Brooks and Wilson’s intersectional examination of Lucile Bluford’s dual roles as advocate and journalist for both the women’s rights and civil rights movements is recovered history at its best. They bring to life a lesser known figure in American journalism who became a central spokesperson through her paper the Kansas City Call for both black women and the broader black community as the civil rights and modern feminist movements built up in the 1960s. Grounded in archival research and interviews, this book contains extensive details about Bluford and the times, while also extending black feminist and critical race theories. This is a brilliant, readable text that should be required reading for all those in journalism, history, political science, and women’s studies.

Carolyn M. Byerly, Howard University

Only recently has the intersection of gender and racial discrimination with the suppression of journalistic inquiry garnered the national attention that pioneering journalist and editor Lucile Bluford exposed over a half century ago. Sheila Brooks and Clint Wilson astutely examine the foundations of Bluford’s groundbreaking engagement of controversies that help to explain our continuing struggles. Their astute search of history exposes a great deal about inequality in the politics and communications of today.

Lorenzo Morris, Howard University

As women take back their history, it’s high time Lucile Bluford received her due. With Lucile H. Bluford and the Kansas City Call: Activist Voice for Social Justice readers are reminded of (and some introduced to) the pioneering work of Kansas City Call reporter and editor Lucile Bluford’s work championing women and civil rights in the United States. Brooks and Wilson use Bluford’s news stories and commentaries from 1968 to 1983 to show how she helped craft both the women’s rights and civil rights agendas of the time. Her voice, so well documented in this work, reflects the challenges Bluford faced by having her work judged by others, whether she was writing under her name or as Louis Blue. And therein lies the importance of this book—placing economic progress and sexual emancipation in the context of a second phase social/feminist revolution. It’s an important read for our time.

Barbara B. Hines, Howard University

Little known outside the Missouri-Kansas area, Lucile Bluford nonetheless is one of the true heroines of the US civil rights movement. Her tireless editorial campaign for social change is chronicled in this book.

Brian S. Brooks, University of Missouri