Black Print with a White Carnation: Mildred Brown and the Omaha Star Newspaper, 1938-1989

3. Politics of Respectability

59 3 Politics of Respectability “Wake up! Wake up! And give these future citizens an opportunity to develop into the kind of men and women to which you can point to with pride.” Like a mother shaking her offspring, Mildred Brown Gilbert scolded her readers for not paying enough attention to themselves and their children. It was time to stop “expecting God and white folks” to do what the community could do by itself. If Omaha’s largest minority, especially its black youth, only knew “what to wear, how to wear it, when to wear it and where to wear it,” the mainstream population would take the black community more seriously. As the black matriarch of the neighborhood, Mildred insisted that the Near North Side could “wipeout mass ignorance” by learning proper etiquette. It was a common solution employed by black middle-class women associated with racial uplift organizations such as the Phyllis Wheatley Club and the Urban League. Like many other black American women in the twentieth century, Brown adhered to what Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham labeled as the politics of respectability.1 Higginbotham’s Righteous Discontent explained how this middleclass phenomenon originated among black Baptist women at the 1900 Woman’s Convention. By mirroring the white middle-class cult of true womanhood ideals, the politics of respectability supplied the foundation from which African American church women demanded complete equality with white America. Creating a mainstream respectability also refuted northern white misconceptions of southern black migrants. While the politics of respectability empowered women, it also created a counter middle-class image: “Their discursive contestation was not directed solely at white Americans; the black Baptist 60 Politics of Respectability women condemned what they perceived to be negative practices and attitudes among their own people.”2 Using the example of assimilation equaling empowerment, these ladies insisted that the black minority must conform to the white majority’s societal standard of manners and morals. The respectability gained by mimicking the dominant culture defined black women outside the parameters of the prevailing racist discourse. As the female leader of the Near North Side, Mildred modeled the politics of respectability on a daily basis, whether it was redefining the meaning of black matriarchy; educating, raising, and uplifting Omaha’s black youth for future advancement; establishing herself as a credible, respectable member of the Omaha community; or using her Star newspaper as a vehicle to instruct subscribers and refute racial stereotypes. Like many black women activists, Brown believed that her “moral standing was a steady rock upon which the race could lean” and that it was her womanly duty to provide maternal leadership for the black neighborhood.3 While Mildred Brown Gilbert fashioned a strong public motherly foundation for the community, her private maternal role fluctuated in her household. She had little control over the dynamics of the Gilbert family in the early 1940s. The United States’ entry into World War II reinstated the Selective Service Act. Twenty-four-year-old resident Marvin Kellogg, who was engaged to Mildred’s twenty-two-year-old foster daughter, Ruth, received his draft notice on February 24, 1942. Between Marvin’s basic training and shipping overseas, the couple hurriedly married in March 1942. African Methodist Episcopalian pastor David Harris, the bride’s father, arrived in time to witness their wedding but not officiate at it. Rev. Boyd Johnson conducted the ceremony at the home of Marvin’s mother, Anna Kellogg. Mildred, whom Ruth referred to as Millie, attended the wedding alone. She acted as the mother of the bride at the private nuptial. Days later Technical Sergeant Kellogg rejoined the Army’s Quartermaster Corp. Ruth became accustomed to living by herself in their new house. At the end of World War II in 1945, Kellogg returned to Omaha. With Politics of Respectability 61 two of their three sons already born, he went to work for his motherin -law as a part-time salesperson at the Star. She paid him straight commission on the ads he sold each week. Working also as the first black full-time truck driver for Robert’s Dairy, Kellogg continued his part-time employment at the Omaha Star for the next twenty years. The permanency in Ruth Harris Kellogg’s household eluded the residents of the Gilbert home.4 The Gilberts’ marital discord started with a Star newspaper interview . A question-and-answer dialogue between Shirley Edward Gilbert and Virginia Cheeks of the...