Where Are All the Women?

 (Re)Discovering the Lost Voices of

Black Women Religious Leaders of Douglass's City

with Professor Dara Delgado

Please Join Professor Delgado for an exciting and thought-provoking Re-Examination and Re-Discovery of Black Women’s vital role in the History of Rochester’s Faith, Politics and Culture.  The scholarship on Rochester's African American religious history tends to begin and end with male leaders like Frederick Douglass and the historic Black Churches they frequented. Often bypassed, is the important influence Rochester’s African American Faith and its Women had on Race, Gender, Class, and Grassroots Religio-Racial Movements on the Margins.

The focus of this discussion is the erasure of Black Religious Women and their influence on Rochester's religious, cultural, racial, and social terrain. Moreover, the discussion will bring to the fore Black Religious Women who have led, organized, and overseen congregations, faith-based organizations, and missions in Rochester. In so doing, the discussion will initiate a (re)Discovery of Rochester's Black Religious Women Leaders as exceptional testaments to the inextricable bond between African American Faith, Gender, Identity, and Social Politics.

Dara Coleby Delgado, Ph.D., is the Assistant Professor of Religious Studies-Christianity at Allegheny College and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Roberts Wesleyan College.  She is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Pan African Pentecostalism, and the Chair-Elect for the Diversity Committee for the Society of Pentecostal Studies.  Her research interests include the history and theology of American Pentecostalism, as well as the role of race, gender, and popular culture in American Christianity during the modern era.  She is the author of numerous scholarly publications, including: "The Practicality of Holiness: A Historical Examination of Class, Race, and Gender within Black Holiness Pentecostalism, Bishop Ida Bell Robinson, and the Mount Sinai Holy Church of America (Pnuema, 2019), and "She is Clothed with Strength and Dignity: Holy Drag and the Prophetic Social Consciousness of the Black Pentecostal Holiness Tradition" in The Mighty Transformer: The Holy Spirit Advocates for Social Justice (GIELD Academic Press, 2019).