The Long Brutality

by Keisha N. Blain

Two police killings highlight the specifically gendered nature of state violence against Black people, and the particular ways Black women are targeted. In this respect, the history of Black Lives Matter is a long history of Black women's political activism.

Criminal Justice Reform Won’t Work Until it Focuses on Black Women

by Talitha L. LeFlouria

The history of mass incarceration is also the history of control and exploitation of Black women through the criminal justice system. Reforms need to recognize the impacts of the system on women to advance justice. 

Harris’s Speech Placed Her In The Long Legacy Of Black Women Who Built America

by Kellie Carter Jackson

Senator Harris has an army of shoulders to stand on, and she is going to need all of their strength, tenacity and resilience. Being called a “nasty woman” by President Trump will be the least of her concerns. 

The Black Women Who Paved the Way for This Moment

by Keisha N. Blain

The prominence of black women in today's protests is not a sudden development. In taking to the streets in support of their goals, they are building upon a rich tradition of black women’s organizing.

How a Fake Priest Duped Oxford and a World-Famous Historian

The New York Times reviews THE PROFESSOR AND THE PARSON: A Story of Desire, Deceit, and Defrocking by Adam Sisman.

In Pursuit of Knowledge: A New Book about Black Women’s Educational Activism

An interview with abria Baumgartner, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Hampshire at Durham, author of n Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Education Activism in Antebellum America.

When White Women Wanted a Monument to Black ‘Mammies’

by Alison M. Parker

A 1923 fight shows Confederate monuments are about power, not Southern heritage.

Carrying Community: The Black Midwife’s Bag in the American South

by Cara Delay

The policing of midwives’ bags and what was in them was central to the mission that would ultimately destroy black women’s traditional health networks. 

These 19 black women fought for voting rights

by Nsenga K. Burton

Featuring historians Jennifer D. Williams, Michelle Duster

How the Daughters and Granddaughters of Former Slaves Secured Voting Rights for All

by Martha S. Jones

Theirs was a unique brand of politics crafted at the crossroads of racism and sexism.   

Kamala Harris is among the few black women to run for president. Here is the amazing story of the first.

Forty-seven years ago this week, Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) announced she was seeking the Democratic 1972 nomination, becoming the first woman and first African American to run for a major political party’s presidential ticket.