Sold Back Into Slavery, She Sued for Restitution — and Won
Morgan Jerkins tells the story of Henrietta Wood — a woman sold back into slavery after being freed — who in 1878 was awarded $2,500, the largest known sum of restitution for enslavement by a United States court.
Of Blackness and “Beauty”
At an art exhibit exploring black models through Western art, Morgan Jerkins finds historical evidence of the white supremacist definitions of beauty Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom identifies in Thick: and Other Essays.
Traveling While Black
An excellent mini-anthology curated and edited by This Will Be My Undoing author Morgan Jerkins. In her introduction, Jerkins writes about her own experiences of having TSA rifle through the Marley twists atop her head while whitesplaining how to care for her hair. Included are pieces by Jamilah Lemieux on the pleasures and pains of traveling first class while Black; Randy Winston on being the only black person at a Cathedral in Florence; Mateo Askaripour on traveling to Florence and discovering racism exists there, too; Kaitlyn Greenidge on traveling to Anguilla, which is predominantly black; Nneka M. Okona on finding kinship among other Black women travelers on a trip to Colombia.
But What Will Your Parents Think?
In this personal essay, This Will Be My Undoing author Morgan Jerkins tackles the time-worn question of how far is too far to go in revealing yourself in first-person writing.
