Initially, black women in the NACW, the churches, the NAACP, and other organizations were less militant than Ida B. Wells and even pushed her to the margins of their activities. Many were closer to Booker T. Washington, who advised accommodation instead of protest. Accordingly, black club women focused on the politics of respectability and racial uplift, with the motto “lifting as we climb.” They believed that if they presented a respectable image of black womanhood the whole race would benefit. “Only the BLACK WOMAN can say,” wrote Anna Julia Cooper, “‘when and where I enter . . . then and
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