| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Respectable Woman: The Public Roles of African American Women in 19th-Century New York. By Jane E. Dabel. (New York: New York University Press, 2008. x, 245 pp. $55.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-2011-0.)
In this book, Jane E. Dabel looks at the gender roles of black women and black leaders' ideas of what constituted "respectable" female pursuits. She reveals that thousands of black women played public roles by meeting with government officials, advocating for their group, and applying for military pensions and for reimbursement for property lost during the New York City draft riots of 1863. She argues that they braved the challenges of constant relocation and left later generations a geographic stake in New York City. She reports that black domestic servants were breadwinners and had status and a measure of economic independence, and she coins the phrase "augmented families" to describe black living arrangements of that period.	1
Dabel's most important illustrations come from the period following the riots of 1863, when New York City became increasingly inhospitable to blacks and thousands fled. But New York was still a vibrant place, still the entrepôt for commerce from abroad, still the first point of acculturation for immigrants, and still the place where black women would find work as domestics. Dabel's point is that black women, clothed in a new public persona, took over leadership and secured a black presence in New York City for succeeding generations.	. . .

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