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Article: "What a chasm there is between us": Charlotte Hawkins Brown and White Protestant progressives, 1901-1952.
- Article from:
- Baptist History and Heritage
- Article date:
- June 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Baptist History and Heritage Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1922, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, the founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute near Greensboro, North Carolina, poured out her heart to the white Christian women of America in the pages of the Missionary Review of the World.
She expressed decades of frustration and disappointment as she described with clarity and eloquence the separate and unequal worlds of white and black women in America. "What a chasm there is between us," she wrote, "deep, fathomless! The Negro woman wonders if there is a place on earth where she can stand and breathe freely and think in terms of a woman." (1)
Charlotte's metaphor of the chasm is reminiscent of a popular version of ...