Born shortly before the Civil War, activist and reformer Fannie Barrier
Williams (1855-1944) became one of the most prominent educated African
American women of her generation. Hendricks shows how Williams became
"raced" for the first time in early adulthood, when she became a teacher
in Missouri and Washington, D.C., and faced the injustices of racism and
the stark contrast between the lives of freed slaves and her own
privileged upbringing in a western New York village. She carried this
new awareness to Chicago, where she joined forces with black and
predominantly white women's clubs, the Unitarian church, and various
other interracial social justice organizations to become a prominent
spokesperson for Progressive economic, racial, and gender reforms during
the transformative period of industrialization. By highlighting how
Williams experienced a set of freedoms in the North that were not
imaginable in the South, this clearly-written, widely accessible
biography expands how we understand intellectual possibilities, economic
success, and social mobility in post-Reconstruction America.