The History of the National Association of Colored Womens Clubs, Inc., Edited by LaVonne Jackson Leslie With a new introduction by the editor In highlighting the history of the oldest black womens organization in the United States, The History of the National Association of Colored Womens Clubs, Inc., written by scholar Dr. Charles Wesley, provides a comprehensive insight into the historical achievements and activities of the organization from its creation to 1984. The book offers an interesting history of how the organization evolved and functioned nationwide into one of the most respectable black organization. It is highly recommended for readers interested in understanding the role of black women in uplifting the black community through community service involvement with programs focusing on childcare, education, and social services. The clubwomen established local, state, and regional chapters nationwide. The History of the National Association of Colored Womens Clubs, Inc., utilizes the organizations conference reports, minutes, and National Notespublication, as primary sources to depict how the clubs carried out their goals and operated in society to make a difference. The voices of the pioneer women in the National Association of Colored Womens Clubs, Inc., can be envisioned by reading this pivotal work. Their achievements are noteworthy in our history. They have inspired women in the organization to continue to be involved in carrying out its mission by upholding its motto, lifting as we climb. This book prepares the foundation for the next edition focusing on the history of the organization to the present.

Though today she is little known, Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) was one of the most remarkable women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Active in both the civil rights movement and the campaign for women's suffrage, Terrell was a leading spokesperson for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the first president of the National Association of Colored Women, and the first black woman appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education and the American Association of University Women. She was also a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In this autobiography, originally published in 1940, Terrell describes the important events and people in her life.Terrell began her career as a teacher, first at Wilberforce College and then at a high school in Washington, D.C., where she met her future husband, Robert Heberton Terrell. After marriage, the women's suffrage movement attracted her interests and before long she became a prominent lecturer at both national and international forums on women's rights. A gifted speaker, she went on to pursue a career on the lecture circuit for close to thirty years, delivering addresses on the critical social issues of the day, including segregation, lynching, women's rights, the progress of black women, and various aspects of black history and culture. Her talents and many leadership positions brought her into close contact with influential black and white leaders, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Robert Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, and others.With a new introduction by Debra Newman Ham, professor of history at Morgan State University, this new edition of Mary Church Terrell's autobiography will be of interest to students and scholars of both women's studies and African American history.

Mary Church Terrell was an icon in the civil rights movement, advocating for equality and social justice for black women through a lifetime of campaigning and eloquent oration. Famed for being the first black woman to gain a college education in the United States, Mary Terrell put her education to great use. Beginning in the 1890s, she spoke publicly on a range of civil rights which black Americans and black women were deprived. Throughout these efforts, Terrell helped coordinate a series of local movements which campaigned for suffrage and enfranchisement for the black population. Mary Church Terrell began a trend in the civil rights movement; her language bursting with eloquence and reason, she argued for a better intellectual, social and economic life for black Americans. Black women, who lacked even the right to vote, were compelled to join the cause, which they did in their thousands. Living to the age of 90, Terrell was a bridge between the Reconstruction era and the modern civil rights movement.

Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States

The NAACP co-founder, civil rights activist, educator, and journalist recounts her public and private life in this classic memoir. Born to enslaved parents, Ida B. Wells was a pioneer of investigative journalism, a crusader against lynching, and a tireless advocate for suffrage, both for women and for African Americans. She co-founded the NAACP, started the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, and was a leader in the early civil rights movement, working alongside W. E. B. Du Bois, Madam C. J. Walker, Mary Church Terrell, Frederick Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony. This engaging memoir, originally published 1970, relates Wells’s private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice. This updated edition includes a new foreword by Eve L. Ewing, new images, and a new afterword by Ida B. Wells’s great-granddaughter, Michelle Duster. “No student of black history should overlook Crusade for Justice.” —William M. Tuttle, Jr., Journal of American History

A Voice from the South was published in 1892 by Anna Julia Cooper, an educator who was one of the first two African-American women to be awarded a master’s degree. Since then it has been recognized as one of the first works of Black feminist theory. Setting forth a perspective that would be described as “intersectional” in contemporary terms, Cooper explores her own lived experience as an educated African-American woman, and advocates for the education of African-American women as a necessary means of achieving racial equality. However, her marked emphasis on women’s roles in the household has been critiqued by later theorists as a concession to the 19th century “cult of domesticity”—or, alternatively, a strategic engagement with the dominant cultural view towards women in her time. A Voice from the South continues to be read and analyzed today for its pioneering role in African-American female scholarship. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

"Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps is the first major study to consider Black women's activism in rural Arkansas. The text explores Arkansas's rural history to foreground Black women's navigation of racial and gender politics as a means to uplift African Americans, develop opportunities for social mobility, and subvert the formidable structures of white supremacy during the Jim Crow years"--