Black Women Historians Encourage Us To #SayHerName with List of Recommended Reading

In response to what seems like a daily onslaught of tragic news about the deaths and assaults of black women at the hands of law enforcement, the Association of Black Women Historians has put together a list of required reading to remind us that the systematic degradation and death of black women in this country is nothing new.

In a statement released Tuesday, the ABWH says:

The members of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH) are well aware of the ways that black women and girls in America have been violently discriminated against and harassed by law enforcement officials and the legal system. From the earliest days in the colonies when laws failed to punish the rape of black women, to the antebellum era where black women were brutally punished for resisting rapist-enslavers, to the post-emancipation period when the sexual and physical assault of black women went unabated, and right up through the Civil Rights Movement, the judicial system has failed us.

 This history, together with recent incidents against black women and girls such as Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 7, who a Detroit officer fatally shot while asleep at her grandmother’s house; Dajerria Becton, 14, who a Texas officer violently thrust to the pavement at a pool party; Natasha McKenna, 37, who a Virginia officer tasered to death while in restraints in police custody; Tanisha Anderson, 37, who—during a mental health crisis—a Cleveland police slammed resulting in her death; and Rekia Boyd, 22, who an off-duty Chicago police officer shot in the back of the head, stand as a modern-day “Red Record” of state sanctioned, anti-black female violence. 

The ABWH reminds us that black women have "never been afforded a femininity that deemed them innocent," and have been "berated, sexually abused, and brutally beaten by police."

In support of the #SayHerName and #BlackLivesMatter movements, the statement also reads , "We find that it is crucial to say the names of black women and girls killed, harassed, and abused by police and to state unequivocally that discussions of police brutality cannot focus on black men and masculinity alone."

Check out these ABWH recommended texts for historical context on today's war on Black women:

Gendered Justice in the American West: Women Prisoners in Men's Penitentiaries by  Anne Butler

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis

“Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching,” by Crystal Feimster


Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 by Kali Gross

Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence (Perverse Modernities) by Christina Hanhardt


Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935 (Gender and American Culture) by Cheryl Hicks

Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (Justice, Power, and Politics) by Talitha Leflouria

“At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power,” by Danielle McGuire

Breaking Women: Gender, Race, and the New Politics of Imprisonment by Jill McCorkel

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan Metzel

Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical (Gender and American Culture) by Sherie Randolph
Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation by Beth Ritchie

Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South (Gender and American Culture) by Hannah Rosen

“The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots,” by Brenda Stevenson

Gender and Lynching: The Politics of Memory by Evelyn Simien

Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans (Gender and American Culture) by Lakisha Simmons

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex by Eric Stanley and Nat Smith

Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex by Julia Sudbury
Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women's Prisons by Megan Sweeney
The Story Within Us: Women Prisoners Reflect on Reading by Megan Sweeney

“They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I,” by Kidada Williams

Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century by Rhonda Y. Williams

Read the full statement and reading list here.


h/t: Colorlines 

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