One of the questions we are asked most frequently when we share our research on the WLCB is “Did they included black members?” The answer is simple: no. The WLCB was formed as Jim Crow took root and solidified, and its members were either in vocal support or complicit through their silence.

But there were black women’s clubs during this time. The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was founded in nearby Washington, DC in 1896 by Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell, and the DuBois Circle was established in Baltimore in 1906.

And today I discovered a black women’s literary club, the Treble Clef and Book Lovers’ Club, started in the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA, in 1908. They claim to be one of the oldest black women’s literary clubs in the United States. The Treble Clef and Book Lovers’ Club was established by a group of faculty wives from Virginia Union University, founded in 1865 to educate the formerly enslaved.

In contrast to the WLCB, the TCBLC spends an entire year reading a book, examining it from a different angle each month in order to gain a thorough, multifaceted understanding.

And also in contrast to the WLCB, the Treble Clef and Book Lovers’ Club is still very much in operation today– as is Baltimore’s DuBois Circle. So perhaps the arc of history does bend toward justice.