Resisting Black Matriarchy Theory

To playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s chagrin, much of the commentary surrounding her 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun centered on the character “Mama” Lena Younger and the ongoing debates about a “matriarchy” dominating Black U.S. families and communities. The theory of Black matriarchy held that Black women’s perennial work for pay outside the home not only left Black children without sufficient parental supervision but also emasculated Black men and distorted African American gender relations. As Hansberry defended her character Lena Younger and Black women in general from the charge that their necessary work and consequent family leadership contributed to Black oppression, resistance to matriarchy theory became a cornerstone of her feminism.

Despite the efforts of Hansberry and other mid-20th-century feminists, however, the U.S. federal government upheld the theory of Black matriarchy. Moynihan’s infamous Department of Labor report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” focused on the Black matriarch as the central knot in a “tangle of pathology” that disempowered Black men and undergirded Black impoverishment.

In this paper, I posit Hansberry’s resistance to Black matriarchy theory as a result of her communism as well as her feminism and consider whether Black matriarchy theory, in addition to analyses such as Myrdal’s An American Dilemma, helped obfuscate the function and effects of racial capitalism on Black people and Black families. Was the theory an aspect of the federal government’s domestic Cold War campaign to sponsor a liberal civil rights agenda that redeemed the image of US democracy yet refused to recognize systemic inequality and resisted critiques of capitalism?