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A Brick and a Bible: Black Women's Radical Activism in the Midwest During the Great Depression
Uncovering the social revolution led by Black women in the heartland
In this first study of Black radicalism in midwestern cities before the civil rights movement, Melissa Ford connects the activism of Black women who championed justice during the Great Depression to those involved in the Ferguson Uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement. A Brick and a Bible examines how African American working-class women, many of whom had just migrated to “the promised land” only to find hunger, cold, and unemployment, forged a region of revolutionary potential.
A Brick and a Bible theorizes a tradition of Midwestern Black radicalism, a praxis-based ideology informed by but divergent from American Communism. Midwestern Black radicalism that contests that interlocking systems of oppression directly relates the distinct racial, political, geographic, economic, and gendered characteristics that make up the American heartland. This volume illustrates how, at the risk of their careers, their reputations, and even their lives, African American working-class women in the Midwest used their position to shape a unique form of social activism.
Case studies of Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, and Cleveland—hotbeds of radical activism—follow African American women across the Midwest as they participated in the Ford Hunger March, organized the Funsten Nut Pickers’ strike, led the Sopkin Dressmakers’ strike, and supported the Unemployed Councils and the Scottsboro Boys’ defense. Ford profoundly reimagines how we remember and interpret these “ordinary” women doing extraordinary things across the heartland. Once overlooked, their activism shaped a radical tradition in midwestern cities that continues to be seen in cities like Ferguson and Minneapolis today.
In this first study of Black radicalism in midwestern cities before the civil rights movement, Melissa Ford connects the activism of Black women who championed justice during the Great Depression to those involved in the Ferguson Uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement. A Brick and a Bible examines how African American working-class women, many of whom had just migrated to “the promised land” only to find hunger, cold, and unemployment, forged a region of revolutionary potential.
A Brick and a Bible theorizes a tradition of Midwestern Black radicalism, a praxis-based ideology informed by but divergent from American Communism. Midwestern Black radicalism that contests that interlocking systems of oppression directly relates the distinct racial, political, geographic, economic, and gendered characteristics that make up the American heartland. This volume illustrates how, at the risk of their careers, their reputations, and even their lives, African American working-class women in the Midwest used their position to shape a unique form of social activism.
Case studies of Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, and Cleveland—hotbeds of radical activism—follow African American women across the Midwest as they participated in the Ford Hunger March, organized the Funsten Nut Pickers’ strike, led the Sopkin Dressmakers’ strike, and supported the Unemployed Councils and the Scottsboro Boys’ defense. Ford profoundly reimagines how we remember and interpret these “ordinary” women doing extraordinary things across the heartland. Once overlooked, their activism shaped a radical tradition in midwestern cities that continues to be seen in cities like Ferguson and Minneapolis today.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
242 pages, Paperback
Published April 28, 2022
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About the author
Melissa Ford
1 book2 followersMelissa Ford is an assistant professor at Slippery Rock University specializing in African American history. She is a former Black Metropolis Research Consortium fellow.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 25, 2024
I love women I love communists I love black women communists and labor organizers and mothers and ahhhh!! Such an important historical interrogation of a deeply overlooked region & population. Phenomenal
January 8, 2025
Tot i ser un text molt breu, és una enriquidora aportació sobre la interseccionlitat de la lluita sindicalista que protagonizaren les dones negres al mig oest d’EE.UU.
June 10, 2023
Historian Melissa Ford draws the title of A Brick and A Bible from Carrie Smith’s courageous stance in 1933 at St. Louis’s City Hall to protest working conditions at a nut factory. With a brick in one hand and a Bible in the other, Smith rallied her fellow workers: “Girls, we cannot lose!” (2) The book’s title aptly describes the community-building, radicalism, and local organizing among Black women in four Midwestern cities during the Great Depression. For these Black women, their demands for sanitary working conditions, decent housing, fair wages, and adequate food during the Depression were compatible with motherhood and Christianity. Working with associations such as the Communist Party of America, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and local entities, Black women resisted capitalism, racism, and sexism through union-organizing, strikes, protest marches, eviction-blocking, and interracial cooperation with white radicals. Ford recovers and recuperates their efforts. The book is organized with an introduction, four chapters each dedicated to a midwestern city, and conclusion.
In the introduction, Ford acknowledges the contributions and gaps within scholarship related to Black women, activism, and the Midwest. She develops the paradigm of Midwestern Black radicalism that she defines as “a distinct expression of praxis-based Black radical ideology informed by American Communism, African American community-building, Black women’s history of resistance, and the lived experiences of Black women in the Midwest during the Great Depression” (3). The subsequent case-study chapters utilize this framework. In the critical tradition, this lens makes visible the Black women’s intersectional identities and their various activities to challenge discrimination and oppression.
