White Women's Rights

This study reinterprets a crucial period (1870s-1920s) in the history of women's rights, focusing attention on a core contradiction at the heart of early feminist theory. At a time when white elites were concerned with imperialist projects and civilizing missions, progressive white women developed an explicit racial ideology to promote their cause, defending patriarchy for primitives while calling for its elimination among the civilized. By exploring how progressive white women at the turn of the century laid the intellectual groundwork for the feminist social movements that followed, Louise Michele Newman speaks directly to contemporary debates about the effect of race on current feminist scholarship.

White Women's Rights is an important book. It is a fascinating and informative account of the numerous and complex ties which bound feminist thought to the practices and ideas which shaped and gave meaning to America as a racialized society. A compelling read, it moves very gracefully between the general history of the feminist movement and the particular histories of individual women.--Hazel Carby, Yale University


This is a provocative and important book that makes a major contribution to our understanding of how American feminism has been shaped by a legacy of racism. In a compelling and illuminating exploration of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century feminist thought, Newman explores how racial thinking distorted liberal ideals of citizenship and democracy and limited the commitments of white women to equality for all. Everyone interested in the deep-rooted and paradoxical consequences of hidden racism should read this book.--Alice Kessler-Harris, Rutgers University

Newman's book will be as much admired as it is hotly debated. The book is, if anything, more broadly significant than it looks at first encounter. White Women's Rights is acute in its demonstration that important breaks in feminist (and anthropological) thought have often developed unevenly and contradictorily, shuffling elements of existing evolutionary models rather than overthrowing them. The tone of Newman's work is exemplary, evoking tragedies without lapsing into easy moralism.--David Roediger, University of Minnesota

White Women's Rights is an important book. It is a fascinating and informative account of the numerous and complex ties which bound feminist thought to the practices and ideas which shaped and gave meaning to America as a racialized society. A compelling read, it moves very gracefully between the general history of the feminist movement and the particular histories of individual women.--Hazel Carby, Yale University

Highly readable intellectual biographies illustrate the complexities and ironic contradictions within turn-of-the-century feminism...White Women's Rights is an important addition to the study of US racism. A provocative and challenging book.--CHOICE

[T]he thorough analysis of the influence of evolutionism on early feminist writing offers many new insights...[A] compelling look backward at the limitations of feminism as an ideology of human liberation.--American Historical Review

Draws attention to the ambivalence of white women and early feminisms in national, colonial and imperial history...[S]how[s] that contemporary racial ideologies influenced activists and leaders.--Journal of American Women's History