Unita Blackwell was born in Lula, Mississippi, a tiny town in the Delta where living was as hard as it gets, the stuff of the blues music that originated there. Like the other black people in Lula, Unita grew up in a sharecropping family, riding on her mother’s cotton sack before she was old enough to pick cotton herself. Having left school at age twelve in order to make a living, Unita was trapped in menial jobs, and a bright future seemed beyond her reach. But Unita was forever changed in the summer of 1964 when civil rights workers came to her town of Mayersville, Mississippi. Electrified by the movement, Unita transformed her life from one of despair to one of hope, and in Barefootin’ she details her inspirational rise from poverty to power, from silence to outspokenness, from oppression to freedom.
Conflict: African American Women and the New Dilemma of Race and Gender Politics offers a provocative examination of an increasingly important voting bloc, one that impacted the 2008 election and whose loyalties will have far-reaching implications for future contests...It explores the conflicts African American women experience in prioritizing race over gender, offers data-backed analysis of the substantial power of this bloc to influence elections, and looks at the ways in which the very existence of that influence impacts the political and social empowerment of this dual-identity population. As background to the present-day story, the book surveys the history of African American females in elective office in the United States, as well as their roles in the Women's Suffrage and Civil Rights movements
The advocates of woman suffrage and black suffrage came to a bitter falling-out in the midst of Reconstruction, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it granted the vote to black men but not to women. How did these two causes, so long allied, come to this?Based on extensive research, Fighting Chance is a major contribution to women's history and to 19th-century political history--a story of how idealists descended to racist betrayal and desperate failure.
The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland engages in an important conversation about race relations in the twentieth century and significantly extends the historical narrative of the Civil Rights Movement. The essays in this collection examine instances of racial and gender oppression in the American heartland--which is conceived of here as having a specific cultural significance which resists diversity--in the twentieth century, instances which have often been ignored or overshadowed in typical historical narratives. The contributors explore the intersections of suffrage, race relations, and cultural histories, and add to an ongoing dialogue about representations of race and gender within the context of regional and national narratives
"What do you hope to accomplish?" asked Ella Baker's granddaddy when she was still a child. Her mother provided the answer: "Lift as you climb." Long before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, Ella Baker worked to lift others up by fighting racial injustice and empowering poor African Americans to stand up for their rights. Her dedication and grassroots work in many communities made her a valuable ally for leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and she has been ranked as one of the most influential women in the civil rights movement. In the 1960s she worked to register voters and organize sit-ins, and she became a teacher and mentor to many young activists.
For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle. An eye-opening book that tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement--when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle. For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle. This Coretta Scott King Author Honor book tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement--when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle.
The story of how the women's rights movement began at the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 is a cherished American myth. The standard account credits founders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott with defining and then leading the campaign for women's suffrage. In her provocative new history, Lisa Tetrault demonstrates that Stanton, Anthony, and their peers gradually created and popularized this origins story during the second half of the nineteenth century in response to internal movement dynamics as well as the racial politics of memory after the Civil War. The founding mythology that coalesced in their speeches and writings--most notably Stanton and Anthony's History of Woman Suffrage--provided younger activists with the vital resource of a usable past for the ongoing struggle, and it helped consolidate Stanton and Anthony's leadership against challenges from the grassroots and rival suffragists.
We think we know the story of women's suffrage in the United States: women met at Seneca Falls, marched in Washington, D.C., and demanded the vote until they won it with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. But the fight for women's voting rights extended far beyond these familiar scenes. From social clubs in New York's Chinatown to conferences for Native American rights, and in African American newspapers and pamphlets demanding equality for Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, a diverse cadre of extraordinary women struggled to build a movement that would truly include all women, regardless of race or national origin.
As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Albama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans. In this memoir, she shows today's young readers what it means to fight nonviolently (even when the police are using violence, as in the Bloody Sunday protest) and how it felt to be part of changing American history. Straightforward and inspiring, this beautifully illustrated memoir brings readers into the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, complementing Common Core classroom learning and bringing history alive for young readers.
