The limits of interracial sisterhood: The Phyllis Wheatley Branch of the Louisville Young Women's Christian Association

This study examines the tensions between black women of the YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Branch and the white women of the YWCA Central Association as they planned, organized and implemented activities for the mental, emotional and physical well being of African American women and girls at the Louisville YWCA. Services for African American women and girls were delivered via the segregated branch structure of the YWCA. In Louisville, Kentucky the Colored YWCA was organized in 1910 by an African American school teacher independently of the existing white YWCA and in 1919, the Colored YWCA women asked the white YWCA for a formal relationship that would provide financial support as well as professional supervision.; Over the next fifty years the women became engaged in a series of conflicts with about autonomy, physical space, leadership and the role of the YWCA in the Black community. African American women and the white women never worked in harmony with regards to the purposes of the Branch's focus and activities. I argue that the African American women and white women held fundamentally divergent views as to the purpose of the Phyllis Wheatley Branch in the Black community. These views were fueled by intra-class dynamics within the Black community that the white women could not understand, appreciate nor accept. While much has been written about the National YWCA's inter-racial policies, and African American women's social reform efforts within the organization, this work moves the loci of focus toward how class influenced inter-racial interaction within the organization and its social reform activities. This study uses race, gender, class and regionality to trace the history and development of the Louisville YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Branch.; Keywords: African American women, Black women, Young Women's Christian Association, YWCA, Phyllis Wheatley Branch...