Race Women Internationalists

Race Women Internationalists explores how a group of Caribbean and African American women in the early and mid-twentieth century traveled the world to fight colonialism, fascism, sexism, and racism. Based on newspaper articles, speeches, and creative fiction and adopting a comparative perspective, the book brings together the entangled lives of three notable but overlooked women: American Eslanda Robeson, Martinican Paulette Nardal, and Jamaican Una Marson. It explores how, between the 1920s and the 1960s, the trio participated in global freedom struggles by traveling; building networks in feminist, student, black-led, anticolonial, and antifascist organizations; and forging alliances with key leaders. This made them race women internationalists-figures who engaged with a variety of interconnected internationalisms to challenge various forms of inequality facing people of African descent across the diaspora and the continent.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. Black and Feminist Internationalism in Interwar Europe, 1920-1935 2. The Italian Invasion of Ethiopia, the Spanish Civil War, and Anti-Fascist Internationalism, 1935-1939 3. Internationalisms during and after World War II, 1939-1949 4. Continuities and Changes, 1950-1966 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index