In honor of Black History Month, API is delighted to welcome Dr. Natanya Duncan from Morgan State University who will present her talk, The 'Efficient Womanhood' of The Universal Negro Improvement Association. 

The women of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, during its heyday from 1919-1930, defied prescribed notions of domestic duty; blurred the lines drawn for “true” women in the early 20th Century; derived their respectability through a practice of nationalist politics in public places resulting in an efficient womanhood that set the stage for what are now known as womanist consciousness and  black feminist politics.  While UNIA women helped set the stage for the development of the latter ideals and in varying ways demonstrated the virtues of the “Cult of True Womanhood” and “the politics of respectability,” their activism reached further than expressions of Victorian Womanhood and their endeavor to lift as they climbed meant leaving no person of African descent behind.  At times their tactics seem to contradict their aims and the results of their efforts were not always immediately evident.  Still, their all encompassing visionary approach to race progress reveals another root of the nascent Civil Rights Movement tree that is in need of both study and nurture.

       Dr. Duncan will touch on the life work of Henrietta Vinton Davis, The Black Cross Nurses and Princess Laura Koffey in this presentation.

About the speaker:
        Natanya Duncan received her PhD from the University of Florida in 2009.  Her areas of research include a focus on the development of Black Nationalist practices prevalent amongst female members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and subsequent derivative groups which she has termed as an “Efficient Womanhood.”  Using this framework, which she asserts refers to the “blending of nationalist and gendered concerns without the sacrificing of one for the other amongst African American women during the long freedom struggle,” Dr. Duncan is presently revising herdissertation into a manuscript entitled,Crossing Waters, Fighting Tides: The`EfficientWomanhood’ of the Universal Negro Improvement Association 1919-1930. As a recipient ofaPost Doctoral Fellowship at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University,Natanya Duncanused the time to start her second full length book project which will focus on the life work ofQueen Mother Audley More. Presently, sheis an Assistant Professor at MorganState University.

Refreshments will follow the program.

Register online using this page or via email at info@alicepaul.org (to avoid online processing fee).