dr. Jessie Annette Alexander, 2 June 1947, container

15, folder 1, The Phillis Wheatley Association Records, 1914-1960, Western Reserve

Historical Society, Cleveland [hereafter PWA Records, WRHS]. See also Storey to

Alexander, 4 February 1947, container 14, folder 5; Storey to Alexander, 25 March 1947,

container 14, folder 5; Alexander to Storey, 15 May 1947, container 15, folder 1; Alexander to

Storey, 4 June 1947, container 15, folder 1; Alexander to Storey, 16 October 1947, container

15, folder 2; all in PWA Records, WRHS.

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6                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

Board of Trustees (which oversaw general policy and financial matters) and the

black staff members of the PWA (who managed the agency's daily operations)

over definitions of appropriate behavior for PWA clients, including gender-

based norms for both work and leisure. This study examines the negotiation

of those norms by the middle-class PWA leaders (both black and white) and

the PWA's black working-class clients, the extent to which the working-class

women's opportunities were enhanced or constrained by those norms, and the

conditions under which the working-class women were able to challenge gen-

der norms successfully, thereby defining their own lives. The period covered,

1920 to 1950, was a time when gender norms for white women were in flux,

both in terms of employment expectations and leisure activities.² This paper

will contribute to an understanding of the extent to which this was true for

black women as well.

Historians of women have long recognized that, within any given society,

gender norms-definitions of appropriate behavior and roles for women and

men-are socially constructed by the members of that society, rather than be-

ing biologically determined. Only recently, however, have they begun to ana-

lyze the historical process through which gender norms are constructed for any

particular group of women. Joan Wallach Scott's work has been pivotal in

pointing scholars toward the issue of the social construction of gender norms.

Scott argues that any definition of gender-based behavioral norms rests on a

continual struggle to suppress competing possible definitions. Constructions

of gender norms are therefore always unstable and subject to revision, as

changing historical conditions alter the relative power balance in the struggle

between different groups and their competing definitions.³

In cross-class organizations such as the PWA, this struggle was frequently

manifested in conflict between middle-class reformers and working-class

clients, almost always both female. Peggy Pascoe and Linda Gordon have

both demonstrated the need to pay close attention to the nature of the relation-

ship between these two groups of women in the second quarter of the twenti-

eth century. Neither cooperation nor conflict can be ruled out in any given

setting; some combination generally prevails. The relative balance between

the two, however, depends on the particular historical situation under consid-

eration.⁴

 

 

 

2. On the changing gender norms for white women during this period, see Dorothy M.

Brown, Setting a Course: American Women in the 1920s (Boston, 1987); Susan Ware, Holding

Their Own: American Women in the 1930s (Boston, 1982); and Susan M. Hartmann, The Home

Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Boston, 1982).

3. Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), 1-50.

4. Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the

American West, 1874-1950 (New York, 1990); Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The

Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston 1880-1960 (New York, 1988).

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Contested Terrain                                                           7

 

This struggle between middle-class reformers and working-class women can

be found within the black community as well. As Liz Stanley has pointed

out, black women do not form a unitary category but are differentiated by

class and other factors, as are white women.⁵ While Linda Gordon minimizes

the significance of class differences between black middle-class female reform-

ers or philanthropists and their black working-class female clients, Karen Sue

Mittelman has demonstrated the pervasiveness of class conflict among the

black women of Philadelphia's black YWCA in the first half of the twentieth

century.⁶ It is clear, then, that class conflict was not necessarily absent from

black communities.

Like the middle-class black reformers of the Philadelphia YWCA, the black

women who founded the Phillis Wheatley Association of Cleveland in 1911

did so in response to the tremendous influx of southern black women into

their city in the early-twentieth century.⁷ During the Great Migration of

southern Blacks into northern urban centers, Cleveland's black population

quadrupled in the second decade of the century, from 8,500 in 1910 to 35,000

in 1920.8 By 1930, it had doubled again, to 72,000, and by 1950, 148,000

Blacks lived in Cleveland.⁹ Black women, more than the women of any other

ethnic group except the Irish, tended to migrate alone, without male rela-

tives.¹⁰ While many of these southern female migrants lived with relatives

or friends after arriving at their destination, not all were able to do so.¹¹

Like their counterparts in other northern cities, Cleveland's black women

drew on their history of voluntary association and community development to

establish for the migrants "a Home of good repute, where good, honest, up-

right working girls can have pure and pleasant surrounding[s]."¹² By provid-

 

5. Liz Stanley, "Recovering Women in History from Feminist Deconstructionism," Women's

Studies International Forum, 13 (1990), 151-58, esp. 154.

6. Linda Gordon, "Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women's Welfare Activism, 1890-

1945," Journal of American History, 78 (September, 1991), 559-90, esp. 570, 578; Karen Sue

Mittelman, "'A Spirit that Touches the Problems of Today': Women and Social Reform in the

Philadelphia Young Women's Christian Association, 1920-1945" (Ph.D. dissertation, University

of Pennsylvania, 1987), 138-42, 236, 240.

7. On the founding of the Phillis Wheatley Association, see Adrienne Lash Jones, Jane Edna

Hunter: A Case Study of Black Leadership, 1910-1950 (Brooklyn, 1990), 35-58.

8. Christopher Wye, "At the Leading Edge: The Movement for Black Civil Rights in

Cleveland, 1830-1969," in Cleveland: A Tradition of Reform, ed. David D. Van Tassel and John

J. Grabowski (Kent, Ohio, 1986), 113-35, esp. 117.

9. Wye, "At the Leading Edge," 130.

10. Susan Tucker, "A Complex Bond: Southern Black Domestic Workers and Their White

Employers," Frontiers, 9 (1987), 6-13, esp. 9. On black women's migration, see Darlene Clark

Hine, "Black Migration to the Urban Midwest: The Gender Dimension, 1915-1945," in The

Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class and Gender, ed. Joe

William Trotter, Jr. (Bloomington, 1991), 127-46.

