Kelli and Kendra welcome Dr. Tahirah Walker back into the group chat for a conversation about lineage, scholarship, and the ways Black women continue to speak ourselves into a future our foremothers dreamed for us. Together, they explore rhetorical intersectionality— Dr. Walker’s framework for naming the erasure of Black women’s voices and the insistence to reclaim our place in public discourse. They also dig into:

• Education as inheritance
How mothers and grandmothers stretched what they had so their children could study, travel, and imagine bigger lives.

• Work, faith, and belonging
The tension of leading in white institutions while staying rooted in community, calling, and spiritual practice.

• Claiming space in public life
From Phyllis Wheatley to “reclaiming my time,” the episode traces a long history of Black women refusing silence.

• Creative and political life in Pittsburgh
Why so many Black women consider leaving—and what it means to build artistic, academic, and community-rooted lives right where we are.

• The legacy of the Community Engagement doctoral program
How Black women helped shape the program’s character from the very first cohort and how Dr. Walker is carrying that work forward.

The episode closes with gratitude for the thinkers, elders, and artists who shaped our understanding of womanism, Black feminism, and freedom work.

Books & Thinkers Mentioned

• Alice Walker — In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
• Patricia Hill Collins — Black Feminist Thought
• bell hooks — All About Love
• Assata Shakur — Assata: An Autobiography
• Fannie Lou Hamer — Biography & collected works
• Ella Baker — Biography
• Septima Clark — Ready from Within
• Beverly Guy-Sheftall — Words of Fire
• Brittney Cooper — Eloquent Rage and The Crunk Feminist Collection
• Cole Arthur Riley — Black Liturgies
• EbonyJanice Moore — The Fourth Wave Womanist Manifesto
• Disha Philyaw — The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
• Tressie McMillan Cottom — Thick
• Octavia Butler scholarship (various) — Suggested starting text

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Kelli King-Jackson is a certified professional coach to Black women leading in white spaces. In addition to coaching, she works with organizations truly committed to justice for Black women by providing philanthropic advising, facilitation, and speaking services. Learn more about Kelli's work here: https://www.iamkelli.com/

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