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"The organized woman's club movement spread into the State of Texas. Beginning as associations for self-culture and intellectual development, the clubs were soon laying the foundation for better conditions of living in their communities. Since Texas was largely in the pioneer stage of development with widely separated communities, the women's clubs in small centers became the nucleii for civic improvements. One of these small centers was the town of Gainesville, Texas, with a population of about 6,000 in the year 1893. That year the first women's club in the town was organized and named the Gainesville XLI Club. This club helped form the State Council of Women of Texas, formerly called the Women's Congress, in 1894, which was three years before the formation of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs."-- pg. 9-10 "It will, perhaps, be seen from the above survey that no transformation in modern society has been more striking or more fraught with significance than the change in the political, legal, economic, moral, and social status of women. Women's clubs were organized for discussion and study, with interests that varied according to location, surroundings, opportunities, and aspirations. The history of a pioneer club portrays the stages of development of clubs in general from institutions for self-improvement to institutions interested in national and international problems." -- pg. 11-12

This study investigates the first Woman's Department at a World's Fair in the Deep South. It documents conflicts and reconciliations and the reassessments that post-bellum women made during the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans, the region's foremost but atypical city. It traces local women's resistance to the appointment of northern abolitionist and suffragist, Julia Ward Howe, for this “New South” event of 1884-1885. It also notes their increasing receptivity to national causes that Susan B. Anthony, Frances E. Willard, and others brought to the South, sometimes for the first time. This dissertation assesses the historical forces that goaded New Orleans women, from the comfort of their familiar city, to consider radical notions that would later strengthen them in civic roles. It asserts that, although these women were skilled and capable, they had previously lacked cohesive force and public strategies. It concludes that as local women competed and interacted with women from across the country, including those from pioneering western territories, they began to embrace progressive ideas and actions that, without the Woman's Department at the Exposition, might have taken years to drift southward. This is a chronological tale of the journey late-nineteenth-century women made together in New Orleans. It attempts to capture their look, sound, and language from their own writings and from journalists' interpretations of their ideals, values, and emotions. In the potent forum for exchange that the Woman's Department provided, participants and visitors questioned and revised false notions and stereotypes. They influenced each other and formed alliances. Although individuals spoke mainly for themselves, common themes emerged regarding education, jobs, benevolence, and even suffrage. Most women were aware that they were in a defining moment, and this study chronicles how New Orleans women seized the opportunity and created a legacy for themselves and their city. As the Exposition sought to (re)assert agrarian and industrial prowess after turbulent times, a shift occurred in the trajectory of women's public and political lives in New Orleans and, perhaps, the South more broadly. By 1885, southerners were ready to insinuate their voices into the national debate on women's issues.