Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights

Black American women have consistently been at the forefront of efforts to position the fight for equal rights as common ground between disparate marginalized peoples, according to this eye-opening account. Guggenheim fellow Blain (Wake Up America) spotlights several key figures, showing how their advocacy for fellow Black Americans led them to forge new ideas about universal rights. Among them are journalist Ida B. Wells, who explicitly connected her anti-lynching activism to American massacres abroad during the country’s colonial wars of the 1890s, and self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker, who cofounded the International League for Darker Peoples, which advocated for people from China to Haiti. THough the ILDP disbanded in 1919 after failing in its push for an equality clause in the Treaty of Versailles, that same year, at the International Congress of Women in Zurich, NAACP cofounder Mary Church Terrell drafted “one of the earliest articulations” of human rights as encompassing “all peoples.” The author unearths a fascinating stream of such little remembered resolutions, speeches, and conferences, especially in the years following the world wars, which were marked by fervent advocacy for change. While some readers might quibble that Blain strays from her women-centric focus, it’s nonetheless a thoroughly researched and invigorating look at a robust grassroots push for human rights in the 20th century. (Sept.)