Introduction / Michele Gillespie and Sally G. McMillen -- The Edenton ladies: women, tea, and politics in revolutionary North Carolina / Cynthia A. Kierner -- Sister Anna: an African woman in early North Carolina / Jon Sensbach -- Elizabeth Maxwell Steele: "a great politician" and the Revolution in the southern backcountry / Cory Joe Stewart -- Rose O'Neal Greenhow: "bearer of dispatches to the Confederate government" / Sheila R. Phipps -- Catherine Devereux Edmondston: "my lines are cast in such pleasant places" / Suzanne Cooper Guasco -- Harriet and Louisa Jacobs: "not without my daughter" / Jim Downs -- Cornelia Phillips Spencer: the foremost daughter of North Carolina and the contradictions of a nineteenth-century public life / William A. Link -- Alice Morgan Person: "my life has been out of the ordinary run of woman's life" / Angela Robbins -- Mary Bayard Clarke: design for "upsetting the established order of our dear old conservative state" / Terrell Armistead Crow -- Anna Julia Cooper: Black feminist scholar, educator, and activist / Vivian M. May -- Sallie Southall Cotten: organized womanhood comes to North Carolina / Margaret Supplee Smith -- Annie Lawrie Alexander: "a woman doing a great work in a womanly way" / James Douglas Alsop -- Sarah Cowan "Daisy" Denson: the lost matriarch of state public welfare reform / Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman -- Sarah Dudley Pettey: "a new age woman" and the politics of race, class, and gender in North Carolina / Elizabeth Lundeen -- Mary Martin Sloop: mountain miracle worker / John C. Inscoe -- Edith Vanderbilt and Katharine Smith Reynolds: the public lives of progressive North Carolina's wealthiest women / Michele Gillespie -- Arizona Nick Swaney Blankenship: becoming Cherokee / Sarah H. Hill -- Samantha Biddix Bumgarner: country music pioneer / Robert Hunt Ferguson.
Summary:
"North Carolina has had more than its share of accomplished, influential women--women who have expanded their sphere of influence or broken through barriers that had long defined and circumscribed their lives, women such as Elizabeth Maxwell Steele, the widow and tavern owner who supported the American Revolution; Harriet Jacobs, runaway slave, abolitionist, and author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; and Edith Vanderbilt and Katharine Smith Reynolds, elite women who promoted women's equality. This collection of essays examines the lives and times of pathbreaking North Carolina women from the late eighteenth century into the early twentieth century, offering important new insights into the variety of North Carolina women's experiences across time, place, race, and class, and conveys how women were able to expand their considerable influence during periods of political challenge and economic hardship, particularly over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These essays highlight North Carolina's progressive streak and its positive impact on women's education--for white and black alike-- beginning in the antebellum period on through new opportunities that opened up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They explore the ways industrialization drew large numbers of women into the paid labor force for the first time and what the implications of this tremendous transition were; they also examine the women who challenged traditional gender roles, as political leaders and labor organizers, as runaways, and as widows. The volume is especially attuned to differences in region within North Carolina, delineating women's experiences in the eastern third of the state, the piedmont, and the western mountains"--Provided by publisher. "This first of two volumes on North Carolina women chronicles the influence and accomplishments of individual women from the pre-Revolutionary period through the early 20th century. They represent a range of social and economic backgrounds, political stances, areas of influence, and geographical regions within the state. Even though North Carolina remained mostly rural until well into the twentieth century and the lives of most women centered on farm, family, and church, Gillespie and McMillen note that the state's people "exhibited a progressive streak that positively influenced women." Public funds were set aside to advance statewide education, private efforts after the Civil War led to the founding of numerous black schools and colleges, and in 1891 the General Assembly chartered the State Normal and Industrial School (later UNC-G) as one of the first publicly funded colleges for white women. By the late 19th century, as several essays in this volume reveal, education played a pivotal role in the lives of many white and black women. It inspired their activism and involvement in a world beyond their traditional domestic sphere"--Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.