Description: Focusing on the National Baptist Convention, the largest religious movement among black Americans, Higginbotham shows readers how women were largely responsible for making the church a force for self-help, also revealing the challenges of black women to patriarchal theology. At once tough-minded and engaging, this book is central to an understanding of African-American social and cultural life and a critical chapter in the history of religion in America. Illustrations.
Brief description: Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African American Studies at Harvard University.
Review Quotes: If the period was so important for women but simultaneously a low point for black Americans as a group, then how should we understand the apparently contradictory politics of that time? Righteous Discontent accentuates the positive, finding in the contradiction 'a creative tension that both motivated and empowered black women to speak out.' Ms. Higginbotham moves beyond the dichotomous thinking that has often short-circuited our attempts to understand the situation of black women... An important, sophisticated, and richly instructive book.--Suzanne Lebsock "New York Times Book Review"