Talk With You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935

by Cheryl D. Hicks

With this book, Cheryl Hicks brings to light the voices and viewpoints of black working-class women, especially southern migrants, who were the subjects of urban and penal reform in early-twentieth-century New York. Hicks compares the ideals of racial uplift and reform programs of middle-class white and black activists to the experiences and perspectives of those whom they sought to protect and, often, control.

In need of support as they navigated the discriminatory labor and housing markets and contended with poverty, maternity, and domestic violence, black women instead found themselves subject to hostility from black leaders, urban reformers, and the police. Still, these black working-class women struggled to uphold their own standards of respectable womanhood. Through their actions as well as their words, they challenged prevailing views regarding black women and morality in urban America. Drawing on extensive archival research, Hicks explores the complexities of black working-class women's lives and illuminates the impact of racism and sexism on early-twentieth-century urban reform and criminal justice initiatives.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

372 pages, Hardcover

First published December 13, 2010

Reviews

[Joshunda Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cheryl Hicks raises some great, fascinating points about the protection of black women migrants from the South in urban New York in the 1890s and 1900s that are still issues being debated today. Actually, that's pretty eerie - that W.E.B. Dubois was concerned that there were far more single black women in urban spaces than there were wage-earning black women (sounds like one of the stories we've seen about the sad plight of single black women, no?) which placed working class black women in danger of being (gasp!) immoral in 1890 is profound in 2011. Those conversations still happen. The discussion about the value of protecting black women -- from men, police and institutions -- when no one really did, is an everlasting question and Hicks lays it out wonderfully. I would have never pegged Paul Laurence Dunbar as abusive, but...so it goes.

[Nuha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completely blew my mind! I didn't know so much of this history, especially the way Northern prison administration essentially carried the same racist principles as their Southern counterparts. I thought the later portions of the book on parole systems was particularly illuminating. In general, I love how Hicks centers the narratives by Black incarcerated women, using their own phrases and quotes from personal letters & returns a sense of agency.

[Asta Schmitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book goes into a bunch of topics relating to working class black women and girls in New York circa 1890-1935. You catch a glimpse of a vast array of lives. It introduced me to ass-kicking activists like Victoria Earle Matthews and probation officer Grace P. Campbell. It also revealed Paul Laurence Dunbar was a rapist and wifebeater.

One thing the book shows without a doubt is how black women were disproportionally arrested (over nothing) by a corrupt police force to then be sent off to reformatories or prisons by corrupt judges. The attitude towards black women and girls was punitive rather than rehabilitative and as political winds changed that only got worse. Every single problem faced by these women in the early 1900s is still a problem today and that blows my mind.

I found it enlightening to read about the experiences of the people who were targeted in New York's race riot(s). It's one thing to read a line in a history book saying that happened, it's another to hear the testimonies of the people who were directly impacted. This book also illustrates very well how life in New York was every bit as segregated as life in the South. There were differences in wages but there was still rampant discrimination in the housing and job markets.

This study does a good job of showing all the different aspects that made up the life of working class black women in NYC and how discrimination impacted every single facet. It begs the question where the people in this socio-economic group would be if they hadn't been forced to spend all their energy fighting a system rigged against them. It begs the question where America would be had it actually offered equal rights and opportunities to all of its citizens.

The only downside to the book is its academic writing style. And it made me want to yell at long gone dead people and their Victorian/racist/sexist bullshit.

[Emma Efing · Rating 4 out of 5]

fairly good. a few descriptions that I wish were more fleshed out