| Popis: |
Madam C. J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy during Jim Crow presents the first comprehensive story of Walker’s philanthropic giving arguing that she was a significant philanthropist who challenged Jim Crow and serves as a foremother of African American philanthropy today. Born Sarah Breedlove (1867-1919) to formerly enslaved parents on a cotton plantation during Reconstruction, Madam C. J. Walker became a beauty-culture entrepreneur and was known as America’s first self-made female millionaire. This book presents the story of Madam Walker’s philanthropic actions through the author’s use of historical methods and archival research. The result is a philanthropic biography that reinterprets Walker’s life, legacy, and meaning through giving. Using analytical frameworks from philanthropic studies and black women’s history, the author constructs the appropriate lenses for interpreting Walker’s lived experiences as a philanthropist through her own words, motivations, relationships, and actions. Organized around five types of gifts that Walker made—opportunity, education, activism, material resources, and legacy—the text illustrates the broader cultural contexts and philanthropic practices of generosity that informed black women’s lives and giving at the beginning of the twentieth century. Madam Walker’s Gospel of Giving provides a different view of who counts as a philanthropist and what counts as philanthropy in the public and scholarly conversations dominated by the perspectives of white wealthy elite donors. It reclaims and names black women as philanthropists using Walker as an example. |
