1946: (White Gloves, Black Nation — The Book’s Analytical Framework Resting in the Tensions and Resonances of the 1946 Assembly Scene, the LFAS Women Literal…

1946: (White Gloves, Black Nation — The Book’s Analytical Framework Resting in the Tensions and Resonances of the 1946 Assembly Scene, the LFAS Women Literally Positioned Differently to Haitian Citizenship Than the Femme du Peuple, Their Ability to Advocate on Women’s Behalf Questioned Not Because They Were Wrong About Gender Inequality but Because Their Class Position Made Their Feminism Suspect, Assemblyman Démesmin Asking Who Will Benefit from These Rights — the Women of the Countryside or Rather These Spoiled Women Who Have Everything in Their Hand Money and Power — the Critique of Limited Cross-Class Analysis Being Frequent and Often Substantiated in Early Twentieth-Century Women’s Movements Particularly in the Americas): White Gloves, Black Nation rests in the tensions and resonances of the 1946 assembly scene. The LFAS women were literally positioned differently to Haitian citizenship than the femme du peuple, and thus their ability to advocate on women’s behalf was questioned — not because they were wrong about gender inequality but because their class position made their feminism suspect. Assemblyman Démesmin had conjectured: “Who will benefit from these rights? The women of the countryside, or rather these spoiled women who have everything in their hand: money and power?” The assertion that LFAS women would accrue more social and material wealth was a frequent and often substantiated critique of women’s movements in the early twentieth century. Particularly in the Americas, early women’s movements often had limited cross-class analysis and embedded anti-Black practices. Although the Black and mûlatre membership of the LFAS was more class-diverse than the leadership — including a small percentage of urban working-class and peasant women — the assemblyman’s statement communicated a particular lacuna between the urban elite, merchant, and professional classes and the rural peasant, urban working, and poor classes. Sanders Johnson does not dismiss the critique, nor does she accept it as the final word. Instead, she situates the LFAS women’s project within its full complexity: women who were teachers, doctors, anthropologists, attorneys, novelists, poets, office administrators, and social scientists, whose life experiences were drastically different from those of the unnamed woman, yet who nonetheless built the intellectual and organizational infrastructure through which Haitian women’s rights would eventually be won.