39
identities and public roles for women, as well as political opportunities that would emerge with
the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
New forms of organizing born of the 1950s, however, may have had civic costs. The
Women’s Division of Christian Service continued to prosper in the 1960s and 1970s, in part,
because large memberships were no longer necessary for the Division to obtain its goals.
Similarly, although the civil rights movement undoubtedly increased African Americans’
engagement as American citizens, its impact on long-standing voluntary associations is less
clear. It is certain that as local and national forms of civic organizing came into conflict in the
mid-20
th
century, the experiences of local clubwomen and churchwomen at the grassroots were
altered. The changing terrain of women’s civic engagement in the mid-20
th
century did not
simply substitute national forms of organizing for local forms—the transformation was much
more complex than that. Women’s associations were also involved in an ideological struggle
over the very meanings and purposes of being “civic.” As one clubwoman it, in the postwar
civic universe, “woman” was no longer synonymous with “neighbor.”
Convention