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Black Women in White America: A Documentary History
In this documentary history, black women themselves tell not only what it's like to be oppressed —as blacks and as women—but also how they have managed to survive. Here are stories of women who built a school "on a garbage dump"; of the little-known but vitally important networks of women's organizations dedicated to self-help and the struggle for human dignity; of the victims of the Ku Klux Klan, beatings and lynchings. The documents, many of them previously unpublished and long hidden in archives across the country, fill in important chapters in the history of America. "Dr. Lerner gives us material which can change images that whites have had of blacks, and possibly even those which we, as blacks, have of ourselves." -Maya Angelou, 'Life'
630 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
23 people are currently reading
1956 people want to read
About the author
Gerda Lerner
35 books282 followersGerda Lerner was a historian, author and teacher. She was a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a visiting scholar at Duke University.
Lerner was one of the founders of the field of women's history, and was a former president of the Organization of American Historians. She played a key role in the development of women's history curricula. She taught what is considered to be the first women's history course in the world at the New School for Social Research in 1963. She was also involved in the development of similar programs at Long Island University (1965–1967), at Sarah Lawrence College from 1968 to 1979 (where she established the nation's first Women's History graduate program), at Columbia University (where she was a co-founder of the Seminar on Women), and from 1980 until her retirement as Robinson Edwards Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
(from Wikipedia)
Lerner was one of the founders of the field of women's history, and was a former president of the Organization of American Historians. She played a key role in the development of women's history curricula. She taught what is considered to be the first women's history course in the world at the New School for Social Research in 1963. She was also involved in the development of similar programs at Long Island University (1965–1967), at Sarah Lawrence College from 1968 to 1979 (where she established the nation's first Women's History graduate program), at Columbia University (where she was a co-founder of the Seminar on Women), and from 1980 until her retirement as Robinson Edwards Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 8, 2016
This book had so many insightful stories and speeches from powerful activist women. It was encouraging to read about the steps toward change that they were taking back then, and to see how some of those steps have manifest today. It was also somewhat disheartening to be reminded that despite all of that change, there are still many of the same oppressive factors at-play today. Some of the personal anecdotes that were included were truly profound and emotional reads; partly because it is saddening and infuriating to know that people lived through such difficult times, but also because so much of it currently exists, albeit in more covert ways than in the past. I'd love to read another book like this from the past 10 years to know how other Black women's lived experiences have changed (or not changed) since this publication.
February 26, 2019
Quite possibly one of the most important books I’ve read concerning women’s studies. For over a hundred years the black woman has had to deal with the double whammy of being both a woman and black. The passages on rape and lynching made me sick to my stomach as it would any one with any heart at all. It took a long time for me to get through this book, not because it was dull, but because it had me thinking, it hurt my heart, it forced me to look outside of myself and my experience. I really think this book should be read by everyone. Maybe then we could see each other instead of color.
June 5, 2018
This book changed my life as a young person. Essential reading.
June 18, 2022
...and somehow it takes a White woman to show those incompetent Black women the way. A White woman who makes a good living off the taxes collected from the work of the said Black women.
September 21, 2015
The insights that Lerner offers into the day-to-day resistance and struggles of oppressed black women throughout history (particularly, during slavery), give tribute to their strength and resilience.
December 31, 2022
Lots of exciting stuff in here, including some excerpts of interviews Lerner herself made. Maybe some of the short contextual essays are showing their age, and maybe there’s not enough Black Joy to counter all the Black Trauma, but this is a strong collection that shows how Black women have been thinking and acting intersectionally since slavery days. Lerner also chooses a broad range of voices, from the politics of respectability over to radical left. One surprise appearance here is a woman leader of the Republic of New Africa.
March 17, 2020
What a totally readable collection of ordinary women’s lives. Put together in 1970, it includes interviews with amazing women who worked on the ground for economic, social and political equality. It’s divided into themes that are roughly chronological and I’m sure when it came out there were few things like that. But it stands the test of time for readability even if it does lack thorough context for these primary sources.
