Black Women Built the Human Rights Movement—History Forgot: Keisha N. Blain & Kathe Hambrick Discuss

This conversation traces a sweeping and urgent history of Black women as architects of the global human rights movement, long before the language of “human rights” became mainstream. Historian Keisha N. Blain explains how her book Without Fear uncovers the forgotten women—activists, writers, missionaries, and organizers—who refused to limit their demands to U.S. civil rights and instead framed Black freedom as a universal human claim.

Moving from the 19th century to the present, the discussion highlights figures like Ida B. Wells, Madam C.J. Walker, Maria Stewart, Margaret Cartwright, and Katie Diallo, revealing how these women forged international alliances, challenged imperialism, and exposed state violence as a human rights abuse—often without access to power, funding, or formal political spaces. Their work crossed borders, languages, and movements, linking Black struggles in the United States to anti-colonial fights across the globe.

Blain also reflects on the emotional and ethical challenges of archival research—deciding what to reveal, what to protect, and how to honor lives lived under constant risk. The throughline is clear: Black women have always been thinking globally, acting strategically, and organizing without fear and hesitancy, even when history refused to remember them. The conversation is both a recovery of the past and a call to action for the present.

Keisha N. Blain is an award-winning historian and bestselling author whose work centers on Black women, human rights, and global freedom movements. Author of "Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights." Co-author of "Four Hundred Souls."

Kathe Hambrick is the Executive Director of the Amistad Research Center, a cultural preservationist, and a public historian known for her work documenting Black history in Louisiana and beyond.

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