KU News Release

Mellon fellowship funds KU student’s study of African-American women’s clubs

LAWRENCE — With a $20,000 dissertation fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, a University of Kansas doctoral student is researching the role African-American women’s clubs played in shaping Kansas communities.

Doretha K. Williams is one of 10 students nationally to receive a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship dissertation grant this year for her research in American studies. The grants are offered through the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in partnership with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Williams’ dissertation focuses on the lives and activities of African-American women from 1890 to 1930 in Kansas.

Williams cautions that the motivation for the African-American women’s club movement was far more complex than some people may realize.

The club movement emerged during the Progressive Era and was “fueled by incredibly distasteful images of black women projected by racists,” Williams said. They fought the encroachment of a racially based system of exclusion.

In Kansas, the club women “were part of a small, yet engaged, group of African-Americans who provided community leadership addressing issues in their region,” Williams said. They funded scholarships for women, conducted competitions in art and music, and established group homes for dependent and neglected teenage girls.

Over time, photos are saved but often information about the occasion and people in the photos is lost. This 1948 group of club women were among photographs and club materials collected by Bertha Dandridge of Topeka. PHOTO/KU Spencer Research Library Afro-American Clubwomen Project Collection in the Kansas Collection

The National Association of Colored Women was formed in 1896 in Boston. State and local clubs could join the national group, but not all did. One early Kansas club, the Ne Plus Ultra Art and Literature Club of Topeka, was formed in 1899 and joined the Kansas Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs in 1900. In contrast, the Pierian Club of Kansas City, Kan., formed in 1893 and has remained active for more than 100 years without joining either the state or national organization.

Early club members were generally in an emerging middle class. They followed Victorian lifestyles. They sought to elevate black women as a group through activities representative of the middle class.

“One way they countered racist views was by promoting respectability, Christian lifestyles as a way of claiming their rights as citizens,” Williams said.

Williams is particularly interested in the influence migration had on the early clubs and their communities. Kansas often served as an intermittent rather than a permanent destination for African-Americans moving from the South in search of jobs and better opportunities, she said.

In researching old correspondence and minutes, Williams found a Topeka club slogan: “Kansas grows the best wheat and the best Race women.” It indicated that members “not only had pride in being black women but also in being women from Kansas,” Williams said.

A 1978 photo of officers of the Kansas Association of Colored Women’s Club during their convention in Topeka. PHOTO/KU Spencer Research Library Afro-American Clubwomen Project Collection in the Kansas Collection

The early clubs formed as far west as Salina, but were predominately located in eastern Kansas. Membership in Kansas peaked before the 1920s and again in the 1930s.

KU’s Spencer Research Library houses the Afro-American Clubwomen Project Collection, a prime resource for Williams. The collection indicates that by the 1950s clubs were active in many Kansas communities including Arkansas City, Atchison, Coffeyville, Emporia, Great Bend, Hutchinson, Independence, Junction City, Kansas City, Lawrence, Leavenworth, Manhattan, Newton, Osawatomie, Paola, Parsons, Pittsburg, Salina, Topeka and Wichita.

Williams’ research extends a 1985 project that documented the history of the clubs in Kansas. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, then teaching women’s studies at KU, directed the study funded by the Kansas Humanities Council. Deborah Dandridge, KU librarian, and Marilyn Dell Brady, a 1987 KU doctoral graduate, were the researchers. Williams notes that Brady’s dissertation also focused on the Kansas clubs. Brady found that Kansas club women often were ahead of the leadership in the national association in targeting issues for action.

Williams is the daughter of Lee and Ozella Williams of Topeka and a graduate of Topeka West High School. She plans to receive her doctoral degree in fall 2009. She is project manager for the History of Black Writing Project at KU and has worked as a graduate teaching assistant in humanities and western civilization. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., in 1998 and a master’s degree in English from KU in fall 2000.

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