Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages between the Two World Wars

3 NEW NEGRO WIVES

Throughout the summer of 1937, James Curwood tried to convince Sarah to accept the role that he envisioned for her: a stay-­at-­ home wife devoted to her husband’s comfort. In one particularly vivid version of his ideal, he wrote: I have known all along— ​ every [sic] since I met you, that you are the type of woman who is best suited to love and be loved by your husband. I.E. [sic] you are fitted for home life and not a career. Hence my anxiety to capture you. You would of course acquit yourself admirably in any field [in which] necessity entered you, but you will make a much finer wife than you will a social or business executive. That is why I am anxious to get going myself. So that I can give you a home to fuss with and in which you can entertain your club friends, etc. You naturally need to be busy— ​ it is your nature, but you actively need to be governed by you. You will make a swell club organizer in the church, and I am sure our members will adore you. You are so adorable. So it is all right with me if you wish to enter into domestic employment . . . for a year or so until our bills are disposed of.1 NewNegro Wives 3  84 new negro wives Her response, as she tried to rationalize her job with the Boston Urban League, was to invoke the necessity of advancing the race, an argument that she knew he would accept. In fact, she used uplift ideology to argue that she should work outside her home: “I want to spend my life in bettering the race,” she wrote, “i.e. bettering possibilities of the race— ​spiritually, economically, politically, etc.— ​I now have a chance to work on the economic aspect; later with you on the spiritual.”2 In her opinion, domestic service, while fitting James’s criteria for a job that would not develop into a career, was the last thing she wanted to do. She also rejected James’s restrictive vision of her as a socialite and clubwoman. Instead, she envisioned her professional endeavors on behalf of the race as working in concert with her role as a wife. Between the wars, many African Americans believed that married black women had three responsibilities: to themselves, to their families , and to the race.3 Most debate over wifehood centered around the appropriate balance of these three roles: Did service to husbands and families eclipse women’s attention to their own careers or interests? In the midst of women’s evolving roles in the interwar period, African American men and women attempted to define a modern role for black wives. Both men and women kept some notions of wifely domesticity, but others (mainly women) sought to drastically expand women’s public presence. The notion of striking a balance between domesticity and public activities was not new in the 1920s. Since the turn of the century, black women had been seeking professional work, bolstered by their families of origin and the expectation that they care for their communities . They had also assumed both paid and unpaid work on behalf of their families.4 In the 1920s and 1930s, however, New Negro wives found themselves negotiating changing roles for women in the wider American culture and, as seen in Chapter 2, dealing with the growing conviction that New Negro men needed the spotlight in public life while women should be confined to supporting roles. The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 meant that electoral politics was no longer a legal connection between husbands and wives. For the first time, marriage was not a unit for governing Americans.5 In addition, after World War I, African American women 85  new negro wives sought to continue their participation in the professions as the overall numbers of black professionals grew. Wartime jobs had not only brought more African Americans to the industrial North; they also allowed women of all races to work for more pay. Woman su∏rage brought a sense of opportunity and empowerment to would-­ be women workers, as did the increased availability of contraception and divorces.6 Still, not all African Americans welcomed these changes. On the surface, New Negro men extolled the virtues of women, especially their wives, and assigned them to a supportive role. But those same men often belittled...