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July 29, 2008
It's frightening to think that those times actually existed. But we aren't too far off yet today, are we? The black women from the white America back then had strength and will. Their fear was understandable; and their determination to make it through each day was honorable!
Read
July 7, 2013An interesting book. This book contains the papers published from manuscripts stored in various libraries in America. Its content is the experience of black women since the time of the pre-exemption until 1970 when a black woman was speak about Womanhood, like white women.
October 12, 2010
Very painful personal histories.
June 19, 2020
A rich collection of personal stories compiled and presented by women's historian Gerta Lerner. This is a very accessible and readable collection of the lives of ordinary women and activists. Th amount of work Lerner spent in researching and putting these together is impressive, and not at all academic or dull, but there's a lot of information here! Put together in 1970, it includes interviews with amazing women who worked on the ground for economic, social and political empowerment. It’s divided into themes that are roughly chronological and though 50 years old, it stands the test of time for readability and importance of content.
April 11, 2026
A FINE COLLECTION OF DOCUMENTS FROM THE TIMES OF SLAVERY, UNTIL 1970
Editor Gerda Lerner (1920-2013) was a historian who was professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a visiting scholar at Duke University, as well as a former president of the Organization of American Historians.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1972 collection, “Until the very recent past, black people in America have been denied their history. The discovery of Black history, and its legitimization and acceptance into the body of American history… has already immensely enriched our knowledge of our national past. Black history is beginning to serve whites as an antidote to centuries of racist indoctrination by providing essential information without which a more truly democratic, nonracist society cannot be built… American women have also been denied their history, but this denial has not yet been as widely recognized… Belonging as they do to two groups which have traditionally been treated as inferiors by American society---Blacks and women---they have been doubly invisible.” (Pg. xvii)
She continues, “Of necessity, a collection such as this cannot be definitive. The source material available is so rich that a representative selection of only the most interesting documents would fill several volumes… As can be seen from the documents in this collection, the black woman’s aim throughout her history in America had been for the survival of her family and of her race… Black women… have been nearly unanimous in their insistence that their own emancipation cannot be separated from the emancipation of their men. Their liberation depends on the liberation of the race and the improvement of the life in the black community.” (Pg. xx, xxv)
In the first section of the book (on slavery), Lerner explains, “In contradiction to the popularly accepted myths about slavery, the vast majority of slaves did not live on large plantations. Most slaves lived on small, family-operated farms, where their contacts with their masters were constant and intimate. Unfortunately, there are very few sources concerning the living conditions of these slaves. A considerable number of slaves lived in city households, where they worked as servants, artisans, small tradesmen and where their contacts with other slaves and with freedmen were frequent.” (Pg. 14)
Slaveholder Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote in her diary, “God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system… Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds.” (Pg. 51-52)
Lerner reports, “The role of whites in the mythical ‘Underground Railroad’ has been greatly exaggerated. Most slave escapes did, in fact, involve helping friends, but these were mostly black freedman in Southern cities, sailors, or persons across the river in the border states. In later years, the Vigilance Committees, often made up of black and white abolitionists in the Northern states, helped the successful escapee to continue toward the greater security of Canada… The largest number of escape cases known to history occurred in the years after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, when participation in such rescue operations became for many Northern and Western whites a means of expressing their political abhorrence of the slave system.” (Pg. 54)
She points out, “Still, even under slavery black women were not quite as defenseless as has been generally assumed. They could and did use various tactics of evasion, shamming, threats, refusal to work and fight. Their men, too, more frequently perhaps than has hitherto been recognized, were able to assert themselves in defense of their women, but it took heroic men and exceptional circumstances to prevail.” (Pg. 150)
