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

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

By Lavonda Kay Broadnax

Published by Publishing Without Walls (PWW), Urbana, Ill., an imprint of the Illinois Open Publishing Network. Published as part of the AFRO Publishing Without Walls  (AFRO-PWW) series.

ISBN 978-1-946011-30-5

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

Synopsis

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.

Project Author

Lavonda Kay Broadnax is an independent researcher who retired from the Library of Congress. The catalyst for this project was her desire to create a handout for FREED (Female RE-Enactors of Distinction), an organization of women associated with the African American Civil War Memorial Museum. An early version of her compilation of African American women authors of the Civil War era won the American Library Association’s Zora Neale Hurston Award, which is granted for leadership in promoting African American literature. The winning compilation was expanded and now resides on the Library of Congress website as “African American Women Authors of the Civil War Era: A Resource Guide.”

Ms. Broadnax was a successful 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 earned her BA from Oberlin College and her MSLS from Case Western Reserve University.

Technical Note

This book is optimized to be viewed on a desktop computer.

Funding Notice

This work is a digital humanities project that was developed as part of a collaboration with the History of Black Writing’s Black Book Interactive Project (BBIP) Digital Publishing Scholars Program, an NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, and African American Studies Publishing Without Walls 2 (AFRO-PWW 2) at the University of Illinois, funded by the Mellon Foundation. AFRO-PWW 2 collaborates with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Black Studies scholars at PWIs, and community-based memory institutions to produce open-source digital publications that document Black lives and experiences.

Copyright

Shining Stars: African American Women Authors of the Civil War Era copyright © 2025 Lavonda Kay Broadnax.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License except as otherwise noted.