Gloves, Glasses, and Conversation ~ Women's Literary Clubs

African American women’s clubs sprouted up in Atlanta during the first two decades of the twentieth century, providing mental stimulation, cultural refinement, and avenues for social service among high society women desiring a more active role in the Progressive Era intellectual conversation. The three main literary clubs in the city were the Inquirers (est. 1909), the Chautauqua Circle (est. 1913), and the Utopian Literary Club (est. 1916). Music, fashion, debate, and prayer accompanied book reviews and recitations. The clubs adhered to strict standards of behavior and dress in order to present an image of refined black womanhood. Rather than opening up the organizations to the widest audiences possible, the clubwomen cultivated exclusivity, limiting total membership to 25 persons or less and passing down membership rights within families. In an answer to the Jim Crow policies of exclusion and embarrassment so prominent elsewhere in Atlanta society, these clubs provided an atmosphere of belonging and even of superiority for their members. 

Current perceptions of what “literariness” entails differ markedly from the definition of “literary” in the early twentieth century. The club yearbooks show a much broader definition of “literary” than is common today: Literary activities included debates, discussions on current events, historical research, recitations, quotations, elocution exercises, and more. The word “literary” can be seen as most nearly synonymous with “intellectual”.  Activities which demonstrated advanced reasoning, scholarly engagement, and cultural sophistication were branded as “literary” whether or not they employed a written text. It is hard to distinguish between Atlanta literary clubs and social welfare organizations in the Progressive Era because the two topics blended together. An intellectual society was expected to show concern for the welfare of the community and be in tune to political trends. Rather than merely participating in book clubs, the Chautauqua Circle, Inquirers, and Utopian Literary Club members saw themselves as the intellectual and cultural leaders of Atlanta black women.

Club women had to balance public expectations to serve others as wives and mothers with a desire for self-fulfillment, something more commonly associated with men during the period. In Women’s Era, an early black club magazine published out of Boston in the 1890s, the group walks a fine line between allegiance to domestic values and an urge to branch out:

A great deal of the advice given to women about their staying at home… is wrong altogether, for if a woman stays at home too much she will forget how to manage that home. At the club she will get new ideas from other women of how to live and manage her home and great help in training her children, and to gain experience in various domestic trials.

The Women’s Era argument cleverly caters to domestic virtues while advocating increased activity outside the house.

**Oops, google took me to Women's Era, the "“largest selling women's fortnightly magazine in ENGLISH in India... NOT a Cosmo, Elle or Vogue. Woman's Era is a rather clean magazine.”

In addition to male resistance to female intellectual activity and community activism, black club women faced competition from Georgia’s white women’s clubs. Race turmoil was a central feature of the Georgia women’s club movement at the turn of the century. Well meaning white groups that raised money for charities and advocated for the disenfranchised were also not afraid to lend their support for segregated practices in the South.  Although African American women’s clubs did not gain prominence in Atlanta until the formation of the Neighborhood Union in 1908 and Inquirers in 1909, Northern black women’s clubs were agitating for national recognition by the turn of the century. At the 1900 convention of the General Confederation of Women’s Clubs, Josephine Ruffin of Women’s Era, an African American club from Boston, demanded membership in the segregated General Confederation. Fearing that a precedent of racial inclusion would be established nationwide, white club women from Georgia, led by Georgia native and then-national confederation president Rebecca Lowe, took the lead in contesting Ruffin’s bid for admission. The Georgia delegation even vowed to withdraw from the national association if the black club was admitted, demanding instead that Women’s Era and other black clubs stick to the National Association of Colored Women rather than disrupting the white national organization. Since Southern club women were often discounted in national discussions, the Georgia women sought to take a stand through the issue of segregation.

While white club women in Georgia recognized the need to aid poor blacks, the charity came mixed with prejudice. In 1899, the Georgia Educational League was formed and quickly created a controversy by accepting money from the National Free Kindergarten Association to establish early education for blacks in the state. While on the surface a progressive action, the educational goals were much different than those in white schools, as stated by the head of the club’s kindergarten division, Mrs. Frank E. Gale: "it is useless to undertake educating the negro children in any except two directions… the religious line [and] industrial training. To teach the negro children social equality would be ruinous…. To educate them in the classics would be and is proving as ruinous." The white club members even went so far as to suggest that moral education of black children would serve as a necessary check on the supposedly out of control epidemic of rapes perpetrated by black men against white women. In other words, they argued that the primary school funding would help teach impressionable black children not to grow up to be scary men who terrorized white women – talk about overstepping your bounds in predicting a child’s future. The schooling was not meant to prepare blacks for the professions, but rather to instill in them Christian morality and thereby pacify them. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, black women’s clubs in Atlanta emerged, faced with the challenge to serve their community, enrich their own minds, and also establish a counter-narrative to views like this put forward by the white club women of their own state.

