Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C.

by Treva B. Lindsey

Home to established African American institutions and communities, Washington, D.C., offered women in the New Negro movement a unique setting for the fight against racial and gender oppression. Colored No More traces how African American women of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century made significant strides toward making the nation's capital a more equal and dynamic urban center.

Treva B. Lindsey presents New Negro womanhood as a multidimensional space that included race women, blues women, mothers, white collar professionals, beauticians, fortune tellers, sex workers, same-gender couples, artists, activists, and innovators. Drawing from these differing but interconnected African American women's spaces, Lindsey excavates a multifaceted urban and cultural history of struggle toward a vision of equality that could emerge and sustain itself. Upward mobility to equal citizenship for African American women encompassed challenging racial, gender, class, and sexuality status quos. Lindsey maps the intersection of these challenges and their place at the core of New Negro womanhood.
 

Genres: History, Nonfiction, African American, American History, Race, Womens, Sociology

204 pages, Hardcover

Published March 29, 2017

Reviews

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has been a long, long time since I read an academic book. This one is hard to get to at some points, but really very interesting at others. Reading about a place I know (DC) in a time period I don't (turn of the century) about a community that is often overlooked (black women), we a good way to mark Women's History Month. The book takes a look at how lots of different women tried to work for racial and gender justice. The variety of places this took the author- academia, beauty salons, literary circles, suffragette rallies- make the book continue to be interesting but also somewhat disjointed at times. This actually supports the author's arguments in some ways however, as she writes that there was not one experience for black women in DC at this time, but many.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had some interesting facts. It could use some more proof reading as there were quite a few errors like words missing. This is not a book to read for fun, it's a scholarly work.