Black Women's History

Black Women's History (A Six-Week Compressed Course, Term II)

Led by: Prof. Kellie Carter Jackson (Wellesley College)
Course Number: AMHI 675
Semesters: Summer 2020, Summer 2021, Spring 2023, Summer 2024 (Term II)

 

 

Image: Shirley Chisholm campaign poster, 1972 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC09721.02)

Shirley Chisholm Poster

Table of Contents:

Course Description

This course focuses on African American women’s history in the United States with certain aspects of Black women’s activism and leadership covered within the African Diaspora. We will examine the ways in which these women engaged in local, national, and international freedom struggles while simultaneously defining their identities as wives, mothers, leaders, citizens, and workers. The course will pay special attention to the diversity of Black women’s experiences and to the dominant images of Black women in America from Mumbet (the first enslaved Black woman to sue for her freedom and win) to contemporary issues of race, sex, and class in the Age of (Michelle) Obama. Participants will explore such questions as: What is Black women’s history? How does Black women’s history add to our understanding of American history? Where should Black women’s history go from here?

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About the Scholar

Kellie Carter Jackson, Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 Associate Professor of Africana Studies, Wellesley College

Kellie Carter Jackson’s research focuses on slavery and the abolitionists, violence as a political discourse, historical film, and Black women’s history. She earned her BA at her beloved Howard University and her PhD from Columbia University working with the esteemed historian Eric Foner. Her book Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence (University of Pennsylvania Press) examines the conditions that led some Black abolitionists to believe slavery might only be abolished by violent force. Force and Freedom was a finalist for the MAAH Stone Book Prize Award and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and winner of the James H. Broussard Best First Book Prize.

The views expressed in the course descriptions and lectures are those of the lead scholars.