“As a scholar who centers Black women’s political thought and activism, I seek to write historical studies that are relevant to our times. I see my work as making visible the transformative power of ordinary people in collective action and the ways these activists have engaged, taken up, and negotiated the intersecting forces of race, gender, sexuality, and class in their organizing and theorizing. I write deeply researched histories, drawing from protest posters and personal records to state archives, that I hope provide guideposts for today’s movements by charting the protracted struggle for liberation built through collective knowledge, solidarities, and imagination.”
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Dayo F. Gore is an associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at Georgetown University. She has previously taught in the Department of Ethnic Studies and Critical Gender Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego, where she was also the founding director of the Black Studies Project. Professor Gore is the author of Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War and a coeditor of Want to Start A Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle. Her work has also been published in a range of journals and anthologies, including Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society; WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly; Radical History Review; and the anthology To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism. Her current research projects include a book-length study of Black women’s transnational travels and activism in the long twentieth century. Professor Gore has worked on issues of police violence and supported Black feminist organizing in a number of organizations and cities, including the Black Radical Congress in Chicago and the Audre Lorde Project in Brooklyn.
Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War examines the intersection of race, gender, and politics during a pivotal period in American history. The book explores the activism of African American women during the Cold War, highlighting their roles in the Civil Rights
Beah Richards was a groundbreaking Black woman poet and activist whose work spanned multiple decades. Through her poetry, she spoke truth to power and advocated for social justice, particularly in regards to race and gender. Her legacy continues to inspire contemporary writers and activists.
This special issue of WSQ examines how social movements have theorized, organized, and otherwise strategized around state formations, with a focus on the U.S. and an understanding that state power and strategies of resistance are not limited by national borders.
What to learn more about the Freedom Scholars?
Questions about the Freedom Scholar awards can be sent to freedomscholars@caseygrants.org.
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR THE FREEDOM SCHOLAR AWARDS HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY THE INATAI FOUNDATION.
