South Carolina Women
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South Carolina Women

Their Lives and Times, Volume 2

Title Details

Pages: 336

Illustrations: 7 color and 19 b&w photos

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Paperback

Pub Date: 01/01/2010

ISBN: 9-780-8203-2938-3

List Price: $34.95

Pub Date: 01/25/2010

ISBN: 9-780-8203-6970-9

List Price: $32.95

Hardcover

Pub Date: 01/01/2010

ISBN: 9-780-8203-2937-6

List Price: $120.95

South Carolina Women

Their Lives and Times, Volume 2

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  • Description
  • Contributors

The biographical essays in this volume provide new insights into the various ways that South Carolina women asserted themselves in their state and illuminate the tension between tradition and change that defined the South from the Civil War through the Progressive Era. As old rules—including gender conventions that severely constrained southern women—were dramatically bent if not broken, these women carved out new roles for themselves and others.

The volume begins with a profile of Laura Towne and Ellen Murray, who founded the Penn School on St. Helena Island for former slaves. Subsequent essays look at such women as the five Rollin sisters, members of a prominent black family who became passionate advocates for women’s rights during Reconstruction; writer Josephine Pinckney, who helped preserve African American spirituals and explored conflicts between the New and Old South in her essays and novels; and Dr. Matilda Evans, the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in the state. Intractable racial attitudes often caused women to follow separate but parallel paths, as with Louisa B. Poppenheim and Marion B. Wilkinson. Poppenheim, who was white, and Wilkinson, who was black, were both driving forces in the women’s club movement. Both saw clubs as a way not only to help women and children but also to showcase these positive changes to the wider nation. Yet the two women worked separately, as did the white and black state federations of women’s clubs.

Often mixing deference with daring, these women helped shape their society through such avenues as education, religion, politics, community organizing, history, the arts, science, and medicine. Women in the mid- and late twentieth century would build on their accomplishments.

Barbara Bellows

Ronald E. Butchart

Michele Grigsby Coffey

James Farmer

Willard B. Gatewood

Belinda Gergel

Darlene Hine

Joan Marie Johnson

Valinda W. Littlefield

Amy McCandless

Giselle Roberts

Martha Severens

Marjorie Julian Spruill

Stephanie E. Yuhl

Larry Watson

About the Author/Editor

Marjorie Julian Spruill (Editor)
MARJORIE JULIAN SPRUILL is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina.

Valinda W. Littlefield (Editor)
VALINDA W. LITTLEFIELD is an assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina.

Joan Marie Johnson (Editor)
JOAN MARIE JOHNSON is a lecturer in women’s history and southern history at Northeastern Illinois University. She is the cofounder and codirector of the Newberry Seminar on Women and Gender at the Newberry Library in Chicago and is the author of Southern Ladies, New Women.