11. Tucker, "A Complex Bond," 9; Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, "From 'Servant' to 'Dayworker':

A Study of Selected Household Service Workers in Washington, D.C., 1900-1926" (Ph.D.

dissertation, University of Maryland, 1983), 83-99.

12. "Articles of Incorporation of The Working Girls Home Association of Cleveland, Ohio,"

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8                                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

ing "the wholesome kind of home life that gives a girl, thrust into a strange

city, the stabilizing influence necessary to cope with a metropolitan environ-

ment," the black women of the PWA hoped to keep these young single black

women from ending up in houses of prostitution.¹³ As late as 1949, the

PWA was still Cleveland's only institution providing "protected living" for

significant numbers of single black women.¹⁴

Like American middle-class black women in general, then, the PWA's

black leaders sought to destroy the prevalent myth of black women's sexual

promiscuity and to protect the sexual respectability of young black women.

These concerns were closely tied to the ideology of "racial uplift" through

self-help and community development that black leader and educator Booker

T. Washington popularized in the early-twentieth century and that formed the

ideological basis for the PWA's specific efforts on behalf of black working

women.¹⁵ The PWA's concern with the lure of prostitution as a way of life

for single working women was also shared by white reformers, who were

aware of the perpetual financial problems of most wage-earning women,

white as well as black.

Almost as soon as it opened its doors, the PWA began expanding its ser-

vices beyond its original function as a residence for those whom Joanne

Meyerowitz has labeled "women adrift," a term originally used by early-twen-

tieth-century social workers.¹⁶ In particular, the leaders of the PWA began

providing various work-related support services, including training programs,

an employment service, and recreational activities for many black working

 

 

14 February 1912, container 1, volume 1, pp. 3, 5, PWA Records, WRHS. See also Jane Edna

Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer (Cleveland, 1940), 85; Charity Adams, "The Phillis Wheatley

Association," 16 January 1947, container 3, folder 3, PWA Records, WRHS. On the role of

black women in founding similar institutions in other cities, see Darlene Clark Hine, "'We

Specialize in the Wholly Impossible': The Philanthropic Work of Black Women," in Lady

Bountiful Revisited: Women Philanthropy, and Power, ed. Kathleen D. McCarthy (New

Brunswick, 1990), 70-93, esp. 71; Gordon, "Black and White Visions of Welfare," 579; Lynda

F. Dickson, "Toward a Broader Angle of Vision in Uncovering Women's History: Black

Women's Clubs Revisited," Frontiers, 9 (1987), 62-68; Joanne J. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift:

Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930 (Chicago, 1988), 47, 54. On black wom-

en's history of associational activity on behalf of blacks in their communities, see Stephanie J.

Shaw, "Black Club Women and the Creation of the National Association of Colored Women,"

Journal of Women's History, 3 (Fall, 1991), 10-25.

13. PWA Annual Report, 1923, p. 7, container 3, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS. On the

concern about prostitution, see Hine, "'We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible,"' 79; Charity

Adams, "The Phillis Wheatley Association," 16 January 1947, container 3, folder 3, PWA

Records, WRHS; Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 85; Jones, Jane Edna Hunter, 39-40, 74-76.

14. "Report from the Phillis Wheatley Board of Trustees to the Welfare Federation

Committee on Health and Welfare Needs," 21 February 1949, p. 3, container 2, folder 1, PWA

Records, WRHS.

15. Jones, Jane Edna Hunter, 35-58; Gordon, "Black and White Visions of Welfare," 579;

Hine, "'We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible,"' 73-82; Paula Giddings, When and Where I

Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (Toronto, 1984), 85-94.

16. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, xvii-xix.

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Contested Terrain                                                       9

 

women, not only PWA residents. Historically, more black women than

white women had worked for wages, out of economic need.¹⁷ In 1929, for

example, 41 percent of Cleveland's black women were employed, whereas

only 29 percent of its white women worked outside the home.¹⁸ Nationally,

significantly more black women than white women continued to work for

wages after marriage. In 1920, for example, 33 percent of married black

women were in the labor force, compared to only 7 percent of married white

women. Although the percentage of married white women who were em-

ployed had increased to 17 percent by 1950, married black women were still

more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to work, with 36 percent

of married black women in the work force in 1950.19

The working-class black women of the Phillis Wheatley Association were

therefore generally expected by the middle-class black and white female PWA

Board and staff members to hold paying jobs for most of their lives, even

after marriage. PWA leaders actively promoted employment opportunities for

these working-class black women because they believed that the women

needed the income in order to meet their financial obligations. The working-

class black women whom the PWA served, while largely accepting paid em-

ployment as an economic necessity for women of their race and class, did

rebel against work that paid too little or constrained their lives in ways they

deemed unacceptable.

When a woman was "compelled to make her own living, support her own-

self or be placed on charity," the PWA's black Executive Secretary Jane

Hunter argued in 1936, she "should be given a chance to earn a living."²⁰

Hunter's ongoing concern with the necessity of black women "earning a

livelihood" reflected the views of the PWA's Board of Trustees and its sup-

porters within the community.²¹ "Some girls have larger financial responsi-

bilities at home," Hunter observed in 1946, "and would like to save money to

 

 

 

17. Elsa Barkley Brown, "Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the

Independent Order of Saint Luke," Signs, 14 (Spring, 1989), 610-33, esp. 619; Gordon, "Black

and White Visions of Welfare," 569, 583-84; Alice Kessler-Harris, "Independence and Virtue

in the Lives of Wage-Earning Women: The United States, 1870-1930," in Women in Culture

and Politics: A Century of Change, ed. Judith Friedlander, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Alice

Kessler-Harris, and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (Bloomington, 1986), 3-17, esp. 11; Sharon

Harley, "For the Good of Family and Race: Gender, Work, and Domestic Roles in the Black

Community, 1880-1930," Signs, 15 (Winter, 1990), 336-49, esp. 342.

