Christina Greene examines how several generations of black and white women, low-income as well as more affluent, shaped the struggle for black freedom in Durham, North Carolina. Greene demonstrates that women activists frequently were more organized, more militant, and more numerous than their male counterparts.

In an in-depth community study of women in the civil rights movement, Greene documents how low-income black women played a powerful role in shaping the struggle for black freedom across several generations in Durham, N.C.