Historical April–May 2011 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
In Groping Toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910–1949, historian [and Westminster neighbor!] Priscilla A. Dowden-White presents an on-the-ground view of local institution building and community organizing campaigns initiated by African American social welfare reformers. Through extensive research, the author places African American social welfare reform efforts within the vanguard of interwar community and neighborhood organization, reaching beyond the “racial uplift” and “behavior” models of the studies preceding hers.
She explores one of the era’s chief organizing principles, the “community as a whole” idea, and deliberates on its relationship to segregation and the St. Louis black community’s methods of reform. Groping Toward Democracy depicts the dilemmas organizers faced in this segregated time, explaining how they pursued the goal of full, uncontested black citizenship while still seeking to maximize the benefits available to African Americans in segregated institutions.
Original photograph caption
Groping Toward Democracy book cover. Designer not separately credited.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, April–May 2011.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2011_04.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 7.