An anonymous woman in 1912 reported, “I remember very well the first and last work place from which I was dismissed… because I refused to let the madam’s husband kiss me… I was young then, and newly married, and didn’t know then what has been a burden to my mind and heart ever since; that a colored woman’s virtue in this part of the country has no protection. I at once went home, and told my husband about it. When my husband went to the man who had insulted me, the man cursed him, and slapped him, and---had him arrested! The police judge fined my husband… The white man, of course, denied the charge. The old judge looked up and said, ‘This court will never take the word of a n----r against the word of a white man.’” (Pg. 155-156)
Lerner comments, “The myth of the black rapist of white women is the twin of the myth of the bad black woman---both designed to apologize for and facilitate the continues exploitation of black men and women. Black women perceived this connection very clearly and were early in the forefront of the fight against lynching. Their approach was to prove the falseness of the accusation, the disproportion between punishment and crime, the absence of legality, and lastly, to point to the different scales of justice meted out to the white and the black rapist. An often neglected aspect of this problem is judicial indifference to sexual crimes committed by black men upon black women.” (Pg. 193-194)
Ida B. Wells wrote in her autobiography, “during the past thirty years in the South… more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood… And yet… during all these years, and for all these murders only three white men have been tried, convicted, and executed… these three executions are the only instances of the death penalty being visited upon white men for murdering Negroes.” (Pg. 199)
Mollie V. Lewis wrote in 1938 of workers in the steel industry, “When the black and white workers and members of their families are convinced that their basic economic interests are the same, they may be expected make common cause for the advancement of these interests…” (Pg. 262)
Mrs. Robert M Patterson wrote in 1922, “we need women of the type of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. Women of mental ripeness, courage and clearness of purpose and a burning spirit to dare and to do. We need women who are not content to trail along in foolish political paths of the Negro men. We need women who will not sell their rights for a mess of pottage.” (Pg. 341)
Shirley Chisholm said in a 1970 speech, “the harshest discrimination I have encountered in the political arena is anti-feminism, both from males and brain-washed, Uncle Tom females. When I first announced that I was running for… Congress, both males and females advised me… to go back to teaching---a woman’s vocation---and leave the politics to the men.” (Pg. 355-356)
An NAACP attorney reported in 1959, “a small but well-organized group of segregationist students gained complete control inside the school. Significantly… the 101st Airborne troops were withdrawn from inside [the school]. They were replaced by the Arkansas federalized national guardsmen. The segregationist students were quick to note that, unlike the Army paratroopers, many of the guardsmen looked the other way when the Negro pupils were attacked.” (Pg. 420)
Mary Church Terrell wrote in 1949, “There are at least two strong reasons why I object to designating our groups as Negroes. If a man is a Negro, it follows … that a woman is a Negress. ‘Negress’ is an ugly, repulsive word---virtually a term of degradation and reproach which colored women of this country can not live down in a thousand years.” (Pg. 549)
Virginia Collins (a Black nationalist) proposes, “We are not religious nationalists like the Muslims. They are buying land---but you cannot buy freedom. We are talking about a plebiscite conducted by the United Nations… we have in mind the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. The Black Belt area. We constitute there the attributes that make a nation by international law… The white people who live in those states---some will stay, some will leave. If white people want to stay under black rule, we have nothing against that. And we feel that some will stay. All nations have immigrants. We will have white people what want to enter our nation.” (Pg. 556-557)
Margaret Wright wrote in 1970, “Black men have been brainwashed into believing they’ve been emasculated. I tell them they’re nuts. They’ve never been emasculated. Emasculated men don’t revolt. And if they were so emasculated, these blonds wouldn’t be running after them. Black women aren’t oppressing them. We’re helping them get their liberation. It’s the white man who’s oppressing, not us.” (Pg. 608)
This collection of documents (as well as Lerner’s useful introductions) will be of great interest to those studying African-American history.
