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Academic Publication by Dr. Gordon Barker called Black Women Freedom Fighters

“Black Women Freedom Fighters: Profiles in the Struggle Against Slavery” by Dr. Gordon S. Barker and Sophie A. Brady tells the gripping stories of remarkable Black women, placing their freedom struggles front and centre in a divided nation grappling with the contradictions between slavery and freedom on the march toward the American Civil War.

The cover of the book Black Women Freedom Fighters: Profiles in the Struggle Against Slavery. Harriet Tubman is the sole person on the cover. Authors Gordon S. Barker and Sophie A. Brady.

Describing their dramatic escapes from an institution that legitimated physical and sexual violence against women and the separation of their families, this work also focuses on the kidnapping of free Black women for enslavement in the American South. Revealing the determination, agency, and ingenuity of courageous African American women resisting slavery, Black Women Freedom Fighters examines how their struggles exposed the horrors and immorality of slavery, fueled antislavery sentiment and militancy among both Black and White people in the North, contributed to the expansion of the Underground Railroad, influenced state and federal government policies, and fundamentally changed America.

Black Women Freedom Fighters shifts the grand narrative of American emancipation, underscoring the instrumental role of extraordinary, ordinary African American women and their allies in ending slavery. It portrays Black women as true heroines alongside celebrated abolitionists and political leaders who have typically been credited with bringing down an institution that violated human rights and clashed with principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

The book is being nominated for a Frederick Douglass Book Prize!

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Joannie St-Germain M.Sc. (she/her/elle)
RESEARCH OFFICER
OFFICE OF RESEARCH AND GRADUATE STUDIES
819-822-9600 x 2242

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