Black Women's Rights: Leadership and the Circularities of Power presents Black women as alternative and transformative leaders in the highest political positions and at grassroots community levels. Beginning with a critique of the assumption of an equivalence between masculinity and political leadership, Carole Boyce Davies moves through the various conceptual definitions, intents, and meanings of leadership and the differences in the presentation of practices of leadership by women and feminist scholars. She studies the actualizing of political leadership in the Presidency of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the historical role of Shirley Chisholm as the first woman to run for presidency of the United States on a leading party ticket, the promise of the Black left feminist leadership of Brazilian Marielle Franco, and the current model of Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados in advancing new leadership models from the Caribbean. This book proclaims the 21st century as the century for Black women's leadership.

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Boyce Davies focuses on the long-standing feminist concept "half the world," first developed by Claudia Jones, which contends that women, as half the world's population, should control half its resources and political power. The author applies this notion as the framework for her exploration of Black women's use of legal, political, social, and creative domains to gain rights and power, particularly in Africa, although she also touches on the US, the Caribbean, and Latin America… This is an important addition to the scholarship on the political power of Black women. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through graduate students.