Watson Postdoctoral Fellow Latoya M. Teague co-authored a paper titled "Epistolary Labor: Letter Writing Activism," which was recently published in the Black History Bulletin as part of a special issue on Black labor.
Activism constitutes various intentional actions to advocate for social change. Historically, the most visible forms of activism in the Black community have been protests, active demonstrations, and campaigns. Our paper invites you to consider other forms of activist labor for human rights and basic freedoms. Letter writing is a quiet and often overlooked form of such labor. Men and women wrote letters addressing various needs. For example, Harriet Jacobs is often credited for her authorship of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, an autobiography about her life in enslavement.