Why in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did middle- and upper-class southern women - black and white - advance from the private worlds of home and family into public life, eventually transforming the cultural and political landscape of their community? Using Galveston as a case study, Elizabeth Hayes Turner asks who were the women who became activists and eventually led to progressive reforms and the woman suffrage movement.

Turner discovers that a majority of them came from particular congregations, but class status had as much to do with reform as did religious motivation. Based on an exhaustive database of membership in community organizations compiled by the author from local archives, Women, Culture, and Community will appeal to students of race relations in the post-Reconstruction South, women's history, and religious history.