46th Annual W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture — Nikki M. Taylor

Nikki M. Taylor, Professor, History, Howard University
Seizing Justice with their Own Hands: Enslaved Women and Lethal Resistance
46th Annual W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture, organized by the Department of Africana Studies
This event is part of the Fall 2024 Humanities Forum and the Fall 2024 Social Sciences Forum.

In this lecture, Nikki Taylor 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, Taylor 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 American Antiquarian Society membership in 2022.

Admission is free. This lecture will be recorded.

The W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture is organized by the Department of Africana Studies. and is co-sponsored by the Center for the Social Science Scholarship and the Dresher Center for the Humanities.

Photo courtesy of Nikki Taylor.