Alison M. Parker, "Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell" (UNC Press, 2020)
Dr. Alison M. Parker\u2019s new book\xa0Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell\xa0(University of North Carolina Press, 2020) explores the life of civil rights activist and feminist, Mary Church Terrell. Born into slavery at the end of the Civil War, Terrell (1863-1954) became one of the most prominent activists of her time -- working at the intersection of rights for women and African Americans, anti-colonialism, criminal justice reform, and beyond. Her career stretched from the late nineteenth century to the civil rights movement of the 1950s -- and she was able to see the result of the NAACP\u2019s efforts in\xa0Brown v. Board of Education\xa0before she died. The first president of the National Association of Colored Women and a founding member of the NAACP, Terrell collaborated closely with other leaders such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Mary McLeod Bethune -- but she also was unafraid to disagree on principle and political strategy.\xa0\nUnceasing Militant, the first full-length academic biography of Terrell, integrates her extraordinary public activism with her romantic, reproductive, parental, economic, and mental health challenges. Understanding what she called the double handicap of sexism and racism, Terrell offered a nuanced and intersectional Black feminist political theory. Terrell insisted upon African American women\u2019s \u201cfull humanity and equality\u201d and -- honoring that legacy -- Alison Parker deftly weaves resources of all kinds, including privately held letters and diaries, to provide an account of a woman dedicated to changing the culture and institutions that perpetuated inequality throughout the United States -- but also a breathing, loving, nuanced woman navigating life.\nAlison M. Parker\xa0is Richards Professor of American History and Chair of the History of the Department at the University of Delaware. She researches and teaches at the intersections of gender, race, disability, citizenship and the law in U.S. history. Her earlier works include two books,\xa0Articulating Rights: Nineteenth- Century American Women on Race, Reform and the State\xa0(Cornell University Press, 2010) and\xa0Purifying America: Women, Cultural Reform, and Pro-Censorship Activism, 1873-1933\xa0(Northern Illinois University Press,1997). Her most recent public facing scholarship is the 2020\xa0New York Times\xa0op-ed, \u201cWhen White Women Wanted a Monument to Black Mammies.\u201d\nMadeline Jones assisted with this podcast.\nSusan Liebell\xa0is an associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph\u2019s University in Philadelphia.\xa0Why Diehard Originalists Aren\u2019t Really Originalists\xa0recently appeared in the Washington Post\u2019s Monkey Cage and\xa0\u201cRetreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground\u201d was published in the Journal of Politics (July 2020). Email her comments at\xa0sliebell@sju.edu\xa0or tweet to\xa0@SusanLiebell.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies