Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership

by Kenja McCray

A new perspective on women’s Black Power leadership legacies

Academics and popular commentors have expressed common sentiments about the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s—that it was male dominated and overrun with autocratic leaders. Yet women’s strategizing, management, and sustained work were integral to movement organizations’ functioning, and female advocates of cultural nationalism often exhibited a unique service-oriented, collaborative leadership style.

Essential Soldiers documents a variety of women Pan-African nationalists’ experiences, considering the ways they produced a distinctive kind of leadership through their devotion and service to the struggle for freedom and equality. Relying on oral histories, textual archival material, and scholarly literature, this book delves into women’s organizing and resistance efforts, investigating how they challenged the one-dimensional notions of gender roles within cultural nationalist organizations. Revealing a form of Black Power leadership that has never been highlighted, Kenja McCray explores how women articulated and used their power to transform themselves and their environments. Through her examination, McCray argues that women’s Pan-Africanist cultural nationalist activism embodied a work-centered, people-centered, and African-centered form of service leadership. A dynamic and fascinating narrative of African American women activists, Essential Soldiers provides a new vantage point for considering Black Power leadership legacies.

Genres: History

259 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 5, 2025

Reviews

[Sarah Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

📖 Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership by Kenja McCray
A groundbreaking spotlight on the unsung heroines who shaped Black Power with grit, grace, and revolutionary vision.

✨ Review
🔹 Theme & Significance: McCray shatters the myth that Black Power was a male-dominated movement, revealing how women activists were its backbone—organizing, theorizing, and leading with quiet ferocity. A vital correction to historical narratives.

🔹 Research & Depth: Meticulously researched, the book unearths overlooked stories of women who strategized protests, built community programs, and challenged sexism within and beyond the movement. Scholarly yet accessible.

🔹 Narrative Style: McCray’s prose is both analytical and evocative, blending biography with broader socio-political analysis. Occasionally dense, but the urgency of these stories compels you forward.

🔹 Emotional Impact: Infuriating, inspiring, and deeply moving. These women’s resilience against dual oppression (racism and patriarchy) resonates powerfully today.

🔹 Originality: A rare focus on Black women’s leadership in this era, offering fresh perspectives on familiar history.

⭐ Star Breakdown (0–5)
Historical Importance: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
Research & Insight: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
Writing Style: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)
Emotional Resonance: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
Original Contribution: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
Overall: 5/5
A torch passed across generations, igniting new fires of recognition.

🙏 Thank you to NetGalley and Kenja McCray for the advance review copy. This book isn’t just history—it’s a call to action. Essential Soldiers is a must-read for anyone invested in justice, feminism, and the untold stories that shape our world.

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential Soldiers by Kenja McCray is a well-researched examination of the vital roles women played in the Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s.

There is a lot of information here, all of it quite interesting. So much was new to me, or deeper than I had gone for the things I was familiar with. Women did, contrary to most publicized accounts, perform far more important duties than we knew, though many of these were, like any foundation upon which a building is constructed, out of view.

I think, for me, what came into clearer focus throughout and especially at the end of the book in the summation was the conflict between cultural and revolutionary nationalism. Part of it has to do with my not knowing how and where such a line of distinction was drawn. It seems like they would and should coexist, each coming to the fore as different obstacles were confronted. This is, however, a view from a person far removed from the actual situation(s).

In addition to being a valuable read for anyone interested in the history of Black nationalist movements and the Civil Rights era more broadly, I think this makes an excellent call to action as well as a cautionary tale for people now.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kenja McCray’s Essential Soldiers is an academic look at many of the Pan-African nationalist groups of the 1970s through the lens of the work of the women in the group. The work is an addition to the more male-focused looks at the organizations by other academics. It discusses how the women’s “kazi” influenced and shaped the organizations.

While the woman were active in many aspects of the organizations, they were often kept from leadership positions due to patriarchal practices of the organizations. Essential Soldiers provides a look at how the women resisted and changed restrictive gender roles

Despite being very academic in its focus and writings, Essential Soldiers is still an interesting read and an excellent look at the woman of the organizations.

(Note, I received an arc on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

[Carla Cherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a highly engaging study of Black female cultural nationalist activism during the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in various urban centers. A must-read!