Book Description

This work traces the genesis and evolution of African American women's feminist discourse and intellectual enterprise from the beginning of slavery in the United States to the end of the 19th century. It does so in three ways. First, Dr. Tsenes-Hills almost solely utilizes the primary and secondary sources of African American women in order to locate and excavate the truly fascinating and extraordinary world of the 19th century Black woman. Second, she discusses this world via examination of the interior, exterior, and alternative realities that delineated the 19th century Black woman's experience. And how the combination of these realities ultimately developed, from a 'grassroots' expression of identity re-claimation and re-formation, to an intellectualized articulation of Black feminist thought and action. Third, Dr. Tsenes-Hills identifies and examines the palpable presence of African American women at the Columbian Exposition, in Chicago Illinois (1893), as one of the earliest public instances of a coherent expression of a distinct Black feminist discourse and intellectual enterprise. The end result is an innovative and in-depth examination of the unique, complex, and contradictory inner-workings of a largely unexplored sub-group of American and African American History-Black Victorian Feminists.