A Respectable Woman: The Public Roles of African American Women in 19th-Century New York

Conclusion

Conclusion In January 1883, the editors of the New York Globe argued that “although twenty years have elapsed since emancipation colored men in some states, north as well as south, are even now subjected to the grossest indignities. They are refused admission to theaters and other places of amusement, unless they take seats in the corner designated for them.” Racism still pervaded the lives of northern blacks. The article described the growing frustration of black New Yorkers with their second-class status, echoed blacks’ questions about how long it was going to last, and called for equal rights.1 While blacks had hoped that the end of southern slavery would elevate their social and economic status, they had soon found that race relations were deteriorating, not improving. A wave of antiblack sentiment reached a high point in the 1863 New York City Draft Riot, and growing residential and occupational discrimination in New York City made many blacks pessimistic about the future of race relations as the racism that they had fought against only seemed to become more virulent . As time went on, they withdrew more and more into their own insular community in Harlem. But although black New Yorkers had been disappointed in their aspirations for racial equality, they continued to fight for equal treatment. 157 Central to their strategy for earning better treatment from whites was a reliance on respectability, which included adherence to white middleclass gender ideals. Black male leaders expected women to devote their lives to their families and to defer to their fathers and husbands. Yet from the very beginning, African American women’s roles could not be confined to home and family. Over the following five decades, black women created and sustained both their community and their families . The paltry wages of black men and a skewed sex ratio pushed many women into the labor force, and their participation in it gave them economic clout. High rates of mortality for black men and an in- flux of black female migrants encouraged black women to create alternative family structures. Racialized violence against black men encouraged black women to stand up, protect their families, and fight back. Black women protected their black community from the resurgent racism during and immediately after the Civil War. Black women’s earnings and ingenuity kept families afloat, especially as the occupational status of black men declined. Women’s local and neighborhood networks were a bulwark against entrenched residential segregation. Finally , women’s ability to negotiate with white employers, city officials, and federal officials allowed the black community to marshal the resources to which it was entitled. Although African American women did not always act like “respectable” women, their efforts guaranteed the survival of New York City’s African American community. The notion of black women’s respectability would continue to be a matter of concern after Reconstruction. The messengers changed, however . Elite black women took up the mantle of dictating respectability with the proliferation of women’s clubs in the late nineteenth century. These clubs carried on the tradition of black women’s political activism, but they revealed growing class differences within the black community. Middle-class black women attempted to impose the standard of respectability on all black women, just as their fathers had attempted to do a generation earlier.2 Nonetheless, black women continued to play a very different role in nineteenth-century New York. They asserted themselves as laborers, family members, community activists, protectors, and decision makers. Although they might have feigned dependence on black men, they actu158 | Conclusion ally had great independence. This dynamic occurred for a variety of reasons . First of all, men’s unemployment, underemployment, low wages, and declining occupational status necessitated married women’s participation in the labor force and gave them more power in their relationships . Second, women, as the heads of many families, had the monopoly of power in their households. Finally, whites viewed black women as less of an economic threat than black men and therefore treated them differently. This became particularly clear during the New York City Draft Riot, when mobs reserved the brunt of their wrath for black men. Women never had an easy time of it, however. They juggled multiple responsibilities at home and at work in the wage-earning sector as they tried to live moral and dignified lives in the face of racism and humiliation. The end of slavery...