Three Days in Boston: Nineteenth Century Black Women's Intellectual Activism and the Case of John W. Jacks

Abstract: This article examines Black club women's intellectual activism in response to a defamatory letter composed in 1895 by white journalist John W. Jacks, in which he labeled Black women "prostitutes" and "thieves." In their ideological rejoinders to Jacks, club members exposed him as a liar and asserted their own definitions of Black womanhood. Yet they grappled with their decision to entertain the journalist and debated over the most appropriate response to his attacks. Their deliberations reveal the complex nature of Black feminist thought, and the anxieties club thinkers confronted in their defense of Black womanhood.