Beverly Guy-Sheftall Hailed as a Pioneer by 'MAKERS' Documentary Airing Tuesday

Beverly Guy-Sheftall is no stranger to receiving awards and accolades for her work as a feminist and as a pioneer in women's studies.  She is a prolific public speaker, an educator at Spelman College, and an author. 

She has published a number of texts within the African-American women’s studies genre, which have been noted as seminal works by other scholars, including the first anthology on Black women’s literature, Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature.

Guy-Sheftall will be featured in a brand-new Aol/PBS documentary titled, "Makers: The Women Who Make America" which first airs on Tuesday, February 26th.  'Makers' is part of an Aol and PBS sponsored project in which producers have "created the largest ever video collection of women's stories," according to the project's website.

According to the Makers website, Makers is, "the remarkable story of the most sweeping social revolution in American history, as women have asserted their rights to a full and fair share of political power, economic opportunity, and personal autonomy. It’s a revolution that has unfolded in public and private, in courts and Congress, in the boardroom and the bedroom, changing not only what the world expects from women, but what women expect from themselves." 

The producers of 'Makers' said, "as one of the leading African-American feminist scholars of our time, Beverly Guy-Sheftall was instrumental in bringing the women’s studies movement to women of color, and the voices of women of color to women’s studies. Highlights from her forty-year academic career include the founding of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College in 1981, and the co-founding of SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women in 1983."

Learn more about one of the women that made America by watching the PBS documentary.  Also learn how this woman, who is right in our neighborhood, continues to pass along her legacy at Spelman College and through her Women's Research and Resource Center on campus.

The Women's Research and Resource Center is the first women's research center at a historically Black college and the first one to offer a women's studies major.  Guy-Sheftall is the founding director and the driving force behind the Women’s Center.

“Since its inception in 1981, the center has been engaged in a variety of global issues impacting women and children,” said Guy-Sheftall in a prepared statement. “We teach about women and social resistance movements in our courses as well as global Black feminist thought throughout the African Diaspora.”

According to the Spelman College website:

"...the Center has facilitated faculty and student leadership development; collaborated with other departments/programs on and off campus to establish new courses (most recently in the sciences) that address issues of gender, race, and sexuality; established international linkages with universities outside the U.S. to increase their capacity to promote faculty and student development; and hosted a number of conferences that explore the lives of African and African descended women in a variety of cultural contexts."