ABSTRACT
Within the context of sweeping social, cultural, and economic changes that occurred in the 100 years after the end of U.S.-institutionalized slavery, the five themes of resistance and activism that emerged from African American women’s struggle during the era of slavery are even more visible as a tradition of leadership. In this chapter I show how during this era, African American women in rural and urban areas of the North and South were constructed as a particular kind of marginal worker at the intersection of race and gender-based systems of domination. Additionally, I discuss how this marginalization existed for both the majority of African American women in working-class jobs and for the small but growing number of Black women that had entered and were continuing to enter the professions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how African American women’s resistance to the cultural text of marginalization infused a tradition of leadership that crystallized during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
