Many historians of the black experience have written about the dual character of African-American culture. They have found that black Americans have developed a culture which incorporates that of European-Americans, as well as their African and African-American ancestors. W.E.B. DuBois made this observation nearly a century ago, when he spoke of blacks as having developed a "twoness,-[as] an American, a Negro."' More recently, John Blassingame in The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Ante-bellum South, Charles Joyner in Down by the River- side: A South Carolina Slave Community, and Deborah Gray White in Ar'n't I a Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South are a few of the works which ex- plore the history and culture of African-Americans.2
Focusing on Illinois during the late Victorian era, from about 1880 to 1910, the present work argues that the dual culture of black Americans can be seen in their ideal of womanhood. The ideal black woman embodied the genteel behavior of the "cult of true womanhood," as espoused by the larger society. In addition, as an African-American, her thoughts and actions exemplified the attributes valued by her own race and community.3
In the late Victorian era Illinois had a small but diverse black female populace.4 A few black women were native born; most were migrants from the South and the East. In the large cities, small towns, and rural areas, former slaves mingled with freeborn blacks. Professionals, farmers and farmworkers, domestic servants and washerwomen, the unemployed, and others lived and worked in close proximity.5
Records left by these black Illinois women and men-especially the middle class-offer a view of their community life and social expectations.6 Black newspa- pers, records of churches, benevolent and fraternal societies and sororities, women's clubs, and schools, memoirs and personal papers help to establish the ideas and values of the post-emancipation black community in Illinois. A central figure within this black community was one which we might call "Black Victoria," the preemi- nent black woman.
