Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Mac Austin
Introduction by Darlene Clark Hine
Broadway Books, 1999

It is wonderful to view the pictures of these women. Their intelligence and kindness are evident in the photographs. I am inspired by their stories and by their brave hearts.
Maya Angelou

Ordinary black women, more than any other group in America, have been invisible in American history as it has been recorded.  As Darlene Clark Hine points out in her introduction to this powerful and affecting book, “disseminating a visual history is more important with Black women, perhaps, than with any other single segment of the American population. We know all too well what this society believes black women look like. The stereotypes abound, from the Mammy to the maid, from the tragic mulatto to the dark temptress. America’s perceptions of Black women are colored by a host of derogatory images and assumptions that proliferated in the aftermath of slavery and, with some permutations, exist even today. We have witnessed the distortion of the image of black women in movies and on television. We have seen black women’s faces and bodies shamed and exploited. What we have not seen is the simple truth of their lives. This book will help to eradicate, or at least to dislodge, the many negative and dehumanizing stereotypes and caricatures of Black women that inhabit our consciousness.

History for the eyes and the heart.
Paula Giddings

What do black women look like? What do they look like at work or with their families? What faces do they choose to present to the world, and what faces has the world forced them to acquire? We can look in vain to most pictorial histories of America and even of African America for images of Black women. With noteworthy exceptions, even scholarly studies in Black women’s history tend to include few, if any, photographic images. Of the images that previously have been presented in print, the majority have been of famous Black women.”

These historic photographs . . . not only illumine the past, they explain the present and inspire the future.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Face of Our Past brings the ordinary Black woman to center stage, showing how she lives, loves her family, works to survive, fights for her people, and expresses her individuality. In addition to 302 carefully chosen images, Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Mac Austin provide quotations from letters, diaries, journals, and other sources.

USA Today-Clarencetta Jelks

Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Mac Austin are indeed dedicated to their subject matter — women in American history. The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women From Colonial America to the Present is a testimony to this. The collaboration of veteran award-winning author Thompson and Austin, a writer and photo researcher, defines the identity of the black woman: who she is, how we physically define her and what her role is in our history.

Here is a comprehensive visual source of black American women. More than 300 photographs and engravings cover hundreds of years. They show dignity through the degradation of slavery, authenticate cultural traditions and validate the inner strength of the subjects.

Darlene Clark Hine, professor of history at Michigan State University in East Lansing, notes in her introduction to this powerful publication that “all women, in all times and places, have been concerned about family, education, community, and religion. Black women are no exception. Yet black women are different, and the source of their difference is best reflected through an examination of their inner lives. The best means is to record and listen to their own personal voices. Here, among the images, are the words of black women, completing the picture, so to speak.”

…an eloquent rebuttal to the stereotypes and distorted media images that have plagued Black women throughout
history.”
Emerge