18. Lois Rita Helmbold, "Downward Occupational Mobility During the Great Depression:

Urban Black and White Working Class Women," Labor History, 29 (Spring, 1988), 135-72,

esp. 157.

19. Lynn Y. Weiner, From Working Girl to Working Mother: The Female Labor Force in the

United States, 1820- 1980 (Chapel Hill, 1985), 89.

20. Hunter to Mr. Super, Director, National Youth Administration, Cleveland, 14 July 1936,

container 14, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS. On the life of Jane Edna Hunter, founder and

Executive Secretary of the PWA from 1911 to 1948, see Jones, Jane Edna Hunter.

21. Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 155.

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10                                             OHIO HISTORY

educate their children too."22 In addition to operating an employment service and a training school for domestic service workers, therefore, PWA leaders continually worked to increase the wage levels of the women they served, rec- ognizing that the income these women earned was vital to their status as self- respecting women, as well as to their families' survival.23 While the women served by the PWA often worked "out of necessity ...     22. Hunter to William F. McDermott, Cleveland Plain Dealer, 27 March 1946, container 14, folder 3, PWA Records, WRHS. Unlike the waitresses studied by Dorothy Sue Cobble, these women did have an interest in upward mobility for their families. See Cobble, "'Practical Women': Waitress Unionists and the Controversies over Gender Roles in the Food Service Industry, 1900-1980," Labor History, 29 (Winter, 1988), 5-31, esp. 10. 23. Annual Meeting Minutes, 13 October 1919, container 1, volume 1, 97-8, PWA Records, WRHS; Home Economics Committee Minutes, 6 November 1928, container 8, folder 20, PWA Records, WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 10 May 1934, container 1, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS; Phillis Wheatley Association, "Evaluation Report," 1938, container 8, folder 13, PWA Records, WRHS; Jane E. Hunter to Alfred Benesch, Office of Price Administration Area Rent Director, 19 March 1943, container 11, folder 5, PWA Records, WRHS; Gloria Jackson to Ethel S. Storey, 12 April 1949, container 16, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS; Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 143-44.

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Contested Terrain                                                            11

 

as a servant or laundress at a very small wage," these black working-class

women did set limits to the exploitation they would allow.²⁴ In 1927, for

example, the PWA's Employment Committee found itself unable to fill all

the requests it received for domestic servants "because of the low wages,

which ranged from six to eight dollars" per week.²⁵ Four years later, in the

midst of the Depression, even lower weekly wages of three to four dollars

continued to cause the same problem, forcing the PWA Home Economics

Committee to confront a situation in which "there were so many persons ap-

plying for work and a large number of persons asking for workers, and the

number so small of placements."²⁶ Quitting was the domestic worker's ulti-

mate form of protest, and even in the midst of the Great Depression, PWA

women continued to leave those job situations they found unacceptable.²⁷

Despite the reality of low wages, PWA leaders still expected the working

women to be financially responsible. The organization required residents to

pay their rent in advance and to repay promptly any debts to the PWA, al-

though not all residents took these responsibilities as seriously as the PWA

wished.²⁸ Noting in 1933 that one resident, who was behind in her PWA

room   rent, "refuses to take most of the jobs offered her," the House

Committee instructed her to see the Residence Secretary "in connection with

back rent due and her attitude."²⁹ When Edith Bishop refused to pay her July

1950 rent because she felt her room needed to be painted, PWA Executive

Secretary Ethel Story retorted sharply that "I want to see you the very next

 

 

 

24. Jane E. Hunter, Chair, Subcommittee on Home Life, National Conference of

Fundamental Problems in the Education of Negroes, Report on "Home Life Among Negroes in

Northern Urban Centers," 17 March 1934, p. 2, container 10, folder 4, PWA Records, WRHS.

25. Employment Committee Minutes, 7 April 1927, container 8, folder 20, PWA Records,

WRHS.

26. Home Economics Committee Minutes, 3 November 1931, container 8, folder 20, PWA

Records, WRHS.

27. Home Economics Committee Minutes, 2 February 1938, container 8, folder 20, PWA

Records, WRHS; Ruth Blake to Jane Hunter, 31 May 1939, container 8, folder 20, PWA

Records, WRHS. David M. Katzman discusses this phenomenon for the earlier period of 1870

to 1920 in his Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America

(Urbana, 1981), 270. Bonnie Thornton Dill found this to be true also for the 1940s and 1950s in

New York City and Philadelphia; see Dill, "'Making Your Job Good Yourself: Domestic

Service and the Construction of Personal Dignity," in Women and the Politics of Empowerment,

ed. Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgen (Philadelphia, 1988), 33-52, esp. 41, 45-46.

28. Board of Trustees Minutes, 13 April 1915, container 1, volume 1, 32, PWA Records,

WRHS; Home Economics Committee Minutes, 4 May 1938, container 8, folder 20, PWA

Records, WRHS; Main Rent Reports, 6 January 1943 and 17 May 1943, container 11, folder 6,

PWA Records, WRHS; Ethel S. Storey to Margaret Mitchell, 19 February 1947, container 14,

folder 5, PWA Records, WRHS; Ethel S. Storey to Mrs. Jessie Traylor, Room 806, 24

November 1947 and 3 December 1947, container 15, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS; Ethel S.

Storey to Mrs. Bernice Pruitt, Room 906, 15 December 1948, container 16, folder 1, PWA

Records, WRHS; Ethel S. Storey to Mrs. Lucy Glover, 3 February 1949, container 16, folder 1,

PWA Records, WRHS.

