South Carolina Women, Volume 2: Their Lives and Times

Overview


The biographical essays in this volume provide new insights into the various ways that South Carolina women asserted themselves in their state and illuminate the tension between tradition and change that defined the South from the Civil War through the Progressive Era. As old rules—including gender conventions that severely constrained southern women—were dramatically bent if not broken, these women carved out new roles for themselves and others.

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Overview


The biographical essays in this volume provide new insights into the various ways that South Carolina women asserted themselves in their state and illuminate the tension between tradition and change that defined the South from the Civil War through the Progressive Era. As old rules—including gender conventions that severely constrained southern women—were dramatically bent if not broken, these women carved out new roles for themselves and others.

The volume begins with a profile of Laura Towne and Ellen Murray, who founded the Penn School on St. Helena Island for former slaves. Subsequent essays look at such women as the five Rollin sisters, members of a prominent black family who became passionate advocates for women’s rights during Reconstruction; writer Josephine Pinckney, who helped preserve African American spirituals and explored conflicts between the New and Old South in her essays and novels; and Dr. Matilda Evans, the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in the state. Intractable racial attitudes often caused women to follow separate but parallel paths, as with Louisa B. Poppenheim and Marion B. Wilkinson. Poppenheim, who was white, and Wilkinson, who was black, were both driving forces in the women’s club movement. Both saw clubs as a way not only to help women and children but also to showcase these positive changes to the wider nation. Yet the two women worked separately, as did the white and black state federations of women’s clubs.

Often mixing deference with daring, these women helped shape their society through such avenues as education, religion, politics, community organizing, history, the arts, science, and medicine. Women in the mid- and late twentieth century would build on their accomplishments.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times—Volume 2 brings together distinguished historians who vividly recapture representative black and white South Carolina women. The articles are lively and the editors ground them in deep historical context that belies any notion of a stagnant state from Reconstruction to World War II. Read any one of these essays and you will want to read them all."—Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History, Yale University

"Charting women’s social activism from the Civil Wars years until the eve of World War II, the compelling essays in South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times—Volume 2, are long overdue. The women profiled in these pages were involved in concerns as diverse as freedmen’s education and woman suffrage, historic preservation and medical care. Through their initiatives, they transformed South Carolina and, at the same time, did much to expand the opportunities and possibilities for the women who came after them."—Bernard E. Powers Jr., author of Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885

"South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times—Volume 2 makes a significant contribution to the body of knowledge about women's lives and work in a quintessentially southern state. Each of the women in this volume is well deserving of study, and together they flesh out a story that scholars have only begun to appreciate piecemeal. Collectively, they present a portrait of energetic and determined women, black and white, who saw needs and injustices in their world and took the responsibility upon themselves to meet those needs and try to right those injustices. Because most of the work on the evolution of women's political and social associations, their work for suffrage, and their impact on women's education and health needs has been focused on the northeastern and New England states, the essays in this volume, focused on black and white southern women, provide a significant addition to this emerging field."—Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, President Emeritus, Sweet Briar College

"While the experiences of the women featured in South Carolina Women range widely in time and circumstance, the essays collectively testify to the power of patriarchy and slaveholding to construct social and gender norms and the pervasiveness of tragedy and hardship in the lives of South Carolina women . . . Anyone interested in further contextualizing southern and women's history will find valuable insights and analysis in each essay." --H-SAWH

"Offers fourteen thoughtful articles on South Carolina women of significance who made diverse contributions to the state, region, and nation during the era bounded by the 1860s and the 1930s."--Journal of American History

“The fourteen essays in South Carolina Women, Volume 2, examine various black and white women who played critical roles in reshaping the economic, social, and political landscape of post-Civil War South Carolina. Together the essays suggest that whether these women embraced traditional Victorian concepts of womanhood or broke with those conventions to claim power as ‘New Women,’ they all secured power for themselves as they helped create a new society.”—Megan Taylor Shockley, Journal of Southern History

“This series has done much since its inception to focus attention on the lives of important, but sometimes little-known, women and their impact on southern history. It also has gone a long way in correcting the historiographical bias of women’s historians who have been preoccupied with other areas of the United States. The second installment of what will be three volumes on South Carolina women fulfills this objective admirably.”—Anne E. Marshall, The South Carolina Historical Magazine

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780820329383
  • Publisher: University of Georgia Press
  • Publication date: 1/1/2010
  • Series: Southern Women: Their Lives and Times Series , #2
  • Edition description: Volume 2
  • Pages: 336
  • Sales rank: 1,316,623
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author


Marjorie Julian Spruill is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina. Valinda W. Littlefield is an assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina. Joan Marie Johnson is a lecturer at Northeastern Illinois University.
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Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction Marjorie Julian Spruill Valinda W. Littlefield Joan Marie Johnson 1

Laura Towne and Ellen Murray: Northern Expatriates and the Foundations of Black Education in South Carolina, 1862-1908 Ronald E. Butchart 12

Martha Fell Schofield and Elizabeth Evelyn Wright: Women Founders of South Carolina African American Schools Larry D. Watson 31

The Rollin Sisters: Black Women in Reconstruction South Carolina Willard B. Gatewood 50

Sarah Morgan Dawson: A New Southern Woman in Postwar Charleston Giselle Roberts 68

Sallie Chapin: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union and Reconciliation after the Civil War Joan Marie Johnson 87

Louisa B. Poppenheim and Marion B. Wilkinson: The Parallel Lives of Black and White Clubwomen Joan Marie Johnson 105

Lucy Dugas Tillman: Child Custody, Motherhood, and the Power of a Populist Demagogue Michele Grigsby Coffey 128

Eulalie Salley and Emma Dunovant: A Complementary Pair of Suffragists James O. Farmer 144

Anita Pollitzer: A South Carolina Advocate for Equal Rights Amy Thompson Mccandless 166

Irene Goldsmith Kohn: An Assimilated "New South" Daughter and Jewish Women's Activism in Early Twentieth-Century South Carolina Belinda Friedman Gerge1 190

Susan Pringle Frost: Historic Preservation in Charleston and Gendered Identity in the Emerging New South Stephanie E. Yuhl 215

Josephine Pinckney: Literary Interpreter of the Modern South Barbara L. Bellows 234

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith and Elizabeth O'Neill Verner: Champions of the Charleston Renaissance Martha R. Severens 249

Matilda Evans: Health Care Activism of a Black Woman Physician Darlene Clark Hine 266

Notes on Contributors 293

Index 297

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