A Right To Learn: African American Women and Educational Activism in Early America

Kabria Baumgartner

A Right To Learn: African American Women and Educational Activism in Early America explores how free and enslaved African American women in the nominally free states of early America fought for educational access and opportunity. This study analyzes a range of initiatives that African American women pursued, from writing children’s literature and campaigning for school desegregation to teaching. Instead of viewing these initiatives as discrete actions, this study juxtaposes them. I argue that African American women such as Sarah Mapps Douglass, Susan Paul, and Sojourner Truth launched a dynamic, grassroots campaign for education to empower themselves and their communities to claim social, political, and economic rights. In doing so, these women acted as educational reformers, defending their right to learn.

About Kabria Baumgartner

Kabria Baumgartner is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her research and teaching interests focus on early American history, African American women’s history, social movements, and the history of education in the United States. Her recent publications have appeared or are forthcoming in the Journal of African American Studies, New England Quarterly, and Journal of the Early Republic. She is currently working on her book manuscript, A Right To Learn: African American Women and Educational Activism in Early America, which is the first full-length study of African American women’s education in early America. Her work has been supported by the Spencer Foundation, American Antiquarian Society, and the Library Company of Philadelphia, where she was a Mellon Fellow in the Program in African American History in 2014-15. Baumgartner completed her Ph.D. in African American Studies and a Certificate in Feminist Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.