29. House Committee Minutes, 17 July 1933, container 9, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS.

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12                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

time you are in the building because there was no excuse for your taking the

attitude you did."³⁰

On occasion, residents required special consideration because of unusual cir-

cumstances. After receiving yet another reminder that her rent was past due in

March of 1950, Rebecca Coleman responded that she had been "confined to

my room for eight Days with the grippe, having to use what money I have

on hand for medicine & food."³¹ The PWA was willing to make allowances

in such cases but continued to insist that some arrangements for payment be

made since it was "strictly a business matter," and the residents were expected

to be financially responsible at all times.³²

The PWA was also willing to help out women earning low wages by struc-

turing the rents "as far as possible, according to one's ability to pay," but was

unwilling to do so without certain concessions.³³ In 1928, the Board of

Trustees decided to allow women earning low wages "to keep a room at a re-

duced rate for a certain period, or until ... [they were] able to earn more," but

insisted that they be more closely supervised than the other women living in

the residence so that they "would be encouraged to earn more and would want

to get from under the supervision."³⁴ Thus, although the Board recognized

that these women desired to maintain their autonomy, it did not always realize

that they would gladly have earned more money had they been able to do so in

a way they deemed acceptable.

One reason black working women's wages were generally so low was that

they were clustered in the poorly-paid field of domestic service. In 1920, 58

percent of wage-earning black women in Cleveland worked as domestic ser-

vants or laundresses, and in 1929, fully 86 percent were in the service sector,

including domestic service.³⁵ Nationally, in 1930, 47 percent of all domestic

servants were black women. Looked at from another perspective, in 1940,

when only 11 percent of the nation's employed white women worked in do-

mestic service, 54 percent of its employed black women still did so.³⁶

 

 

30. Storey to Bishop, 12 July 1950, container 18, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS.

31. Rebecca M. Coleman to Ethel Storey, 17 March [1950], container 17, folder 2, PWA

Records, WRHS. Coleman was responding to Storey's letter of 16 March 1950, container 17,

folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS.

32. Ethel S. Storey to Rebecca Coleman, Room 606, 28 March 1950, container 17, folder 2,

PWA Records, WRHS.

33. House Committee Minutes, 17 July 1933, container 9, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS.

This contrasts with the practice of Philadephia's black YWCA, studied by Karen Sue

Mittelman, which raised room rates during the Depression in order to to exclude the lowest-

paid women; see Mittelman, "'A Spirit that Touches the Problems of Today,"' 237-40.

34. Board of Trustees Minutes, 9 October 1928, container 1, volume 2, 132, PWA Records,

WRHS.

35. 1920 figures are from Katzman, Seven Days a Week, 293; 1929 figures are from

Helmbold, "Downward Occupational Mobility During the Great Depression," 144-45.

36. George J. Stigler, Domestic Servants in the United States, 1900-1940 (New York, 1946),

7.

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Contested Terrain                                                         13

 

In a 1936 study of unemployed eighteen- to twenty-one-year-old black

women served by Cleveland-area social service agencies, including the PWA,

seventeen of the eighteen agencies participating in the study characterized the

field of domestic service as open to black as well as white working women,

and fifteen of the eighteen thought courses in "Home Management" (cooking,

serving, and housework) should be offered for black women. Only eight of

the respondents, however, reported that young black women had expressed an

interest in domestic service training, and thirteen noted that the young women

generally did not like domestic service, because of the long hours, low wages,

poor working conditions, and low status.³⁷

The experience of the PWA mirrored this report in many ways.

Throughout its history, the PWA worked to facilitate the entry of black

women into the field of domestic service through its classes, training school,

and employment service. At the same time, however, the PWA experienced

resistance from women wanting to avoid or leave domestic service as quickly

as possible and who were therefore reluctant to invest time and money in ei-

ther beginning or advanced training.

The black and white women leaders of the PWA were united in emphasiz-

ing the value of training in domestic service for black women who had to earn

a living. Throughout the 1920s, the PWA's leaders, like many black educa-

tors throughout the nation, strove to train and place as many domestic ser-

vants as possible, constantly working to improve their training facilities and

employment service.³⁸ After establishing the Sarah C. Hills Training School

in 1931, the Board of Trustees and its Home Economics Committee used this

new forum to stress the value of domestic service training.³⁹

 

 

 

37. "Study of the Unemployed Negro Girl," [February 1936], container 8, folder 13, PWA

Records, WRHS.

38. Board of Trustees Minutes, 8 January 1924, container 1, volume 2, 14, PWA Records,

WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 9 February 1926, container 1, volume 2, 76, PWA Records,

WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 8 November 1927, container 1, volume 2, 113, PWA

Records, WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 10 November 1930, container 1, volume 2, 174,

PWA Records, WRHS; Employment Committee Minutes, 14 December 1925, 24 February

1927, container 8, folder 20, PWA Records, WRHS; Home Economics Committee Minutes, 6

December 1927, 2 October 1928, 6 November 1928, 4 December 1928, container 8, folder 20,

PWA Records, WRHS. On the wider support of black educators for domestic service training

for black girls and women in the 1920s, see Phyllis Palmer, Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives

and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920-1945 (Philadelphia, 1989), 98-99.

39. Board of Trustees Minutes, 10 February 1931, container 1, volume 2, 178, PWA

Records, WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 10 March 1931, container 1, volume 2, 180, PWA

Records, WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 10 October 1933, container 1, folder 1, PWA

Records, WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 12 December 1950, container 2, folder 1, PWA

Records, WRHS; Home Economics Committee Minutes, 7 April 1931, 17 November 1937, 2

March 1938, 4 May 1938, container 8, folder 20, PWA Records, WRHS; "Where Girls Learn

to Keep House in the Modern Way," Sarah C. Hills Training School brochure, [1935], con-

tainer 36, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS; PWA, "Evaluation Report," 1938, container 8,

folder 13, PWA Records, WRHS.

