Strategic Sisterhood

Rebecca Tuuri's impactful book, Strategic Sisterhood, joins a long list of historical scholarship on the role of black women in the long freedom struggle. Tuuri makes a unique contribution to the growing body of literature by focusing on black middle-class women via the National Council of Negro Women (Ncnw). These women supported the civil rights movement but have been largely overlooked in favor of more visible, outspoken, and radical activists. The strategy employed by these women was unique. “While the council was committed to public moderation, through interracial, nonviolence and mainstream civil rights work, it also helped fund and support the more radical and grassroots activists who advocated black separation, black nationalism, and anti-imperialism” (p. 2). Tuuri uncovers her subject through a masterly use of archival sources, publications, oral history, and interviews. Women in the Ncnw, an umbrella organization for black women, were bridge builders, communicators and catalysts. In eight chapters Tuuri traces the Ncnw from its inception to the present with emphasis on the 1960s and 1970s. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 show the council's shift from a self-help organization to one more directly involved in civil rights, while chapters 5 and 6 reveal its more grassroot emphasis, addressing the War on Poverty. Chapters 7 and 8 show how the organization took on a new identity, focused not only on the elite group but that also spoke on behalf of all women

Elite · Grassroots · Mainstream · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society