The Impact of the “Cult of True Womanhood” on the Education of Black Women

Abstract

This paper compares the primary purposes and functions of educating black and white women in the 19th century. For white women, education served as a vehicle for developing homemaker skills, for reinforcing the role of wife and mother, and a milieu for finding a potential husband. For black women education served as an avenue for the improvement of their race or “race uplift.” The economic, political and social conditions which contributed to these purposes are discussed within a historical context.