• 9
 

14                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

The PWA continued to encourage domestic employment throughout the

1930s and 1940s. In a 1938 radio address reproduced in the PWA's monthly

publication for its financial supporters, The Open Door, Jane Hunter articu-

lated the philosophy of other black leaders of the PWA when she claimed that

"for many years to come, the great mass of Negro girls must carve out of the

domestic field a livelihood for themselves and [their] families.... Negro

women leaders feel a definite responsibility for the future usefulness of the

girls, who must find a way to get an education" in domestic service. Hunter

went on to say that by being better servants in white peoples' homes, young

black women would promote interracial understanding and harmony, one of

her primary goals for black women.⁴⁰ In her 1940 autobiography, Hunter

wrote that domestic service was particularly appropriate for "those Negroes

whom poor endowment, inadequate training, and racial prejudice" bar from

other occupations.⁴¹ In response to the charge that "our undertaking is degrad-

ing to the Negro girl, because it deprives her of ambitions to reach a higher

economic status," Hunter argued that not all black women would be able to

do better, even if they received help from others.⁴²

One reason the PWA's leaders felt it necessary to stress repeatedly the value

of training and employment in domestic service was the continual resistance

of their clientele to such service. In addition to refusing many domestic ser-

vice jobs because of inadequate wages, women often "insisted on going home

at night" in order to be with their families and to get away from their em-

ployers, a practice many employers did not appreciate.⁴³ Even those women

without families of their own often felt "deprived of their social life" and "so

shut off from the family [for whom they worked] that they are lonesome

without companionship," Jane Hunter reported in 1946.⁴⁴ Both young black

women first entering the work force and older black women already active in

the labor force denigrated the value of training in domestic service because of

their eagerness to move into other fields of work as soon as possible.⁴⁵ The

 

 

40. Hunter, radio address, 10 July 1938, printed in The Open Door, 13 (July, 1938), 2,

container 14, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS.

41. Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 154.

42. Ibid., 156.

43. Employment Committee Minutes, 7 April 1927, container 8, folder 20, PWA Records,

WRHS. See also Ruth Blake to Jane Hunter, 31 May 1939, container 8, folder 20, PWA

Records, WRHS. David M. Katzman has documented the crucial role that black women

played in shifting domestic service in northern cities from live-in to day work; see Katzman,

Seven Days a Week, 273. Joanne Meyerowitz found Chicago's black women adrift also fa-

vored day work to live-in work in the early-twentieth century; see Meyerowitz, Women Adrift,

78.

44. Hunter to William F. McDermott, Cleveland Plain Dealer, 27 March 1946, container 14,

folder 3, PWA Records, WRHS.

45. Board of Trustees Minutes, 9 February 1926, container 1, volume 2, 74-81, PWA

Records, WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 8 November 1927, container 1, volume 2, 113,

PWA Records, WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 10 November 1930, container 1, volume 2,

• 10
 

Contested Terrain                                                  15

"opposition of Negro women to training in domestic arts" continued through- out the second quarter of the century, with the Home Economics Committee lamenting in 1942, for example, that it continued to be "hard to get girls for the training school."46 Although most PWA leaders were still urging black women to enter do- mestic service in 1942, a few began to support, as World War II progressed,     174, PWA Records, WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 10 March 1931, container 1, volume 2, 180, PWA Records, WRHS; Board of Trustees Minutes, 13 October 1942, container 1, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS; Employment Committee Minutes, 24 February 1927, container 8, folder 20, PWA Records, WRHS; Home Economics Committee Minutes, 6 December 1927, 6 November 1928, 4 December 1928, 4 May 1938, container 8, folder 20, PWA Records, WRHS; Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 164. This same aversion to domestic service has been observed among many groups of women workers. See Nancy B. Sinkoff, "Educating for 'Proper' Jewish Womanhood: A Case Study in Domesticity and Vocational Training, 1897- 1926," American Jewish History, 77 (June, 1988), 572-99, esp. 585; Katzman, Seven Days a Week, 268; Joanne Reitano, "Working Girls Unite," American Quarterly, 36 (Spring, 1984), 112-34; Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, 28; Palmer, Domesticity and Dirt, 73-74. 46. Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 164; Board of Trustees Minutes, 13 October 1942, container 1, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS.

• 11
 

16                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

the movement of black women workers into industrial work.⁴⁷ The workers

themselves initiated this movement into new job opportunities at the earliest

possible moment, welcoming the chance to increase their earnings, status,

and free time.⁴⁸ The staff of the PWA in turn saw this as an opportunity for

"racial uplift," claiming that the working women's "impression would deter-

mine whether the Negro girls and men would be retained after the war."⁴⁹ The

industrial workers, realizing that societal attitudes toward both their gender

and their race constrained these opportunities, expressed concerns at a 1944

PWA-sponsored discussion group for "industrial girls" about "being accepted

from minority groups"; each black female factory worker also faced the diffi-

culty of "convincing her immediate family that she ... could work" in indus-

try despite her gender.⁵⁰ Postwar cutbacks in the nation's industrial produc-

tion after 1945, however, eliminated these industrial employment opportuni-

ties for the PWA's black women.

Whether working as domestic servants or factory operatives, PWA residents

did not spend all of their time at work, and it was in the realm of leisure ac-

tivities that they came into the most conflict with the middle-class staff and

Board members of the PWA. Kathy Peiss has documented the struggle be-

tween white reformers and white working-class women over appropriate forms

of leisure in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in New York

City; the experience of the women of the PWA demonstrates that definitions

of appropriate leisure-time behavior for working-class women continued to be

a source of contention well into the middle of the twentieth century, in this

case for black women.⁵¹ In particular, the PWA's black working-class and

middle-class women frequently disagreed about gender norms for drinking,

dancing, curfews, and dating.

