Published in 2020
288 pages
Daina Ramey Berry is an associate professor of history and African and African diaspora studies, and the George W. Littlefield Fellow in American History, at the University of Texas at Austin. An award-winning historian, she is also a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.
Kali Nicole Gross is Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her previous books include Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America (2016), winner of the 2017 Hurston / Wright Legacy Award in nonfiction, and Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 (2006).
What is this book about?
A revealing history—at once sobering and empowering—showing Black women’s expansive contributions since the 1600s.
Spanning over 400 years, this book, written by two award-winning Black women historians, prioritizes all voices: from poor and working-class domestics to middle-class reform women to sex workers and female convicts. The book challenges historical stereotypes and myths but also offers a contemporary understanding of Black women in America, highlighting diverse voices and lives—from activists to athletes to rappers. Focusing on the unique and expansive experience of Black women, Berry and Gross reach far beyond a single narrative of Black women in America. The result is a book that centers race, gender and sexuality in the North, as well as the South, and in both rural and urban areas, to show that Black women are—and have always been—instrumental in shaping our history.
