Hidden Histories: Black Women Activists in Connecticut

Black female organizers have made vast contributions to society, leading crucial influential action toward a more just reality. But these stories are often reduced, undocumented, or forgotten. Recent important research from Kathryn Angelica and Dr. Brittney Yancy are helping change that. Learn about their work and the forgotten histories of Connecticut’s Black women activists during this inspiring program.

Kathryn Angelica and Dr. Brittney Yancy are the recipients of the League of Women Voters of Connecticut Education Fund 2021 Connecticut Women’s Suffrage Research Fellowship.

$5 suggested donation.

Co-sponsored by League of Women Voters of Fairfield

About the Speakers

Kathryn Angelica is a PhD Candidate at the University of Connecticut, advised by Dr. Manisha Sinha. She received her MA from the University of Chicago, and her BA from Boston University. She also holds graduate certificates in Feminist Studies, College Instruction, and Intersectional Indigeneity, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (IIREP). Her dissertation, An Uneasy Alliance: Cooperation and Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Black and White Women’s Activism juxtaposes prominent white activists with Black feminist abolitionists to reveal how their campaigns for abolition and women’s rights shaped the trajectory of political and social thought.

Dr. Brittney Yancy is an Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at Illinois College. Professor Yancy is an intersectional scholar-activist and is committed to fighting for a gender-inclusive movement for racial justice. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, and her current research focuses on 20th-century U.S. social movements, urban radicalism, critical race theory, women’s activism, and black women’s political and intellectual history. In 2018, she was appointed as the Greater Hartford Ambassador to the United State of Women, and recently chaired the state-wide summit on gender equity, Galvanize Connecticut. In 2019, Professor Yancy was appointed to the Board of Connecticut’s State Education Resource Center and served on the steering committees for Connecticut’s Social Studies Standards Project and the Governor’s Council on Women and Girls. She also serves on the boards of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame and the Association for the Study of Connecticut History.