Black Women Legacies

Public History Sites Seen and Unseen

Alexandria Russell

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9780252088360
  9780252046292
• eBook ISBN:
  9780252047572
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: History

From Black clubwomen to members of preservation organizations, African American women have made commemoration a central part of Black life and culture. Alexandria Russell illuminates the process of memorialization while placing African American women at the center of memorials they brought into being and others constructed in their honor. Their often undocumented and unheralded work reveals the importance of the memorializers and public memory crafters in establishing a culture of recognition. Forced to strategize with limited resources, the women operated with a resourcefulness and savvy that had to meet challenges raised by racism, gender and class discrimination, and specific regional difficulties. Yet their efforts from the 1890s to the 2020s shaped and honed practices that became indispensable to the everyday life and culture of Black Americans.

Intersectional and original, Black Women Legacies explores the memorialization of African American women and its distinctive impact on physical and cultural landscapes throughout the United States.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One. Creating Their Own World Named Memorials of African American Women during Jim Crow
• Part Two. The National, State, and Local Stages Ushering in the Golden Age of African American Women’s Memorialization
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover