Dossett aims to uncover the magnitude and complexity of women's input into both black feminism and black nationalism in the early twentieth century and in this endeavour she undoubtedly succeeds. She emphasizes the role of middle-class African American women in black cultural and political resistance movements, challenging their apparent lack of “authenticity.” She does this by analysing several key women through the prisms of politics, business and literature. African American women, who dealt with the “multiple jeopardy” (2) of gender, race and class, developed various social, business and political networks beginning in the late nineteenth century which helped to ameliorate the worst depredations of Jim Crow and gender discrimination. Dossett demonstrates that these various networks and their members cannot be compartmentalized either chronologically or politically, but were united as “race women” interested in the general uplift of the race, regardless of philosophical or strategic differences. She concludes that there was not necessarily a contradiction between advocacy of separation or black nationalism and the embrace of integration (which was never seen as a panacea), and that these women were much more ideologically flexible than many of their male counterparts.
Mary McLeod Bethune, Madam C.J. Walker and Amy Jacques Garvey, and the organizations they led, are among those examined by Dossett. Each had a similar philosophy, and they even cooperated, even though their ideologies may have seemed incompatible.
Bethune, “the most powerful black woman in the United States” (50), headed the National Youth Administration, led Roosevelt's Black Cabinet and was prominent in black women's clubs. She was committed to interracialism and integration, but this was as strategic (her school relied on white philanthropy) as it was ideological. Bethune was a pragmatic idealist who recognized the immediate need for racial solidarity and viewed equality as more important than integration. Bethune, therefore, managed to combine integrationism with black economic and cultural nationalism.
Walker, a millionaire beautician, was one of the best-known black women of the early twentieth century and managed to negotiate both integrationism and black nationalism. She skillfully avoided allegations that she was selling, for example, hair-straightening products, and instilled pride in her female sales agents by giving them economic independence. Moreover, Walker's success made her a prime example of what Du Bois, Washington and Garvey each advocated, be it rags to riches, self-help, black nationalism or membership of the so-called “talented tenth.”
Walker was incredibly shrewd, recognizing the value of championing causes, including both Tuskegee and the UNIA, but she clearly had a political agenda, exemplified when the State Department prevented her from traveling to the Paris Peace conference as a delegate of the Race Congress for World Democracy. Dossett denies that Walker was motivated by self-interest, although her business did benefit, insisting instead that this is transcended by her desire to promote black womanhood and the race more generally.
Amy Jacques Garvey married Marcus Garvey in 1922 and was central to the New Negro movement but her impact has been overlooked. When her husband was arrested in 1923, she became the de facto leader of the UNIA and, in pursuit of a feminist agenda, challenged the centrality of masculinity within it.
Where black male leadership was characterized by feuding and rivalry, women's organizations relied on and thrived upon crossover membership. Although those discussed here would probably not have identified themselves as feminists, they were clearly the forebears of what would become black feminist thought. Dossett argues that the “false dichotomy” (3) of integrationism versus black nationalism is a product of historiographical obsession with male leadership. This dichotomy is perhaps overplayed, as neither Washington nor Du Bois was ideologically consistent. Du Bois's intellectual journey during the years of this study encompassed nationalism, accommodationism and ultimately separatism, something recognized by existing historiography. This minor criticism apart, Dossett demonstrates how women managed to transcend male leaders' feuds and had much more in common than divided them, and how, through their links and cooperation, they were able to shape responses to discrimination which encompassed feminism, nationalism and integrationism.
