Hello sapphickismet

that's a very interesting topic and quite long in duration (over 100 years). The 'differing views' requirement is tricky though. 

One individual you might want to look at is Aileen Cole Stewart, a nurse from Maryland who served in the army hospital at Camp Sherman, Ohio during the 1918-19 Spanish influenza epidemic. She features in Lettie Gavin's They Also Served: American Women in World War I (2006), University Press of Colorado. It was a pioneering role for someone of her background and her application to practice there was initially rejected despite the acute shortage of nurses at the time.   

If I find any more I'll let you know, but in the meantime good luck with your research!

Vizzer wrote:

Hello sapphickismet

that's a very interesting topic and quite long in duration (over 100 years). The 'differing views' requirement is tricky though. 

One individual you might want to look at is Aileen Cole Stewart, a nurse from Maryland who served in the army hospital at Camp Sherman, Ohio during the 1918-19 Spanish influenza epidemic. She features in Lettie Gavin's They Also Served: American Women in World War I (2006), University Press of Colorado. It was a pioneering role for someone of her background and her application to practice there was initially rejected despite the acute shortage of nurses at the time.   

If I find any more I'll let you know, but in the meantime good luck with your research!

Thank you for the help! Yep, it's quite long. We're required to talk about the whole period, along with analysing three primary sources and two historical interpretations. We had a choice of factors to analyse in the context of civil rights (federal government; African American leadership; grassroots organisations; war; women), I just so happened to pick the one that no one in my school has done before, and so my teachers don't have any resources to help me.

If your teachers don't have any resources then that could work in your favour because they'll have to rely on your research which will all be new to them by definition and therefore difficult to evaluate.

Sticking with the First World War era nurses then here are a couple of links which might be of use as sources:

Pathfinders: A History of the Progress of Colored Graduate Nurses by Adah B. Thoms (1929)

and

Ready to Serve by Aileen Cole Stewart (1963)

(That second, however, is only a preview from the American Journal of Nursing which needs to be subscribed to for full access.)

Hi sappickismet - a fascinating study indeed.

When it comes to comparing two historical perspectives on the same issue, both of which include a perspective on black women's contribution to society in the US, then I would personally opt to avoid the "grand themes" of the Civil Rights Movement, MLK, etc and try to find a more specific point of comparison. The hope would be that by comparing where, for example, a sociological perspective versus a more gender-aware perspective were applied to the same set of historical circumstances and yielded quite different results, this could then be presented as indicative of the same discrepancy as repeated within the wider spectrum of historical literature, including that which indeed tackles these larger themes too.

A case in point would be, for example, these two approaches adopted by two different historians to the specific history of black women in South Carolina. The first, written only 13 years ago by Carmen Harris, Professor of History at SCU, has a laser-like focus on women, black women in particular, and a near forensic treatment of specific incidences of where these women tangibly influenced society through their specific actions at specific times. In her approach black women are a subset of women first and Afro-Americans second, and their achievements are presented in the context of an often disregarded analysis of where feminism and civil rights overlap to a hugely influential extent in history anyway.

Black Women, Gender, and Families

The second is an older, and still academically respected, much more traditional treatment of the same period in the same area "Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks in South Carolina from 1895 to 1968" by I.A. Newby, which was published in 1973 when South Carolina was celebrating its "Tricentennial" and used the occasion to apply quite a lot of revisionist introspection to its own unique history. Newby, with other respected historians, therefore had a cart-blanche opportunity to approach his subject from any new angle he wanted, and in fact his option to view the state's history through the prism of black experience was, at the time, considered rather avant garde and brave. Within his essay, later expanded into a book, black women get several mentions, but rarely by name and always as a sociological component of the population, albeit an important one. He does not under-play their role, and cites many of the same initiatives and events as Harris, but in his treatment of the subject these "women do what all women do", but as a subset of their race first and as a gender second.

Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks in South Carolina from 1895 to 1968

Both approaches are well-meaning and neither aims to disparage the role of those receiving less focus within their preferred historiographical approach. However for two readers whose first exposure to the historical details might be from either of these treatments, it is certain that they would walk away from that exposure with less than compatible impressions of the subject matter, and very likely an incomplete understanding of the full context. This is a problem with "women's studies" in a broader sense anyway - once regarded as a subset within a larger social or sociological context then the relevance of women's roles and contributions, especially when viewed retrospectively, runs a very real risk of being so defined by that overall context that an intelligent reader might justifiably fail to distinguish actual achievement and effect from that which the historian has meant to infer. Or worse, distrust the inference of both authors when confronted with the disparity of approach used by each.

These problems, all related to historiography and interpretation of the past, are as true when tackling the history of women of colour in an American context as in any other field of history. However by concentrating on two such specific examples with obvious points of parallel in their subject matter and divergence in their approaches, then one can certainly alert others to how this must be true also when the entire genre is to be evaluated. And one has avoided having to wade through reams of literature related to that entire genre and the huge themes it addresses in order to make the point.

Many more examples, indeed better ones, can undoubtedly be found where two authors approach a very specific historical subject in which each must unavoidably refer to the role black women played in that context, either as the main theme in its own right or as an important aspect to the study. But the important thing is that whichever example one finds, one can then reasonably extrapolate the points of comparison to the entire field of black women as a point of focus in historical gender and race relation studies.

nordmann wrote:

Hi sappickismet - a fascinating study indeed.

When it comes to comparing two historical perspectives on the same issue, both of which include a perspective on black women's contribution to society in the US, then I would personally opt to avoid the "grand themes" of the Civil Rights Movement, MLK, etc and try to find a more specific point of comparison. The hope would be that by comparing where, for example, a sociological perspective versus a more gender-aware perspective were applied to the same set of historical circumstances and yielded quite different results, this could then be presented as indicative of the same discrepancy as repeated within the wider spectrum of historical literature, including that which indeed tackles these larger themes too.

