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"Born into slavery during the Civil War, Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) would become one of the most prominent activists of her time, with a career bridging the late nineteenth century to the civil rights movement of the 1950s. The first president of the National Association of Colored Women and a founding member of the NAACP, Terrell collaborated closely with the likes of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Unceasing Militant is the first full-length biography of Terrell, bringing her vibrant voice and personality to life"--

Frances Wright : moral suasion and states' rights -- Sarah and Angelina Grimké : women's political engagement -- Frances Watkins Harper : civil rights and the role of the state -- Frances Willard : federal regulations for the common good -- Mary Church Terrell : critiques of "White lawlessness

Women's activism and alliances : WCTU crusades and the quest for political power -- The suppression of impure literature : impressionable children, protective mothers -- Guardians of public morals" : professional identity and the American Library Association -- Amateur censors and critics : creating an alternative cultural hierarchy -- Mothering the movies : women reformers and popular culture -- The production of "pure" children's literature : the WCTU's young crusader -- Hearts uplifted and minds refreshed : promoting and producing pure culture

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union's (WCTU)
Department for the Promotion of Purity in Literature and Art,
established in 1883, worked for legal censorship, but also created a
"pure" literary, artistic, and popular culture. This WCTU program blurs
the distinctions some historians have made between producers of culture
and their audience(s) or, alternatively, between repressive censors and
creative artists. This article documents the WCTU's publication of its
own children's magazine, distribution of cheap reproductions of famous
paintings, and promotion and production of educational pro-temperance
movies. Moral transformation of youth, activists argued, could only
occur through the positive influence of a pure culture. As WCTU
women pursued a strategy of supporting and producing culture, they
made crucial contributions to shaping the public arena in the United
States. Asserting their right to be the arbiters of culture themselves,
women reformers insisted upon a tie between art and morals.

With the politics of the environment so fundamental to the development process in rural India, this paper analyses the relations between water discourses and drinking water technology. First, the national discourses of water are analysed using key policy and populist documents. Second, the paper presents ethnographic fieldwork studying the politics of drinking water in rural Bihar, where the relative merits of borehole handpumps and open wells are contested. The links between the national discourses and local contestation over appropriate technology are examined. The paper argues both policy and traditionalist perspectives are too technologically deterministic to adequately account for the myriad challenges of delivering rural water supply. The emphasis on technology, rather than service levels, creates the conditions in which capability traps emerge in terms of service provision. This is not only in terms of monitoring regimes but in the very practices of rural actors who use certain water supply technologies under an illusion of safety. With a focus on furthering the policy debate, the paper considers ways forward and suggests that a move from a binary understanding of access to a holistic measure of service levels will reduce the potential for political contestation and capability traps in rural water supply.