Ames s Long Battle Against Lynch Law - 1257 Words

The contents of this book is a fascinating study over Jessie Daniel Ames, who was a southern woman who played major roles in several local social movements between the two world wars- as the very first President of the Texas league of woman voters, leader in the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, Director of Woman’s Work for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in the 1920’s, and following that decade as the head of the association of southern Woman for the prevention of Lynching (ASWPL). The book deals both with Ames’s work in the woman’s movement and her efforts as a white liberal in the racist south. Ames’s long battle against lynch law gave her an opportunity to merge two basic interests-feminist concerns and racial reform. She†¦show more content†¦Hall s importance on the anti-racist character of the Southern women s anti-lynching campaign is seriously misleading. Although Hall reports the racism of white women leaders of various anti-lynching initiatives toward black women collaborators, â€Å"But the notion of â€Å"racial integrity which white woman asserted as a fundamental goal, functioned for blacks as a code word for segregation.† (100). she does not deliver a continuous examination of the contradictory, often mutually aggressive impulses these leaders displayed. However, in all fairness, Hall does report that within the white women s movement; spontaneity gave way to a reassertion of traditional hierarchies and assump tions†¦ (95). Ironically, during this influential period of women s consciousness, the plight of black men provided a central opportunity for white women to participate in the forbidden arena of public talk about race and sex. These same white women leaders summarily rejected black women s call for suffrage and equal treatment with white women. â€Å"When we yield to public opinion and make ourselves say only what we think the public can stand, is there not a danger that we may find ourselves with our larger view conceding what those with the narrow view in demand?† (96). The enormous potential of anti-lynching complaints for establishing a bridge of equality between black and white women was thereby immoral. These early feminine supporters used the very stereotypes that fueled mob hatred