The economic and social circumstances of
their community affected black women and their perceptions of the world. The
informal networks that characterized much of their nineteenth-century efforts
remained important, but the increasing population compelled them to give way to
new formal, structured groups designed to improve their status and that of their
community. African American women in Buffalo had keen notions of the meaning of
community and they were deeply involved in the creation of their
twentieth-century Buffalo. These women persistently had struggled to improve the
lives of their people.
