
          Victorian Reformer.
          Reviewed by Fleming, Harold G.Harold G. Fleming
          Vol. 11, No. 5, 1989, pp. 18-19
          
          Lugenia Burns Hope: Black Southern
Reformer by Jacqueline Anne Rouse (Athens: The University of
Georgia Press, 1989. 192 pp. $25.)
          If a truly definitive history of the South is ever written, some of
its best pages will be devoted to those unsung women of the region who
led the way in the battle for social justice. Aside from a few who
achieved national recognition, like Mary McLeod Bethune and Lillian
Smith, their names and deeds are not to be found in the standard
historical records.
          This admirably succinct and understated biography is a valuable
addition to the meager body of writing that seeks to cure that
neglect.
          Lugenia Burns Hope (1871-1947) was a prominent member of a network
of Southern black_women who banded together in such organizations as
the National Association of Colored Women, the Southeastern
Association of Colored Women's Clubs, and Atlanta's Neighborhood Union
to find remedies for the wretched conditions in which most blacks were
obliged to live. As was the case with most of her collaborators, Hope
was animated by a spirit of nobolesse oblige. She
was an educated woman of proud family background and the wife of a
prominent educator--John Hope I, the first black president of Atlanta
University and himself a leading reformer, or "race man."
Conventionally, a woman of her status was expected to serve mainly as
an adjunct and adornment of her prestigious husband, a devoted mother,
gracious hostess, and bellwether of the social elite.
          Lugenia Hope's advantaged position, however, drove her to give
first place to a duty of another kind--to fight for the dignity and
well-being of the less fortunate, especially the children of the black
slums. Her intense commitment to this cause took precedence over all
other concerns, even her own health and comfort and the many claims of
family life. (Her husband's illustrious career imposed its own heavy
demands of work and travel leading to long periods of physical
separation and presumably loneliness.) She was a rarity on yet another
count: Her independent spirit and assertive manner made it all but
impossible for her to play the accommodationist role adopted as a
pragmatic strategy by most of her black contemporaries. While her
forthrightness won admiration in some quarters, it often subjected her
to painful criticism.
          Rouse has given us not only an account of an inspiring life. but
also an insightful view of black_community life in the South, dating
back to the beginning of the century. The racial customs of those
years would seem quaint if they were not so egregiously inhumane. The
protracted struggle required of Hope and her allies, first to get a
"black" branch of the YWCA established, and then to wrest control of
it from condescending white Southern women, is one of the milder
examples.
          There is a certain quaintness, too, in the 

Victorian values that Hope
and her network brought to the reformist crusade. The Neighborhood
Union prided itself on ridding black neighborhoods of immoral elements
that threatened to corrupt the youth of those areas. The records of
the organization include the following:
          February 1911: "Mrs. Barnett succeeded in getting two families
out of her district who indulged in doing things that were immoral
such as breaking the Sabbath and gambling."
          August 1912: "The Mildred Street Case has been satisfactorily
disposed of. The Holy Rollers were made to move on the grounds of
disorderly conduct."
          Victorian principles and all, our society today could do with some
brave and dedicated reformers like Lugenia Burns Hope.
          
            HAROLD FLEMING was on the staff of the Council
continuously from 1947-61. From 1957-61 he was executive
director. Since then, he has led the Potomac Institute, in Washington,
and in countless other ways served civil_rights and the enlargement of
American justice.
          
        
