THE INSTIGATORS

A distinguished activist and political strategist examines how Black women hold the key to rebuilding a more inclusive multiracial democracy.

Omara argues that American democracy was largely built by an overlooked demographic: young, Black women aged 18 to 45 whom she calls “the Instigators.” What distinguishes these people from other groups and connects them across time is a “shared ancestral belief…in the importance of the collective over the individual.” Drawing from history, politics, and her own experience, Omara suggests that these women have been responsible for pushing democracy forward during major American historical “inflection points.” She suggests that because Black women have faced racial and gender discrimination, they have a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of injustice than either their white female- or Black male-activist counterparts. Antebellum activist Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the country’s first Black female newspaper publisher, was among the earliest challengers of the “nation’s stated ideals of justice and liberty for all.” Two generations later, journalist Ida B. Wells would call out the lynching of Black men and white male violence against Black women in the Jim Crow South as racial terrorism. During the 1960s, Shirley Chisolm would begin her storied career as a grassroots organizer and member of Congress by co-founding the multiracial Unity Democratic Club, a political group meant to counter an all-white male group in her native Brooklyn. The author cites U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts as a modern-day instigator: She was the first Black woman elected to Congress from the state “because she had been elected to and served on Boston’s City Council years before. She had also worked behind the scenes in city and state Democratic politics for years.” Impassioned and necessary, Omara’s book not only celebrates the courage and vision of Black female leaders but issues a call to all Americans to “take up the mantle” of community building alongside other instigators “and fight to save our country.”

A timely book about the essential role of Black women in shaping—and preserving—American democracy.