A reclamation of essential history and a hopeful gesture toward a
better political future, this is what listening to Black women looks
like—from a professor of political science and columnist for Teen
Vogue.
“Jenn M.
Jackson is a beautiful writer and excellent scholar. In this book,
they pay tribute to generations of Black women organizers and set
forward a bold and courageous blueprint for our collective
liberation.”—Imani Perry, author of South
to America
This is my
offering. My love letter to them, and to us.
Jenn M. Jackson,
PhD, has been known to bring historical acuity to some of the most
controversial topics in America today. Now, in their first book,
Jackson applies their critical analysis to the questions that have
long energized their work: Why has Black women’s freedom fighting
been so overlooked throughout history, and what has our society lost
because of our refusal to engage with our forestrugglers’ lessons?
A love letter to
those who have been minimized and forgotten, this collection
repositions Black women’s intellectual and political work at the
center of today’s liberation movements.
Across eleven
original essays that explore the legacy of Black women writers and
leaders—from Harriet Jacobs and Ida B. Wells to the Combahee River
Collective and Audre Lorde—Jackson sets the record straight about
Black women’s longtime movement organizing, theorizing, and
coalition building in the name of racial, gender, and sexual justice
in the United States and abroad. These essays show, in both critical
and deeply personal terms, how Black women have been at the center of
modern liberation movements despite the erasure and misrecognition of
their efforts. Jackson illustrates how Black women have frequently
done the work of liberation at great risk to their lives and
livelihoods.
For a new generation
of movement organizers and co-strugglers, Black Women Taught Us
serves as a reminder that Black women were the first ones to teach us
how to fight racism, how to name that fight, and how to imagine a
more just world for everyone.