Voices of the Valley: Black Women, Radical Politics, and Internationalism in the Tennessee Valley, 1931–50

This presentation charts the national and international political organizing of working-class and poor Black women from the Tennessee Valley region–eastern Tennessee, North Georgia, northern North Carolina, and northern Alabama–from the 1930s to the 1950s. Beginning with the well-known Scottsboro Nine Case (1931) and ending with the modern Civil Rights Movement, this project highlights the Tennessee Valley Region’s monumental contribution to the production of Black internationalist thought and activism. Drawing insights from a range of untapped sources, including historical newspapers, oral histories, and local archives, “Voices of the Valley” argues that working-class and poor Black women of the region were part of the vanguard of activists and theorists who challenged racism and imperialism and shaped Black internationalist politics during the twentieth century. While much of the extant scholarship centers on the activities of women in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and Black nationalist organizations such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), this presentation aims to shift the focus to a cadre of Black women from the South who worked to galvanize activists across the country and the globe around issues of race, class, and gender.