Paula Giddings

Paula Giddings
Giddings in 2011
Born	1947 (age 76–77) Yonkers, New York, U.S.
Education	Howard University
Occupation(s)	Writer, historian, and civil rights activist
Known for	When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (1984) Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (2008)

Paula Jane Giddings (born 1947) is an American writer, historian, and civil rights activist. She is the author of When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (1984), In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement (1988) and Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (2008).

Early life

Paula Jane Giddings was born on November 16, 1947, in Yonkers, New York,^[1] to Virginia Iola Stokes and Curtis Gulliver Giddings.^[2] She grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood in Yonkers, New York, where she regularly and systematically experienced isolation and racism from her white neighbors.^[3] As a teen in Yonkers, Giddings personally experienced and witnessed the racism and violence against African Americans that led to and occurred in reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. This led her to participate in the movement as a Freedom Rider. According to Giddings, this set the stage for her desire to understand both oppression and resistance to it, a theme that would recur through her own activism and writing.^[4]

Education

In 1965, Giddings enrolled in the historically Black college

From 1969 to 1972, Giddings worked for Random House, first as an editorial assistant and later as a copy editor. She then became an associate book editor for the Howard University Press. In 1975, she moved to Paris, France, to serve as the Paris bureau chief for Encore America/Worldwide News. Two years later, she transferred to the New York office, where she served as an associate editor until 1979.^[2] In 1975, she traveled to South Africa, where she had the opportunity to meet leaders of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.^[5]

In 1984, Giddings published her first book, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. The book tracks the history of Black women in the United States through the 1970s and the confluence of the Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements. Kirkus Reviews described When and Where I Enter as "the first historical study of the relationship, in America, between racism and sexism--broad-ranging, occasionally plodding, generally sound and insightful."^[6] The following year, Giddings served as contributing editor and book review editor for Essence magazine and became a distinguished scholar for the United Negro College Fund (UNCF).^[2]

In 1988, Giddings joined the faculty of

In 2001, Giddings joined Smith College as the Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor of Africana Studies. She also served as the editor of feminist journal Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. She then became Smith College department chair and honors thesis advisor for the department of Africana studies, where she remained until her retirement in 2017.^[2][9]

Giddings received many accolades upon the 2008 publication of her biography of civil rights activist

In 2017, Giddings was a National Book Award Judge for nonfiction works.^[12] That same year, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[7][13]

Selected publications

• Ida, A Sword Among Lions:
  ISBN 0060797363
  )
• Burning All Illusions: Writings from
  ISBN 1560253843
  )
• In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement (
  ISBN 0688135099
  )
• When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (William Morrow & Co, 1984;
  ISBN 0688146503
  )