A case in point would be, for example, these two approaches adopted by two different historians to the specific history of black women in South Carolina. The first, written only 13 years ago by Carmen Harris, Professor of History at SCU, has a laser-like focus on women, black women in particular, and a near forensic treatment of specific incidences of where these women tangibly influenced society through their specific actions at specific times. In her approach black women are a subset of women first and Afro-Americans second, and their achievements are presented in the context of an often disregarded analysis of where feminism and civil rights overlap to a hugely influential extent in history anyway.

The second is an older, and still academically respected, much more traditional treatment of the same period in the same area "Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks in South Carolina from 1895 to 1968" by I.A. Newby, which was published in 1973 when South Carolina was celebrating its "Tricentennial" and used the occasion to apply quite a lot of revisionist introspection to its own unique history. Newby, with other respected historians, therefore had a cart-blanche opportunity to approach his subject from any new angle he wanted, and in fact his option to view the state's history through the prism of black experience was, at the time, considered rather avant garde and brave. Within his essay, later expanded into a book, black women get several mentions, but rarely by name and always as a sociological component of the population, albeit an important one. He does not under-play their role, and cites many of the same initiatives and events as Harris, but in his treatment of the subject these "women do what all women do", but as a subset of their race first and as a gender second.

Both approaches are well-meaning and neither aims to disparage the role of those receiving less focus within their preferred historiographical approach. However for two readers whose first exposure to the historical details might be from either of these treatments, it is certain that they would walk away from that exposure with less than compatible impressions of the subject matter, and very likely an incomplete understanding of the full context. This is a problem with "women's studies" in a broader sense anyway - once regarded as a subset within a larger social or sociological context then the relevance of women's roles and contributions, especially when viewed retrospectively, runs a very real risk of being so defined by that overall context that an intelligent reader might justifiably fail to distinguish actual achievement and effect from that which the historian has meant to infer. Or worse, distrust the inference of both authors when confronted with the disparity of approach used by each.

These problems, all related to historiography and interpretation of the past, are as true when tackling the history of women of colour in an American context as in any other field of history. However by concentrating on two such specific examples with obvious points of parallel in their subject matter and divergence in their approaches, then one can certainly alert others to how this must be true also when the entire genre is to be evaluated. And one has avoided having to wade through reams of literature related to that entire genre and the huge themes it addresses in order to make the point.

Many more examples, indeed better ones, can undoubtedly be found where two authors approach a very specific historical subject in which each must unavoidably refer to the role black women played in that context, either as the main theme in its own right or as an important aspect to the study. But the important thing is that whichever example one finds, one can then reasonably extrapolate the points of comparison to the entire field of black women as a point of focus in historical gender and race relation studies.

This is my first time doing an essay like this so how would I go about finding two authors who approach a very specific historical subject? For example, I happened to stumble across an essay on black female teachers a couple weeks ago, but could not find anyone else who had spoken about the same topic, let alone in a different way.

Vizzer wrote:

If your teachers don't have any resources then that could work in your favour because they'll have to rely on your research which will all be new to them by definition and therefore difficult to evaluate.

Sticking with the First World War era nurses then here are a couple of links which might be of use as sources:

(That second, however, is only a preview from the American Journal of Nursing which needs to be subscribed to for full access.)

Thank you very much! The role of black women in WW1 seems very fascinating.

As for the evaluation of my essay, here in England, it would be sent off to a board of experienced examiners so I won't be that lucky haha

sapphickismet wrote:

This is my first time doing an essay like this so how would I go about finding two authors who approach a very specific historical subject?

I suppose Google is your friend in that quest (it was mine), at least in locating two seriously written previously published historical treatments of the same narrow theme, whichever particular theme you fancy most. However getting your hands on the actual document - be it a book or a journal entry - may require forking out some money to the publisher.

When it comes to black women serving in any capacity during WWII - this is also an extremely interesting topic indeed, and one that certainly could benefit from closer scrutiny and higher awareness among historians. I can find many articles and blogs written by some astute authors around the internet, though what they all have in common as far as I can judge is a reliance on source material such as military records and contemporary news reports. In other words each writer has had to rely primarily on extant "raw" records and first-hand contemporary or personal accounts (no bad thing in itself).

This leads to a loose body of historical writing which does not unfortunately lend itself to the particular task you have been set regarding comparative treatments, in that most of the writers are following similar motivation, identical research techniques, and arrive at remarkably similar conclusions. The subject just hasn't as yet been written about enough to yield examples, for instance, of where one bunch of historians might tackle the issue primarily as a sociological feature of 20th century American society, while another bunch stick to either a gender oriented or race oriented perspective. That would be exactly the kind of comparison that would be useful to you, but it looks like it just hasn't as yet emerged within serious historical writing.

I could be wrong of course, and simply haven't looked hard enough. However I am sure you would be in more fertile territory if you tackle the slavery/post-slavery issue. This, at least, has certainly been written about from almost every conceivable angle and, if you can manage to hone in on one aspect to this broad theme limited in scope by geographical, academic or any other specific context similarly preferred by two authors but who were writing with different perspectives on the issue (eg. with focus on women's history versus history of race relations), then you have a ready-made point of comparison that is easier for you to use as illustrative of how the very same discrepancies are expressed across the board when black women's history is germane to the authors' subject matter.

Don't know if this will be of any help:


Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement 1960-70

Incudes quotes from a number of references.