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Sandra D. Harmon, Women and Patriotism in Jim Crow America, Journal of American History, Volume 93, Issue 2, September 2006, Pages 556–557, https://doi.org/10.2307/4486319
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What is patriotism? How does one demonstrate national loyalty? For that matter, to what or to whom does one owe allegiance? These were contested issues in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, of course, still are. In the aftermath of the Civil War numerous voluntary associations formed to pursue patriotic goals in a nation struggling to reunite the white North and South (usually at the expense of black Americans). Women's associations were particularly prominent, and they are the subject of Francesca Morgan's Women and Patriotism in Jim Crow America. Many studies of patriotism focus on government and the activity of men to the neglect of women's activities. Others analyze women's voluntary associations, but focus on reform associations to the neglect of conservative ones. Morgan's exhaustive research offers new, broader viewpoints for studies of patriotism. She demonstrates that women's patriotic organizations were not merely auxiliaries of men's groups but a force in their own right. Women were political actors who, ironically, acted to preserve existing, gendered notions of citizenship.
