All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900

by Martha S. Jones

The place of women's rights in African American public culture has been an enduring question, one that has long engaged activists, commentators, and scholars. All Bound Up Together explores the roles black women played in their communities' social movements and the consequences of elevating women into positions of visibility and leadership. Martha Jones reveals how, through the nineteenth century, the "woman question" was at the core of movements against slavery and for civil rights.

Unlike white women activists, who often created their own institutions separate from men, black women, Jones explains, often organized within already existing institutions--churches, political organizations, mutual aid societies, and schools. Covering three generations of black women activists, Jones demonstrates that their approach was not unanimous or monolithic but changed over time and took a variety of forms, from a woman's right to control her body to her right to vote. Through a far-ranging look at politics, church, and social life, Jones demonstrates how women have helped shape the course of black public culture.

Genres: History, Feminism, Nonfiction, Race, Gender Studies

Hardcover

First published October 8, 2007

About the author

I am a writer, historian, and legal scholar who also teaches at the Johns Hopkins University. I am also the prize-winning author of several books. My latest - THE TROUBLE OF COLOR: AN AMERICAN FAMILY MEMOIR - is a big departure for me, turning my historian's lens toward my own family and myself. I've gone deep into who, as Americans, we call family and how that has changed across generations. It's a story that runs from slavery and sexual violence and anti-miscegenation laws to Jim Crow and civil rights. Throughout, my questions are about how color and the line it is said to draw across our lives and our national landscape is a legal fact and an everyday fiction.My past books include Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020), Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018) and All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture (2007,) and Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015.)

Reviews

[Mads P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the most entertaining read, but definitely a thoroughly researched historical account of the intersections between the movements for the right to vote for women and the same for African Americans--a fascinating topic. I read this for a graduate-level American studies course on African American politics, culture and identity. The book is well recommended for anyone studying these topics in depth.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smiths...

[Sandra Oldfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well researched, very interesting and also readable. I really appreciated this book