Black folks that did reform work, they
didn't necessarily call them -
they didn't call themselves social workers or think
of themselves as social workers,
but they served people -  they served poor black
folks.
They helped poor black folks with the many issues that they were they were dealing with and surviving .
But black reformers tended to
avoid populations that engaged in
practices that would reinforce the most
vicious racist and racist sexist stereotypes.
So, for example, in the early 1900s there's a stereotype of black  women being promiscuous.
Black reformers, black women, middle-class women reformers
tended to avoid or ignore black women sex workers.
There was a tendency to ignore cross-dressing -
cross-dressing sex workers, 
cross-dressing black sex workers,
queer black sex workers,
because there was a fear - a realistic fear and an understanding
that working with
this population  of promiscuous,
ostensibly promiscuous black women, would
reinforce and validate the
stereotype of black women's hyper
sexuality.
So on the one hand,
black middle-class and upper-class reformers
and black working class people
were doing a lot of work informally and
formally to to uplift their communities,
to address the social political and
economic problems in their communities,
but they also put limitations - many put
limitations on themselves.
There were just areas they wouldn't go because white supremacy -
white supremacist beliefs were so, so powerful.
And they didn't want to - they didn't want to legitimate them.
