Gladys-Marie Fry’s Night Riders in Black Folk History: Critical Race Theory and Black Folklore Practice

Gladys-Marie Fry’s Night Riders in Black Folk History is a foundational text at the intersection of folklore studies and critical race studies. Published in 1975, Fry’s work centers analyses of race and gender in collecting and explicating Black folk practices and stories related to the supernatural. Fry’s attention to the operations of white supremacist practices grounds her assertion that Black folk practices and supernatural beliefs were, in part, a response to racist efforts to exert psychological and economic control over African Americans during and after slavery. Fry’s method of collecting oral histories, as well as her attention to the operations of race and gender, call on us to re-engage with the critical contributions of this foundational text.