A01=Crystal Marie Moten
activism
affirmative action
African Americans
Author_Crystal Marie Moten
beauty schools
Black women
Category=NHB
Category=NHT
Category=NHTB
Category=NHWR9
civil rights
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
equal employment
intellectual history
Jim Crow
jobs
justice
labor
midwest
Milwaukee
NAACP
Project Equality
Title VII
Urban League
work
Young Women's Christian Association
Product details
- ISBN 9780826505583
- Weight: 513g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Mar 2023
- Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Continually Working tells the stories of Black working women who resisted employment inequality in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from the 1940s to the 1970s. The book explores the job-related activism of Black Midwestern working women and uncovers the political and intellectual strategies they used to critique and resist employment discrimination, dismantle unjust structures, and transform their lives and the lives of those in their community.
Moten emphasizes the ways in which Black women transformed the urban landscape by simultaneously occupying spaces from which they had been historically excluded and creating their own spaces. Black women refused to be marginalized within the historically white and middle‑class Milwaukee Young Women's Christian Association (MYWCA), an association whose mission centered on supporting women in urban areas. Black women forged interracial relationships within this organization and made it, not without much conflict and struggle, one of the most socially progressive organizations in the city. When Black women could not integrate historically white institutions, they created their own. They established financial and educational institutions, such as Pressley School of Beauty Culture, which beautician Mattie Pressley Dewese opened in 1946 as a result of segregation in the beauty training industry. This school served economic, educational and community development purposes as well as created economic opportunities for Black women. Historically and contemporarily, Milwaukee has been and is still known as one of the most segregated cities in the nation. Black women have always contested urban segregation, by making space for themselves and others on the margins. In so doing, they have transformed both the urban landscape and urban history.
Moten emphasizes the ways in which Black women transformed the urban landscape by simultaneously occupying spaces from which they had been historically excluded and creating their own spaces. Black women refused to be marginalized within the historically white and middle‑class Milwaukee Young Women's Christian Association (MYWCA), an association whose mission centered on supporting women in urban areas. Black women forged interracial relationships within this organization and made it, not without much conflict and struggle, one of the most socially progressive organizations in the city. When Black women could not integrate historically white institutions, they created their own. They established financial and educational institutions, such as Pressley School of Beauty Culture, which beautician Mattie Pressley Dewese opened in 1946 as a result of segregation in the beauty training industry. This school served economic, educational and community development purposes as well as created economic opportunities for Black women. Historically and contemporarily, Milwaukee has been and is still known as one of the most segregated cities in the nation. Black women have always contested urban segregation, by making space for themselves and others on the margins. In so doing, they have transformed both the urban landscape and urban history.
Crystal Marie Moten is a public historian, curator, and writer who focuses on the intersection of race, class, and gender to uncover the hidden histories of Black people in the Midwest.
