Doers of the Word: African-American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1880)

Adapting a verse from the Epistle of James--"doers of the word"--nineteenth century black women activists Sojourner Truth, Jarena Lee, and Charlotte Forten, among others, travelled throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest. There they preached, lectured, and wrote about religious evangelicism, abolition, moral reform, temperance, and women's rights. Doers of the Word is built on two premises: first that "Civil Rights movements" are not a modern phenomenon, and second that a balanced perspective of black/white power relations requires knowledge of Northern African-American culture. Following these, Peterson attempts to understand the cultural work of these women in terms of the role gender, class, and religion played in shaping black cultural nationalism. Peterson begins her study in the 1830s, when a substantial body of writing by black women first emerged, and traces the development and reactions of this writing through the shifting political climate up to