Work · African & Africana Philosophy
A Voice from the South
Essays by “a Black Woman of the South”: only when the Black woman enters, unforced and undegraded, does the whole race enter with her.
Introduction
Anna Julia Cooper, then a teacher at the leading Black high school in Washington, D.C., published this collection of essays and speeches in 1892. Its first part, “Soprano Obligato”, deals with Black women, their higher education and their role in the nation’s progress; the second, “Tutti ad Libitum”, turns to the “race problem”, the portrayal of Black Americans in literature and questions of value and faith. Cooper argues that an account of American society that leaves out Black women, who face both racism and sexism, is incomplete. The book is often named as an early work of Black feminist thought and a forerunner of the idea of intersectionality.
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Connections
Taken up in
- Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex1989 · Kimberlé Crenshaw
- Black Feminist Thought1990 · Patricia Hill Collins
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