Black Women In The Late Victorian Era

This critical reflection will focus on Black women in the elite and middle class of Victorian America by using “Black Ideals of Womanhood in the Late Victorian Era” by Shirley J. Carlson and “To erect above the ruined auction-block ... Institutions of learning’: ‘race-women’, industrial education, and the artifacts of nation-making in the Jim Crow South” by Angel David Nieves. Both works discuss the roles of Black women in Victorian society as educated and poise while fighting for racial uplift. They also discuss how those roles were different from their white counterparts and how the white community reacted to the fight for the racial uplift. Overall, both works were very interesting, but could have gone into more detail about certain things.

institutions of learning’: ‘race-women’, industrial education, and the artifacts of nation-making in the Jim Crow South” by Angel David Nieves continues by speaking on similar topics but goes further into detail. Nieves chooses to express in depth the fight for racial uplift of Elizabeth Evelyn Wright specifically. Nieves uses Wright’s struggle to erect her school to prove and demonstrate black women’s passion and dedication to do race work in the Victorian era. While expressing this dedication Nieves also discusses the reluctance of the white community to allow this to as she perseveres on and finally builds her school. Although, interesting there were things in both works that I wished were spoken more about. Carlson gave a very in depth explanation about the rise in educated black women in Victorian society, but lacked in information on how the white community reacted to this. Unlike Nieves Carlson only spoke about how accepted the educated women was and not how they struggled and fought against the white community’s resistance to their race work. It would have been interesting to see how they reacted to the way Black women were treated for their intelligence compared to white