Conclusion

The concluding chapter of this book contextualizes the political implications of Black women’s appearances for both political elites and voters. The chapter centers on Black women’s activism around natural hair and its connection to politics and policy. The natural hair movement signals not just a styling preference but also a way for Black women political elites to descriptively represent constituents. In this chapter, the authors provide a summary of the findings of their study and offer insights into Black women’s representation. The chapter ends by asking readers to assess the values that they ascribe to a Black woman political elite based on what she looks like.

Mothers of the Movement: Evangelicalism and Religious Experience in Black Women’s Activism

This article centers Black religious women’s activist memoirs, including Mamie Till Mobley’s Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America (2003) and Rep. Lucia Kay McBath’s Standing Our Ground: The Triumph of Faith over Gun Violence: A Mother’s Story (2018), to refocus the narrative of American Evangelicalism and politics around Black women’s authoritative narratives of religious experience, expression, mourning, and activism. These memoirs document personal transformation that surrounds racial violence against these Black women’s Black sons, Emmett Till (1941–1955) and Jordan Davis (1995–2012). Their religious orientations and experiences serve to chart their pursuit of meaning and mission in the face of American brutality. Centering religious experiences spotlights a tradition of Black religious women who view their Christian salvation as authorizing an ongoing personal relationship with God. Such relationships entail God’s ongoing communication with these Christian believers through signs, dreams, visions, and “chance” encounters with other people that they must interpret while relying on their knowledge of scripture. A focus on religious experience in the narratives of activist Black women helps to make significant their human conditions—the contexts that produce their co-constitutive expressions of religious and racial awakenings as they encounter anti-Black violence. In the memoirs of Till and McBath, their sons’ murders produce questions about the place of God in the midst of (Black) suffering and their intuitive pursuit of God’s mission for them to lead the way in redressing racial injustice.

Black Women’s Activism in Brazil: Black Genocide, Anti-Blackness and Racial Apartheid

This article focuses on changes in Black women’s activism, particularly in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, from 1995-2015, by comparing two national marches. Black organizations throughout the country came together to organize a national march in national’s capital Brasilia in November 1995. Twenty years later in November 2015, Black women organized a national march to address the intersection of racism and sexism. During those twenty years, Black activists worked tirelessly against Black genocide, anti-Blackness and racial apartheid in Brazil, and Black women stood on the frontlines of these struggles. The intersectionality of race, class, and gender were and remain critical to the activism of Black women and to the production of research and knowledge. The paper examines the changes activism in the Black movement over twenty years that marked the growth on Black women’s organizations and networks.

“All the Progress to Be Made Will Be Made by Maladjusted Negroes”: Mae Mallory, Black Women’s Activism, and the Making of the Black Radical Tradition

Mae Mallory (1927–2007) was a radical political activist and a self-proclaimed “maladjusted Negro.” She played a foundational role in developing and sustaining the black freedom movement through her school desegregation protests in the 1950s, Black Power advocacy in the 1960s, and Pan-African and prisoner’s rights organizing in the 1970s and 1980s. She also espoused a politics defined by her commitment to a black, community-centered, working-class, gender-conscious, and anti-imperialist worldview. Mallory’s multifaceted organizing, intellectual production, and women-centered approach to radical politics have made her an outlier in traditional historical frameworks. However, her alternative intellectual and activist path is also generative in that it illuminates different aspects of black women’s political activism. This article examines Mallory’s organizing and intellectual production through the lens of “maladjustment.” It argues that her unconventional identifications, politics, and organizing trajectory not only showcase Mallory’s unique influence on the black radical tradition, they also offer an opportunity to rethink existing approaches to the study of black women’s activism. The essay offers one of the first overviews of Mallory’s life, organizing, and theorizing, in order to foreground her role in shaping multiple facets of black organizing. In doing so, it offers a larger commentary on how “maladjusted” women like Mallory challenge conventional narratives about the periodization, strategies, and legacies of the black freedom movement.

Rooted Pedagogies: Black Women Activist Teachers Planting Seeds

The history of activism on the part of African American women has laid the foundation on which contemporary African American women activists and scholars have developed theories, critiques, and cultural frameworks that challenges pre- established paradigms and epistemologies. This paper focuses on extending the research that begun on African American teacher activists to gain sufficient insight into their political perspectives and how their perspectives were manifested in their personal and professional lives to influence their role as a teacher. This study was informed by black feminist epistemology and it employs portraiture as its research methodology. Data analysis yielded significant findings. The subjects of the study considered those life experiences to be most significant that contributed in developing their critical consciousness as children through the influence of their family, school, and community. Each teacher pointed to the need to teach critical thinking skills so that students of color will be able to establish their places in the world as productive citizens. The pedagogical approaches of the black women activist teachers were theorized and it emerged as a model of Rooted Pedagogies grounded in the historical tradition of black women’s activism. Furthermore, the implications for teacher education and practice were discussed, alongside with the recommendations for future research.