Recommendations from our site
“To ‘Joy My Freedom is one of my favorite books. It centers Black working class women in the city of Atlanta. A lot has changed since Tera Hunter’s book, but labor history is still primarily the history of white men; oftentimes women, especially women of color, are excluded or marginalized…Reading this book crystalized my determination to become a historian focused on Black women.” Read more...
The best books on African American Women’s History
Keisha N. Blain, Historian
“This magnificent book blazed a path for many scholars. To ‘Joy My Freedom looks at a group of women who worked in white homes, cleaning and doing the laundry during the post-emancipation period; a group of Black women who were typically overlooked as laborers and as women.” Read more...
Barbara Krauthamer, Historian
Our most recommended books
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The Best and the Brightest
by David Halberstam -
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement
by Barbara Ransby -
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
by Gordon S. Wood -
Promise Me, Dad
by Joe Biden -
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
by Bernard Bailyn -
To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War
by Tera Hunter