In A Brick and a Bible, historian Melissa Ford examines how Black women in the urban Midwest fought against racism and deteriorating economic and social conditions during the early 1930s by joining or combining forces with the Communist Party. Fusing her focus on the struggles of Black women with the recent scholarly focus on the Midwest, Ford coins a new term to encompass what she regards as the important distinctions of the conditions and challenges faced by Black women in that region. “I offer Midwestern Black radicalism, formulated as a distinct expression of praxis-based Black radical ideology informed by American Communism, African American community-building, Black women’s history of resistance, and the lived experiences of Black women in the Midwest,” she writes (p. 3). Reflecting recent scholarship, Ford draws upon the concept of intersectionality, the idea that Black women endured “interlocking” racial, class, and gender oppression (p. 7).
To achieve...
University of California Press