| This socio-historical, exploratory, and qualitative study examines the lived experiences of Black female professional social workers who worked in Southeastern Michigan between 1955--1973. An adapted life story/life history methodological approach was used. In-depth interviews provided the primary source of the data. Eleven Black female professional social workers, who obtained their Master of Social Work degrees between 1947 and 1966, were interviewed. The theoretical lens that shaped the collection and analysis of data was "Intersectionality".; Historically, teaching, nursing, social work, and library science were the sole professions open to Black females when the women in this study entered the labor market. U.S. Census Bureau data show that the vast majority of African-American female professionals in these four professions were either teachers or nurses. Black women social workers placed a distant third and was the only one of the four professions that required a master's degree to attain "professional" status. The women in my study not only secured a graduate degree, but did so at a time when merely finishing high school was difficult for most African-Americans.; Research has shown that racism had a significant impact on Black women in the nursing profession. Little or no research exists as to the impact of racism on Black women within the female profession of social work. Intersectionality asserts that race, class, gender, as well as other hierarchies of stratification are interlocking and simultaneously structure the experiences of all people within society. Race, class, and gender were selected as the primary categories of analysis in this study.; The study had two primary objectives. First, it sought to understand the social forces that propelled these women into the field of social work instead of one of the other three professions open to Black women. Second, it sought to explore the ways in which race, class, and gender differentially shaped these women's educational and social work employment experiences.; The most important findings of the study include the following: teaching, nursing, and library science were professions primarily open to Black women in the South while social work was essentially the only profession open to Black women in the North; geographic region produced differences in the women's life experiences; three distinctly different routes were pursued by the women to graduate schools of social work; and the nature and degree of race, class, and gender discrimination in social work employment varied by sector (private versus public), type of agency (social service versus host and white versus Black), and position held by each woman within the agency's hierarchy. |
