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Black neighbors: Race and the limits of reform in the American Settlement House Movement, 1890-1945
Abstract
Settlement workers sought to reform American society in order to make it truer to its democratic ideals. They erected the seedling of modern social work, the social settlement, which uniquely combined social services and reform. Attentive to the daily concerns of their neighbors, settlement workers aimed at nothing short of total social transformation based on the revitalization of local communities. However, when black migrants from the rural South began to replace European immigrants in settlement neighborhoods during and after World War I, settlements responded by closing down completely, following their white neighbors out of the slums, conducting segregated activities, or only rarely, opening a separate branch or an independent black branch. This dissertation seeks to explain the failure of the mainstream movement to redirect its efforts toward the needs of its new black neighbors. It analyzes many settlement leaders' belief in the amorality of black individuals and the deficiency of their culture. Settlement workers attempted to put into practice what they considered a cosmopolitan world view, yet its secular, urban, and Northern biases further inhibited their understanding of black culture and religion. Their "liberalism" ironically helped stall the translation of "the settlement idea" from immigrants to blacks. While the mainstream settlement movement failed to welcome blacks, other reformers did conduct settlement work in both urban and rural black communities in the North and South. School settlements, the YWCA, and independent black settlements all embodied the settlement's marriage of social services and community revitalization. Some of this work influenced the broader movement toward civil rights and State responsibility for social welfare. Innocuous doctrines like industrial education and moralist womanhood veiled serious commitments to social change. This study describes a reform movement plagued and directed by racial tension. It provides evidence of the great impact of race on the history of the settlement movement from the Progressive Era to the 1940s, and reveals the importance of collective confrontation of issues such as racism and separatism in all efforts to bring about change in a pluralistic society.
Subject Area
American history|Black history|Womens studies
Recommended Citation
Lasch, Elisabeth Dan, "Black neighbors: Race and the limits of reform in the American Settlement House Movement, 1890-1945" (1990). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9110172.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9110172