The life and accomplishments of an
influential leader in the desegregated SouthThis
biography of educational activist and Black studies pioneer Bertha
Maxwell-Roddey examines a life of remarkable achievements and leadership in the
early years of the desegregated South. Sonya Ramsey modernizes the
nineteenth-century term "race woman" to describe how Maxwell-Roddey and her
peers turned hard-won civil rights and feminist milestones into tangible
accomplishments in North Carolina and nationwide from the late 1960s to the
1990s.
Born
in 1930, Maxwell-Roddey became one of Charlotte's first Black woman principals
of a white elementary school; she was the founding director of the University
of North Carolina at Charlotte's Africana Studies Program; and she cofounded
the Afro-American Cultural and Service Center, now the Harvey B. Gantt Center
for African-American Art + Culture. Maxwell-Roddey founded the National Council
for Black Studies, helping institutionalize the field with what is still its
premiere professional organization, and served as the 20th National President
of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., one of the most influential Black women's
organizations in the United States.
Using oral histories and primary sources that
include private records from numerous Black women's home archives, Ramsey
illuminates the intersectional leadership strategies used by Maxwell-Roddey and
other modern race women to dismantle discriminatory barriers in the classroom
and the boardroom. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey
offers new insights into desegregation, urban renewal, and the rise of the
Black middle class through the lens of a powerful leader's life story.