Margaret Murray Washington
Written by Daisy Zeijlon
Source: HBCUStory
b. March 19, 1861 | d. June 4, 1925
Margaret Murray Washington worked tirelessly to equip young Black women for success in a society that didn’t value them. She is an undervalued leader of domestic science who illuminates the field’s purpose in a Black, Southern, rural context.
Bio
Margaret Murray Washington was born in Mississippi to an enslaved Black mother and a white Irish father in 1861. Exactly how many siblings she had is unknown, but her mother, Lucy Murray, raised them alone. From Washington’s later correspondence and personal records it is clear that her mother understood the value of education, and it’s likely this conviction that led to Washington’s informal adoption by a Quaker couple—both teachers—at age seven. In 1881 she enrolled in Fisk University as a part-time student, studying ancient history, philosophy, science and literature (Harris). At a moment when the vast majority of the South’s Black population was illiterate, and its white population was violently resisting Black progress, a classic education was a source and symbol of power. Washington graduated in 1889 and began working at the Tuskegee Institute as an English Instructor before becoming its Lady Principal and Director of the Department of Domestic Service (Rouse). She occupied these roles until her death in 1925, all the while maintaining a steadfast belief in homemaking and motherhood as vehicles through which Black Southern women could assert their power.
Washington’s understanding of domestic science as a source of empowerment was in part the result of her personal context. Her own mother had strived to achieve some agency through domestic service; for her, taking laundry into her home had been a way to generate income, establish independence, and care for her children (Harris). Additionally, while Washington’s career was her own, it was inextricably linked to that of her husband. She married Booker T. Washington—a renowned leader of the African American community—in 1892, immediately becoming the mother of his three small children from two previous marriages. Already in an exceedingly public relationship that required a relentless performance of the values of racial uplift, she was under further pressure for her abilities as a wife and mother. Without doubt, this role informed her emphasis on homemaking as tools of advancement for Black women.
Divinely Imposed Duty
In her definition of domestic science, Washington borrowed from the work of the field’s white leaders. She agreed with Catharine Beecher and Ellen Swallow Richards that properly maintaining a home was a way to strengthen the moral character of the nation. “She will raise the standards of the home,” she wrote in 1895, “and thus from the home will come stronger men to execute the nation’s plan” (Lend a Hand, 1895; quoted in Patterson). When she co-founded the National Federation of Afro-American Women as President, their mission detailed “the great need of systematic effort in homemaking and the divinely imposed duties of motherhood” (quoted in Perkins). As such, she taught a robust curriculum at Tuskegee which included laundering, millinery, cooking, table setting, basketry and sewing (Harris, “Margaret Murray Washington”). Washington was particularly ardent in her belief that motherhood was the most important role a woman could have. For more than ten years she led “Mothers’ Meetings” in an underserved African American community a few miles outside of Tuskegee (Rouse). Mothers, she argued, were agents of social uplift and needed to be equipped with knowledge of child care, home management and thrift (Rouse). Ideologically, she agreed with her white northern counterparts in the ability—and duty—of women to be agents of social progress.
Proving Womanhood
Still, it is crucial to avoid conflating Washington’s lived experience with that of her white, northern counterparts. In the wake of emancipation, white people viewed Black women as less than human. They were considered incapable of the qualities of “real” womanhood as defined by Northern domestic scientists: modesty, submissiveness, refinement (Perkins). This harmful categorization was designed to prevent Black women from gaining cultural or political capital. Already fearful of industrialization and urbanization, the prospect of racial equity only further threatened white women’s sense of social security. In this context it becomes clear that by teaching students the science of domesticity, Washington was equipping them to prove their womanhood. While white domestic scientists concerned themselves with sanitizing their food, for example, Washington stressed personal hygiene as a way to transform Black bodies from a status of other to one of belonging (Patterson). Washington was also supportive of her students in a way that white domestic science teachers were not, providing references for jobs and advising on their personal affairs (Rouse). She was also protective, implementing a zero-tolerance policy for deviant male behavior; for example, when she found faculty men lingering around women student buildings, they were fired (Harris). Washington was helping to construct and preserve their femininity in a society that denied it. This exhausting work of performing identity was never part of the white domestic science syllabus.
Political Activism
A further important distinction is that white domestic scientists generally avoided political activism, disengaging, for example, with those pushing for women’s right to vote at the start of the twentieth century. Turning a blind eye to gender and racial inequity was not a luxury that Black women could afford. Black women were expected to be self-sacrificing, and to participate in racial uplift: the collective upward advancement of Black Americans (Wallach). To that end, Washington was the President of the National Federation of Afro-American Women at its founding in 1895, the Executive Chair of the National Association of Colored Women and a founding member of the International Council of Women of the Darker Races in 1922 (Perkins; Harris “Margaret Murray Washington”). Throughout her life, Washington used her position at Tuskegee to develop initiatives and organizations championing the rights of Black Southern women.
Sources
Harris, Sheena. “Margaret Murray Washington.” Alabama Women, edited by Susan Youngblood Ashmore and Lisa Lindquist Dorr, University of Georgia Press, 2017, pp. 129-144. muse.jhu.edu/book/52089.
Ibid. Margaret Murray Washington: The Life and Times of a Career Clubwoman. University of Tennessee Press, January 2021.
Patterson, Martha H. Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895-1915. University of Illinois Press, 2005. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1xcpv3.7
Perkins, Linda M. “‘Bound to Them by a Common Sorrow’: African American Women, Higher Education, and Collective Advancement.” The Journal of African American History, vol. 100, no. 4, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, 2015, pp. 721–47, https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.100.4.0721
Rouse, Jacqueline Anne. “Out of the Shadow of Tuskegee: Margaret Murray Washington, Social Activism, and Race Validation.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 81, no. 1/4, University of Chicago Press, Winter-Autumn 1996, pp. 31-46, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2717606.
Wallach, Jennifer Jensen. Every Nation Has its Dish: Black Bodies & Black Food in Twentieth-Century America. The University of North Carolina Press, 2019.