In Search of Sisterhood is the definitive history of the largest Black women's organization in the United States, and is filled with compelling, fascinating anecdotes told by the Delta Sigma Theta members themselves, illustrated with rare early photographs of the Delta women.
This book contains the story of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority (DST), and details the increasing involvement of Black women in the political, social, and economic affairs of America. Founded at a time when liberal arts education was widely seen as either futile, dangerous, or impractical for Blacks--and especially Black women--DST is, in Giddings's words, a compelling reflection of Black women's aspirations for themselves and for society.
Giddings notes that unlike other organizations with racial goals, Delta Sigma Theta was created to change and benefit individuals rather than society. As a sorority, it was formed to bring women together as sisters, but at the same time to address the divisive, often class-related issues confronting Black women in our society. There is, in Giddings's eyes, a tension between these goals that makes Delta Sigma Theta a fascinating microcosm of the struggles of Black women and their organizations.
DST members have included Mary McLeod Bethune, Mary Church Terrell, Margaret Murray Washington, Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, and, on the cultural side, Leontyne Price, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Judith Jamison, and Roberta Flack.
Pulitzer Prize Board citation to Ida B. Wells, as an early pioneer of investigative journalism and civil rights icon
From a thinker who Maya Angelou has praised for shining a brilliant light on the lives of women left in the shadow of history, comes the definitive biography of Ida B. Wells--crusading journalist and pioneer in the fight for women's suffrage and against segregation and lynchings
Ida B. Wells was born into slavery and raised in the Victorian age yet emerged--through her fierce political battles and progressive thinking--as the first modern black women in the nation's history.
Wells began her activist career when she tried to segregate a first-class railway car in Memphis. After being thrown bodily off the car, she wrote about the incident for black Baptist newspapers, thus beginning her career as a journalist. But her most abiding fight would be the one against lynching, a crime in which she saw all the themes she held most dear coalesce: sexuality, race, and the law.