Editor Gerda Lerner (1920-2013) was a historian who was professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a visiting scholar at Duke University, as well as a former president of the Organization of American Historians.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1972 collection, “Until the very recent past, black people in America have been denied their history. The discovery of Black history, and its legitimization and acceptance into the body of American history… has already immensely enriched our knowledge of our national past. Black history is beginning to serve whites as an antidote to centuries of racist indoctrination by providing essential information without which a more truly democratic, nonracist society cannot be built… American women have also been denied their history, but this denial has not yet been as widely recognized… Belonging as they do to two groups which have traditionally been treated as inferiors by American society---Blacks and women---they have been doubly invisible.” (Pg. xvii)
She continues, “Of necessity, a collection such as this cannot be definitive. The source material available is so rich that a representative selection of only the most interesting documents would fill several volumes… As can be seen from the documents in this collection, the black woman’s aim throughout her history in America had been for the survival of her family and of her race… Black women… have been nearly unanimous in their insistence that their own emancipation cannot be separated from the emancipation of their men. Their liberation depends on the liberation of the race and the improvement of the life in the black community.” (Pg. xx, xxv)
In the first section of the book (on slavery), Lerner explains, “In contradiction to the popularly accepted myths about slavery, the vast majority of slaves did not live on large plantations. Most slaves lived on small, family-operated farms, where their contacts with their masters were constant and intimate. Unfortunately, there are very few sources concerning the living conditions of these slaves. A considerable number of slaves lived in city households, where they worked as servants, artisans, small tradesmen and where their contacts with other slaves and with freedmen were frequent.” (Pg. 14)
Slaveholder Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote in her diary, “God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system… Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds.” (Pg. 51-52)
Lerner reports, “The role of whites in the mythical ‘Underground Railroad’ has been greatly exaggerated. Most slave escapes did, in fact, involve helping friends, but these were mostly black freedman in Southern cities, sailors, or persons across the river in the border states. In later years, the Vigilance Committees, often made up of black and white abolitionists in the Northern states, helped the successful escapee to continue toward the greater security of Canada… The largest number of escape cases known to history occurred in the years after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, when participation in such rescue operations became for many Northern and Western whites a means of expressing their political abhorrence of the slave system.” (Pg. 54)
She points out, “Still, even under slavery black women were not quite as defenseless as has been generally assumed. They could and did use various tactics of evasion, shamming, threats, refusal to work and fight. Their men, too, more frequently perhaps than has hitherto been recognized, were able to assert themselves in defense of their women, but it took heroic men and exceptional circumstances to prevail.” (Pg. 150)
An anonymous woman in 1912 reported, “I remember very well the first and last work place from which I was dismissed… because I refused to let the madam’s husband kiss me… I was young then, and newly married, and didn’t know then what has been a burden to my mind and heart ever since; that a colored woman’s virtue in this part of the country has no protection. I at once went home, and told my husband about it. When my husband went to the man who had insulted me, the man cursed him, and slapped him, and---had him arrested! The police judge fined my husband… The white man, of course, denied the charge. The old judge looked up and said, ‘This court will never take the word of a n----r against the word of a white man.’” (Pg. 155-156)
Lerner comments, “The myth of the black rapist of white women is the twin of the myth of the bad black woman---both designed to apologize for and facilitate the continues exploitation of black men and women. Black women perceived this connection very clearly and were early in the forefront of the fight against lynching. Their approach was to prove the falseness of the accusation, the disproportion between punishment and crime, the absence of legality, and lastly, to point to the different scales of justice meted out to the white and the black rapist. An often neglected aspect of this problem is judicial indifference to sexual crimes committed by black men upon black women.” (Pg. 193-194)
Ida B. Wells wrote in her autobiography, “during the past thirty years in the South… more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood… And yet… during all these years, and for all these murders only three white men have been tried, convicted, and executed… these three executions are the only instances of the death penalty being visited upon white men for murdering Negroes.” (Pg. 199)
Mollie V. Lewis wrote in 1938 of workers in the steel industry, “When the black and white workers and members of their families are convinced that their basic economic interests are the same, they may be expected make common cause for the advancement of these interests…” (Pg. 262)
Mrs. Robert M Patterson wrote in 1922, “we need women of the type of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. Women of mental ripeness, courage and clearness of purpose and a burning spirit to dare and to do. We need women who are not content to trail along in foolish political paths of the Negro men. We need women who will not sell their rights for a mess of pottage.” (Pg. 341)
