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From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women.

“Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard.”—The New York Times Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women’s rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger’s racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.

Review

Angela Davis's Women, Race, & Class is a forceful and meticulously researched work of historical analysis that traces the intertwined histories of the women's rights movement, the struggle for Black liberation, and class politics in the United States from the era of slavery through the late twentieth century. Davis's central argument is that the mainstream feminist movement has been repeatedly undermined by its own failure to confront racism and class bias, and that genuine women's liberation is impossible without simultaneously challenging racial and economic oppression.

The book opens with a revelatory chapter on slave women, demolishing the myth of the Black matriarchy by demonstrating that slavery's brutal gender-blindness in the realm of labor paradoxically created a more egalitarian relationship between enslaved men and women than existed in white households. Davis shows that enslaved women were field hands, factory workers, and resistance fighters who forged a "legacy of tenacity, resistance and insistence on sexual equality" that would shape Black womanhood for generations.

Davis then charts the promising early alliance between abolitionism and women's rights through figures like the Grimke sisters and Frederick Douglass, before documenting the devastating fracture that occurred during Reconstruction. Her account of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's descent into openly racist rhetoric -- referring to Black men as "Sambo" and arguing it was "better to be the slave of an educated white man, than of a degraded, ignorant black one" -- is presented not as mere character assassination but as evidence of a structural flaw in a movement that prioritized the interests of white middle-class women above universal liberation.

The chapters on the suffrage movement at the turn of the century are particularly damning. Davis documents how the National American Woman Suffrage Association actively courted white Southern women by sidelining Black members and embracing the argument that educated white women's votes could neutralize the political power of Black and immigrant communities. The story of Ida B. Wells being told by Susan B. Anthony not to attend conventions in the South "for the sake of expediency" crystallizes the moral catastrophe of this strategy.

Among the book's strongest chapters are those on the myth of the Black rapist and on racism within the birth control movement. Davis's analysis of how the fraudulent rape charge functioned as political weaponry to justify lynching remains devastatingly relevant. She traces the mythology from its post-Reconstruction origins through its resurgence in contemporary feminist writing, offering a sharp critique of Susan Brownmiller's treatment of the Emmett Till case and the Scottsboro Nine in Against Our Will. On birth control, Davis shows how a movement born of progressive impulses was co-opted by eugenicist ideology, transforming what should have been a right for all women into a tool of population control targeting communities of color.

The book is not without limitations. Davis's Marxist framework sometimes leads to reductive economic explanations where more nuanced cultural analysis might serve better. Her chapter on Communist women, while recovering important forgotten histories like those of Claudia Jones and Lucy Parsons, occasionally reads as hagiographic toward the Communist Party's record on race. The final chapter on housework, though theoretically interesting in its critique of the Wages for Housework movement, feels somewhat disconnected from the historical narrative that precedes it.

Yet these are minor objections against a work whose fundamental achievement is enormous. Davis demonstrates, with relentless documentary evidence, that every time the women's movement chose "expediency" over solidarity with Black people and working-class women, it not only betrayed those groups but ultimately weakened its own cause. The suffragists who courted white supremacists found that Southern states still voted against the Nineteenth Amendment. The birth control advocates who embraced eugenics saw their movement become a vehicle for sterilization abuse. The pattern is unmistakable: racism within feminist movements is not merely a moral failing but a strategic catastrophe.

First published in 1981, Women, Race, & Class laid intellectual groundwork for what would later be called intersectional feminism. Davis's insistence that race, class, and gender form an inseparable matrix of oppression -- and that movements addressing only one axis will inevitably reproduce the others -- remains as urgent now as when it was written. The book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand why solidarity across lines of difference is not a luxury but a necessity for any movement aspiring to genuine liberation.

Reviewed 2026-03-28

Notable Quotes

Where work was concerned, strength and productivity under the threat of the whip outweighed considerations of sex. In this sense, the oppression of women was identical to the oppression of men.

Davis on how the slave system's exploitation of women as full-time field laborers rendered gender distinctions irrelevant in the domain of work — slavery, gender equality, labor

The salient theme emerging from domestic life in the slave quarters is one of sexual equality. The labor that slaves performed for their own sake and not for the aggrandizement of their masters was carried out on terms of equality.

Davis's argument that enslaved people transformed the negative equality of shared oppression into positive egalitarian social relations within their communities — slavery, egalitarianism, family

It was those women who passed on to their nominally free female descendants a legacy of hard work, perseverance and self-reliance, a legacy of tenacity, resistance and insistence on sexual equality -- in short, a legacy spelling out standards for a new womanhood.

The conclusion of Davis's opening chapter on slave women, linking their experiences to the ongoing struggle for women's emancipation — Black womanhood, legacy, resistance

I want to be identified with the Negro. Until he gets his rights, we shall never have ours.

Angelina Grimke speaking at a convention of patriotic women supporting the Civil War effort in 1863, articulating the inseparability of Black and women's liberation — solidarity, Grimke sisters, abolition

I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man -- when I could get it -- and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman?

Sojourner Truth's famous 1851 speech at the Akron, Ohio women's convention, demolishing the argument that female weakness was incompatible with suffrage — Sojourner Truth, women's rights, race and gender

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to get it right side up again! And now they are asking to do it, the men better let them.