Bestselling biographer Kate Clifford Larson offers the first account of Hamer's life for a general audience, capturing and illuminating what made Hamer the electrifying force that she became when she walked onto stages across the country during the 1960s and until her death in 1977. Walk with Me does justice to the full force of Hamer's activism and example. Based on new sources, including recently opened FBI files and Oval Office transcripts, the biography features interviews with some of the people closest to Hamer and conversations with Civil Rights leaders who fought alongside her.
Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women's rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger's racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.
Unequal Sisters has become a beloved and classic reader in American Women's History. It provides an unparalleled resource for understanding women's history in the United States today. When it was first published in 1990, it revolutionized the field with its broad multicultural approach, and continued, through its next two editions, to emphasize feminist perspectives on race, ethnicity, region, and sexuality. This classic work is in its fourth edition, and has incorporated the feedback of end-users in the field, to make it the most user-friendly version to date.
Winner of the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, Women's Studies Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace explores the social and political activism of American Jewish women from 1890 to the beginnings of World War II. Written in an engaging style, the book demonstrates that no history of the birth control, suffrage, or peace movements in the United States is complete without analyzing the impact of Jewish women's presence.
Citizens at Last is an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of the suffrage movement in Texas. Richly illustrated and featuring over thirty primary documents, it reveals what it took to win the vote.
Suffragists recognized that the media played an essential role in the women's suffrage movement and the public's understanding of it. From parades to going to jail for voting, activists played to the mass media of their day. They also created an energetic niche media of suffragist journalism and publications. This collection offers new research on media issues related to the women's suffrage movement.
Between 1890 and 1920, middle-class white and black Alabama women created many clubs and organizations that took them out of the home and provided them with roles in the public sphere...Women seeking validation for their roles as homemakers and mother demanded a hearing in the political arena for issues that affected them and their families. In the process they began to erase the line between the public world of men and the private world of women. These were the New Women who tackled the problems created by the industrialization and urbanization of the New South.
A respected group of contributors from diverse generations and backgrounds argue for new chronologies, more inclusive conceptualizations of feminist agendas and participants, and fuller engagements with contestations around particular issues and practices. Race, class, and sexuality are explored within histories of women's rights and feminism as well as the cultural and intellectual currents and social and political priorities that marked movements for women's advancement and liberation. These essays question whether the concept of waves surging and receding can fully capture the complexities of U.S. feminisms and suggest models for reimagining these histories from radio waves to hip-hop.
A leader in the successful fight for woman suffrage in Texas, Jane Yelvington McCallum (1878-1957) left an absorbing written record of an exceptionally productive life. McCallum was a wife, mother, and clubwoman; unlike most, she was also a suffrage leader, lobbyist, journalist, publicist, Democratic Party worker, and secretary of state. A Texas Suffragist brings to print two of Jane McCallum's most important unpublished diaries, which cover the period from October 1916 through December 1919.
Treacherous Texts collects more than sixty literary texts written by smart, savvy writers who experimented with genre, aesthetics, humor, and sex appeal in an effort to persuade American readers to support woman suffrage. Although the suffrage campaign is often associated in popular memory with oratory, this anthology affirms that suffragists recognized early on that literature could also exert a power to move readers to imagine new roles for women in the public sphere. Uncovering startling affinities between popular literature and propaganda, Treacherous Texts samples a rich, decades-long tradition of suffrage literature created by writers from diverse racial, class, and regional backgrounds.
On February 14, 2020, the League of Women Voters of the United States celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding. Although women of color have always made significant contributions to women's suffrage and the women's movements, their contributions, particularly as they relate to the League of Women Voters (LWV), have been marginalized and relegated to the footnotes of the organization's history. The Untold Story of Women of Color in the League of Women Voters adds a new dimension to these conversations.
For far too long, the story of how American women won the right to vote has been told as the tale of a few iconic leaders, all white and native born. But Susan Ware uncovered a much broader and more diverse story waiting to be told. Why They Marched is a tribute to the women who worked tirelessly across the nation, out of the spotlight, protesting, petitioning, and insisting on their right to full citizenship. Ware shows how race, class and religion divided the movement even as she celebrates unheralded African American, Mormon, and Jewish activists. The dramatic, often joyous experiences of these pioneering feminists resonate powerfully today, as a new generation of women demands to be heard.