“Womanhood: A Vital Element

Anna Julia Cooper’s “Womanhood: A Vital Element …” and DuBois’s “The Damnation of Women” outline the
challenges black women faced during the Reconstruction era. The contradiction that expectations of
respectability and society’s hypersexualization of black women presented persisted in the New Negro era, as
Bonner’s prose piece “On Being Young …” indicates. Write an essay that explores this paradox. Use Cooper,
DuBois, and Bonner to support you.