Michele Gillespie

“While Katharine masked almost all her actions in ladylike, feminine trappings, she was a shrewd businesswoman at heart, more capable than most men of managing a hundred employees and making a killing on Wall Street. Katharine spent her adulthood extending her freedom and authority as a woman, and R.J.R. supported her in that quest. As much as R.J.R. and Katharine challenged traditional gender conventions by creating a more modern model for marriage, however, they did not question the fundamental inequalities of the new order that they themselves generated and benefited from. While both took action to improve the quality of the lives of many people, white and black, throughout the city and the state as benevolent paternalists, they never questioned the myriad racial injustices imposed on African Americans by white supremacy and the Jim Crow system. Nor were they troubled enough by structural inequities experienced across the whole working class, white and black, male and female, to propose substantive change.”
― Michele Gillespie, Katharine and R.J. Reynolds: Partners of Fortune in the Making of the New South