10 The Black Women’s Club Movement: an Opportunity for Immersive Local History

Introduction: Teaching Through Rather Than About

A facet of history that is often overlooked in US History classrooms are the many contributions Black women contributed to resisting and pushing back against institutional racism and systemic oppression. With the exception of women like Ida B. Wells and Rosa Parks, Black women’s history is largely erased in the collective historical narrative of the United States. The intention of this lesson is to provide an opportunity for secondary Social Science students to learn about the collective contribution Black women made to civil rights throughout US history via the Black Women’s Club movement. Using a mixture of secondary and primary sources, students have the opportunity to localize their understanding of history and learn through Black history, rather than about Black history.

Black women have been organizing politically and economically in some fashion since before the Civil War. In the Antebellum South, enslaved women’s collective and individual efforts to provide some relief from the inhumane living and labor conditions is a type of resistance and rebellion often overlooked when teaching about the era of American slavery. Organizing happened in the North as well. In Philadelphia, the Daughters of Africa, formed in 1821 as a Black female benevolent society to provide aid for the needy and sick. The Colored Females Free Produce Society, also from Philadelphia and formed in 1831, organized boycotts of products produced by slavery. It is estimated that there were over 200 Black mutual-aid societies with over 15,000 members by 1850 (Shaw, 1991).

Black women also began organizing for better working conditions as early as 1866, a year after the conclusion of the Civil War. Many Black women worked as washerwomen and domestic servants in White homes, spending hours doing laborious work for little pay. Doing laundry, in particular, was a challenging job, as it required long hours with insufficient access to water and exposure to unsanitary conditions. In 1866, Black washerwomen presented the mayor a list of demands with the threat of a work stoppage to increase pay. While there is no record of the outcome, this type of labor organization would be repeated again throughout the South during Reconstruction (Kelly, 2022).

During Reconstruction, Black female-driven mutual-aid societies thrived and grew in numbers and localities; this is known as the Black Women’s Club movement. While some historians argue that these organizations mirrored the work of their White female counterparts (Lerner, 1974), the reality was that the groundwork for these organizations already existed. Regardless, the massive boom of local Black Women’s Club chapters was underway, seeking to provide aid as needed (Shaw, 1991). For example, in the immediate post-Civil War era, the Memphis’ Daughters of Zion advocated for public health and educational access initiatives. The Independent Order of St. Luke, founded in Baltimore in 1867, created a bank to lend to Black individuals and businesses (Shaw, 1991). As organizations like the YWCA of New York often refused housing to Black women, the Women’s Loyal Union of NYC stepped in to assist young Black women to relocate and find housing during the Great Migration (Lerner, 1974).

In 1895-1896, there was a movement to create a coalition of Black Women’s Clubs under a national banner. The most well-known national organization is the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), most famously led by Mary Church Terrell. While they had many initiatives, they are remembered for their work on Black women’s suffrage, as well as supporting antilynching efforts of Ida B. Wells (Berry & Gross, 2020). But, while there were efforts to organize nationally, local clubs still thrived and worked to mediate economic and civic challenges that impacted Black communities (Shaw, 1991).

It is this last point that brings us to this particular lesson. Learning about the Black Women’s Club movement is an opportunity for students to learn about local civil rights history through historical documentation. There are a number of primary resources housed in local archives (historical societies, universities, and libraries) that capture the work of Black Women’s Clubs. In looking at the work they did locally, such as setting up housing for young women and lobbying against discriminatory housing practices, a student can learn about localized civil rights issues through the organization’s efforts.

This lesson features learning through, rather than about, history because students will use historical skills to uncover local histories of Black Women’s Clubs and evaluate their significance in supporting civil rights in Portland, Oregon. In doing this, students are an active participant in understanding what work Black Women’s Clubs were engaged with and the impact they had on their local community. Students will analyze different historians’ interpretations of Black Women’s Clubs and their rationales for organizing, analyze a collection of primary documents on Portland’s Culture Club, an organization of Portland Black women community leaders, and write and record a two-minute podcast teaching others not only what Black Women’s Clubs were, but offering their own analysis of their impact on civil rights initiatives in Portland.

