Abstract
Grounded in a deconstructionist approach, this article identifies ideological elements in historical work on women’s boxing, including my own. First, I examine the sources, practices, and evidence that have constituted historical facts on women’s boxing. Then, employing some of the tactics of a deconstructive historian, I examine and critique the erasure of black female combatants from boxing history through an examination of various written sources about pugilism. To rectify this longstanding silence and exclusion, I provide a brief account of some black female boxers from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries. This paper draws from mainstream and African-American newspapers, U.S. boxing periodicals, and a sample of scholarly and popular literature on the history of boxing.
