I Got a Story to Tell: Black Voices in Print

By former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams

Note: Novels by Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams under the pen name Selena Montgomery. After serving for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, she became the first Black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States.

Note: Lorde’s work describes the relationship between South African Apartheid and American racism. Woo discusses divestment of US corporations and holdings in South Africa and the turn of attention to eliminating racism worldwide. They connect the largely unchecked white supremacy of both countries and note the rise of freedom fighting by Black and people of color that emerges as a counter to that supremacy.

Note: Audre Lorde, Black lesbian feminist, co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980. In #2 of the Freedom Organizing Pamphlet Series, "an African American and an Asian American poet make the connections between South African apartheid and North American racism. I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities is a printed version of a lecture delivered by Lorde at Medgar Evers College in NYC. The acclaimed author challenges homophobia as a divisive force, particularly among Black women.

Note: A selection of the lectures that Professor Angela Y. Davis gave in her “Recurring Philosophical Themes in Black Literature course at UCLA during the fall quarter of 1969.

Note: A pamphlet including Birth control pills and black children / a statement by the Black Unity Party (Peekskill N.Y.) -- A response / by black sisters -- Poor black women / by Patricia Robinson.

Note: In this volume of poetry, activist poet Lizelia Moorer, a teacher at South Carolina’s first black college, presents a sweeping portrayal of the nature of racial oppression. She confronts lynching, debt peonage, rape, segregation, and the hypocrisy of the church.

Note: This work is co-authored by Ida B. Wells and this a written, self-published response to the lack of representation of the Black experience, African American and African Diapora, at the 1893 World’s Fair. Wells was a well known journalist and activist of the late 19th and early 20th century, writing about advocating for anti-lynching legislation, women’s and Black rights.

Note: A Voice from the South (1892) is the only book published by one of the most prominent African American women scholars and educators of her era. In it, she engages a variety of issues ranging from women's rights to racial progress, from segregation to literary criticism.She became the fourth African American woman to earn a doctoral degree, earning a PhD in history from the University of Paris-Sorbonne.

Biographies of Lucy Craft Laney, Maggie Lena Walker, Julie Porter Barrett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Jane Edna Hunter.

Note: This book profiles significant African American women of the early 20th century who built institutions for the African American community. The dust jacket features the artwork of Lois Mailou Jones.

Notes: Both published works are part of the Robert A. Hill Collection. Hill is a noted scholar of the Black Diaspora who primarily researches the life of Marcus Garvey and his global Pan-Africanist movement. Ethel M. Collins was a Jamaican born activist served as secretary-general of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the Black nationalist organization founded by Garvey to promote these ideals. Collins briefly served as president of the UNIA after Garvey’s death in 1940. Elinor Robinson White was a Garvey loyalist from Robbins Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. An officer in the Chicago Garvey Club in the 1920s and early 1930s, she served as a delegate to the 1929 and 1934 conventions in Kingston and the 1937 and 1938 UNIA convention in Toronto. She was among those chosen by Garvey to participate in the "School of African Philosophy" sessions he taught for a small group following the 1937 convention.