Journal of Women's History

Abstracts of Books Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Black Women in United States History: From Colonial Times Through the Nineteenth Century. 4 vols. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1990.1500 pp. ISBN 0-926019-14-7 (set; cl); $300.00 (set). This four volume set is part of the sixteen-volume series, Black Women in United States History. The series is the most exhaustive compüation of existing research on African-American women, comprising nine different subject areas, inducting five monographs. Additional titles in the series include: Black Women in American History: The Twentieth Century; Black Women's History: Theory and Practice; Daughters of Sorrow: Attitudes Toward Black Women, 1880-1920, by Beverly Guy-SheftaU; Jane Edna Hunter: A Case Study of Black Leadership, 1910-1950, by Adrienne Lash Jones; Quest for Equality: The Life and Writings of Mary Eliza Church Terrell, 1863-1954, by Beverly Washington Jones; To Better Our World: Black Women in Organized Reform, 1890-1920, by Dorothy Salem; Ida B. Wells Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman, 1893-1930, by Müdred Thompson; and Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965, edited by Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods. The series comes with a guide offering a cross-referenced subject and author index. These indexes lessen the confusion that could result from the presentation format, in which the artides are arranged alphabeticaUy by the author's name rather than by theme or chronology. The pro jed as a whole represents the editors' attempt to bring together the most compelling work in the growing field of African-American women's history, and to lay the foundation for future research. It is geared to the needs of a broad-based scholarly community, which includes teachers and students of both African-American studies and women's studies. This series should be a very helpful resource for integrating Black women's history into existing curricula as weU as for developing new multicultural courses in women's studies, African-American studies, and American studies. These four volumes contain essays and book chapters previously pubUshed over the last two decades, several of which appeared in obscure pubUcations or in local or state historical journals and were, before now, generaUy not avaüable to teachers and students of African-American women's history. Spanning the period between early colonial America through the westward movement, these works are a document of the Uves of women who, for the most part, have been rendered invisible in conventional historical research. The essays are divided between biographical and thematic studies, with biographical subjeds ranging from the most famiUar © 1992 Journal of Women's History, Vol 4 No. 2 (Fall) 190 Journal of Women's History Fall women such as poet PhiUiss Wheatley, aboUtionists Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, and anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells, to lesser known notable women such as lawyer and journalist Mary Ann Shadd, educators Olivia Davidson and Fanny Jackson Coppin, artist Edmonia Lewis, and novelist Pauline Hopkins. The thematic studies are broad and varied with several entries focusing on slavery. The new research on slavery wül be of particular interest to those pursuing a gendered analysis of the institution of slavery, a perspective that is missing in much of the most notable scholarship in the field. In addition, African-American women's emerging presence in the professions open to them before the twentieth century is covered in several of the articles. Their accompUshments in teaching, medicine, social reform, and the arts are shown to be strategies for overcoming both the gender and racial bias that they faced. To those who thought that there has not been much research and writing on Black women's history, these volumes are a pleasant surprise. Almost every theme that is encountered in the study of African-American history is dealt with in this collection—slavery, emancipation, famüy relationships , migration and urbanization, employment, social activism, and artistic activity—to name some of the most salient themes. The difference is that these studies treat gender as a category of analysis, and in so doing, often produce different insights and conclusions than those rendered in conventional historiography. The...