We Are Your Sisters

Black Women in the Nineteenth Century

With a new introduction by Mary Helen Washington

"A remarkable documentary and the first in-depth record of many black women, slave and free." --Dorothy B. Porter, curator emeritus, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

"This richly researched, sensitively edited, annotated volume portrays indelibly, in their own words, the lives of American black women before, during, and immediately after the Civil War. . . . Added to the oral interviews collected by historians of the WPA Writers' Project in the 1930s are excerpts from contemporary diaries, letters, newspapers, memoirs and other sources. . . . A narrative symphonic in scope and inspiring in its revelations of the human ability to overcome. . . . Unforgettable reading." --Publishers Weekly

"Dorothy Sterling has for most of a rich lifetime been providing us with significant portions of black women's history. Now we have another treasure, the fruits of a sympathetic heart and an able mind." --Florence Howe, co-director of the Feminist Press and professor of American studies, The State University of New York at Old Westbury

Dorothy Sterling lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.