The leaders of the PWA and many of its residents continually struggled

over whether or not it was appropriate for PWA residents to drink alcoholic

beverages. PWA rules for residents stated that "the use of intoxicants in any

form or the bringing of them into the building . . . will be sufficient cause

 

 

 

47. Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 22 October 1943, container 2, volume 2,

191, PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 3 June 1943, con-

tainer 2, volume 2, 183-84, PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting

Minutes, 28 February 1944, container 2, volume 2, 222, PWA Records, WRHS.

48. Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 3 June 1943, container 2, volume 2, 183-

84, PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 28 February 1944,

container 2, volume 2, 222, PWA Records, WRHS.

49. Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 3 June 1943, container 2, volume 2, 183-

84, PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 7 October 1943,

container 2, volume 2, 188, PWA Records, WRHS.

50. Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 28 February 1944, container 2, volume 2,

222, PWA Records, WRHS.

51. Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century

New York (Philadelphia, 1986), 163-84.

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Contested Terrain                                                        17

 

for immediate cancellation of all privileges."⁵² The agency repeatedly identi-

fied "saloons and wine rooms . . . night clubs and cabarets" and "small beer

parlors" as destructive influences within their neighborhood, and lobbied

Cleveland's city officials to remove them.⁵³

These establishments were destructive not only because of the numbers of

"lewd men and wretched women" they drew to the neighborhood, but also

"because they attract young people from the worthwhile programs of social

agencies and direct them into wrong channels."⁵⁴ PWA residents nevertheless

patronized these businesses, despite the efforts of PWA leaders who lamented

the behavior of these "drunk, loud, boisterous" women.⁵⁵ The behavior of

"the woman who . . . goes out and . . . returns at three, four and five o'clock

in the morning so drunk that we wish she had not returned" reflected her un-

willingness to accept the norms of the PWA's middle-class leaders.⁵⁶ The

PWA, for its part, did enforce its code as best it could, evicting residents who

refused to abide by its rules, whether they did their drinking elsewhere or in

their own rooms, where PWA staff and Board members periodically found

beer bottles during spot inspections.⁵⁷

Dancing was also a source of contention between the middle-class and

working-class black women of the PWA. Writing in 1940, Jane Hunter noted

that in the neighborhood surrounding the PWA, "dance halls have multiplied,

and their unsavory atmosphere is a growing cause of concern."⁵⁸ Dancing was

undeniably a popular pastime among the young women served by the PWA;

35 percent of applicants for residency at the PWA in November and December

1946, for example, expressed an interest in attending dances.⁵⁹ Rather than

prohibiting dancing altogether, therefore, the PWA sponsored carefully super-

vised dances on its own premises.⁶⁰ Hours, choice of music, level of light-

 

 

52. "Application for Membership and Residence in the Phillis Wheatley Association,

Cleveland, Ohio," container 32, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS.

53. Evaluation and Budget Committee, "Agency Information," 1937, 2, container 8, folder

13, PWA Records, WRHS; Group Work Council, "Agency Evaluation Outline," 6 April 1942,

container 12, folder 6, PWA Records, WRHS.

54. Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 132; Evaluation and Budget Committee, "Agency

Information," 1937, 2, container 8, folder 13, PWA Records, WRHS.

55. Jane Hunter to Mr. L.C. Snyder, Superintendent of Dining Service, New York Central

System, 3 September 1947, container 15, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS.

56. Ibid.

57. Ethel Storey to Flora Burton, Room 905, 4 January 1950, container 17, folder 2, PWA

Records, WRHS; "Personal Inspection," n.d., container 2, folder 4, PWA Records, WRHS;

House and Cafeteria Committee Report, May 1943, container 2, folder 4, PWA Records,

WRHS.

58. Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 131.

59. Residence applications, November and December 1946, container 32, folder 1, PWA

Records, WRHS.

60. Louise Walton, radio address, 20 November 1934, container 9, folder 3, PWA Records,

WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 13 April 1938, container 2, volume 2, 2,

PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 14 December 1938,

• 13
 

18                                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

ing, and behavior at these dances quickly became sources of conflict between

PWA staff members and the young women attending the dances, who had

their own ideas about how the dances should be run and did not hesitate to as-

sert themselves on the issue.⁶¹ Unwilling to give up their "noisy boisterous"

ways and their dimly-lit dancing, the female dancers were subject to frequent

disciplinary action by PWA leaders.⁶² The staff repeatedly discussed the diffi-

culty of controlling conditions at the dances, where, for example, on one oc-

casion "the girls had wanted very little light in the two rooms where they

danced."⁶³ Staff members attempted to enforce the agency's standards, even to

the point of banning certain individuals from attending PWA dances, but the

dancers continued to struggle for more control over how they spent their

leisure time.⁶⁴

A third problem area for PWA leaders and their constituency was the

PWA's curfew. Residents were expected to be in by midnight at the very lat-

est, and to leave their names at the desk if they expected to be out any later.⁶⁵

Those who came in late were listed on the Night Matron's Report, along with

 

 

 

 

container 2, volume 2, 57, PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting

Minutes, 23 September 1943, container 2, volume 2, 184, PWA Records, WRHS; Education

Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 21 February 1944, container 2, volume 2, 220, PWA

Records, WRHS; "Report of Youth Activities of the Phillis Wheatley Association for February

1950," container 7, folder 6, PWA Records, WRHS. This same reaction has been noted among

New York City's Jewish reformers in the early-twentieth century by Nancy B. Sinkoff and

among Philadelphia's black reformers in the 1940s by Karen Sue Mittelman. See Sinkoff,

"Educating for 'Proper' Jewish Womanhood," 586-89; Mittelman, "'A Spirit that Touches the

Problems of Today,"' 234.

61. Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 13 April 1938, container 2, volume 2, 2,

PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 11 February 1943, con-

tainer 2, volume 2, 163, PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes,

23 September 1943, container 2, volume 2, 184, PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department

Staff Meeting Minutes, 21 February 1944, container 2, volume 2, 219, PWA Records, WRHS;

Health and Physical Education Committee Report, 19 March 1938, container 8, folder 19, PWA

Records, WRHS; Dorothy James, "Resume of the Work of the Younger Girls Department,"

April 1941, container 13, folder 6; "Report of Youth Activities of the Phillis Wheatley

Association for February 1950," container 7, folder 6, PWA Records, WRHS.

62. Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 23 September 1943, container 2, volume

2, 184, PWA Records, WRHS. See also ibid.

63. Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 21 February 1944, container 2, volume 2,

219, PWA Records, WRHS.

64. Health and Physical Education Committee Report, 19 March 1938, container 8, folder 19,

PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 13 April 1938, container

2, volume 2, 2, PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department Staff Meeting Minutes, 23

September 1943, container 2, volume 2, 184, PWA Records, WRHS; Education Department

Staff Meeting Minutes, 21 February 1944, container 2, volume 2, 220, PWA Records, WRHS;

"Report of Youth Activities of the Phillis Wheatley Association for February 1950," container

7, folder 6, PWA Records, WRHS.

65. Residents Meeting Report, 17 June 1938, container 9, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS;

Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 128; Jane Hunter to House Guests, 24 September 1945, con-

tainer 14, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS.

• 14
 

Contested Terrain                                                     19

 

the time they returned.⁶⁶ As part of an ongoing effort "to prevent girls from

staying out late at night," the Night Matron spoke with repeat offenders, the

PWA discontinued elevator service to the upper floors late at night, PWA

staff members sometimes reported the matter to the woman's parents, and ul-

timately, the PWA occasionally evicted a woman, especially if she repeatedly

stayed out all night.⁶⁷

By examining the Night Matron's Reports for 1933, the year for which

they are most complete, and comparing them with statistics on the number of

women then living in the residence, we get some sense of the frequency with

which residents flouted the midnight curfew.⁶⁸ In the month of January

1933, for example, twenty-four different women returned after midnight or

stayed out all night at least once. This is 30 percent of the eighty-one differ-

ent women who lived in the PWA residence at one time or another during the

month. Of those twenty-four women, twenty-one, or 26 percent of the

eighty-one women, repeated the offense at least once during the first quarter of

the year (January through March), including one woman who returned late

seventeen of the fifty nights recorded during those three months. Almost one-

third of the women thus ignored the curfew regulations at some point during

the month, and more than one-quarter did so more than once. Breaking the

curfew was apparently not a rare phenomenon, but rather was a relatively

common form of protest against the rules made by middle-class PWA lead-

ers.⁶⁹

Since 66 percent of January's twenty-four curfew-breakers reappeared at

least once on the Night Matron's Reports during June 1933, September 1933,

or January 1934, it would seem that the leaders of the PWA countenanced this

behavior to some degree, even though they never condoned it. Indeed, in

1938, the House Committee commented that "it is rather unfortunate for

young people to stay out late so many nights during the week," but went on

to note that "all young people stay out late, especially when they attend par-

ties because the parties do not begin until very late."⁷⁰

The struggles over drinking, dancing, and curfews reflected a larger struggle

 

66. Night Matron's Reports, container 10, folder 8, PWA Records, WRHS.

67. "Housekeeper's Responsibilities," n.d., container 11, folder 10, PWA Records, WRHS.

See Night Matron's Report, week of 29 January 1933, container 10, folder 8, PWA Records,

WRHS; House Committee Minutes, 16 May 1938, container 9, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS;

Ethel Storey to Mrs. Barney Johnson, 12 February 1948, container 15, folder 3, PWA Records,

WRHS; Ethel Storey to Harriett Cantrell, Room 416, 29 September 1950, container 18, folder 2,

PWA Records, WRHS.

68. The following statistics are based on the PWA Night Matron's Reports for January

through March 1933, container 10, folder 8, and the PWA Housing Reports for 1933, container

9, folder 1; both in PWA Records, WRHS.

69. Nancy B. Sinkoff also found ignoring curfews to be relatively common among the young

Jewish women she studied in early twentieth-century New York City. See Sinkoff, "Educating

for 'Proper' Jewish Womanhood," 596.

70. House Committee Minutes, 16 May 1938, container 9, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS.

• 15
 

20                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

over the young women's heterosocial and heterosexual activity. In an effort

to keep the residents' contact with men as closely supervised as possible, the

PWA provided lounges "where the young women may receive members of the

opposite sex under acceptable home conditions and at reasonable hours."⁷¹

This was not considered an acceptable alternative by a number of the resi-

dents, however, who chose instead to "exchange tokens of affection with their

male friends" either on the sidewalk outside the building or in cars parked

nearby, much to the chagrin of the staff and Board of the PWA.⁷²

Regardless of whether such behavior actually led to the "immoral conduct"

all residents had promised to eschew upon taking up residence in the PWA,

the leaders of the PWA feared that it might.⁷³ Jane Hunter no doubt did not

endear herself to certain of the residents by keeping "a vigilant ear to the

switchboard in my office to catch conversations of a doubtful character, and to

intercept assignations."⁷⁴ Hunter would, accompanied by a police officer,

"sometimes follow couples to places of assignation, rescue the girl, and assist

in the arrest of her would-be seducer."⁷⁵ Her successor, Ethel Storey, simi-

larly enforced PWA norms for residents, although she was less given to such

public action, preferring instead to write them privately regarding these infrac-

tions of the rules and to evict them if all else failed.⁷⁶

The gender-based norms governing the behavior of the PWA's black work-

ing-class women were, thus, continually contested by those women, through

an ongoing process involving cooperation and conflict between them and the

organization's middle-class reformers. These gender norms were deeply influ-

enced by considerations of race and class, as well as gender, in the realms of

both employment and leisure.

