Publisher:
New York : W. Morrow, 1984. First edition. First printing.

Summary:


This book is a testimonial to the profound influence of
African-American women on race and women's movements throughout American
history. Drawing on speeches, diaries, letters, and other original
documents, the author portrays how black women have transcended racist
and sexist attitudes - often confronting white feminists and black male
leaders alike - to initiate social and political reform. From the open
disregard
for the rights of slave women to examples of today's more covert racism
and sexism in civil rights and women'sorganizations, the author
illuminates the black woman's crusade for equality. In the process, she
paints portraits of black female leaders, such as anti-lynching activist
Ida B. Wells, educator and FDR adviser Mary McLeod Bethune, and the
heroic civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, among others, who fought
both overt and institutionalized oppression.

ISBN:	9780688019433 0688019439
Description:	408 pages ; 8vo
Contents:	pt. 1. Inventing themselves. "To sell my life as dearly as possible" : Ida B. Wells and the first Antilynching Campaign -- Casting of the die : morality, slavery, and resistance -- To choose again, freely -- Prelude to a movement -- Defending our name -- "To be a woman, sublime" : the ideas of the National Black Women's Club Movement (to 1917) -- The quest for woman suffrage (before World War I) -- pt. 2. A world war and after : the "new Negro" woman. Cusp of a new era -- The radical interracialists -- A new era : toward interracial cooperation -- A search for self -- Enter Mary McLeod Bethune -- Black braintruster : Mary McLeod Bethune and the Roosevelt administration -- pt. 3. The unfinished revolution. Dress rehearsal for the sixties -- SNCC : coming full circle -- The women's movement and black discontent -- Strong women and strutting men : the Moynihan report -- A failure of consensus -- Outlook.