Across eleven original essays that explore the legacy of Black women writers and leaders—from Harriet Jacobs and Ida B. Wells to the Combahee River Collective and Audre Lorde—Jackson sets the record straight about Black women’s longtime movement organizing, theorizing, and coalition building in the name of racial, gender, and sexual justice in the United States and abroad. These essays show, in both critical and deeply personal terms, how Black women have been at the center of modern liberation movements despite the erasure and misrecognition of their efforts.

Harriet Jacobs taught me about freedom -- Ida B. Wells taught me about radical truth telling -- Zora Neale Hurston taught me about the reclamation of our labor -- Ella Baker taught me why we should listen to young people -- Fannie Lou Hamer taught me to be unrespectable -- Shirley Chisholm taught me to hold whiteness accountable -- Toni Morrison taught me that Black women are powerful -- The Combahee River collective taught me about identity politics -- Audre Lorde taught me about solidarity as self-care -- Angela Davis taught me to be an anti-racist abolitionist -- Bell Hooks taught me how to love expansively.