Jacquelyn Dowd Hall is the founding director of the Southern Oral History Program and the Julia Cherry Spruill Professor of History Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching, and coauthor of the prize-winning Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. She resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
At a time when millions hunger for hope that America is possible, one of our wisest historians uncovers a past we urgently need... With page after page of surprises conveyed in crystalline prose, Sisters and Rebels recovers a world that was eclipsed by McCarthyism to show us who we can become. Centering women who gave each other courage, Jacquelyn Hall offers unforgettable insights into how we all might manage to get free. -- Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains I loved this beautifully researched and expertly executed study of three women who were just as distinct, complicated, and problematic as the region they called home. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall again proves herself to be one of our nation's most relevant scholars. -- Wiley Cash, author of A Land More Kind Than Home: A Novel A sweeping, against-the-grain panorama of American history in the first half of the twentieth century. -- Nancy F. Cott, author of The Grounding of Modern Feminism An absolutely necessary, totally engaging history. Hall speaks from her own long relationship with the sisters as well as her rigorous and comprehensive scholarship, adding yet another dimension to this fine history that reads like a novel. -- Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls: A Novel A tour de force from a remarkable historian. Jacquelyn Hall's long-awaited chronicle of the Lumpkin sisters offers unparalleled insight into the complexities of gender and race in the lives of white southerners. -- Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of Suffering The word befitting this work is `masterpiece.' Sisters and Rebels is an impassioned, elegant, evocative narrative that turns biography into art and scholarship into the profound understanding of a South searching for its soul. -- Paula J. Giddings, author of Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching In this excellent triple biography, Hall (Like a Family) follows Elizabeth, Grace, and Katherine Lumpkin, whose lives and work touched many elements of 20th-century social history.... These admirably crafted biographies of the Lumpkins, their cohorts, and their causes open a fascinating window on America's social and intellectual history. -- Publishers Weekly (starred) A sweeping, richly detailed intellectual and political history of America from the 1920s to the 1980s, an absorbing narrative based on impressive scholarship.... Sharply etched biographical portraits focus a compelling history. -- Kirkus (starred)