Published June 20, 2020 by Tom Porter

Scanlon’s Hedgeman Biography among Most Relevant Texts in Current Crisis, Says OUP

As a wave of protests swept across America, sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police, Oxford University Press recently recommended twelve books across the humanities that it hopes “can contribute to the important conversations currently taking place and provide valuable context.”

scanlon hedgeman book

Among the featured texts is Until There Is Justice: The Life of Anna Arnold Hedgeman (OUP, 2016), by William R. Kenan Professor of Humanities in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Jennifer Scanlon.

“Scanlon presents the first-ever biography of Hedgeman, a demanding feminist, devout Christian, and savvy grassroots civil rights organizer,” says the OUP blog. “Anna Arnold Hedgeman played a key role in over half a century of social justice initiatives. Hedgeman ought to be a household name, but until now has received only a fraction of the attention of activists like A. Philip Randolph, Betty Friedan, and Martin Luther King Jr.”

Read Professor Scanlon’s recent reflections on Anna Arnold Hedgeman in another OUP blogpost.

Here is an excerpt: “More than half a century ago, in words that resonate as clearly now as they did then, Hedgeman described the chaos that an unrestrained racism had wreaked on the nation, north and south: ‘There is chaos in the land; utter confusion and fear,’ she wrote. ‘Where people thought there had been order there was no order; only day by day reports of our world falling apart.’ No justice, no peace.”