Faith in the World Community: Sue Bailey Thurman and Black Women's World Reconstruction, 1920-1950

Abstract

Scholars have demonstrated that during the first half of the twentieth century, African American women were at the vanguard of the international struggle for Black liberation. Through their international travel, political organizing, and writing, they promoted transnational consciousness in domestic African American politics. While many of the women involved in these movements held Leftist or racial nationalist sympathies, this dissertation uses activist and journalist Sue Bailey Thurman as a lens through which to consider how Black women involved with liberal Christian organizations created an anticolonial and antiracist critique that was based on a radical religious egalitarianism, rooted in a belief in African American dignity and human personality. Sue Bailey Thurman, who was married to esteemed theologian Howard Thurman, promoted international consciousness through her work with the Young Women’s Christian Association, the National Council of Negro Women, and the Fellowship Church, as well as her writings as a journalist and public historian. During the period under consideration, she traveled throughout Europe, Central America, and South Asia building relationships with women and women’s organizations, which she then integrated into her domestic programming. By foregrounding non-white and female voices, Bailey Thurman bridged the organizing tradition of 19th century African American women with liberal Christian internationalism and the Harlem Renaissance concern for self-portraiture. The resulting critique of imperialism targeted its limitations on creative expression rather than a systematic interpretation of oppression.