To learn through history, rather than about history, is represented in this lesson by uncovering the nuances of engagement by the Black community through organization efforts in response to systemic oppression. Rather than learning about what happened to the Black community during the Civil Rights era, students will experience through working with primary documentation how the Black community, with a focus on the Culture Club, one of Portland’s Black Women’s Clubs, and Urban League organized and resisted the oppression as told by the actors engaged in the work themselves. This will create a nuanced and detailed history ripe for student analysis and in-depth understanding. More importantly, it adjusts the narrative of Black Portlanders as victims to agents in creating change.

Framework

Educators are currently in a significant moment in contemplating how to teach the history of all Americans, not just a masculine, Anglophile interpretation of history with token moments of diversified history. We must consider how to decouple the sidebar nature of gendered, racial, and national history that plays a supporting role in telling US history from that of the status quo in teaching history to our students. This lesson on the Culture Club of Portland offers an opportunity for students to learn civil rights history through Black women who shaped the direction of the movement through fundraising efforts and political support. It centers the voices of those who actively pushed for change, rather than an over-generalized explanation on the evolution of civil rights. It creates a nuanced and rich retelling of history with opportunity for meaningful analysis and historical thought for students.

King (2020) argues that teaching Black history requires more than just teaching over-simplified narratives of general actions by the Black community in parallel to developments in the Anglo-schema of US history; instead teachers must fold in elements of Black historical consciousness to deliver a more rich curriculum. King states these elements include “systemic power, oppression, and racism; agency, resistance, and perseverance; Africa and the African Diaspora; Black joy and love; Black identities; and Black historical contention” (p. 337). This lesson on the Black Women’s Club movement predominantly focuses on Black agency, resistance, and perseverance. King defines and argues the importance for teaching this tenet of Black historical consciousness as such:

Black agency, resistance, and perseverance help us understand that, throughout history, Black people could act independently, made their own decisions based on their interests, and fought back against oppressive structures. This concept recognizes that Black people have a spirit of freedom and revolt as each generation has fought against oppression. Without Black agency to balance oppression, Black history falls into the trap of victimhood, accompanied by a Black suffering narrative. (p. 338)

While this lesson does touch upon other tenets of Black historical consciousness, to include systemic power, oppression, and racism, that is not the focus of the primary document exploration and historical analysis.

Using primary documents of Portland’s Culture Club and the Urban League from 1964 and 1965 and teaching students how to work with primary documents to write history is a way in which to teach through history rather than about history. King argues that, “Redefining Black history is to explore Black identity through complex and nuanced narratives that attempt to get at the full humanity of Black people” (p. 337). Examining the Culture Club’s yearbooks and a select set of the Urban League’s meeting notes will yield surprising results and moments of meaningful analysis as it relates to understanding the reality of systematic oppression and the response, as well resistance, to the oppression by Portland’s Black community. In looking at the documents that are directly tied to Black organization efforts, students will begin to glimpse these “complex and nuanced narratives” and learn details of Portland’s civil rights movement that might otherwise get lost in a generalized narrative.

Pedagogical Applications

This lesson has a number of pedagogical applications to build content knowledge, historical thinking skills, and organization of analytical thought. Students will learn about the Black Women’s Club movement from both the national and local level and have the opportunity to use contextual knowledge to analyze the work of women engaged in and around the Portland region.

The first part of the lesson builds basic knowledge about Black Women’s Clubs. Students will watch a “Crash Course: Black History” on the Black Women’s Club movement and begin to think about why certain narratives appear in history texts, while others do not and how that can impact our understanding of history.

The second part of the lesson is two-fold: it asks students to compare two interpretations of history, while also asking them to consider which version of history they think is “more accurate.” This models how history can be analyzed by historians, but also is an opportunity for students to begin thinking about what makes history “accurate” (if history can ever be accurate).

The third part of the lesson engages students in primary document analysis. This portion of the lesson has the teacher modeling how to unpack a primary document, using a scripted approach to seeing a whole primary source, rather than just summarizing its content. After the teacher models how to read a primary source, students will read several documents on their own using the same set strategies for unpacking a primary source. They will use local documentation, including Culture Club yearbooks and Urban League meeting notes, as the Culture Club financially and politically supported the work of Portland’s Urban League.

