Jessie B. Ramey

Dissertation: "A Childcare Crisis: Poor Black and White Families and Orphanages in Pittsburgh, 1878-1929"

How can ordinary Americans protect and strengthen our democracy? How do movements advance our nation’s promise of justice and freedom for all? How do people keep going in the face of fierce backlash? This biography of activist, coal miner, and educator Kipp Dawson tackles these critical contemporary questions as it examines her work on the front lines of six major social movements. The coalitions she built helped to win crucial victories. Yet they sustained constant defeats, and Dawson’s own identities – as a lesbian, Jewish, working-class woman, from a multi-racial family – frequently meant she faced surveillance, bigotry, and even violent resistance. Drawing from two rich new archives, this project advances recent historiography while introducing a new theoretical framework.