
Black Women’s Christian Activism
Seeking Social Justice in a Northern Suburb
240 pages
April, 2018
ISBN: 9781479814817
In Black Women’s Christian Activism, Betty Livingston Adams examines the oft overlooked role of non-elite black women in the growth of northern suburbs and American Protestantism in the first half of the twentieth century.
Reviews
"With care and nuance, Betty Livingston Adams illuminates the social worlds and religious activism of a group of ordinary black working women who made extraordinary contributions to black public life. Well researched, engaging, and accessible, Adams’s work adds new dimensions to our understanding of the history of the black women’s club movement, their participation in interracial social reform and political organizing, and leadership in black churches. She has done a great service in restoring these women to a place of importance in the narrative of African American religious history."
—Judith Weisenfeld, Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion, Princeton University
"This lucid and engrossing reframing of the suburbs adds to a growing body of research uncovering the overlooked and courageous social activism of working-class African-American women. Adams's work should fundamentally alter the way we talk and write about the civil rights movement in the United States, from where and when it happened, to who contributed to its real momentum."
—Morris Davis, Drew University
"Adams follows the fascinating careers of Violet Johnson (1870-1939) and Florence Spearing Randolph (1866-1951), black women born in the South following emancipation, who traveled to New York City to find work."
—Christian Century Magazine
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