Black Christian Women’s Activism: Seeking Social Justice in a Northern Suburb by Betty Livingston Adams (review)

Adams’ monograph places two black Christian women at the center of religion and politics in Summit, New Jersey. Through the stories of Violet Johnson and Florence Spearing Randolph, Adams describes a white suburban community in terms of race and gender activism. Ordinary black women not only were leaders in their faith communities, but they also played a significant role in American religion and suburbanization.

Johnson and Randolph initially galvanized support for missionary and temperance work, aiming for small improvements in their community. They shifted their focus toward suffrage, which black women significantly aided, endorsing politicians whose policies would promote civic righteousness and urging Christians to understand voting as a spiritual practice. Rising religious and social conservativism in addition to the Great Depression exacerbated racial tensions, resulting in white marginalization of black citizens, and black men’s marginalization of black women. Though Jim Crow settled into the North, Adams argues that Johnson and Randolph’s contribution to black women’s consciousness and activism laid the foundation for the civil-rights movement and womanism.

Adams’ work reveals a number of themes. First, women’s religious clubs, such as the Women’s Auxiliary to the National Baptist Convention and the Women’s Temperance Union, heavily influenced women’s organizing. Black churches launched women into discursive and public leadership amid patriarchal, classist, and racist structures. Second, racial tension took different forms in the North and South. Black women in the North were able to form alliances with white women in ways that southern black women could not, but as Jim Crow spread, these divides became ubiquitous, particularly concerning anti-lynching and civil-rights laws. Third, white racism fueled support of black churches as management sites, which ultimately encouraged black communities to become politically engaged against white supremacy. The white-topped hierarchy that the New Deal favored, however, left many black citizens under the control of white economic power. Fourth, black women held diverse opinions about the relationship between religion, politics, race, gender, and class; they were not unanimous in support of causes or strategies.

Black Christian Women’s Activism explores the mixed motivations behind white people’s support of black church women’s activism, and the complications surrounding the alliance of black church women with white women’s organizations. Adams also explores how these relationships evolved over time. She examines the tenuous relationships between black men and women, particularly in the context of racial and class negotiations locally and nationally. Black women were constantly negotiating women’s work in the church and race work in the women’s movement.

Adams’ book will aid research that explores the relationships between politics and religion, gender and class, community organizing, and history. Her detailed, grassroots account of a lay woman and ordained minister subverts the typical top-down narrative in its analysis of how the themes of race, gender, class, and history interact with, and influence, each other. Adams’ demonstration of diversity within groups, as well as the variety of organizations devoted to particular issues, strengthens her work and enriches the narrative. She also manages to weave a superb historiography seamlessly throughout the book.