The final part of the lesson, the formative assessment, asks students to do something with the history they learned. Students will write and record a two-minute podcast that offers an analysis of the importance of The Culture Club moving civil rights initiatives forward in Portland. Students will need to use contextual knowledge from part one of the lesson, analysis skills built from part two, and research conducted in part three to write and produce the podcast.

Connections to Oregon State Social Science Standards:

Please note that this lesson is designed for 9-12 students but can be adapted to middle school years:

• HS.11 – Examine the pluralistic realities of society (such as ethnic and social groups, urban/rural, cultural, poverty, religion, and age) recognizing issues of equity, and evaluating the need for change. (Civics)
• HS.61 – Analyze and explain persistent historical, social and political issues, conflicts and compromises in regards to power, inequality and justice and their connection to current events and movements. (History)
• HS.62 – Identify historical and current events, issues, and problems when national and/or global interests have been in conflict, and provide analysis from multiple perspectives. (History)
• HS.63 – Identify and analyze ethnic groups (including individuals who are American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian or Americans of African, Asian, Pacific Island, Chicano, Latino, or Middle Eastern descent), religious groups, and other traditionally marginalized groups (women, people with disabilities, immigrants, refugees, and individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender), their relevant historic and current contributions to Oregon the United States, and the world. (History)
• HS.66 – Examine and analyze the multiple perspectives and contributions of ethnic and religious groups, as well as traditionally marginalized groups within a dominant society and how different values and views shape Oregon, the United States, and the world. (History)
• HS.68 – Select and analyze historical information, including contradictory evidence, from a variety of primary and secondary sources to support or reject a claim. (Historical Thinking)
• HS.69 – Create and defend a historical argument utilizing primary and secondary sources as evidence. (Historical Thinking)

Lesson Narrative

Black women’s history in the United States is often over simplified or completely erased when teaching the trajectory between the Antebellum South and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Some US History classes might touch upon critical Black women, such as Ida B. Wells, Mamie Till, Rosa Parks, or Angela Davis, but the larger narrative capturing the intersection of Black women’s history and civil rights is largely absent from the collective curriculum. This lesson on the Black Women’s Club movement purposefully centers Black women’s history and local voices through primary documentation into the US History curriculum at the high school level.

Black Women’s Clubs have a long history in the US – from the Antebellum South to modern day. They are both local (such as the Oregon Federation of Colored Women) and national (National Association for Colored Women) (Shaw, 1991). As such, this lesson can be placed anywhere in a number of places throughout the US History curriculum, to include units about Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, the Great Migration, or Civil Rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, this lesson can be adapted to a teacher’s local area. As this is originally written for a Portland, Oregon audience, it will feature Oregon history, but it can be very easily adapted to other major cities across the United States, as local archives are brimming with documentation of Black Women’s Club actions and initiatives.

There are four components to this lesson. The first component is “the what.” The intention of this is to learn who Black Women’s Club members were and what their purposes entailed. The second component is a comparative analysis of how historians have written about Club Women, thereby offering competing analysis of the history just learned. The third component is an opportunity for students to immerse themselves in a selection of primary sources that look at Oregon-related Club Women and discuss the localized aspects of clubs, as it pertains to Oregon history. The final component, the formal assessment, combines the skills and content learned in the first three parts into a short podcast that assesses the significance of Portland’s local Black Women’s Club–The Culture Club–on the Civil Rights movement.

This lesson has natural breaking points should it need to be divided among classes. There are also a number of extension opportunities, which will be discussed in a later section of this chapter. If the lesson is followed as written, it will likely take three 90-minute block periods to complete.

Overview and Description of the Essential Question:

Why, and with what results, did Black Women’s Club members organize in Portland, Oregon?

Staging the Question:

Ask the students what they already know about Black Women and US History – make a list on the board (this might be short and that is okay).

Students will likely know very little about Black women in US History – inquire why that might be.

Question 1, Formative Task 1, Featured Sources:

First Supporting Question:

Who joined the Black Women’s Club movement and why did they join?

