Institutions of higher learning represent gateways to opportunity, political engagement, and economic mobility. Historically, they have also been exclusionary, contested spaces marked by barriers of race, gender, and class. Kabria Baumgartner's In the Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America examines the influential and understudied histories of several institutions in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. These include Prudence Crandall's Canterbury Female Boarding School and the Young Ladies’ Domestic Seminary in Clinton, Oneida County, New York, as well as smaller institutions throughout the Northeast. African American women's and girls’ quest for higher education led to legal disputes, racialized violence, and personal sacrifice. They also forged the way for future generations of political thinkers. The book importantly traces the impact of these scholar-activists and the networks of students, reformers, and teachers that emerged as the result of this bold pursuit of knowledge. Baumgartner demonstrates the deeply political and...

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