Out of the Shadows: Origins of Black Feminism in the United States

Abstract

While researching the lives of black women in the United States, I found that it was often quite difficult to find information about black women. Books about slavery spoke mostly of the experiences of black men. When looking in books about the history of women, I found that they meant white women. This was a reoccurring theme I found doing the researching of the paper.. While researching and writing this paper I worked in a bookstore. In this bookstore, we had a large black studies section and also a large women's studies section. We (staff) often found it difficult to stock books by women like Angela Davis or bell hooks, two black women authors who wrote with a feminist perspective. No one knew whether to put the books in the black studies section or the women's studies section. These examples help to illustrate the precarious position of black women in the United States. They and their history often falls in the shadows of two other marginalized groups, black men and white women.