front cover of To Advance the Race
To Advance the Race
Black Women's Higher Education from the Antebellum Era to the 1960s
Linda M. Perkins
University of Illinois Press, 2024
From the United States' earliest days, African Americans considered education essential for their freedom and progress. Linda M. Perkins’s study ranges across educational and geographical settings to tell the stories of Black women and girls as students, professors, and administrators. Beginning with early efforts and the establishment of abolitionist colleges, Perkins follows the history of Black women's post–Civil War experiences at elite white schools and public universities in northern and midwestern states. Their presence in Black institutions like Howard University marked another advancement, as did Black women becoming professors and administrators. But such progress intersected with race and education in the postwar era. As gender questions sparked conflict between educated Black women and Black men, it forced the former to contend with traditional notions of women’s roles even as the 1960s opened educational opportunities for all African Americans.

A first of its kind history, To Advance the Race is an enlightening look at African American women and their multi-generational commitment to the ideal of education as a collective achievement.

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front cover of When Will the Joy Come?
When Will the Joy Come?
Black Women in the Ivory Tower
Edited by Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine, Michelle Dionne Thompson, and Abena Ampofoa Asare
University of Massachusetts Press, 2023

How do Black women in higher education create, experience, and understand joy? What sustains them? While scholars have long documented sexism, racism, and classism in the academy, one topic has been conspicuously absent from the literature—how Black women academics have found joy in the midst of adversity. Moving beyond questions of resilience, labor for others, and coping, When Will the Joy Come? focuses on the journeys of over thirty Black women at various stages of their careers.

Joy is a mixture of well-being, pleasure, alignment, and purpose that can be elusive for Black women scholars. With racial reckoning and a global pandemic as context, this volume brings together honest and vital essays that ponder how Black women balance fatigue and frustrations in the halls of the ivory tower, and explore where, when, and if joy enters their lives. By carefully contemplating the emotional, physical, and material consequences of their labor, this collection demonstrates that joy is a tactical and strategic component of Black women’s struggle.

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