Shining Stars: African American Women Authors of the Civil War Era

Lavonda Kay Broadnax

doi:10.21900/pww.27

Shining Stars: African American Women Authors of the Civil War Era

Authors

Lavonda Kay Broadnax

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21900/pww.27

Keywords:

19th Century, African American, Women Authors, literature, Civil war, African American literature, 19th Century African American Women Authors, 19th Century Women authors, Civil War women authors, 19th Century African American literature

Synopsis

“Shining Stars…is a welcome and important addition to a growing constellation of projects focusing on Black women authors, Black women’s intellectual history, and Black women’s writing during the Civil War Era. Broadnax’s opening gambit, “it is unusual to anticipate the existence of publications written by African Americans” from the Civil War era, echoes a tradition of bibliographers challenging scholarly presumptions about absences….Broadnax has provided a wonderful service to the fields of African American literary studies, Civil War studies, print culture, and digital humanities.”

Derrick R. Spires, University of Delaware

This project capitalizes on the discovery of lesser-known works by African American women of the US Civil War era (1861-1865). The documents, all available in digital format, consist of an array of various types of fiction and nonfiction. Their writings provide a unique perspective on the trials and triumphs of the enslaved. Their texts also reflect their post-slavery politics, spirituality, and activism. This remarkable collection of documents enables users to acquire new information regarding African Americans that has traditionally been omitted. The project also provides extensive primary sources pertaining to the authors. All the online resources are full text and free.

This title was peer reviewed with a single-blind process by the AFRO-PWW editorial board.

Please cite this book using the DOI: 10.21900/pww.27.

Chapters

Welcome
Exhibit
Three Freedom Seekers; Genre; Beyond Texts; Inheritance
Authors
Full Text Documents
Images
Newspaper Articles
Further Reading

Author Biography

Lavonda Kay Broadnax

Lavonda Kay Broadnax is an independent researcher and a former Library of Congress librarian. Her primary research focus is African American Civil War era women. She provides both professional lectures and living history presentations on this subject. Her compilation of documents written by and about African American Civil era women received the Zora Neale Hurston Award from the American Library Association. This award is given for promoting African American literature. Ms. Broadnax was a participant in the Black Book Interactive Project's Scholars III, a program where the participants learned about the digital humanities and accessed the HBW Novel Corpus of Black-authored texts. She has served on the executive boards of: Society of Women of the Civil War; Bethel Dukes Branch, ASALH, and Dr. Bettye Yates Educational Foundation. She earned her BA at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio and her MSLS at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.