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The Natchez Garden Club As a Literacy Sponsor June Graham Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College

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The Natchez Garden Club As a Literacy Sponsor June Graham Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2011 Social graces: the Natchez Garden Club as a literacy sponsor June Graham Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Education Commons Recommended Citation Graham, June, "Social graces: the Natchez Garden Club as a literacy sponsor" (2011). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 299. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/299 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. SOCIAL GRACES: THE NATCHEZ GARDEN CLUB AS A LITERACY SPONSOR A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Educational Theory, Policy and Practice by June Newman Graham B. A., Louisiana State University, 2001 M. A., Louisiana State University, 2002 August 2011 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sincere gratitude is expressed to Professor Petra Munro Hendry for so kindly contributing to this dissertation and her deep commitment to her scholarship and the cause of women‘s history. Her passion brought me to this study and pushed me to explore this topic and pursue its completion. I am deeply indebted to for intellectually nurturing. Thank you for guiding me towards this research. Special thanks go to my advisory committee composed of Nina Asher, Jackie Bach, Denise Egea-Kuehne Jennifer Milam, Danny Shipka and Sue Weinstein who so kindly read and critiqued my work, adding their own dimension to the way I approach the topic of club women. Much appreciation is extended to The Natchez Garden Club. I thank them for opening their doors to me. This research would not be possible without access to the archives that The Natchez Garden Club gave me access to. I would also like to thank Karin DeGravelles, Kristi Richard Melancon, Hillary Procknow and Jie Yu for the dedicated reading of this text. None of this would be possible without the support of two very special people in my life. For their grounding and never ending love, I extend my heartfelt thanks to my husband Brent and my mother, Beth, who are my personal inspiration. For their patience in putting up with me through the long days and nights of my field research and dissertation writing I am forever indebted. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………… ii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………...iv ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………...v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….1 2 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI……………………37 3 BELLES AND BOOKS………………………………….……………………...61 4 LADIES AND LETTERS……………………………………………………..99 5 PILGRIMAGE, PAGEANT AND PEDAGOGY…………………….............131 6 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………..157 WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………………………168 APPENDIX A THE NATCHEZ GARDEN CLUB SURVEY………………………………….176 B INTERVIEW QUESTIONS……………………………………………………...178 C ARTICLE TITLES OF 18 ISSUES OF OVER THE GARDEN WALL………………………………………………180 D LETTER OF PERMISSION FROM THE MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY……………………….………………………198 E LETTER OF PERMISSION FROM HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT PUBLISHING COMPANY…………………………………….……..……………………..200 F LETTER OF PERMISSION FROM THE NATCHEZ GARDEN CLUB……………………………………………….202 VITA………………………………………………………………………………………….203 iii iv LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Timeline of Data Collection ………………………………………………28 1.2 Archives Used in the Study………………………………………………30 2.1 Map of Georgia…………………………………………………………….37 2.2 Stanton Hall………………………………………………………………..42 2.3 Belles on Display………………………………………………………….57 2.4 Socializing…………………………………………………………………60 3.1 Textbook Cover……………………………………………………………72 3.2 Indian Dance at Nanih Waiva……………………………………………74 3.3 Discovering the Mississippi by Hernando de Soto…………………….76 4.1 Over the Garden Wall……………………………………………………101 4.2 Content Analysis of Article………………………………………………111 5.1 Picnic at Concord in Natchez, Mississippi……………………………..142 5.2 Slave Workers…………………………………………………………….143 5.3 Soiree at Jefferson College……………………………………………..144 v ABSTRACT This study asks (1) how did the Natchez Garden Club conceptualize and promote literacy in their club and in the community?, (2) how might educational practices of select Southern, White, elite women be theorized in the lives of the Natchez Garden Club and its members during the 1930s, 40s and 50s?, and (3) how does an examination of the Natchez Garden Club illuminate understandings of select Southern, White, privileged women and the ways they took on roles as informal educators? To answer these questions, the study examined The Natchez Garden Club, an elite White women‘s club in the South and their literacy practices. The case study used document analysis, interviews and observations to gain understanding of literacy practices of the club. A central finding was that the club engaged in literacy activities that included authoring books, printing a literary magazine and performing a pageant and home tours that perpetuated a version of history that romanticized the South and perpetuated the ideas of paternalism, patriarchy, and privilege as depicted in the Lost Cause Movement. The irony of this is that the women inverted patriarchy by establishing their place as benevolent leaders in Natchez despite expectations that they would remain in the private realm. The study compels researchers to think about the ways privilege influences social action and the ways informal institutions can become literacy sponsors for young people and community members. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The Club teaches us more than how to act. It teaches us to be women, powerful women. Sarah Hankens Natchez Garden Club Member, 1940-present As Sarah Hankens‘s quote suggests, The Natchez Garden Club is engaged in teaching young women how to gain power and negotiate gender norms within the dominant gender ideologies of the Old South. These ideologies were deeply embedded in the Lost Cause1 which promoted patriarchy, paternalism and privilege as critical to the social order in the region. This study looked to the hidden curriculum of the Natchez Garden Club of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, which acted as a literacy sponsor and through which women became leaders within the community, thereby subverting gender norms. How their literacy practices yield economic and cultural capital is the focus of this study. Literacy and Its Social Turn To understand the literacy practices of The Club, it is important to understand literacy in broader terms. The social turn in literacy studies has researchers looking beyond the individual to the social, cultural and political context in which people live their lives and learn to read. Literacy scholars such as Gee (1996), Street (1995; 1984) 1 The Lost Cause refers to the Southern movement to preserve the ideas of the Old South prior to the Civil War. 1 and Heath (1983) see reading and writing in the context of the social and cultural practices of which they are a part. Street (1995), for example, argues that rather than basing definitions of literacy on a narrow point of view of one discipline, New Literacy Studies should borrow from multiple disciplines in order to see how literacy functions in broader social contexts. Street argues that literacy is not merely a neutral tool; rather it creates power structures and, as a consequence, power struggles. This dissertation takes up these issues by examining the Natchez Garden Club of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s as a literacy sponsor. It asks how wealthy, White women in the small town of Natchez read the world and teach others to identify the world through particular literacy practices that construct gender, class and race ideologies. Gee (1996) explains literacy by his first defining discourse. As he defines it, discourse is a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking and of acting that is used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group. Furthermore, discourses are inherently ideological. They involve values and viewpoints that they endorse when they act or speak. These viewpoints make them resistant to internal criticism, since alternative views would mark one as an outsider. Maintaining viewpoints and values is central to any discourse, which thus marginalizes other viewpoints. The Club promotes certain viewpoints at the expense of others. This makes discourses intimately related to the distribution of social power and social hierarchies. There are benefits to control over certain discourses: they can lead to money, power and status within society. Gee (1996) calls these dominant discourses that are led by dominant groups. Gee (1996) points out that it is important to realize that it is not individuals who speak and act, but rather historically and socially defined discourses speak through 2 individuals. There are two ways that Gee says one comes by the discourses one controls. The first is the process of acquisition, which is acquiring something subconsciously by exposure to models. It occurs in natural settings and without any formal teaching, like the teaching The Club does. This is how most people come to control their first language. The other way one comes to control discourse is through
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