Paula J. Giddings

Paula J. Giddings (born in 1947 in Yonkers, New York) is an American writer, historian, and civil rights activist. She is the author of When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement and Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching.

Paula J. Giddings was born on November 16, 1947, in Yonkers, New York, to Virginia Iola Stokes and Curtis Gulliver Giddings. She grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood in Yonkers, New York, where she regularly and systematically experienced isolation and racism from her white neighbors. As a teen in Yonkers, Giddings personally experienced and witnessed the racism and violence against African Americans that led to and occurred in reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. 

This led her to participate in the movement as a Freedom Rider. According to Giddings, this set the stage for her desire to understand oppression and resistance, a theme that would recur through her activism and writing. Giddings enrolled in the historically Black college Howard University in 1965, where she worked on the university's newspaper beginning in her first year. 

In 1967, she became editor of the university's literary magazine, The Promethean, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1969. As a student at Howard, Giddings was part of a group of students who worked against sexism, colorism, and classism that they saw as rampant on their campus.

From 1969 to 1972, Giddings worked for Random House, first as an editorial assistant and later as a copy editor. She then became an associate book editor for Howard University Press. In 1975, she moved to Paris, France, to serve as the Paris bureau chief for Encore America/Worldwide News. Two years later, she transferred to the New York office and served as an associate editor until 1979. In 1975, she traveled to South Africa, where she had the opportunity to meet leaders of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

In 1984, Giddings published her first book, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. The book tracks the history of Black women in the United States through the 1970s and the confluence of the Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements. Kirkus Reviews described the book as "the first historical study of the relationship, in America, between racism and sexism--broad-ranging, occasionally plodding, generally sound and insightful." 

The following year, Giddings served as contributing editor and book review editor for Essence magazine and became a distinguished scholar for the United Negro College Fund (UNCF). In 1988, Giddings joined the faculty of Douglass College at Rutgers University. That same year, she published In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement, a history of Delta Sigma Theta, the African-American sorority of which she is a member. The book was recognized for its depth and its focus on the influence of Delta Sigma Theta and its members.

In 2001, Giddings joined Smith College as the Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor of Africana Studies. She also served as the editor of the feminist journal Meridians, feminism, race, and transnationalism. She then became Smith College department chair and honors thesis advisor for the department of Africana studies, where she remained until her retirement in 2017.

Giddings received many accolades upon the 2008 publication of her biography of civil rights activist Ida B. Wells. Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching received the 2008 Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians, the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Outstanding Book Award, and was the 2009 Nonfiction winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award. 

In addition, it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for 2008 and was named Best Book of 2008 by both the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. Additionally, the book was recognized as the inaugural Duke University John Hope Franklin Research Center Book Award winner in 2011. In 2017, Giddings was a National Book Award Judge for nonfiction works. That same year, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.