Both the PWA's middle-class reformers and its working-class women rec-

ognized that paid work was necessary for the working-class black women and

accepted it as a normal part of their gender role. The two groups of women

 

71. "Questionnaire to Agencies Providing Housing for Young Men or Women," [1949],

container 9, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS. See also PWA Annual Report, [1920], container

3, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS; "Rules and Regulations," n.d., container 9, folder 1, PWA

Records, WRHS.

72. Juanita Baker, PWA Assistant Executive Secretary, to Mary Pritchard, Room 708, 3

October 1949, container 17, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS. See also Juanita Baker to Ruth

Waite, Room 421, 3 October 1949, container 17, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS; Ethel Storey

to Residents, 27 June 1949, container 9, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS; Ethel Storey to

Residents, 29 June 1950, container 8, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS. Nancy B. Sinkoff has

also noted this concern about heterosexual liaisons in her study of New York City's German

Jewish female reformers. See Sinkoff, "Educating for 'Proper' Jewish Womanhood," 596.

73. "Application for Membership and Residence in the Phillis Wheatley Association,

Cleveland, Ohio," n.d., container 32, folder 1, PWA Records, WRHS.

74. Hunter, A Nickel and A Prayer, 128.

75. Ibid., 128-29.

76. Storey to Residents, 27 June 1949, container 9, folder 2, PWA Records, WRHS; Storey to

Harriett Cantrell, Room 416, 29 September 1950, container 18, folder 2, PWA Records,

WRHS.

• 16
 

Contested Terrain                                             21

 

sometimes differed, however, on the extent to which and under what circum-

stances the working-class women should be held financially responsible, as in

the case of PWA room rents. They differed even more on the desirability of

domestic service as a life-long career for black working women. The PWA's

leaders exhorted the working women to enter the field of domestic service,

rather than actively seeking out and promoting alternative employment.

Whether or not the white and black leaders could have succeeded, they chose

to forego other avenues of employment for their black clients because they

accepted what they perceived to be the unalterable realities of racism within

their city.

The working-class black women apparently never accepted domestic service

as the desirable employment option that the middle-class women claimed it

was, although they did recognize that it was often their only option. Even

so, they refused to make the long-term commitment to it that middle-class

women desired, resisting PWA efforts to characterize it as skilled labor requir-

ing extensive training. Rather than try to raise the status of the field of do-

mestic service, working-class black women chose to minimize the amount of

time they spent as domestics and to modify their job-related behavior in order

to make service more bearable.

When industrial jobs became available for Cleveland's black women during

World War II, the PWA's working-class women eagerly sought them out.

These women were eventually supported by the middle-class PWA leaders,

who came to accept factory work as acceptable employment for black women.

Only with the advent of war-generated industrial opportunities in the early

1940s, therefore, did gender-based norms for black women's employment be-

gin to enhance, rather than constrain, their economic opportunities. At other

times, however, economic realities growing out of societal racism prevented

these women from expanding their realm of acceptable employment much be-

yond the service sector.

The greatest forum for conflict in the construction of gender norms for the

PWA's working-class black women, as we have seen, was how they spent

their leisure time. The middle-class PWA leaders strove to enforce their own

norms regarding drinking alcoholic beverages, dancing, curfews, and heteroso-

cial and heterosexual activities. These issues were, as well, matters on which

the working-class women continually challenged the authority of the PWA

staff and Board members.

In general, however, gender norms restricted the working-class women's

leisure activities, constraining their behavior and their opportunities for relax-

ation. This was, indeed, the goal of the PWA's leaders, who wanted to ensure

that these women would not fall prey to prostitution or even occasional sex-

ual impropriety; these middle-class black women were also concerned with el-

evating society's opinion of the morality of all black women. The working-

• 17
 

22                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

class black women do not seem to have always shared this concern, and, like

their white counterparts, frequently chose to reject middle-class standards of

behavior as inappropriate for their lives.

 

Although still subject to coercion by PWA leaders, particularly through the

threat of eviction from the PWA residence, the PWA's working-class black

women were able to exert some control over their recreational opportunities.

While never completely successful in revising the gender norms regarding

leisure which middle-class black and white women held for them, the work-

ing-class black women of the PWA did repeatedly challenge those norms

through their unwillingness to accept them. But given their dependence on

the PWA for housing and employment assistance as well as recreation, they

were severely limited in their ability to reject the PWA leaders' supervision of

their leisure activities.

The context within which working-class black women strove for greater au-

tonomy in defining their lives was shaped by their race and class, as well as

their gender. Because they were working-class, black, and women, they were

expected to contribute financially to their families throughout their lives

while being relegated by American society to the least desirable types of em-

ployment. Thus they predominated in domestic service between 1920 and

1950, a time when that field of employment was shrinking, and they contin-

ued to be largely excluded from clerical and sales work, occupations dominated

numerically by white women.

The racism of the larger society was not only the most significant factor in

shaping the gender norms for these women's employment expectations, but

also played a direct role in determining their leisure norms. Middle-class

black women were reacting to the presence of racist stereotypes when they ar-

gued that the race as a whole could be uplifted only when the sexual morals of

black women were recognized by white society as being equivalent to those of

white women. Ironically, the middle-class black women of the PWA strove

unrelentingly to restrict the leisure activities of their working-class counter-

parts at the same time that gender norms regarding white women's leisure ac-

tivities were being relaxed.

This study, then, demonstrates that gender norms for women from 1920 to

1950 were inseparably linked to their race and class. The role that women

played in defining their own lives through constructing the gender norms

which governed their existence depended, therefore, not only on the specific

historical conditions in which they lived, but also on their position in the hi-

erarchies of class and race within American society.

• 18