K abria B aumgartner . In Pursuit of Knowledge

Kabria Baumgartner’s In Pursuit of Knowledge is a deeply researched and beautifully written narrative of Black women’s educational activism in the early American republic. Specifically, it recovers part of the story of antebellum American women’s history that has not received its due: African American women’s fight to lay equal claim to the educational privileges opening up to white women. Likewise, Baumgartner centers Black women in the narrative of contemporaneous Black educational activism, which has too often focused on men. She excels at the creative use of a wide variety of sources to piece together the stories of Black women overlooked in these traditional accounts. In Baumgartner’s telling, individual Black women’s pursuit of higher learning opportunities were not merely isolated instances of personal initiative. Rather, these women belonged to networks of African American activists and white allies, both female and male, who worked together to secure Black women’s admission to advanced...

African american · Art · Black church · Black male · Black women · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · Variety (cybernetics) · White (mutation) · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Historical Education Studies Worldwide · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Race, History, and American Society