A new Negro for a new Century: An Accurate and Up-to-date Record of the Upward Struggles of the Negro Race
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The New Woman of Color: The Collected Writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, 1893-1918
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Fannie Barrier Williams made history as a controversial...)
Fannie Barrier Williams made history as a controversial African American reformer in an era fraught with racial discrimination and injustice. She first came to prominence during the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where her powerful arguments for African American women's rights launched her career as a nationally renowned writer and orator. In her speeches, essays, and articles, Williams incorporated the ideas of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois to create an interracial worldview dedicated to social equality and cultural harmony.
Williams's writings illuminate the difficulties of African American women in the Progressive Era. She frankly denounced white men's sexual and economic victimization of black women and condemned the complicity of religious and political leaders in the immorality of segregation. Citing the discrimination that crushed the spirits of African American women, Williams called for educational and professional progress for African Americans through the transformation of white society.
Committed to aiding and educating Chicago's urban poor, Williams played a central and continuous role in the development of the Frederick Douglass Center, which she called "the black Hull House." An active member of the NAACP and the National Urban League, she fought a long and successful battle to become the first African American admitted to the influential Chicago Women's Club. Her efforts to promote the well-being of African American women brought her into close contact with such influential women as Celia Parker Woolley, Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
Accompanied by Deegan's introduction and detailed annotations, Williams's perceptive writings on race relations, women's rights, economic justice, and the role of African American women are as fresh and fascinating today as when they were written.
Fannie Barrier Williams, née Fannie Barrier, was an American social reformer, lecturer, clubwoman, and cofounder of the National League of Colored Women.
Background
Fannie Barrier Williams was born in Brockport, New York, the youngest of the three children of Anthony J. and Harriet (Prince) Barrier. Her parents and grandparents had been born free, and her father, a native of Philadelphia, had lived in Brockport since childhood. A modestly successful small businessman and an active leader in the Baptist church, he provided a comfortable and secure life for his children. The Barriers were one of the few black families in Brockport and associated freely with whites.
Education
Fannie graduated from the State Normal School in Brockport in 1870 and, like many educated Northern black women of the Reconstruction era.
After several years, she returned north from south to study at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and then at the School of Fine Arts in Washington, D. C.
Career
She went south to teach the freedmen. There she encountered discrimination for the first time and, in her words, "began life as a colored person, in all that that term implies".
After marriage she with her husband, S. Laing Williams, moved to Chicago, where Williams established a law practice. They quickly found a niche in the city's small, closely knit black community, and joined the Unitarian All Souls Church of Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
Fannie Williams made her debut as a public figure in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where she gave a widely acclaimed address on "The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women of the United States" before the World's Congress of Representative Women.
She excoriated white America for denying equal opportunity to blacks and "thus attempting to repress the yearnings of common humanity. " Widely hailed in the press and by prominent black leaders, Mrs. Williams was soon in demand as a lecturer and writer.
She gave a second successful address during the Exposition, this time before the World's Parliament of Religions, and for the next decade she traveled extensively, speaking to women's clubs and church groups on various aspects of Afro-American life. She also wrote for several newspapers, including the Chicago Record-Herald and the New York Age.
In 1894 she worked to develop an organizational and institutional life in the black community. She was a leader in the National Association of Colored Women; a director of the Frederick Douglass Center, a social settlement on Chicago's South Side; a member of the board of the Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls; and an active supporter of Provident Hospital, one of the first black-controlled medical centers in the country.
In her early lectures and writings, Mrs. Williams voiced the militant protest ideology of Frederick Douglass, arguing that nothing less than the eradication of segregation and discrimination would solve the American racial problem. But after 1900 she began to drift toward the more conciliatory philosophy of Booker T. Washington.
She urged black Americans to stop complaining about white hostility and instead to help themselves, to acquire property, and "to cultivate strength against adversity and wrong-doing".
Fulsome in her praise of Washington's cautious leadership, she supported him in his dispute with the more militant W. E. B. Du Bois. Many other black leaders at the turn of the century retreated in the face of mounting social discrimination, but Mrs. Williams also had a personal motivation. Her husband was seeking a federal appointment which he could secure only through Washington's influence; when Laing Williams was appointed Assistant United States Attorney in 1908, his wife was widely credited with his success.
After 1908 Mrs. Williams wrote and lectured less often. She and her husband continued to endorse Washington's self-help philosophy, but by 1912, with the Washington-Du Bois controversy ebbing, they were working with the more militant National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as well. Mrs. Williams also participated in the woman suffrage movement, urging black women to play a leading role in the struggle for the rights of all women.
After her husband's death in 1921, she curtailed many of her activities, but did accept an appointment to the city's Library Board in 1924, the first woman and the first Afro-American to serve on that body.
Two years later, in declining health, she resigned and moved back to Brockport, where she spent the rest of her life with her unmarried sister. She died of arteriosclerosis in Brockport at the age of eighty-nine and was buried in the Barrier family plot at the High Street Cemetery.
Achievements
Fannie Williams was a pioneer in the effort to make black women a potent social and political force. Middle-class in background and outlook, she had little real knowledge of - or rapport with - the black masses, even while she worked for their uplift. She spoke instead for an educated black elite, attempting to formulate viable tactics and goals in the midst of an increasingly hostile white world.
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Views
Quotations:
"Only men of moral and mental force, of a patriotic regard for the relationship of the two races, can be of real service as ministers in the South. Less theology and more of human brotherhood, less declamation and more common sense and love for truth, must be the qualifications of the new ministry that shall yet save the race from the evils of false teaching. "
"In nothing was slavery so savage and relentless as in its attempted destruction of the family instincts of the Negro race in America. Individuals, not families; shelters, not homes; herding, not marriages, were the cardinal sins in that system of horrors. "
"The hearts of Afro-American women are too warm and too large for race hatred. Long suffering has so chastened them that they are developing a special sense of sympathy for all who suffer and fail of justice. "
". .. social evils are dangerously contagious. The fixed policy of persecution and injustice against a class of women who are weak and defenseless will be necessarily hurtful to the cause of all women. "
"Only men of moral and mental force, of a patriotic regard for the relationship of the two races, can be of real service as ministers in the South. Less theology and more of human brotherhood, less declamation and more common sense and love for truth, must be the qualifications of the new ministry that shall yet save the race from the evils of false teaching. "
Membership
In 1894 Mrs. Williams was nominated for membership in the Chicago Woman's Club. She was admitted only after fourteen months of bitter wrangling which attracted wide publicity; for thirty years she was the club's only black member.
Personality
She was an impassioned and forceful speaker. Contemporaries described her as a charming and attractive woman who spoke with eloquence and wit.
Connections
In Washington she met S. Laing Williams, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan and of Washington's Columbian College of Law, and they were married in 1887. They had no children.