Intro to the topic: The “WHAT”

This part of the lesson introduces what Black Women’s Clubs were to the students.

1. Introduce the Black Women’s Club movement verbally, using Slides or PowerPoint, that covers the content in Figure 10.1.

Figure 10.1
Black Women’s Club Movement Overview

2. Crash Course – Black History – The Black Women’s Club Movement: Crash Course Black American History #23(Warning about mature content – sexual and physical abuse). Below are questions students can answer as they watch. You can convert these questions into a worksheet with space to answer or allow students to answer informally in notebooks.
   • Additional Lesson Guidance: Review questions 1, 2, and 3 with students prior to engaging in question 4 – the free-write/ discussion portion.
   • Additional Lesson Guidance: You can scaffold the lesson by building vocabulary (ie – “suffrage”) prior to watching the Crash Course depending on the grade and academic level of your class.
   • Additional Lesson Guidance – If you want an additional video (or if you need a refresher of contextual information at any point in the lesson), please refer to “Black History in Two Minutes: The Women’s Club Movement”

Questions

As you watch, answer these questions:

1. Black Women’s Club movement – What is the CONTEXTUAL history helpful to know about Club Women?
2. Two CRITICAL PLAYERS – who were they and how did they contribute to the overall growth of the Club Women’s movement?

• • • Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin
    • Mary Church Terrell

3. Keep track of the TYPES OF ACTIONS or areas of focus for Club Women (i.e., – creating preschools).

After viewing the Crash Course, reply to the following prompts (spend about 4-5 minutes per question):

4. What do you think “Lifting as We Climb” means? What does this slogan tell you about Black women and the push for civil rights after the Civil War?
5. “Our textbooks don’t always include the contributions that Black women made towards civil rights, but we should be absolutely clear that without their work, our world would not be where it is today.” Let’s reflect on this:

• • Why might a typical US History textbook leave this information out?
  • What impact does this history’s exclusion have on our collective understanding of Black women’s history?
  • How might the inclusion of this history give a better more/ complete understanding of US history?

Question 2, Formative Task 2, Featured Sources

Second Supporting Question:

How is Black women’s history shaped by the Black Women’s Club movement?

Assessment of Black Women’s Clubs in History: “THE ANALYSIS”

Now that the historical context of the Black Women’s Club movement is established, it is time to look at historical analysis of the movement, as offered by two distinct historians. Have a physical copy of this reading so students can actively underline and highlight.

1. Students will read independently and interact with excerpts from the articles below to identify concrete details and analysis.
   • When reading, students will underline information that offers concrete details about what Club Women were – who joined the clubs, goals, etc.
   • After identifying concrete details, students will highlight (or circle) analysis (meaning an argument or interpretation) offered by the historians.
   • If students have never done this type of identification of concrete details and analysis, model how to do this with the first document (Lerner) and allow students to complete the second document (Shaw) on their own.

Figure 10.2
Source #1: Excerpt from Lerner, G. (1974). Early Community Work of Black Club Women. The Journal of Negro History, 59(2), 158–167. https://doi.org/10.2307/2717327

Figure 10.3
Source #2: Excerpt from Shaw, S. J. (1991). Black Club Women and the creation of the National Association of Colored Women. Journal of Women’s History., 3(2), 10–25. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0065

 

2. When done independently reading, provide students with a blank Venn diagram (Figure 10.4) and markers of two different colors. They can work individually, in pairs, or small groups.
   • In the middle of the Venn Diagram, students will fill out any commonalities they found between the readings for concrete detail in Color A and commonalities for analysis in a Color B.
   • On the outside spaces of the Venn Diagram, students will fill out differences they found – Color A for concrete details and Color B for analysis.
3. When done with the Venn Diagram, review with the class what they found that was similar or different across the two historians for concrete details and analysis, then discuss – which interpretation of events did they find more compelling or “accurate”?

Question 3, Formative Task 3, Featured Sources

Third Supporting Question:

• How did social, political, and economic conditions impact the agendas of the Black Women’s Club in Portland, Oregon?

