New Book: Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton by Duchess Harris

from Palgrave Macmillan

BLACK FEMINIST POLITICS FROM KENNEDY TO CLINTON
Duchess Harris
Contemporary Black History
Pub date: Jul 2009
208 pages

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book analyzes Black women's involvement in American political life, focusing on what they did to gain political power between 1961 and 2001, and why, in many cases, they did not succeed. Harris demonstrates that Black women have tried to gain centrality through their participation in Presidential Commissions, Black feminist organizations, theatrical productions, film adaptations of literature, beauty pageants, electoral politics, and Presidential appointments. Harris contends that 'success' in this area means that the feminist-identified Black women in the Congressional Black Caucus who voted against Clarence Thomas's appointment would have spoken on behalf of Anita Hill; Senator Carol Moseley Braun would have won re-election; Lani Gunier would have had a hearing; Dr. Joycelyn Elders would have maintained her post; and Congresswoman Barbara Lee wouldn't have stood alone in her opposition to the Iraq war resolution.

Praise for Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton

“I have been longing for a book that can conceptually interweave the legacy of the Combahee River Collective, the longstanding hostility by some in the black community toward the movie The Color Purple, and the political style of Congresswoman Barbara Lee. Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton offers us a little known political history--it is required reading for any serious student and scholar of contemporary African American’s women’s political participation. This book provides readers a new and valuable conceptual landscape of how African American feminists have engaged electoral and cultural politics despite consistent and powerful opposition. What a refreshing and much needed addition!”--Michele Tracy Berger, Author of Workable Sisterhood: The Political Journey of Stigmatized Women with HIV/AIDS

Table of contents

Part I: The ‘90s in Context: A History of Black Women in American Politics
Part II: A History of American Black Feminism
Part III: Black Women’s Relationships with Party Politics
Part IV: Doubting the Democrats: Current Disenchantment and Political Futures

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Duchess Harris, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Macalester College. She is the co-editor with Bruce D. Baum of the forthcoming Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity. She is also a J.D. candidate at William Mitchell College of Law.