Kansas Grows the Best Wheat and the Best Race Women: Black Women's Club Movement in Kansas 1900-30

Abstract

The rise of club women in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries challenged established definitions of true womanhood, redefined leadership roles in Black communities, and questioned the complexities of economic class status. According to Deborah Gray White's analysis, Black women "with full knowledge of the ravages being wrought, proclaimed the advent of the `woman's era' and came forth with a plan that made Black women the primary leaders of the race, a plan based on the promise of equality between Black men and women." Although club women's histories abound, most take concern with women in southern states, northern cities, and east coast urban centers who were battling urbanization, Jim Crow, and economic blight, all while ushering in a new middle class generation. Unlike the well represented areas of the nation, there is no book-length discussion examining club women in Kansas. Nevertheless, I argue that the women participating in the greater Kansas club movement tailored their programs to strengthen their communities. Out-migration became a constant problem for Black communities in Kansas, causing leaders to search for ways to attract and retain potential citizens. Neighborhoods struggled to bridge rural life and an emerging urban society. Finally, Blacks worked to bring about the reality of full citizenship within the state and the region. Monitoring the ebb and flow of unstable migration patterns, addressing the needs of rural women, and re-visioning the failed and unfulfilled promises of the state, Kansas women accomplished more than just incorporated art clubs; they strengthened a community in transition, setting in motion the construction of a Black middle class. The significance of my work lies in its exploration of the wide-ranging work of the little known women's club phenomenon in the Central Plains, but perhaps more importantly in the inclusion of resources that document this history in order to map a more complex picture of the intersections of race, class, gender, and region. My research is a significant contribution to the study of the Great Migration, examining movement patterns of African Americans in and out of the Central Plains beyond the Exodusters saga or narratives of the western frontier. Often neglected for southern, northern or western studies, Black populations in the Central Plains in the early twentieth century tell of a people in search of full citizenship, land and opportunity. Analyzing African Americans in the Central Plains illustrates the agricultural roots of the region and how the process of urbanization influenced their communities, a transition repeated throughout the nation during a time of migration and industrialization. While many African Americans left Kansas for points farther west, Oklahoma or even northeast, studying those who remained in the region is important to the complexity of the larger narrative of African American history. Interdisciplinary in nature, my research engages historical scholarship, archival collections, Black feminist theory, literary studies and material culture to provide a rich source of information to better understand the role of "women's work" in the development African American communities in Kansas.