Given the broad consensus that the Civil War in the United States was, first and foremost, a war about freedom, it would be reasonable to expect that Black women would play a central role in most accounts of the conflict. After all, as Thavolia Glymph shows in her splendid The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation, Black women led the struggle for a freedom that exceeded anything contemplated by Union authorities at any point in the war.
Black feminist scholars have long recognized the vanguard role played by Black women in the long freedom struggle that includes, as one of its signal moments, the US Civil War of 1861–65. One classic statement was Angela Davis's 1971 “Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves,” published while she was in her own form of bondage, held without bail for over a year...
