Without Fear
Black Women and the Making of Human Rights
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
One of Essence's "7 Political Books By Black Women Authors To Read Now" • A Library Journal Best Book of the Year • One of Bookbub's Best Nonfiction of 2025 • One of the African American Intellectual History Society's Best Black History Books of 2025
“Without Fear tells the stories of Black women who, like Deborah in the Bible, have engaged in social justice agitation, refusing to simply suffer by engaging in the redemptive work of challenging injustice while in the midst of it. Each of us can and must learn from these women if we are to reconstruct America and build a just world.” —Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, coauthor of White Poverty
Even before they were recognized as citizens of the United States, Black women understood that the fights for civil and human rights were inseparable. Over the course of two hundred years, they were at the forefront of national and international movements for social change, weaving connections between their own and others’ freedom struggles around the world.
Without Fear tells how, during American history, Black women made humans rights theirs: from worldwide travel and public advocacy in the global Black press to their work for the United Nations, they courageously and effectively moved human rights beyond an esoteric concept to an active, organizing principle. Acclaimed historian Keisha N. Blain tells the story of these women—from the well-known, like Ida B. Wells, Madam C. J. Walker, and Lena Horne, to those who are still less known, including Pearl Sherrod, Aretha McKinley, and Marguerite Cartwright. Blain captures human rights thinking and activism from the ground up with Black women at the center, working outside the traditional halls of power.
By shouldering intersecting forms of oppression—including racism, sexism, and classism—Black women have long been in a unique position to fight for freedom and dignity. Without Fear is an account of their aspirations, strategies, and struggles to pioneer a human rights approach to combating systems of injustice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Black American women have consistently been at the forefront of efforts to position the fight for equal rights as common ground between disparate marginalized peoples, according to this eye-opening account. Guggenheim fellow Blain (Wake Up America) spotlights several key figures, showing how their advocacy for fellow Black Americans led them to forge new ideas about universal rights. Among them are journalist Ida B. Wells, who explicitly connected her anti-lynching activism to American massacres abroad during the country's colonial wars of the 1890s, and self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker, who cofounded the International League for Darker Peoples, which advocated for people from China to Haiti. THough the ILDP disbanded in 1919 after failing in its push for an equality clause in the Treaty of Versailles, that same year, at the International Congress of Women in Zurich, NAACP cofounder Mary Church Terrell drafted "one of the earliest articulations" of human rights as encompassing "all peoples." The author unearths a fascinating stream of such little remembered resolutions, speeches, and conferences, especially in the years following the world wars, which were marked by fervent advocacy for change. While some readers might quibble that Blain strays from her women-centric focus, it's nonetheless a thoroughly researched and invigorating look at a robust grassroots push for human rights in the 20th century.