Ford devotes a chapter to four Midwestern cities: Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, and Cleveland. She begins each chapter with the unique characteristics and regional history of each city. For example, the presence of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit constrained radicalism because of the company’s interference and lobbying with local Black leaders. St. Louis, as Ford explains, was placed geographically and historically “squarely in the middle of the Yankee North and the Jim Crow South” (49). Although St. Louis had no official segregation laws, de facto segregation existed in nearly every public space. By the 1930s, Chicago had established a strong foundation of Black culture and radicalism with Robert Abbott’s Chicago Defender, A. Philip Randolph’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Chicago’s Black Renaissance. Lastly, residents experienced race relations differently in Cleveland due to the city’s proximity to New England and its history of abolitionist activity prior to the Civil War. Even as she documents distinctions among the cities, Ford notes the similarities such as segregated housing, disenfranchisement, and low wages, then connects each city to the larger national context of the Great Depression and Great Migration.
The content of Ford’s study makes a valuable and unique contribution to our understanding of Black radicalism and Black women’s roles. The form warrants accolades because Ford deftly weaves the broader national circumstances within the specific aspects of each city that provided constraints and opportunities for radicalism. While never attributing any element as determinant, Ford thoughtfully observes how these forces converged, even as she resists the tendency “to rehash moments of Black radicalism and simply place them in the Midwest” (17).
Ford concludes A Brick and A Bible by claiming continuity “between 1930s labor and community organizing and the Black Lives Matter movement,” a claim that she suggests “might seem like an intellectual stretch” (165). However, Ford demonstrates in the conclusion that the roots of the twenty-first century resistance to state-sanctioned violence can be traced to Midwestern Black radicalism because both sought to assert the democratic principles of equality and justice.
In the introduction, Ford acknowledges the contributions and gaps within scholarship related to Black women, activism, and the Midwest. She develops the paradigm of Midwestern Black radicalism that she defines as “a distinct expression of praxis-based Black radical ideology informed by American Communism, African American community-building, Black women’s history of resistance, and the lived experiences of Black women in the Midwest during the Great Depression” (3). The subsequent case-study chapters utilize this framework. In the critical tradition, this lens makes visible the Black women’s intersectional identities and their various activities to challenge discrimination and oppression.
Ford devotes a chapter to four Midwestern cities: Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, and Cleveland. She begins each chapter with the unique characteristics and regional history of each city. For example, the presence of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit constrained radicalism because of the company’s interference and lobbying with local Black leaders. St. Louis, as Ford explains, was placed geographically and historically “squarely in the middle of the Yankee North and the Jim Crow South” (49). Although St. Louis had no official segregation laws, de facto segregation existed in nearly every public space. By the 1930s, Chicago had established a strong foundation of Black culture and radicalism with Robert Abbott’s Chicago Defender, A. Philip Randolph’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Chicago’s Black Renaissance. Lastly, residents experienced race relations differently in Cleveland due to the city’s proximity to New England and its history of abolitionist activity prior to the Civil War. Even as she documents distinctions among the cities, Ford notes the similarities such as segregated housing, disenfranchisement, and low wages, then connects each city to the larger national context of the Great Depression and Great Migration.
The content of Ford’s study makes a valuable and unique contribution to our understanding of Black radicalism and Black women’s roles. The form warrants accolades because Ford deftly weaves the broader national circumstances within the specific aspects of each city that provided constraints and opportunities for radicalism. While never attributing any element as determinant, Ford thoughtfully observes how these forces converged, even as she resists the tendency “to rehash moments of Black radicalism and simply place them in the Midwest” (17).
Ford concludes A Brick and A Bible by claiming continuity “between 1930s labor and community organizing and the Black Lives Matter movement,” a claim that she suggests “might seem like an intellectual stretch” (165). However, Ford demonstrates in the conclusion that the roots of the twenty-first century resistance to state-sanctioned violence can be traced to Midwestern Black radicalism because both sought to assert the democratic principles of equality and justice.
December 11, 2022
Taking readers across three Midwestern cities during the early 19th century, Melissa Ford preserves the often neglected history of Black women activists in the Midwest, calling attention to labor disputes with Ford in Detroit, Funsten in St. Louis, and Sopkin in Cleveland in a work that is as much a Black text as it is a unionist history.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews