Race, social reform, and the making of a middle class : the American Missionary Association and Black Atlanta, 1870-1900 / Joseph O. Jewell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jewell, Joseph O., 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Georgia--Atlanta--Social conditions--19th century.

African Americans.

African Americans--Georgia--Atlanta--Economic conditions--19th century.

Middle class--Georgia--Atlanta--History--19th century.

Middle class.

Social problems--Georgia--Atlanta--History--19th century.

Social problems.

History.

Economic conditions.

Social conditions.

Atlanta (Ga.)--Social conditions--19th century.

Atlanta (Ga.).

Atlanta (Ga.)--Economic conditions--19th century.

Atlanta (Ga.)--Race relations--History--19th century.

Georgia--Atlanta.

Physical Description:

x, 225 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, [2007]

Summary:

Moral reform movements targeting racial minorities have long been central in negotiating the relationship between race and class in the United States, particularly in periods of large-scale social change. Over a century ago, when the abolition of racial slavery. Southern Reconstruction, industrialization, and urban migration presented challenges to both race and class hierarchies in the South, organizations like the American Missionary Association (AMA) crusaded to establish schools, colleges, and churches for blacks in southern cities like Atlanta that would aggressively erode cultural differences among former slaves, and assimilate them into a civic order defined by Anglo-Protestant culture. Drawing upon late nineteenth-century accounts of AMA missionary activity in Atlanta, black attempts to define and maintain a middle-class identity, and Atlanta whites concern about black attempts at upward mobility, Joseph O. Jewell argues that the rhetoric about the implications of increased minority access to middle-class resources like education and cultural knowledge speaks to links between anxieties about class position and racial status in a society stratified by both class and race.

Contents:

Introduction

"Open and urgent fields of labor" : the American Missionary Association, race, and social reform in the Black South

"Up from slavery" : the economic foundations of Atlanta's Black middle class, 1870-1900

"Black ivy" : education, race, and class at Storrs Free School and Atlanta University

From "black sheep" to "dusky shepherds" : missionary religion and the making of a Black middle-class elite

Race, reform and remaking the middle class.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-213) and index.

ISBN:

0742535452

9780742535459

0742535460

9780742535466

OCLC:

62172738