This collection of essays (1891) is a statement of black feminist thought in the nineteenth century, and is considered to be one of the original texts of the black feminist movement. Cooper came of age in a period of conservatism in the black community, a time when Afro-American intellectual and political ideas were dominated by men. At the heart of her work is a belief that the status of black women, the most oppressed group of all, is the only true measure of collective racial progress.

At the close of the 19th century, a black woman of the South presents womanhood as a vital element in the regeneration and progress of her race.

Critic, essayist, and anthologist Mary Helen Washington has chosen as the theme of her newest collection "the family as a living mystery." She selected nineteen stories and twelve poems by some of this century's leading black authors that oblige the reader to observe the complexities of the family in new and provocative ways.

Including oral history, letters and excerpts from diaries, this is a documentary study of 2 million black slave women and 200,000 free black women in the 19th century.

Mary Helen Washington recovers the vital role of 1950s leftist politics in the works and lives of modern African American writers and artists. While most histories of McCarthyism focus on the devastation of the blacklist and the intersection of leftist politics and American culture, few include the activities of radical writers and artists from the Black Popular Front. Washington's work incorporates these black intellectuals back into our understanding of mid-twentieth-century African American literature and art and expands our understanding of the creative ferment energizing all of America...