Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks
1945-present · Contribution: 1993-2009
Education
Coined the influential concept of the “politics of respectability” in her landmark 1993 book Righteous Discontent, the first full scholarly account of Black women's central role in building the Black Baptist church into a vehicle for social and political change, and later revised and updated John Hope Franklin's foundational textbook From Slavery to Freedom
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Impact on the world
Higginbotham gave the field one of its most influential analytical frameworks and helped build its major reference works, shaping how Black women's history is written and taught.
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American Historical Association
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