Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era

Justice, Power, and Politics

by Ashley D. Farmer

In this comprehensive history, Ashley D. Farmer examines black women's political, social, and cultural engagement with Black Power ideals and organizations. Complicating the assumption that race and gender constraints relegated black women to the margins of the movement, Farmer demonstrates how female activists fought for more inclusive understandings of Black Power and social justice by developing new ideas about black womanhood. This compelling book shows how the new tropes of womanhood that they created--the "Militant Black Domestic," the "Revolutionary Black Woman," and the "Third World Woman," for instance--spurred debate among activists over the centrality of gender to Black Power ideologies, ultimately causing many of the era's organizations and collectives to adopt a more radical critique of patriarchy.

Making use of a vast and untapped array of black women's artwork, political cartoons, manifestos, and political essays that they produced as members of groups such as the Black Panther Party and the Congress of African People, Farmer reveals how black women activists reimagined black womanhood, challenged sexism, and redefined the meaning of race, gender, and identity in American life.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Feminism, Race, Politics, Social Justice, Gender

266 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Teri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive look at the image of black womanhood in the era of the Black Power movement. Dr. Ashley Farmer details 5 different images of black womanhood: The Militant Negro Domestic (1945-1965), The Black Revolutionary Woman (1966-1975), The African Woman (1965-1975), The Pan-African Woman (1972-1976), and The Third World Black Woman (1970-1979).

The author argues that in the 1960s black women were the most oppressed people in our nation. Black women suffered ternary oppression in class, gender, and race. Forging their path of activism on the heels of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, African-American women set out to reinvent their image and fight for equal rights. Utilizing the writings and art of the time, Ashley D. Farmer focuses her book “Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era” on the activism and ideology of black womanhood.

Ashley Farmer’s central theme centers around the idea that black women are at the heart of many activist groups in the 1960s and 1970s. The work of these women goes beyond the day to day activism under the leadership of men of the Black Power era. These women redefined black womanhood through the contributions of activists like Joan Bird, Amina Baraka, and Kathleen Neal Cleaver.

This is the definitive book on the women of the Black Power movement. It's a great resource on civil rights and activism from the 1950s through the 1970s. I particularly liked the chapter on the Black Panther organization and the women (Pantherettes) that helped form and run the group. It clarified their ideology and their reason for taking a militant stance in a tumultuous time in history. This book is eye-opening and its themes resonate today when civil and human rights are issues that are still at the forefront of the nation's mind.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the biggest downfall of the book is that it doesn't mention the Combahee River Collective. The organization and thesis of the book is also lacking, primarily in that it doesn't truly address the patriarchal underpinnings of many Black Power groups.

[Redpoet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sorry, but it read like a college essay. Too much was repeated. I will say a few key points were very well made. The section on Panther Women was especially informative. I also agree with the point made about the absence of anything about the Combahee River Collective.

[Amal Omer · Rating 5 out of 5]

written in a way that’s really easy to follow! learned a lot about “third world women’s” organizing of the 60s/70s! wow Black women are goat

[Alex Milton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ashley D. Farmer’s Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era discusses the central role of women in the Black Power movement. Farmer argues that women played vital roles in the development of militant and Pan-African organizations rooted in Marxism ideology while shifting societal conceptions of Black womanhood. Although Remaking Power Lines provides an ambitious scale that expands to analyze global liberation movements, Farmer builds a cohesive narrative on notions of Black womanhood by analyzing numerous activist and self-defense organizations. Remaking Black Power effectively develops concepts of Black womanhood and Black female involvement in activist organizations on a regional, national, and international scale. As Black women involved in the Black Power Movement sought leadership roles in activist organizations, they sought to redefine womanhood from traditional concepts of motherhood and education towards organizing and leading self-defense movements. Farmer grows the scale of the narrative as the book progresses. Each chapter provides developments in conceptualizations of womanhood reflected through organizational periodicals and speeches.

[Canyon Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agree with others' feelings re: repetitive concepts and over explaining theories already acknowledged. And the absence of mentioning the Combahee River Collective, even in passing, seems certainly intentional - however confusing. At first, I thought, perhaps CRC was too small to get attention but then reading through the TWWA section it became clear that organizational size was not of importance. Reading the epilogue, it also seems as though the author fed into precisely what she critiques when recognizing the failure to incorporate the recognition of other sexualities and gender. It's must be out of ease, editorial boundaries, laziness, or a combination of some/all.

I would be interested to know why the author doesn't capitalize black when describing the objects of study, and I wish there was more explanation of "Afrikanism" because it seems relevant in the "back to Africa" conversation.

Like others the panther section was probably the most interesting, followed by the TWWA. Other sections seemed important for the continuity of the study, but are far less engaging at least as far as I'm concerned.

[Leslie Garrote · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ashley Farmer’s Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era sets out to examine the way Black women reformulated Black womanhood through their engagement with the Black Power movement. By focusing on women, Farmer extends the chronology of the movement. Her narrative begins decades before Stokely Carmichael’s 1966 Black Power speech in Greenwood, Mississippi and ends in late 1970s Pan African movement. She spotlights Audley Moore throughout this narrative, following her development as a teenager in contact with Garveyism in New York City to her involvement in the Communist Power during the Great Depression to the way she lent her hard-earned wisdom to the 1974 Sixth Pan-African Congress in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In so doing, Farmer demonstrates the ways historical narratives change when the activity of women is centered in research questions and analysis.

[Gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my FAVORITE books of all time. Ashley D. Farmer did her thing on this one! We may know a little bit about the Black Panthers, but we as collective don't know anything without understanding Black Women's role in the Panther Party. This was on a syllabus for a class taught by Dr. Lakisha Simmons (University of Michigan: History) and it changed my life and my research trajectory.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is this about the women that RE-made the work of the males?

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book to anyone working on wrapping their minds around the place of women in the Civil Rights era and beyond.

[Mills College Library]

305.48896 F2336 2017