Shirley Chisholm said in a 1970 speech, “the harshest discrimination I have encountered in the political arena is anti-feminism, both from males and brain-washed, Uncle Tom females. When I first announced that I was running for… Congress, both males and females advised me… to go back to teaching---a woman’s vocation---and leave the politics to the men.” (Pg. 355-356)
An NAACP attorney reported in 1959, “a small but well-organized group of segregationist students gained complete control inside the school. Significantly… the 101st Airborne troops were withdrawn from inside [the school]. They were replaced by the Arkansas federalized national guardsmen. The segregationist students were quick to note that, unlike the Army paratroopers, many of the guardsmen looked the other way when the Negro pupils were attacked.” (Pg. 420)
Mary Church Terrell wrote in 1949, “There are at least two strong reasons why I object to designating our groups as Negroes. If a man is a Negro, it follows … that a woman is a Negress. ‘Negress’ is an ugly, repulsive word---virtually a term of degradation and reproach which colored women of this country can not live down in a thousand years.” (Pg. 549)
Virginia Collins (a Black nationalist) proposes, “We are not religious nationalists like the Muslims. They are buying land---but you cannot buy freedom. We are talking about a plebiscite conducted by the United Nations… we have in mind the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. The Black Belt area. We constitute there the attributes that make a nation by international law… The white people who live in those states---some will stay, some will leave. If white people want to stay under black rule, we have nothing against that. And we feel that some will stay. All nations have immigrants. We will have white people what want to enter our nation.” (Pg. 556-557)
Margaret Wright wrote in 1970, “Black men have been brainwashed into believing they’ve been emasculated. I tell them they’re nuts. They’ve never been emasculated. Emasculated men don’t revolt. And if they were so emasculated, these blonds wouldn’t be running after them. Black women aren’t oppressing them. We’re helping them get their liberation. It’s the white man who’s oppressing, not us.” (Pg. 608)
This collection of documents (as well as Lerner’s useful introductions) will be of great interest to those studying African-American history.
August 11, 2022
While this is old (published in 1972), it is an excellent collection of primary sources which still has great pertinence today. In addition to all of the various selections in the book, it is also a great source of further reading, citing many autobiographies and biographies of black women, as well as other historical sources of information. I recommend it highly.
August 16, 2024
How does a white woman know what it’s like being a black woman in this sick world! So sick of white people using OUR story, OUT history to make a dollar!!! What has she done for the black community! Typical slave master, make money off OUR race!
November 25, 2024
shares really important personal histories and influential leaders!
August 26, 2023
Most of this book is reprinting original documentation that can be used to prepare histories of Black women in the US. Having read biographies and memoirs of some African American women throughout the same period I really appreciate the fuller picture I now have. Gerda Lerner added some editorial material to facilitate the understanding of the documents and in some cases to give context. Her material is a very small portion of the book and well written.
So much of this is about the documents speaking for themselves. I don't know how much it was intended as a cover to cover read, which I did. The organization of the documents grouped into topics and chronologically within the topics allowed for a through thread for cover to cover reading. All of the selections are readable and enlightening. There are topics that are unpleasant to read but that was to be expected with the subject matter.
I have one rebuttal to one other reviewer who only made one comment- yes, it was written by a white woman but a white women who fought for the idea of women's studies; a white woman who participated in the civil rights struggle; a white woman who was in position to pull this together at a time when few Black women were; a white woman who was able to go looking for this material that no one else had worked to bring light on. I read women's history when it is written by men, it is of no less value. I would have loved to see something like this by a Black woman, does it exist? And in this case as much as possible, the actual documents were written by Black women. Did you even read the book or just disparage it because of the editor?
So much of this is about the documents speaking for themselves. I don't know how much it was intended as a cover to cover read, which I did. The organization of the documents grouped into topics and chronologically within the topics allowed for a through thread for cover to cover reading. All of the selections are readable and enlightening. There are topics that are unpleasant to read but that was to be expected with the subject matter.
I have one rebuttal to one other reviewer who only made one comment- yes, it was written by a white woman but a white women who fought for the idea of women's studies; a white woman who participated in the civil rights struggle; a white woman who was in position to pull this together at a time when few Black women were; a white woman who was able to go looking for this material that no one else had worked to bring light on. I read women's history when it is written by men, it is of no less value. I would have loved to see something like this by a Black woman, does it exist? And in this case as much as possible, the actual documents were written by Black women. Did you even read the book or just disparage it because of the editor?
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews