Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson
Broadway Books, 1998
From time to time, a work of history itself makes history. A Shining Thread of Hope is such a book . . .
Nell Irvin Painter
Encompassing both the panoramic story of black women in America and the intimate, evocative details of the lives of individual women, this landmark history offers a new perspective on a long-neglected area of our country’s history. At its greatest moments and in its cruelest times, black women have been a crucial part of America’s history. Now, in A Shining Thread of Hope, the inspiring story of black women in America is explored in vivid detail by two experts in the fields of African American and women’s history.
In this engagingly written narrative history, coauthors Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson illuminate the roots of the present-day black community and make evident that our understanding of women’s history, and indeed of American history, must begin with an understanding of black women’s history. A Shining Thread of Hope chronicles the lives of black women from indentured servitude in the early American colonies to the cruelty of antebellum plantations, from the reign of lynch law in the Jim Crow South to the triumphs of the Civil Rights era.
[T]his stirring tour de force moves black women from the wings to center stage.
Publisher’s Weekly
Tracing the accomplishments, as well as the suffering, of black women through the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, the Depression, the Civil Rights movement, and the present day, Hine and Thompson challenge preconceived notions and move black women from the fringes of American history to a central position in our understanding of the forces and events that have shaped this country.
More than a story of struggle, black women’s history is very much a story of hope. In the face of great obstacles, black women strengthened their communities through the development of women’s groups, charitable organizations, and political groups, and contributed to the larger community as writers, activists, educators, artists, and leaders. A Shining Thread of Hope reveals this history, presenting the strength and courage of black women, both as individuals and as a collective force for positive change.
Library Journal
In an extraordinary narrative personalized for easy reading, Hine (Michigan State Univ.), perhaps the leading historian of U.S. black women, and Thompson, editor-in-chief of Facts on File’s Encyclopedia of Black Women (LJ 4/15/97), convey the plight and pluck of African American women from their arrival at Jamestown, VA, in 1619 to what the authors describe as a new era at the dawn of the year 2000. Celebrating black women’s historical strength, Hine and Thompson accentuate resistance and survival in their 12 chapters. They focus on flesh-and-blood women whose stories of persistence, protest, and progress flow together with famous and unfamiliar names sharing an unbreakable thread spun by faithful and industrious self-reliance. Without peer as a single-volume history of being black and female in America, this book is an inviting opening to the fast-growing scholarship on African American women to which Hine has so richly contributed. Highly recommended for collections on blacks, women, or U.S. history. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/97.]Brenda M. Brock, Univ. at Buffalo, NY, & Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe
The News and Observer–Nell Irvin Painter
. . . This deeply informed history is brought to life by often-lyrical writing. The authors invite readers into black women’s history by speaking to us directly as “you.” They also ask us to imagine ourselves in the situation of historical subjects. Because the particulars of so much early history is still lost or undiscovered, Hine and Thompson occasionally, and effectively, create composite characters — such as “Oni,” an imagined African captive who survives the Atlantic Middle Passage and adjusts to enslavement in the New World — to give their story focus. This direct address and direct immersion works beautifully to break down barriers between historical subjects and readers.
American readers, as members of a visual culture, appreciate scholarship animated by illustrations. In this case, photographs and drawings are doubly precious, because we still run short of images of black women in everyday life. As though to remedy the scarcity, Hine and Thompson include three sections of photographs of workers, farmers, celebrities, artists, socialites, athletes, suffragists, protesters, musicians, mothers and more. These images feed a hunger for non-sensational visual images, bringing their subjects out of the realm of the unfamiliar and closer to readers.
Readers also will appreciate the high-quality design of this attractive book, each of whose chapters opens with an exquisite photo. Careful thought has gone into all the chapter titles and headings, such as “Blossoming in Hard Soil,” on the late 19th century; and “The Caged Bird Sings,” evoking Maya Angelou, on the 1970s and 1980s. Two of my favorite headings are “O, Ye Daughters of Africa,” echoing Maria Stewart; and “Not Quite Free, Not Quite Wives,” on enslaved paramours.
Perhaps the most difficult trick Hine and Thompson pull off is rendering a history that slights neither the hardships nor the achievements of black women. Quite rightly, they name law, custom and violence as black women’s enemies and obstacles and show exactly what that meant. They are not saying black women had to break the law in order to live, but that American law, by codifying white supremacy and prejudice against women, worked to black women’s detriment. Showing how black women have transcended unjust laws and worked to change them, Hine and Thompson also confirm a history larger than a sum of our oppression.
In short, “A Shining Thread of Hope” sets itself a daunting task and completes it brilliantly. It delivers a clear and elegant history of Americans who have known the worst of our society and yet produced some of its best exemplars.
The Independent Reader
A professional historian specializing in African-American women’s history and a professional writer and researcher in African-American and Jewish women’s contributions to American culture, teamed up to produce the first comprehensive history of black women in America. It is a tour de force, synthesizing both primary and secondary resources into an accessible, eye-opening account of black women’s political and cultural roles in this country over the last four decades. In addition to providing their own analysis, there is a great section of photographs enabling one to see images that challenge the popular imagination, as well as first-person text allowing the reader to hear the voices of women from the days of slavery up to the current decade. One leaves this book with a profound respect for what black women have accomplished and with a new understanding of how black women have shaped communities and institutions.
Kirkus Reviews
The dean of a new generation of historians of black women in America and the editor of a notable reference work have produced a vivid narrative that illuminates the usually marginalized, neglected history of women of African descent in the New World and recasts it as a distinctive American legacy. . . .From an anonymous woman among the first documented black people in America, the 20 Africans who landed in Jamestown in 1619, to contemporary giants in popular culture and the arts, this book gives context to a succession of firsts by tracing the forces of gender, class, and race African-American women contended with in building an original culture and resilient communities, commingling African traditions and American innovations. Paradoxically rising above a grim story of oppression and struggle with humor and hope, moving beyond the singular exploits of towering figures like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, this volume is remarkably grounded in the complexities of the historical record and of black women’s lives. A Shining Thread of Hope examines the mythology of the American mainstream as well as demonstrates a scrupulous appreciation of black women as a powerful but largely unacknowledged force in American society.