When and Where I Enter

This book details the engagement and impact African American women have made on race and gender issues throughout American history.

Paula Giddings uses first-person narratives to portray how generations of Black women have acted as “agents of change” to achieve political and economic progress. In researching the lives of two nineteenth-century Black female sculptors, I needed to understand the cultural and political environment that inspired them to tackle the controversial themes of race, gender, and social injustice in their art.

When and Where I Enter provided a gendered and historical framework to help me answer these critical questions.

I have a PhD in American history but I’m still learning about Black history that was not taught in my schools. This groundbreaking work is a prime resource and an introduction, especially for white readers like me, to Black women in American history. They include Ida B. Wells, who risked her life to launch an anti-lynching campaign in the 1890s; Mary Church Terrell, who marched in the 1913 suffrage parade and picketed the White House in 1917 and segregated restaurants in the 1950s; Mary McLeod Bethune, the highest ranking African American in the New Deal and Eleanor Roosevelt’s ally, who… show more.

The writings in this book illuminate the experience of African American women from the 17th through 20th century. Its pages inform and inspire. I enjoy the narratives and absorb wisdom from the amazing women whose stories are recorded within. A lot has happened since the book was published in 1984. Yet the narratives recorded and explored in Giddings’s book include heroines barely mentioned in present-day: Ida B. Wells and anti-lynching campaigns, the National Colored Women’s Club movement of which my great-grandmother was an enthusiastic participant, feminism, and African American women. Even the chapter and section titles captivate: “To… show more.