Uplifting Our "Downtrodden Sisterhood": Victoria Earle Matthews and New York City's White Rose Mission, 1897-1907

The youth of our race . will pay with their bright young lives . for our ignorance, [and] our sinful negligence in watching over and protecting our struggling working class. Many of the dangers confronting our girls from the South in the great cities of the North are so perfectly planned, so overwhelming in their power to subjugate and destroy, that no woman's daughter is safe away from home. Let women and girls become enlightened, let them begin to think, and stop placing themselves voluntarily in the power of strangers. [I]t is meet that appeal should be made at this conference . in behalf of . the long-suffering, cruelly wronged, sadly unprotected daughters of the entire South. Victoria Earle Matthews, Hampton Negro Conference, 1898 (1) Victoria Earle Matthews was the logical choice to speak to the Hampton Negro Conference about the problems facing southern black women and girls when they migrated to northern urban areas in the late 1890s. Not only had she established in February 1897 a settlement house located on the Upper East Side, the White Rose Mission, to help these young women arriving in New York City, but Matthews's long history of prominence and activism in the black community gave her great credibility. Her speech, based on her own studies and investigations, caused an immediate sensation. The Southern Workman and the New York Post reported that Matthews had shocked "in [the] most graphic terms" the audience with the "startling facts" of the evils in northern cities. Young African American women, Matthews provocatively insisted, were transformed from hopeful migrants in search of a better life to captivity in "a perfect network of moral degradation for the unknowingly unfortunate who may happen to fall into its toils. " She castigated both African Americans and whites for participating in these schemes where the sole purpose was to ensnare unsuspecting young women into illicit and immoral pursuits. The result of all this was that the "public, seeing these women haunting certain portions of the city in such an unfailing stream, takes it for granted that all black people--all Afro-Americans are naturally low. " The conference participants' response was immediate: they collected money to publish Matthews's paper "to reach the masses of the people" to educate them of the dangers in leaving the South for uncertainty in the North. (2) Matthews sorrowfully observed as well that for "the young and unfriended [women] of other races, there are all sorts of institutions," but for black girls and women, "there is nothing. " Matthews concluded that African Americans must begin their own efforts "to better the conditions of our girls. " (3) The White Rose Mission was her concrete response; it became her abiding passion. A tireless and compassionate advocate for the impoverished in the New York City's black community, she brought together a dedicated group of volunteers who shared her commitment. Contemporaries and recent scholars have properly praised her achievements, devotion, and prominence in reform. Yet, few have related the difficulties and frustrations, some surprising, that Matthews faced. These obstacles did not completely limit the scope and influence of her mission, but her important accomplishments cannot be understood without looking at the challenges she faced. This essay provides a detailed examination of the White Rose Mission in the early Progressive Era that assays a fuller understanding of Matthews's work and its importance. Matthews's organization of the White Rose Mission would have surprised few people in the African American community in the late 19th century. According to a New York Daily Tribune article in 1896, her mother, Caroline Smith, "was the first black woman to gain recognition in a Georgia court of justice. " Smith had run away from her master shortly after Victoria was born in 1861, and, after the war, she returned "to recover her children, who had failed to escape with her. …