Learning “THROUGH” History – PRIMARY SOURCES

In this portion of the lesson, students will examine primary sources and determine what it was the Oregon’s Club Women were doing. A reminder that many clubs were localized, as discussed earlier in the chapter. What Oregon’s Club Women focused on might be different from that of chapters in New York City, Boston, or Atlanta. Actions Oregon Club Women chose to engage with will illustrate significant issues of discrimination as it relates to gender and race.

• To introduce this lesson, students will read Pauline Bradford’s interview. Bradford was a member of the Harriet Tubman Club. This reviews what Club Women did, to include localized purposes in the Portland region. This is a great read if you need to break the lesson over two days, as it will help refresh key historical points already covered.
• Students will use a collection of yearbooks from the “Culture Club,” one Portland’s Black Women’s Clubs, as they exemplify localized issues of concern. Students will look at who the Culture Club donated money to and supported politically, which will elucidate larger objectives of this particular club, as well as issues of concern to the Black community in Portland.

Documents Needed:

1. National Archives Worksheet for Understanding Perspective in Primary Sources.pdf
2. Portland State Culture Club Yearbook, 1937-1938.pdf

Part One: Modeling Document Analysis:

• Open up the document analysis worksheet (see below).
• Visit the Culture Club’s Yearbook from 1937-1938 – [https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=cc_yearbooks]
• Work through the document analysis worksheet with the class to model how to unpack a primary source.
• A critical component of this document is what the women were learning each week – what that might tell us about the purpose clubs served in the community, particularly for Black women?

Part Two: Culture Club + Local Beneficiaries:

• Students will look at a series of documents to determine what it was the Culture Club did and who they supported via fundraising, thereby illustrating issues of interest to Black Club women.
• Documents and framing questions for each document. For students, have physical or electronic copies of each document AND four Primary Document Analysis worksheets (one for each document).

Table 10.1
Documents and Framing Questions

Documents for this Activity	Focus for Reading the Document
1956-1957 – Culture Club Yearbook	Read through this document with students and fill out the Primary Document Analysis worksheet with them. Direct students to pay attention to these questions as they fill out the Primary Doc Analysis worksheet: What is the Culture Club? What types of activities are on their agenda? Who is in the club? What other organizations are mentioned within the document? How are they working towards larger goals of civil rights in Portland?
1961-1962 – Culture Club Yearbook	Students work on the Primary Document Analysis worksheet on their own or in small groups – review answers with them. See questions above. If the teacher is short on time, the 1961-1962 Club Yearbook can be removed from the activity.
1964-1965 – Culture Club Yearbook   Urban League – Meeting Notes for 1964  (pp. 7-11, 16, 20-22, 43-45)	Students will use both documents and determine why the Culture Club was supporting the Urban League through fundraising. For Urban League, direct students to pay close attention to: Hate groups Hiring practices of Fred Meyer Housing discrimination Educational discrimination (to include particular focus on Jefferson High School)

Figure 10.4
Primary Document Analysis Worksheet

Summative Performance Task

Your students are now equipped with knowledge of Black Women’s Clubs, two historical perspectives on their significance and impact on the larger civil rights movement, and localized primary document data. Now it is time to do something with that information and the historical skills they have been building.

Students will create a two minute podcast with their local peers as their intended audience (a podcast for teens by teens). Podcasts must cover the following:

1. What the Black Women’s Club movement was (historical context and general overview);
2. Offers analysis for why they were critical to localized civil rights movements;
3. Uses the Culture Club as an example.

Groups of 3 students is ideal, as each student can have a particular role:

• All three students draft the script – each student is responsible for one of the three aspects listed above (what, analysis, Culture Club);
• Two students record and one is responsible for production/ tech aspects.

Helpful Resources for Podcasting – If your students have never written or recorded a podcast, here are two resources to help:

• NPR (2018) article: “Starting your podcast: A guide for students.”
• Adame’s (2021) article: “A studio at your fingertips: 5 apps teachers are using to make student podcasts.”

