“A Woman Question and a Race Problem”: Attending to Intersectionality in Children’s Literature

Abstract

Historical narratives of Black women often focus solely on racial discrimination without acknowledging the structural and systemic gender-based discrimination they faced. Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality draws upon decades of Black feminist scholarship delineating how Black women experience systemic oppression on account of both their race and gender simultaneously and can serve as an important framework to guide more critical conversations related to the long civil right movement. This article considers how three picturebook biographies about Black women who are often overlooked in early social studies education can powerfully demonstrate the intersectional roles of racism and sexism in their lived experiences.

Keywords:

• Black history women’s history children’s literature intersectionality long civil rights movement

Notes

1 After the passage of the 19th Amendment, Black women, particularly but not exclusively in the South, faced many barriers as they attempted to exercise their right to vote, including delays in registration, poll taxes, and literacy tests in addition to threats of physical violence and retribution from white employers. Most Asian American women, who were barred from becoming U.S. citizens, were not allowed to vote until 1952. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed in order to legally prohibit racial discrimination in voting, but lacked protections for voters not fluent in English until 1975.

2 For a detailed analysis of this scene, see https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/hidden-figures-shows-how-a-bathroom-break-can-change-history.html

3 https://folkways.si.edu/sneak-preview-songs-my-mother-taught-me-by-fannie-lou-hamer