An illustrated biographical compilation of over fifty African American women from the 1700s through to the present day.

Miriam Thaggert illuminates the stories of African American women as passengers and as workers on the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century railroad. As Jim Crow laws became more prevalent and forced Black Americans to "ride Jim Crow" on the rails, the train compartment became a contested space of leisure and work. Riding Jane Crow examines four instances of Black female railroad travel: the travel narratives of Black female intellectuals...

Explores the previously uncelebrated but pivotal contributions of NASA's African-American women mathematicians to America's space program, describing how Jim Crow laws segregated them from their white counterparts despite their groundbreaking successes.

Profiles thirty-two successful black women, from judges to rocket scientists to corporate executive officers, revealing the combination of hard work, determination, and the support of family that drove them forward against the odds.

Katherine Clay Bassard is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Her articles have been published in African American Review and Callaloo. The late eighteenth century witnessed an influx of black women to the slave-trading ports of the American Northeast. The formation of an early African American community, bound together by shared experiences and spiritual values, owed much to these women's voices. The significance...

A groundbreaking collection based on oral histories that brilliantly plumb the leadership of African American women in the twentieth-century fight for civil rights-many nearly lost to history-from the latest winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize. During the Civil Rights Movement, African American women were generally not in the headlines; they simply did the work that needed to be done. Yet despite their significant contributions at all levels...

The extraordinary life story of America's most celebrated African-American actress, Cicely Tyson is always worthy to remember. Cicely Tyson never ceased to flabbergast the audience and never aimed to break their trust. Till her death she never quitted acting. Her passion gave her tremendous energy to defy the hurdles of criticism. Cicely Tyson's exquisite talent and urge to make a change in her life ended up changing the mindset of the American society....

In 1960s Mississippi, Skeeter, a southern society girl, returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives, and a small Mississippi town, upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen, Skeeter's best friend's housekeeper, is the first to open up, to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community.

"In this magisterial, intimate novel, debut writer Lakiesha Carr captures the essence of Black womanhood, richly articulating the private lives of a cast of women from East Texas, illuminating the grief that is carried inside them, as well as the bonds oflove that both define them and give them strength. A middle-aged colon hydrotherapist feeds the slots at a secret parlor, fighting memories of gendered violence with plastic cups of Crown Royal. A...