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Book Cover for: Lifting as They Climbed: Mapping a History of Trailblazing Black Women in Chicago, Mariame Kaba

Lifting as They Climbed: Mapping a History of Trailblazing Black Women in Chicago

Mariame Kaba

An essential guidebook to influential Black women from Chicago's South and West Sides, and their social, cultural, and artistic contributions to movements both past and present.

Geographically, historically, and politically, Lifting As They Climbed gives readers an in-depth understanding of the numerous Black women, from the nineteenth century to today, who empower(ed) their neighborhoods and communities. Structured as a self-guided walking tour, with crisp maps and accessible narratives, Lifting As They Climbed showcases seventy-five women-activists, artists, musicians, and more-through sites and landmarks on Chicago's South and West Sides.

Including Margaret Burroughs, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mahalia Jackson, and many others, this updated and extended edition is a testament to women whose stories have gone largely untold, and whose lives reveal powerful connections between their endeavors and present-day struggles for radical community-building and solidarity. With no "official" landmarks to preserve the history of their social justice efforts, this book is an intervention against their erasure.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Haymarket Books
  • Publish Date: Aug 8th, 2023
  • Pages: 176
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.30in - 0.50in - 0.55lb
  • EAN: 9781642599015
  • Categories: Cultural & Ethnic Studies - American - African American & BlHistorical GeographyWomen

About the Author

Kaba, Mariame: -

Mariame Kaba is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization focused on ending youth incarceration, and co-leads the initiative Interrupting Criminalization with fellow organizer Andrea J. Ritchie. Kaba is the author of the New York Times Bestseller We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Books, 2021), among several other titles that offer support and tools for repair, transformation, and moving toward a future without incarceration and policing.

Praise for this book

"A journey through the pages of Lifting as they Climbed and you will never walk Chicago's Southside streets again without remembering the amazing Black women that lived, worked, struggled, taught and worshiped there. Mariame Kaba and Essence McDowell conjure up Black women's history as lived experience on the streets of Chicago in this book. It is a tribute, a loving reclamation of memory, and a precious family album, all in one." -Barbara Ransby, historian, author, activist