A Brief Primer on the History of Black Women in the U.S. Pt. 2

A 57 Second Lecture

Lecture Transcript

I’m Nikki Lane and I’m going to be your professor.

Singing: ** I been thinkin’, I been thinkin’ **

The second thing I think is important, is the history of black women’s activism. And one of my favorite black women is Ida B. Wells.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett writes this pamphlet called Southern Horrors. She takes these white newspapers to task for inaccurately reporting on the lynchings of black men across the United States. Through Ida B. Wells-Barnett, we start to see the way that black women are starting to pull at the seams of both misogyny and white supremacy. And that really begins to lay the groundwork for Black Feminism.

It [Souther Horrors] reads like a bad-ass black woman blog post. If Ida B. Wells was tweeting right now, we would all be following her.

Suggested Reading

Collins, Patricia Hill. 2009. “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought.” Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge.

Giddings, Paula. 2008. Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. Amistad/Harper Collins.

1984, When and Where I Enter: The Impact on Black Women on Race and Sex in America. William Morrow & Co.