Journal of Hate Studies

A Forgotten Sisterhood: Pioneering Black Women Educators and Activists in the Jim Crow South by Audrey Thomas McCluskey (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. 181 pp. $40.00, ISBN 978-1-4422-1138-4.)

Doretha K. Williams, George Washington UniversityFollow

Abstract

Black women became a mighty force rising up against white supremacy in the mid- nineteenth century. Through sexual exploitation, racially charged violence, and employment discrimination, the imposers of slavery and the oppression that followed sought to destroy black women. A small yet savvy group of women defied the powers of institutionalized racism and pressed forward to create and sustain institutions for African Americans. In A Forgotten Sisterhood: Pioneering Black Women Educators and Activists in the Jim Crow South, Audrey Thomas McCluskey uncovers the lives and educational contributions of four extraordinary women: Lucy C. Laney, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Nannie Helen Burroughs. McCluskey argues that the quartet of women believed that education was not so much a means to racial equality but the most successful route to undermining and nullifying the damaging effects of white supremacy and achieving a better life for the black community as a whole. During the turbulent era following Emancipation, these women sought to design schools that would secure young black men and women a place in a new and developing society.

Recommended Citation

Williams, Doretha K. (2016) "A Forgotten Sisterhood: Pioneering Black Women Educators and Activists in the Jim Crow South by Audrey Thomas McCluskey (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. 181 pp. $40.00, ISBN 978-1-4422-1138-4.)," Journal of Hate Studies: Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 14.
DOI: 10.33972/jhs.143
Available at: https://repository.gonzaga.edu/jhs/vol13/iss1/14