Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps encourages a new consideration of Arkansas rural history by foregrounding Black women’s astute navigation of racial and gender politics as a means to uplift African Americans, develop opportunities for social mobility in impoverished communities, and subvert the formidable structures of growing white supremacy during the Jim Crow years.
Here, Black women activists included home demonstration agents employed by the Arkansas Agricultural Cooperative Extension Service, Jeanes Supervising Industrial Teachers, and members of the Arkansas Association of Colored Women—all of whom possessed an acute understanding of the difficulties African Americans endured in rural spaces.
This study reveals for the first time how middle-class, educated Black women worked with their less educated rural sisters by creating all-female spaces to engage with health, education, and issues free from southern white regulation and interference.
On the cover: Assistant home demonstration agents for Negro Work in 1950. Courtesy of Dorris Vick Collection, Manuscript Collection, 961, box 2, folder 2, image 57, University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections. Design by Erin Kirk.
Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps is part of the Arkansas History Series. It is available for preorder, and 25% off when you order at uapress.com.