From 2020: Ancestral Power

Our Best of ITT series continues, as we celebrate our 7th year anniversary! In this episode from July 2020, Maria and Julio are joined by authors and historians Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross to talk about their book “A Black Women's History of the United States.” They analyze the history of Black women in America and their legacy of activism, resistance and entrepreneurship.

ITT Staff Picks: 

• Olivia Lapeyrolerie writes about the incredible life’s work of Marvel Cooke, a Black reporter and union organizer, who inspired Black women activists such as Angela Davis and spent her life fighting systemic inequities and the exploitation of Black people, in this article for Teen Vogue. 

• “The challenge of solving the Black wealth gap is informed by another time in our past when Black people were the wealth of this nation,” writes Daina Ramey Berry in this piece for The Boston Globe. 

• The Free Black Women’s Library features a collection of four thousand books written by Black women and Black non-binary authors and celebrates these authors through workshops, readings, story circles, performances, cultural conversations and a monthly reading club.