Table 10.2
Rubric

Podcast Content (9 pts)	Podcast Production (7 pts)
Podcast clearly provides historical context about Black Women’s Club movement (3 pts); Podcast has a clear analysis of why and in what ways Clubs were influential on localized civil rights movements (3 pts); Podcast has connection to local history via Culture Club – data is used to support analysis (3 pts).	Two minutes long (can be up to 2:30, but no shorter or longer) (2 pts); Audio is clear and easy to understand (1 pt); Story includes a hook and is engaging to listeners (2 pts); Podcast flows logically with clear beginning (hook) and end (2 pts).

Potential Civic Engagement

There are a number of ways students can use history to civically engage with their surrounding community, whether that be their local school, neighborhood, city, or state. Educating others through podcasts, newspaper articles, and public memorials is a significant form of civic engagement that is very attainable for students. Below are a few examples of how this work can be done by students:

• Publish podcasts on school’s local social media, website, or school news site;
• Contact school’s archivist (many schools have one) and offer to provide data found about Black Culture Women and work done in local communities;
• Interview surviving and current Club Women from local area and create a searchable database or donate to local historical society;
• Research local women leaders (i.e., – Thelma Unthank) – create a public memorial for that person or group;
• Utilize school newspaper archives or local newspapers (The Oregonian or The Advocate) to corroborate what they learned – write a story for school newspaper or other local publication.

Conclusion

Too often, America’s diverse history is taught as a footnote or sidebar in parallel to the dominant US historical narrative. Teaching the Black Women’s Club movement is an opportunity for students to engage with materials that create a rich narrative that captures the complexities of the civil rights movement in Portland, Oregon. Using primary and secondary sources, students will understand how Black women were influencing the direction and initiatives of the civil rights movement, rather than being passive participants. Students will understand how Black Portland women were actively resisting and challenging systemic and institutional racism at the local level, rather than being merely victims of white supremacy.

In creating a rich narrative of the civil rights movement using primary documents, students will learn through, rather than about Black women’s history because they will understand the nuances of progress related to civil rights by reading actions taken by local community leaders, rather than learning an over-generalized historical retelling of events about this particular era. As argued by King (2020), it is this type of learning that shifts US history away from tokenizing Black history and into teaching Black historical consciousness. Teaching in this manner is critical in rethinking best practices for teaching the diversified histories of the United States.

If educators want ways to expand upon this lesson, please refer to the list below:

• Compare Portland to NYC, Atlanta, or St. Louis (or anywhere…really).
• Look at collections of pictures:
  • Oregon Historical Society – Collections results for Oregon Association of Colored Women’s Clubs
  • Multnomah County Library – National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs
• Examination of tension between local chapters and national organizations (ie – NACW)
• Biographics of members of the Culture Club (ie – Thelma Unthank).

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References

Adame, D. (2021, Feb. 21). A studio at your fingertips: 5 apps teachers are using to make student podcasts. NPR: Student Podcast Challenge. https://www.npr.org/2020/02/21/807372536/a-studio-at-your-fingertips-5-apps-teachers-are-using-to-make-student-podcasts

Berry, D.R. & K. N. Gross (2020). A Black women’s history of the United States. Boston.

Black Club Women and the creation of the National Association of Colored Women. Journal of Women’s History., 3(2), 10–25. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0065

Kelly, K. (2022, April 17). Black washerwomen in the South become pioneers of American labor. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/04/17/black-washerwomen-strike/

King, G.L. (2020). Black history is not American history: Toward a framework of Black Historical Consciousness. Social Education (84)6, 335-341.

Lerner, G. (1974). Early community work of Black Club Women. The Journal of Negro History, 59(2), 158–167. https://doi.org/10.2307/2717327

PDX Scholar. (n.d.) Women’s clubs: Culture clubs. Portland State University. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cultureclub/

Ross, J. (2010). Black united front oral history project: Pauline Bradford. Portland State University Library. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/blackunited_oralhist/1/

Starting your podcast: A guide for students (2018, Nov. 15). NPR: Student Podcast Challenge. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/15/662070097/starting-your-podcast-a-guide-for-students

Williams, M. (2020). Portland, Oregon Black Women’s Clubs reaction to visit of national leader. Oregon Women’s History Consortium. http://www.oregonwomenshistory.org/portland-oregon-black-womens-clubs-react-to-visit-of-national-leader-by-morgan-williams/