Sojourner Truth responding to the argument that male supremacy was a Christian principle because Christ was a man — Sojourner Truth, religion, women's power

Although this may remain a question for politicians to wrangle over for five or ten years, the black man is still, in a political point of view, far above the educated white women of the country.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 1865 letter revealing the racist turn of the suffrage movement during Reconstruction, arguing white women should not let 'Sambo' walk into the kingdom of rights first — racism in feminism, Reconstruction, suffrage

When women, because they are women, are dragged from their homes and hung upon lamp-posts; when their children are torn from their arms and their brains dashed upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; then they will have the same urgency to obtain the ballot.

Frederick Douglass's powerful 1869 appeal at the final Equal Rights Association convention, arguing that the physical violence against Black people made their need for the vote qualitatively more urgent — Frederick Douglass, Black suffrage, urgency

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.

Sojourner Truth at the 1867 Equal Rights Association convention, opposing the Fourteenth Amendment for excluding Black women from the franchise — Sojourner Truth, intersectionality, Black women's rights

We women are a helpless disfranchised class. Our hands are tied. While we are in this condition, it is not for us to go passing resolutions against railroad corporations or anybody else.

Susan B. Anthony urging defeat of a Black woman's anti-Jim Crow resolution at the 1899 NAWSA convention, exemplifying the suffrage movement's capitulation to racism — racism in suffrage movement, expediency, Jim Crow

A colored woman's virtue in this part of the country has no protection.

A Georgia domestic worker's testimony about sexual exploitation by white employers, demonstrating the continuity of sexual coercion from slavery through post-emancipation domestic service — sexual exploitation, domestic workers, post-slavery

The myth of the black rapist of white women is the twin of the myth of the bad black woman -- both designed to apologize for and facilitate the continued exploitation of black men and women.

Gerda Lerner, quoted by Davis, on the intertwined racist mythologies that justified both lynching and the sexual abuse of Black women — myth of Black rapist, racism, sexual violence

History does not present an example of a transformation in the character of any class of men so extreme, so unnatural and so complete as is implied in this charge.

Frederick Douglass refuting the myth of the Black rapist by noting that no rapes of white women were reported during the Civil War, when enslaved men had unimpeded access to white households — Frederick Douglass, rape myth, logical argument

In the past ten years over a thousand black men and women and children have met this violent death at the hands of a white mob. And the rest of America has remained silent.

Ida B. Wells speaking in England in 1893, seeking international support for her anti-lynching crusade after American institutions remained indifferent — Ida B. Wells, lynching, silence

We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

Margaret Sanger in a private letter about the Birth Control Federation's 'Negro Project,' revealing the racist dimension of the birth control movement's outreach to Black communities — birth control, eugenics, racism

Every inequality and disability inflicted on American white women is aggravated a thousandfold among Negro women, who are triply exploited -- as Negroes, as workers, and as women.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's 1948 analysis of Black women's oppression, anticipating the 'triple jeopardy' framework later proposed by Black feminists — triple oppression, intersectionality, Communist women

The continued relegation of Negro women to domestic work has helped to perpetuate and intensify chauvinism directed against all Negro women.

Claudia Jones arguing in Political Affairs that the equation of Black women with domestic servitude reinforced racist attitudes toward the entire group — Claudia Jones, domestic labor, racism

The club movement among colored women reaches into the sub-condition of the entire race. It is not a fad. It is rather the force of a new intelligence against the old ignorance.

Fannie Barrier Williams distinguishing the Black women's club movement from the white clubs, arguing it was fundamentally about racial uplift and survival rather than leisure activity — Black women's clubs, racial uplift, organizing

By her peculiar position, the colored woman has gained clear powers of observation and judgment -- exactly the sort of powers which are today peculiarly necessary to the building of an ideal country.

Mary Talbert's concluding remarks at a 1915 symposium on woman suffrage, arguing that Black women's unique vantage point gave them distinctive political insight — Black women's perspective, suffrage, standpoint

Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.

Frederick Douglass arguing that the franchise was indispensable for consolidating emancipation and preventing the re-enslavement of Southern Black people through economic exploitation — Frederick Douglass, franchise, emancipation

The housewife stands condemned as the worst employer in the country.

The Domestic Workers Union exposing the hypocrisy of middle-class feminists who fought for women's rights while exploiting their own Black domestic workers — domestic workers, class contradiction, feminism

Petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades the woman, chains her to the kitchen and to the nursery, and wastes her labor on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery.

Lenin, quoted by Davis in her argument against the Wages for Housework movement and for the socialization of domestic labor — housework, women's liberation, socialization

Some few women are born free, and some amid insult and scarlet letters achieve freedom; but our women in black had freedom thrust contemptuously upon them. With that freedom they are buying an untrammeled independence and dear as is the price they pay for it, it will in the end be worth every taunt and groan.

W. E. B. DuBois on the paradox of Black women's independence, forged through centuries of compulsory labor that gave them strengths denied to women confined to domesticity — DuBois, Black women, independence, labor

The war is not, as the South falsely pretends, a war of races, nor of sections, nor of political parties, but a war of Principles, a war upon the working classes, whether white or black.

Angelina Grimke's address to the Women's Loyal League, articulating a radical class analysis of the Civil War that linked the liberation of slaves with the emancipation of all working people — Angelina Grimke, Civil War, class solidarity

What if I am a woman?

Maria Stewart, the first native-born American woman to address audiences of both men and women, responding to attacks on her right to deliver public lectures in the 1830s — Maria Stewart, women's rights, public speaking