The power of femininity in the New South

The Power of Femininity in the New South demonstrates how the legendary strength and moral authority of the South's "steel magnolias" inspired turn-of-the-century women to move from the parlor to the political arena.

With a comprehensive examination of the women's voluntary associations that proliferated in North Carolina between 1880 and 1930, Anastatia Sims chronicles the emergence of women - both black and white - in a political terrain torn between the tyranny of white supremacy and the promise of Progressive reform.

She tells how organized women, as they called themselves, came to terms with a sacred cultural icon of the antebellum South - the complex, often contradictory ideal of southern femininity - and how they explored the ideal's possibilities, discovered its limitations, and ultimately transformed it by their own actions.