Introduction : "Song of her possibilities" : Black women's voices in the American intellectual tradition / Hettie V. Williams
Part I. Black women intellectuals in the 19th and 20th centuries. Black women, black ink : the "word" of black women abolitionist feminisms / Marquis Bey
"To make myself and my people whole" : Ida B. Wells as a public intellectual / Marsha J. Tyson Darling
A presence and a voice : Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and the Black Women's Club movement / Teresa Blue Holden
Part II. Black women intellectuals in the new Negro era. "Never...let color interfere" : the insurgent black intellectual writing of Jessie Redmon Fauset / Christopher Allen Varlack
"Now you cookin' with gas" : Zora Neale Hurston and her legacy, 1891-1960 / Nicole Anae
The realisms of Elizabeth Catlett / Kirstin L. Ellsworth
Part III. Black women intellectuals in the civil rights-black power era. "Sounding the trumpet" : Anna Arnold Hedgeman and the civil rights movement in the north / Hettie V. Williams
Pauli Murray : the life of an American intellectual / Kenya Davis-Hayes
Wanda Coleman and Los Angeles : reading postmodern America from the eye of the cyclone / Charles Joseph
"Pro black women, yet anti no one" : black women intellectuals and the national alliance of black feminists / Voichita Nachescu
Part IV. Black women intellectuals in the post-civil rights era. bell hooks : resistance writing beyond the academy / Ewa Kleczaj-Siara
"At the core of the broken fruit" : on Audre Lorde's self-definitions and the critical deployment of the Dahomey/Yoruba lore / J. Edgar Bauer
Part V. Black women intellectuals in the public square. She who could never be "just" anything : Toni Morrison, an American intellectual / Marquis Bey
African American women in the public square : Admiral Michelle Howard / Melissa Ziobro.