Descendants of a prominent slaveholding family, Elizabeth, Grace, and
Katharine Lumpkin were raised in a culture of white supremacy. While
Elizabeth remained a lifelong believer, her younger sisters sought their
fortunes in the North, reinventing themselves as radical thinkers whose
literary works and organizing efforts brought the nation's attention to
issues of region, race, and labor. National Humanities Award-winning
historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall follows the divergent paths of the Lumpkin
sisters, tracing the wounds and unsung victories of the past. Hall
revives a buried tradition of Southern expatriation and progressivism;
explores the lost, revolutionary zeal of the early twentieth century;
and muses on the fraught ties of sisterhood.
Grounded in decades of research, the family's private papers, and
interviews with Katharine and Grace, Sisters and Rebels unfolds an
epic narrative of American history through the lives of three Southern
women.