Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence.

Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence. Edited by LeeAnn Whites, Mary C. Neth, and Gary R. Kremer. (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, c. 2004. Pp. x, 275. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-8262-1526-2.)

It is telling that one of the most powerful women in Missouri history, Emily Newell Blair, a national Democratic strategist, was frustrated by her inability to assist more women to achieve positions of power within the party. Blair's effort to bring more women into the fold is just one of many stories of struggle chronicled in this anthology of Missouri women's history, which is aptly subtitled "In Search of Power and Influence."

The volume's fourteen essays, three of which have been previously published in slightly different form, cover the years from 1750 to 1950 and are presented chronologically. Black and white, rural and urban, native-born and immigrant women--all receive their due. Fully seven of the essays are biographical, while two focus on women's organizations. Five look in depth at women's experiences in St. Louis. Missouri's status as a state on the border of the South and the Midwest comes through clearly in several of the pieces.

In the introduction, LeeAnn Whites and Mary C. Neth briefly summarize the historiography and conclude that the focus has been on how Missouri women lived and what they did. While the editors seek to continue adding to the historical record in this vein, they also want to present fresh insights into the nature of women's history itself.

Several of the essays do raise excellent questions about the history of women. These include Judith A. Gilbert's analysis of free women of color as property owners in colonial St. Louis. Drawing on meticulous research in legal sources, Gilbert weaves bits of evidence into compelling narratives of the family relationships and economic endeavors of several illiterate women of color, all of whom forthrightly stated their cases in court. Gilbert's discussion of these women's "remarkable level of legal and financial sophistication" challenges us never to equate illiteracy with powerlessness and reminds us of the pivotal place held by the courtroom as a potential locus of women's power (p. 42).

That the legal system could also stifle women's efforts to assert their independence comes through in two other fine essays. Kimberly Schreck dissects the fascinating case of Eda Hickam, an African American woman who unsuccessfully sued her former owners for back wages in 1890, claiming that she had been held in slavery long after emancipation. Schreck uses the case to raise important questions about the complicated nature of freedom in the years after the Civil War. The compelling case of Euphemia B. Koller, a property owner institutionalized in 1927 after resolutely and repeatedly challenging the land claims of a local corporation, is analyzed by Gregg Andrews. Despite considerable intelligence and legal acumen, Koller was no match for the local politicians and businessmen who ultimately used their power to remove her as a threat to the company's expansion. Andrews shows how Koller's opponents used her defiance of gender conventions against her.

Another essay that emphasizes the importance of the legal system proposes a new perspective on the success of women leaders. LeeAnn Whites's essay on the women's rights activists Virginia Louisa Minor and her husband, Francis Minor, encourages historians of women to pay attention to the men who have provided support for activist women: "[W]e are perhaps hesitant to recognize that behind every great woman there might be a great man" (p. 104). Virginia Minor, a founder of the Missouri Suffrage Association and plaintiff in the 1875 Supreme Court case Minor v. Happersett, exercised power as a property holder after Francis put all of his property in trust for her. Whites argues that the Minors took this unusual legal step in order to subvert the inequitable social order that prevailed in the United States during the nineteenth century. They fashioned their marriage into a personal challenge to prevailing gender inequality.

While some of the most intriguing essays in the anthology thus delve into legal records, two other pieces that use personal and organizational papers also stand out. Essays by Rebecca S. Montgomery and Virginia Laas well demonstrate the difficulties women have had in acquiring broad-based political and economic power. In a crisply written analysis of the Missouri Women Farmers' Club, Montgomery reviews the organization's strengths and limitations within the contexts of rural class structure and twentieth-century professionalization. Laas recreates Emily Newell Blair's political career during the 1920s and traces her transformation into a feminist.

Other essays treat colonial-era French women in the community of Ste. Genevieve and their active participation in family decision making; nineteenth-century German immigrant women and their primary role in the retention of language and culture; relations between antebellum mistresses and slaves on Missouri's family farms; the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet and their promotion of Catholicism in St. Louis and Kansas City; changing gender roles during the Civil War in Saline County; the middle class's efforts to control prostitution in the railroad town of Sedalia; entrepreneurs Madam C. J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone and the development of African American beauty culture in St. Louis; and novelist Fannie Cook and the influence of her social activism on her writing.

Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence is a well-written anthology that covers a wide spectrum of the state's history and contains several gems chronicling the challenges that women have faced throughout American history.

ANTOINETTE G. VAN ZELM

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