Recipient of the 2002 Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Historical Writing. In this “stunning collection of documents” ( ), African-American women speak of themselves, their lives, ambitions, and struggles from the colonial period to the present day. Theirs are stories of oppression and survival, of family and community self-help, of inspiring heroism and grass-roots organizational continuity in the face of racism, economic hardship, and, far too often, violence. Their vivid accounts, their strong and insistent voices, make for inspiring reading, enriching our understanding of the American past. “A very timely and powerful collection which gives emphasis to the magnificent role of Black women in the struggle of Black people to survive in this, the United States,”—Nathan Irvin Huggins “Gerda Lerner has collected . . . material which can change images that whites have had of Blacks, and possibly even those which we, as Blacks, have of ourselves,”—Maya Angelou
Author
Gerda Lerner was a historian, author and teacher. She was a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a visiting scholar at Duke University. Lerner was one of the founders of the field of women's history, and was a former president of the Organization of American Historians. She played a key role in the development of women's history curricula. She taught what is considered to be the first women's history course in the world at the New School for Social Research in 1963. She was also involved in the development of similar programs at Long Island University (1965–1967), at Sarah Lawrence College from 1968 to 1979 (where she established the nation's first Women's History graduate program), at Columbia University (where she was a co-founder of the Seminar on Women), and from 1980 until her retirement as Robinson Edwards Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. (from Wikipedia)
