Unknown Tongues: Black Women's Political Activism in the Antebellum Era, 1830-1860

by Gayle T. Tate

Overview

Unknown Tongues examines the social and economic factors of northern industrialization, social reform, and black nationalism, all of which undergirded black women’s political consciousness during the decades before the American Civil War. The linkages between black women’s roles in the “culture of resistance” in slave communities and their transformations in the urban market economy fueled the development of black women’s political consciousness. As community activists and then as abolitionists, black urban women organized and protested against slavery, racism, sexism, and its attendant ills. Driven by market forces of nascent capitalism, black women created broad- based protest responses to the white power structure. Unknown Tongues explores the material realities that underpinned black women’s political development as well as the transformative stages of their political consciousness and activity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870136535
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2003
Series:	Black American and Diasporic Studies
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Gayle T. Tate is Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Africana Studies at Rutgers University. She has co-authored and edited several books including Africana: An Introduction and Study, Dimensions of Black Conservatism, and Rights for a Season: Race, Class, and Gender in a Southern City.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction: Theoretical Perspectives on Black Women's Political Activism	1
Part 1	Critical Passages
1	A Long Ways from Home: The Context for Oppression and Resistance	23
2	Troubled Waters: Invisible Boundaries of Resistance	40
Part 2	Defining Moments of Freedom
3	Weaving the Colors of Oppression: Black Women's Urban Resistance, the Market Economy, and the Cult of Domesticity	63
4	As Quiet as It's Kept: Black Women's Urban Economic Activity and Empowerment	100
Part 3	Collective Consciousness
5	Shaking the Tree of Liberty: Alienation and Activism	131
6	Hallowed Fire: The Gospel Politics of Black Female Evangelists	157
7	Rocking the Bastille: Black Women's Abolitionism	186
	Conclusion: Sites of Change	215
	Notes	221
	Bibliography	257
	Index	275