Red Emma’s

“Jenn M. Jackson is a beautiful writer and excellent scholar. In this book, they pay tribute to generations of Black women organizers and set forward a bold and courageous blueprint for our collective liberation.”—Imani Perry, author of South to America

This is my offering. My love letter to them, and to us.

Jenn M. Jackson, PhD, has been known to bring historical acuity to some of the most controversial topics in America today. Now, in their first book, Jackson applies their critical analysis to the questions that have long energized their work: Why has Black women’s freedom fighting been so overlooked throughout history, and what has our society lost because of our refusal to engage with our forestrugglers’ lessons?

A love letter to those who have been minimized and forgotten, this collection repositions Black women’s intellectual and political work at the center of today’s liberation movements.

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. Jackson illustrates how Black women have frequently done the work of liberation at great risk to their lives and livelihoods.

For a new generation of movement organizers and co-strugglers, Black Women Taught Us serves as a reminder that Black women were the first ones to teach us how to fight racism, how to name that fight, and how to imagine a more just world for everyone.

Jenn M. Jackson, PhD, is an award-winning professor of political science at Syracuse University and a columnist for Teen Vogue, where they write the popular “Speak On It” column that “explores how today’s social and political life is influenced by generations of racial and gender (dis)order.” A queer genderflux androgynous Black woman, Jackson primary research is in Black Politics with a focus on Black Feminism, racial trauma and threat, gender and sexuality, and social movements. Black Women Taught Us is their first book.

CaShawn Thompson is a proud third-generation native of Washington, D.C. She is an early childcare development expert, an educator, a trained doula, and author. CaShawn is a well-known social media influencer in DC and across the country. She is a writer who first got her start about beauty and lifestyle topics on her award-winning blog, Little Dirty Pretty Things. Her newest release, Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Real-Life Tales of Black Girl Magic, contains stories edited by Lilly Workneh and vibrant illustrations by many women and non-binary artists. CaShawn is also a Black cultural pioneer, creating the concept of “Black Girls Are Magic,” which sprung from her life as a little girl growing up with her mother, grandmother, and aunts. Black Girls Are Magic became wildly popular in 2013 after CaShawn began using the phrase online (which was later shortened to the hashtag #BlackGirlMagic) to uplift and praise the accomplishments, beauty and other amazing qualities of Black women.