Legacies: African-American Female Pioneers

Legacies: African-American Female Pioneers is a collection of life stories of women who lived through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s while residing in Charlotte, North Carolina. By sharing their stories of activism in the face of social and institutional racism, readers learn how women fought for freedom and equality in America.

Chapters One and Two of the book introduce the women in the context and history of the era in which they worked and lived. Readers learn about their experiences at segregated schools, hospitals, colleges, and universities, as well as their personal lives, raising families and working. Chapter Three includes highlights from the author’s interviews with the legacies, in which they emphasize the importance of friendship, unexpected allies, and serving the community during their years of activism. The final chapter features photographs and first-hand accounts from each of the women in the book, bringing their stories to life.

Deeply personal and endlessly inspiring, Legacies is an excellent supplementary text for courses in Africana studies, race and ethnic studies, or any course that studies the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

Dr. Deanna L. Fassett is a professor of communication and chair of the Department of Communication Studies at San José State University. She is the author of Critical Communication Pedagogy and Coordinating the Communication Course: A Guidebook (both with John T. Warren). Her published research has appeared in an array of communication studies journals, including Basic Communication Course Annual, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication Education, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, and Text and Performance Quarterly.

Dr. Keith Nainby is a professor of communication and chair of the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Stanislaus. His publications include chapters in The SAGE Handbook of Communication and Instruction and The Invisibility Factor: Administrators and Faculty Reach Out to First-Generation College Students, as well as journal articles in Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, Language and Intercultural Communication, and Educational Foundations.

Dr. John T. Warren was a professor of communication at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He was the author of numerous books including Performing Purity: Whiteness, Pedagogy and the Reconstitution of Power, Casting Gender: Women and Performance in Intercultural Contexts, Critical Communication Pedagogy, and Coordinating the Communication Course: A Guidebook. He authored articles for several education and communication studies journals, including Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication Education, Educational Theory, and Text and Performance Quarterly.