Hallie Q. Brown and twenty-eight contributors recreate the lives of sixty remarkable Afro-American women, all born in the United States or Canada between the 1740s and the end of the nineteenth century. Slaves and social workers, artists and activists, cake makers and home makers, their stories offer unusual insight into female networks, patterns of voluntary association, work, religion, family life, and black women's culture.

Introduction by: Randall K. Burkett