46th Annual W.E.B. DuBois Lecture

Seizing Justice with their Own Hands:
Enslaved Women and Lethal Resistance

This lecture contends that enslaved black women carried deep and personal ideas about justice, which they exercised to resist slavery and ultimately end the tyranny of their enslavers. Using a black feminist theoretical framework the talk will explain why enslaved women were motivated to this type of slave resistance.

Nikki M. Taylor is professor of history and chair of the department at Howard University. She specializes in nineteenth-century African American History. Her sub-specialties are in Urban, African American Women, and Intellectual History. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania (B.A.) and Duke University (M.A., Ph.D., Certificate in Women’s Studies), Taylor is the author of four books and some articles. The books include: Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women and Lethal Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2023); Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio (Ohio University Press, 2016); America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark (University Press of Kentucky, 2013); and “Frontiers of Freedom:” Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802-1868 (Ohio University Press, 2005). Dr. Taylor has won several fellowships, including Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, and Woodrow Wilson. She was elected to the American Antiquarian Society membership in 2022.

Organized by the Department of Africana Studies.  Co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; the Dresher Center for the Humanities; the Center for Social Science Scholarship; the Shriver Center; the Division of Professional Studies; and the Department of American Studies.

This lecture will be recorded.