Too Much to Ask: Black Women in the Era of Integration(Gender and American Culture)

The challenges and achievements of the first women to integrate American higher education; In the 1960s, increasing numbers of African American students entered predominantly white colleges and universities in the northern and western United States. Too Much to Ask focuses on the women of this pioneering generation, examining their educational strategies and experiences and exploring how social class, family upbringing, and expectations - their own and others' - prepared them to achieve in an often hostile setting. Drawing on extensive questionnaires and in-depth interviews with black women graduates from one northeastern city, sociologist Elizabeth Higginbotham sketches the patterns that connected and divided the women who integrated American higher education before the era of affirmative action. Although they shared educational goals, for example, family resources to help achieve those goals varied widely according to their social class. Across class lines, however, both the middle- and working-class women Higginbotham studied noted the importance of personal initiative and perseverance in helping them to combat the institutionalized racism of elite institutions and to succeed. Highlighting the actions black women took to secure their own futures as well as the challenges they faced in achieving their goals, Too Much to Ask provides a new perspective for understnading the complexity of racial interactions in the post-civil rights era.

About the Author :
Elizabeth Higginbotham is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. She is coeditor of Women and Work: Exploring Race, Ethnicity, and Class.

Review :

"Too Much to Ask is a blueprint for the construction of the African American baby boomer generation."--Women's Review of Books

"Too Much to Ask makes a tremendous contribution to the field of black women's history. Higginbotham's careful analysis avoids over-generalization about black women, and her attention to the meanings of social and economic class is particularly valuable."--Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University

"An excellent introductory text for first year education, sociology, or history students."--Contemporary Sociology

"An exemplary study into the early politics of race in higher education."--QBR, The Black Book Review

"At its heart, Too Much to Ask is poignant and compelling as it explores how social class, family practices and expectations prepared and influenced the lives and educational outcomes of Black women in the 1960s."--Educational Review

"Higginbotham provides a compelling portrait of these women, their families, their struggles during the early years of integration, and their fights to achieve success in a racist, sexist, and elitist society."--Journal of American History