Stepping Forward: Black Women in Africa and the Americas

by Catherine Higgs, Barbara A. Moss, Earline Rae Ferguson

Overview

A unique and important study, Stepping Forward examines the experiences of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black women in Africa and African diaspora communities from a variety of perspectives in a number of different settings.

This wide-ranging collection designed for classroom use explores the broad themes that have shaped black women’s goals, options, and responses: religion, education, political activism, migration, and cultural transformation. Essays by leading scholars in the field examine the lives of black women in the United States and the Caribbean Basin; in the white settler societies of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa; and in the black settler societies of Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Among the contributors to this volume are historians, political scientists, and scholars of literature, music, and law. What emerges from their work is an image of black women’s agency, self-reliance, and resiliency. Despite cultural differences and geographical variations, black women have provided foundations on which black communities have not only survived, but also thrived. Stepping Forward is a valuable addition to our understanding of women’s roles in these diverse communities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821414569
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	11/30/2002
Edition description:	1
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Catherine Higgs is Professor of History in the Department of History and Sociology in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. She is the author of The Ghost of Equality: The Public Lives of D.D.T. Jabavu of South Africa, 1885–1959, Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa, and coeditor of Stepping Forward: Black Women in Africa and the Americas, all published by Ohio University Press.

Barbara A. Moss is an assistant professor of history at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia.

Earline Rae Ferguson is an assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island.

Editorial Reviews

Catherine Higgs provides an absorbing account of rival black women’s self-help organizations in Cape Province, South Africa, from 1922 to 1952 that considers issues of education and status, class and ethnicity, effects of male outmigration, and even marital infidelity!”—African Studies Review

From the Publisher