| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

African American Women and Christian Activism: New York's Black YWCA, 1905–1945. By Judith Weisenfeld. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. viii, 231 pp. $35.00, isbn 0-674-00778-6.)

In 1905, a black branch of the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association) formed in New York City. By the 1930s, it could look proudly at a range of accomplishments on behalf of blacks, including providing social services, fund raising, running a trade school, and serving as a cultural center during the Harlem Renaissance. The national YWCA, however, had a more troubled record on the issue of race. While some of its leaders took bold stands for their time, the Y's general policy was one of segregation. Only in 1946 did an "Interracial Charter" proclaim that the Y would organize on an interracial basis. 1

This book traces the black branch's history mainly through a study of its leaders and policy discussions. Like other authors on black women's reform work, Judith Weisenfeld stresses that its pioneers' casting it as a new kind of private space along the model of a safe, morally upright Christian home enabled it to serve as a springboard for more public reforms. Weisenfeld finds the central importance of the branch to be not only its offering of services and a thriving social and educational environment but also, on the cultural front, its attack on white supremacy's traditional "representations" of black women as immoral. . . .

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