Black Women's History 101

When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Sex and Race in America by Paula Giddings

One of my professors recommended this book to me as a good overall beginning to black women in America. I'd already read Angela Davis's Women, Race and Class earlier in the deployment, and this book discusses similar topics. Unlike Davis, however, Giddings provides a much more comprehensive piece on black women's history. Davis focused much more on certain eras, and skipped over others, while Giddings goes basically through each time period and decade and discusses issues that were affecting black women, analyzing issues of race and gender. This means she not only discusses black women in relation to white women, but also discusses black women and black men and how their needs intersected and converged. Overall, a very good intro, and I am thinking about adding a few biographies to my reading list in the future, first off being Ida B. Wells, and possibly Eleanor Roosevelt. I already have a few ideas for Wells, but as far as Roosevelt is concerned, I am sure there are quite a few out there, but which ones are the best?