Carrie Williams Clifford, Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Ohio (US)

Two generations away from slavery in her own family, Carrie Williams Clifford was born in the free state of Ohio in 1862. She came of age during Reconstruction and watched conditions for African Americans erode in the Jim Crow era. Cognizant of the way white Americans were crafting historical narratives to elide black presence and freedoms, she resisted by highlighting the richness of black history, including women’s history, in her poetry, journalism, activism, and theatrical performances. Like her white colleagues in the suffrage movement and male colleagues in race work, Clifford used history to claim self-representation in a world in which African Americans confronted powerful forces attempting to define their place in the nation.