A Shining Thread of Hope

A Shining Thread of Hope is a historical nonfiction work by Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson. When the book was initially published in 1998 Hine and Thompson offered readers an unprecedented, critical, and comprehensive survey of African American women’s history.
Together these two Black American women draw meaningful connections between the historical past and present, emphasizing how forgetful and exclusive the American historical canon is while identifying the lingering effects of racism in US policy and legislation. Their work is a canonical landmark for gender theory and African American studies.

Hine and Thompson offer a series of biographic snapshots detailing the lives, struggles, and accomplishments of significant Black American women in order to bring awareness to figures whose stories have been neglected in historical discourse and memory. These stories demonstrate their profound perseverance while illuminating the intersection of oppressive social forces they fought against, such as racism, sexism, and classism. They discuss the sexual, emotional, and physical abuse and economic disadvantage these women experienced, shedding light on the immense hardship they faced, and further emphasizing the remarkable magnitude of their successes.

The portraits establish the diversity of Black women’s experiences, rooting historical context with narrative example. The result offers a powerful combination that explores the psychological, economic, and cultural moments of each of these famous female figures. In addition, Hine and Thompson’s work makes an effort towards inclusion by highlighting a number of significant African American figures while gesturing to significant gaps in our collective American historical memory.



The women highlighted include Ida Wells-Barnett, an equal rights activist and journalist. She often wrote on mob violence, advocating for anti-lynching laws during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her efforts garnered her a frightening number of death threats, forcing her to move twice. Harriet E. Wilson, the author of Our Nig, is considered the first African American woman novelist. While Our Nig was initially published in 1859, its significance was not recognized until 1981. Another marginalized figure, Anna Murray Douglass’s famous husband, Frederick Douglass’s accomplishments are well known. She, too, was an Underground Railroad agent who helped to free thousands of slaves. She risked her freedom and her life to better the circumstances of countless others. Legendary for her political resistance to injustice, Maggie Walker sued the local government for kicking her off a train when she bought a first class ticket; though she won the trial at the local level, the federal government dismissed her victory. She also led the Richmond, Virginia boycott of the segregated streetcars. All of these women shared a vision of a better tomorrow and the tenacity to usher in that horizon.

These women’s remarkable resistance demonstrates the vital sense of self-empowerment, community, and advocacy that emotionally, socially, and politically allowed these women to be triumphant in their endeavors. The authors make frequent use of feminist standpoint theory, joining scholarship with their own informed, personal perspectives. The authors summarize, "Black women ... have developed values over almost four centuries that actually seem to work."

This work is more than a survey of forgotten Black American female figures. Hine and Thompson present evidence from a variety of sources, including slave narratives, autobiographies, letters, documentaries, oral tradition, and current academic research, providing a rounded view of their cultural circumstances. Strategically discussing historical issues and relating the past to contemporary American culture and politics, they endeavor to restore representation and accuracy to historical moments such as enslavement, abolition, the civil rights movement, and the Harlem Renaissance. They successfully advocate for a more inclusive conceptualization of the past while celebrating the historical progress and contributions of African American women as individuals and as a whole.



Hine and Thompson offer another example of African American women’s persevering resistance: prioritizing education demonstrative of their family values, inner reserves, and devotion to improving their dire circumstances, Black communities formed underground schools during Black enslavement. Much of the book contemplates African American women’s participation in the civil war, discussing their involvement in a variety of roles, such as intelligence agents, nurses, cooks, and grass-roots positions. Their proactive organization and activism gave voice to efforts to elevate African Americans’ status, to reduce widespread poverty, and eradicate racism. A Shining Thread of Hope offers a significant contribution to the conversation of Black American women’s history.