The Inquirers Club was founded in February 1909 by Ida Wynn. Wynn had assembled a group to raise funds for the Gate City Free Kindergarten in Atlanta’s West End, and the one-time meeting evolved into an established club. As her daughter Mae Harvey put it, “She invited some ladies over for tea and cookies one afternoon. They enjoyed it so much they decided to form a club.” The club members came from Atlanta’s most prominent families, most of them affiliated with the black colleges in the city. They included:

• Lugenia Burns Hope, founder of the Neighborhood Union social service organization and wife of Morehouse College president John Hope
• Hilda Damaris Prowd (honorary member), the wife of Benjamin Brawley, Morehouse dean from 1912 to 1920 and a key conservative figure in the Southern black intelligentsia See Post on Brawley: http://rootsandtendrilspoetry.blogspot.com/2012/06/benjamin-brawley-contested-notions-of.html 
• Claudia Harreld, professor of German at Morehouse College and wife of Kemper Harreld, the chair of that school’s music department
• Irene Smallwood, wife of J.W.E. Bowen, president and professor at Gammon Theological Seminary from 1906-10 and co-editor of The Voice of the Negro, a leading national black magazine from 1904-1907

The list could go on. Twelve members made up the roster for 1926, with five honorary members also listed. In that year’s yearbook, nearly every meeting included quotations from Shakespeare. The members saw Shakespeare and other English authors as the basis of a respectable, classical education.

The Chautauqua Circle, another Atlanta club, followed a national program for home-based education which provided an alternative to university learning. Henrietta Porter founded the circle in September 1913. In an account of the beginnings of the club, she explains that “the universities would not condescent[d] to the Masses; so the masses made an institution of its own, and its diploma was held in very high esteem… the Chautauqua Lecture Course still stands out in bright luster as the pioneer in carrying the schoolroom to the people.” The Chautauqua Institution website gives an excellent summary of the early goals of its national education program:

The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC) was started in 1878 to provide those who could not afford the time or money to attend college the opportunity of acquiring the skills and essential knowledge of a College education. The four-year, correspondence course was one of the first attempts at distance learning. Besides broadening access to education, the CLSC program was intended to show people how best to use their leisure time and avoid the growing availability of idle pastimes, such as drinking, gambling, dancing and theater-going, that posed a threat both to good morals and to good health. To share the cost of purchasing the publications and to take encouragement from others in the course, students were encouraged to form local CLSC reading circles.

Meetings of the Atlanta group were held in members’ households. It is unclear whether the members actually participated in the four-year course and graduated from the Chautauqua headquarters in New York, or if they merely modeled their meetings after the national program. The Chautauqua Movement offered a liberal arts education firmly rooted in Christianity, and each meeting of the Atlanta circle began with a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. An 1892 essay from the Chautauquan, the main organ for the national organization, emphasizes the Christian nature of the program: “No culture is Christian, in college or out of college, that does not recognize that the best discovery of moral or mental power within a soul is “a well of water springing up in to everlasting life.” Each month’s meeting featured a new theme for quotations, often organized around general virtues (ex: “On Liberty”, “On Love”, “On Beauty”, “On Mercy”). Discussions of current events, formal debates, and musical performances were also regular features of the program. On the social side, an annual reception was given in honor of the members’ husbands. Like other clubs in the city, the Chautauqua Circle paid attention to their image in the public sphere, hosting elegant receptions and printing ornate yearbooks.

In addition to the Inquirers and the Chautauqua Circle, the Utopian Literary Club brought high society black women together for evenings of refined dress and conversation. It was organized in 1916 by Atlanta public school teacher Anna Madison with the goal of the “mental advancement of its members.” The 1927 yearbook lists several reviews of novels, including: Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives; Dubose Heyward’s recently released Porgy, which would later be adapted for Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess; and Sarah Gertrude Millin’s God’s Stepchildren, a 1924 novel of miscegenation which describes the tortured life of a mixed-blood heroine. The literary rigor of the meetings was bolstered in the 1920s by Alice Dugged Cary, an honorary member and the first librarian of the African American branch of the Atlanta Public Library. Annie McPheeters, the second librarian of the black public library and an important figure in Southern library politics, was an active club member in later years, continuing the group’s literary legacy. However, like the two other Atlanta literary clubs, the Utopian Club meetings were multidisciplinary and touched on social concerns. Four meetings in 1927 incorporated a travel theme, with a different continent the focus of each month. The yearbook also included topics relating to elocution and public presentation such as “Acquiring a Vocabulary” and “Good English and How to Use It.” The club members sought social respectability in addition to literary knowledge, and strove to act as examples of Christian morality for the surrounding community. This formal address was read at the beginning of each meeting:

I will try each day to live a simple, sincere, serene life, repelling every thought of discontent, self-seeking and anxiety; cultivating magnanimity, self control and a habit of silence, practicing economy, cheerfulness, and helpfulness and as I cannot in my own strength do this, as even with the hope of success, attempt it, I look to thee, oh lord, my father in Jesus our Savior, and ask the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

The address is markedly humble in its goals and Christian in its sentiment. For a prominent social welfare organization, it is surprising to see a commitment to cultivate “a habit of silence” rather than activism.

