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“Why Sit Ye Here and Die”? Counterhegemonic Histories of the Black Female Intellectual in Nineteenth-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2020

REBECCA J. FRASER  and
MARTYN GRIFFIN
REBECCA J. FRASER
Affiliation:
Department of American Studies, University of East Anglia. Email: [email protected].
MARTYN GRIFFIN
Affiliation:
Durham University Business School. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This paper examines the work and lives of black female activist intellectuals in the years before the formation of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) in 1896. Looking deeper at arguments originally made by Maria Stewart concerning the denial of black women's ambitions and limiting potential in their working lives, the analysis employs the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, in particular his notion of the intellectual, to help reflect on the centrality of these black women in the development of an early counterhegemonic movement.

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Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 5 , December 2020 , pp. 1005 - 1031
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

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3 Ibid., 46.

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60 Extract from a letter dated “Greenville, Georgia, March 29th,” cited in ibid.

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63 Ibid.

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74 Maria W. Stewart, “An Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall,” in Maria W. Stewart: Essays and Speeches, 56–64, 59.

75 Ibid., 63.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid.

78 Carol B. Conaway, “Mary Ann Shadd Cary: A Visionary of the Black Press,” in Waters and Conaway, 216–45, 216.

79 Ibid., 217.

80 Peterson, “Doers of the Word”, 102.

81 Shadd, Mary Ann, A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West, in Its Moral, Social and Political Aspect: with Suggestions respecting Mexico, West Indies and Vancouver's Island for the Information of Colored Emigrants (Detroit, 1852)Google Scholar, at Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/cihm_47542.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid., 8, 11, 16, 20.

84 “From Our Brooklyn Correspondent,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 9 Nov. 1855, at Accessible Archives, www.accessible.com.

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90 Edmonia G. Highgate to Rev. George Whipple, 18 Jan. 1864, in Sterling, 294.

91 Edmonia G. Highgate to anonymous, 31 Oct. 1868, in ibid., 300.

92 Edmonia G. Highgate to Rev. M. E. Strieby, 17 Dec. 1866, in ibid., 299.

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94 Ibid.

95 Bay, Mia, Griffin, Farah J., Jones, Martha S. and Savage, Barbara D., eds., Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 1Google Scholar. See Part II, “Race and Gender in the Postemancipation Era,” 75–194, for a focus on nineteenth-century black female intellectuals.

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