Reputable and Entitled to Credit: The Respectability of African American Women in Nineteenth-Century New York City

Reputable and Entitled to CreditThe Respectability of African American Women in Nineteenth-Century New York City Jane E. Dabel (bio) and Mary E. Booth (bio) In 1878, one year after the end of Reconstruction, Charity Johnson recounted the financial strain her husband’s illness had inflicted on her family. “I had been married to my late husband, Jacob Johnson, for about three years when he went in the Army and had two children. Then I had to support myself and my children.” Shortly after her husband returned from service with the 26th Regiment of the United States Colored Troops, one of New York City’s three black Civil War regiments, his health failed, and he could no longer work. As Charity explained, “The sickness of my husband, being consumption, it kept us poor and in struggling circumstances.” When pension officials inspected the family’s financial status, they found Charity’s husband had “left no money when he died, not being able to work of late years.” Therefore, as Charity put it, “I have no means of support except my daily labor.” The pension official assigned to the family described Charity Johnson as “reputable and entitled to credit.”1 Charity Johnson’s recounted narrative reveals the struggles working-class black women faced in their attempts to survive economically, while at the same time being profoundly committed to respectability. Their devotion to respectability can be seen in three critical areas as these women sought education for their children, worked to gain economic independence, and demonstrated devotion to lawfulness in times of turmoil. Far from being solely a middle-class concern, issues of respectability permeated the lives of black women from all economic backgrounds. During this period, both ordinary and elite [End Page 192] 1. African American women were firmly devoted to respectability because they believed that such behavior would enhance their own lives while also forcing whites to recognize them as equals. Stories like that of Charity Johnson, therefore, assist us in exploring how ordinary black women developed their unique version of respectability. Historiography Following the end of slavery in New York City in 1827, the black community—both elites and ordinary blacks—embraced the behaviors of respectability. Religious and civic leaders within the African American community, in particular, argued that blacks could use respectability to fight discrimination. In her landmark study, Righteous Discontent, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham argued that black leaders emphasized the virtues of thrift, temperance, and purity when discussing the politics of respectability.2 Since the publication of Higginbotham’s groundbreaking work in 1993, numerous scholars have examined how African Americans defined respectability in terms of gender roles. In his 2001 study of the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, Craig Steven Wilder argued that black men were “committed to progress through patriarchy” and that they “dominated the public sphere by gathering communities of men to exercise the authority of men.”3 In a similar vein, Patrick Rael has argued that black leaders fought for equality in nineteenth-century northern cities by using the language of republicanism to demand liberty and equality. These claims for equal treatment, however, were gendered with republican norms of behavior calling for men to be the ones making public claims for equal rights while women remained in the home in charge of the private sphere.4 Other scholars, including Michele Mitchell, have also explored these gender expectations by demonstrating how respectability was bound up with patriarchal constructions.5 Another trend the historiography has seen is a growing focus on the ways in which class played a central role in the construction of African American respectability. In particular, scholars have examined how the black middle class used respectability to highlight economic differences within their community. This is particularly evident in the [End Page 193] late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.6 Much of the scholarly work on twentieth-century black respectability relies on sources from women’s clubs, revealing how elite women used respectability as a way of proving their virtue in contrast to lower-class blacks.7 As a result, historians have noted how the politics of respectability often served to foster intraracial class tensions. Scholars like LaShawn Harris, Cheryl Hicks, and...