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Chapter 6 attempts to answer the question of why black women lead social movement? Defying expectations, black women are invisible in domestic work, but are visible in neighborhood associations. Domestic work provides the knowledge and wisdom necessary to understand and fight systemic gendered anti-black racism. Candomblé also plays a special significance in forging political community among black women.

This chapter is set in Kansas City, Missouri and Los Angeles, California and demonstrates how Flo Kennedy’s parents contributed to the formation of her black feminist radicalism. Her parents not only stood up for themselves and their daughters against racist white authorities but also held progressive views about personal autonomy and female sexuality. Kennedy’s mother allowed her to kiss boys on the front porch and to discuss taboo topics, such as the scents and sensations of a woman’s body. Both her mother and father actively defended themselves against entrenched forms of power and had numerous run-ins with the Ku Klux Klan, white employers, and black school officials. They taught Kennedy not to defer to any type of authority. The sexual freedom that Kennedy experienced and the battles with both black and white authorities that she witnessed helped her to embrace a black feminist politics and reject the politics of respectability and other social constraints that inhibited black women’s political activism and mobility.

Chapter 1 focuses on the centrality of black women activists in social movements. Although oftentimes forgotten, they are the main political agents bringing attention to the violent nature of land expulsion in Salvador. Focusing on black women broadens the debate on how blacks mobilize against racial injustice in Brazilian cities.

Chapter 3 narrates the history of the Gamboa de Baixo’s political movement against urban removal and for land rights. The chapter describes the forms of organization that have resulted in social transformation in the community such as direct-action protest and collective memory. Black movement ideas are practiced in the everyday lives of Brazil’s most marginalized neighborhoods.

The Conclusion reflects on why housing and land are key components of the global human rights debate. The struggle for black inclusion in cities impacts all Brazilian citizens, and I explain why what happens to blacks in Brazil matters for all blacks in the African Diaspora.

Chapter 2 argues that spatial exclusion is at the core of gendered racial stratification in Brazilian cities and that this exclusion produces mass political organization. The chapter outlines the recent history of the revitalization plans for the city of Salvador and its impact on the Gamboa de Baixo neighborhood as well as other neighborhoods within the city.

Chapter 5 explores how black women experience police violence in ways that lead to trauma and death as well as political action. How they respond to violence challenges how we think about the gendered nature of police repression and the intra-community dynamics that shape their activism.

Chapter 4 provides concrete examples of how violent policing is central to constructing, maintaining, and disposing of black marginalized landscapes and the people who occupy them. The construction of luxury high-rises, accompanied by private police forces, play a large role in excluding poor blacks from coveted coastal lands.