Review: Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era

Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era by Ashley D. Farmer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a comprehensive look at the image of black womanhood in the era of the Black Power movement. Dr. Ashley Farmer details 5 different images of black womanhood: The Militant Negro Domestic (1945-1965), The Black Revolutionary Woman (1966-1975), The African Woman (1965-1975), The Pan-African Woman (1972-1976), and The Third World Black Woman (1970-1979).

The author argues that in the 1960s black women were the most oppressed people in our nation. Black women suffered ternary oppression in class, gender, and race. Forging their path of activism on the heels of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, African-American women set out to reinvent their image and fight for equal rights. Utilizing the writings and art of the time, Ashley D. Farmer focuses her book “Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era” on the activism and ideology of black womanhood.

Ashley Farmer’s central theme centers around the idea that black women are at the heart of many activist groups in the 1960s and 1970s. The work of these women goes beyond the day to day activism under the leadership of men of the Black Power era. These women redefined black womanhood through the contributions of activists like Joan Bird, Amina Baraka, and Kathleen Neal Cleaver.

This is the definitive book on the women of the Black Power movement. It's a great resource on civil rights and activism from the 1950s through the 1970s. I particularly liked the chapter on the Black Panther organization and the women (Pantherettes) that helped form and run the group. It clarified their ideology and their reason for taking a militant stance in a tumultuous time in history. This book is eye-opening and its themes resonate today when civil and human rights are issues that are still at the forefront of the nation's mind.

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