4. October 4-October 11

It’s been a busy week, but I’m starting to really see the project come together. The Atlanta University Conference material has proved to be quite a rich sourcebase! In particular, I’m very excited about pieces by Georgia Swift King, Lucy Laney, Minnie Wright Price, Rosa Morehead Bass, Adella Hunt Logan, and Selena Sloan Butler. In combination with the Childs research and the pre-Riot writings of female intellectuals and reformers in the Voice of the Negro, it’s starting to seem like I have enough material for a chapter on the 1895 moment from a female reform perspective. My focus on prohibition and other efforts at social and moral reform then become a litmus test for broader debates of the period. As Du Bois and Washington were advancing their visions of racial uplift, how did these prominent women identify themselves and their strategies? I like this conceptual angle because it’s both a national question of black leadership but also an essentially local story – this is happening in the Atlanta context and is informed by previous attempts at Progressivism (i.e., 1885 and 1887). In the next week, I’m going to continue to search for material in newspaper databases and begin close readings of the sources I already have. I’m really thrilled that the work is starting to come together thematically.