The club adopted a consistent pattern for its meetings and yearbooks, with defined club colors (orchid and pink), flower (sweet pea) and slogan (“Higher Standards”). The name and inspiration for the group was drawn from Thomas More’s Utopia. This line from Book II of More’s work was printed at the front of every yearbook: “But of all pleasures, they esteem those to be most valuable that live in the mind.” Like the Chautauqua Circle, the Utopian Club held an annual “Party for Friends” reception to show off the virtues of the club to the community. As much a social club as a literary club, Frankie Adams noted in a club history that “being dressed up was an important part of the meetings, wearing hats and gloves.”

While proud of their club’s individual traditions, the various women’s clubs freely associated with one another, inviting each other to receptions and cohabitating under the umbrella of the City Federation of Women’s Clubs. Adams notes in her history of the Utopian Literary Club: “For a party for Mrs. W.J. Trent on her leaving the city in 1925, each member was taxed to provide the party. Special guests included the members of Chautauqua Club and Enquirers.” The Chautauqua Club minute book from 1922-1933 also mentions a meeting with the Inquirers as well as a visit from Lugenia Burns Hope, president of the City Federation.

Most of the information I found in the archives about the clubs was either general histories or yearbooks, which showed the club’s yearly programs but didn’t go into detail. Therefore, it’s hard to figure out exactly how serious the reading component of the clubs was. Many of the members had to prepare reports to present to the club at meetings, usually about current events, or a review of a novel, or a historical research project (Homework, eeew!). Many of the club programs did not list a novel on the day’s agenda. I think that more reading was done IN the club as opposed to out of it. Recitations were very common, and even if someone wrote a report, they were expected to read out the entire thing during the club rather than distribute copies to the other members. Hopefully I can find some copies of some of the reports, or a transcript of a more detailed interview with a clubmember to get a better sense of what happened during the meetings.

  **NOTE: I got this information from looking at three archives in Atlanta. I spent a long weekend hanging out in archives all day and going to bars at night. It was an awesome feeling coming back to an archive for a second visit, and looking like a baller because I already know all the procedures.

Sources:

“About Us/Our History.” Ciweb. Chautauqua Institution. 2012. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

Adams, Frankie V. “Utopian Literary Club History As Reflected in Minutes.” Annie McPheeters Papers, Archives Division, Auburn Ave Research Library in African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System.

Brennan, Carol. "Bowen, John W. E. Sr. 1855–1933." Contemporary Black Biography. Ed. Margaret Mazurkiewicz. Vol. 89. Detroit: Gale, 2011. 7-9. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

Douglass, William. “Inquirers Literary Club Branches from Classics to Causes.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 18 Mar 1984. Inquirers Club Vertical File, Archives Research Center, Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library.

Finding Aid, John and Lugenia Burns Hope Papers, Archives Research Center, Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library.

Gere, Anne Ruggles and Sarah R. Robbins. “Gendered Literacy in Black and White: Turn-of-the-Century African-American and European-American Club Women's Printed Texts.” Signs, 21. 3 (Spring, 1996): 643-678. The University of Chicago Press. JSTOR. Web. 30 Jan 2013.

Green, Jeffrey. “Reminiscences of Times Past.” Interview with Josephine Harreld Love. The Black Perspective in Music. 18.1/2 (1990): 179-213. JSTOR. Web.

Gunsaulus, Frank Wakeley D.D. “The Ideal of Culture.” Chautauquan 16 (Oct 1892): 59-64. The American 1890s: A Cultural Reader. Ed. Susan Harris Smith & Melanie Dawson. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Print.

Smith, M. “The Fight to Protect Race and Regional Identity within the General Federation of Women's Clubs, 1895-1902.” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 94.4: 479-513. EBSCO. Web. 30 Jan 2013.

Williams, Jeffrey Robert. Benjamin Brawley and the Compass of Culture: Art and Uplift in the Harlem Renaissance. University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. Print.

Utopian Literary Club, Annie McPheeters Papers, Archives Division, Auburn Ave Research Library in African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System.