In centering Black women’s stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women’s unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today.
A Black Women’s History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women’s lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women’s history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation.
Purchase the book from the publisher or select one of the following fine retailers: IndieBound, Amazon, Target, and Barnes & Noble.
February 11, 2021
Virtual Panel Discussion: Looking Back, Looking Forward: Choices, Careers and Living Black History
In this inaugural event launching P. Gabrielle Foreman's 2021 Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the Syracuse University Humanities Center, three Black women scholars and institution builders (Foreman, Ramey Berry, and Armstrong Dunbar) discuss their innovative scholarship, transformative advocacy, and how they’ve overcome the challenges of centering Black women’s lives, resistance, and intellectual contributions. Shirley Moody-Turner moderates this interdisciplinary dialogue.
Panel includes Daina Ramey Berry (University of Texas at Austin), Erica Armstrong Dunbar (Rutgers University), P. Gabrielle Foreman (Pennsylvania State University) and Shirley Moody-Turner (Pennsylvania State University) | Hosted by Syracuse University Humanities Center
Register for the event here!
Check back here as Drs. Berry and Gross begin promoting A Black Women’s History of the United States.
"A compact, exceptionally diverse introduction to the history of black women in America, rooted in "everyday heroism."As Berry (History/Univ. of Texas; The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, 2017, etc.) and Gross (History/Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick; Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex and Violence in America, 2016, etc.) persuasively argue, black women have "significantly shaped" our nation—and fought for their rights—throughout every period of American history. Yet their contributions often have been overlooked or underappreciated. In the latest book in the publisher's ReVisioning American History series, the authors offer a selective but wide-ranging search-and-rescue mission for black female activists, trailblazers, and others who have left a mark..."
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)