Fox analyzes Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, Elizabeth Keckly's Behind the Scenes, Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice From the South, and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose. The thinkers highlighted by Fox have been dismissed as elitist, accommodationist, or complicit―yet Fox reveals that in reality, these women use their writing to protest antiblack violence, reject superficial reform, call for major sociopolitical change, and challenge the false promises of American democracy.