Merze Tate

“An incisive and compelling biography of a scholar who thrived despite steep obstacles. . . . Savage’s skilled rendering of Tate’s story also revives and critiques her prolific and prescient body of scholarship, celebrates a historical community of support for the social and intellectual power of Black women, and paints an inspiring picture of how far some of us will go to learn everything within our grasp.”—Houston Style Magazine

2024 ASALH Book Prize Winner

Longlisted for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography from the Biographers International Organization

“Finally, Merze Tate has the biographer she was waiting for. In this exceptionally well-researched and fascinating book, Barbara Savage returns Merze Tate to her rightful place as one of the most important, sophisticated and unjustly neglected international thinkers of the twentieth century.”—Patricia Owens, University of Oxford

“This beautifully written, meticulously researched biography contains a depth of insight into a daring and boundary-breaking Black woman intellectual who consistently refused the limitations others placed upon her. Cinematic in scope, and as learned and extraordinary as its subject, this book allows us to follow Tate’s global travels as well as her groundbreaking intellectual contributions.”—Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia University

“A riveting, nuanced biography of the highest achieving Black female intellectual ever to be forgotten by the history books. Traveling from the rural Midwest to the streets of DC and the halls of Europe in pursuit of her bottomless passion for knowledge and accomplishment, Tate lived an adventurous life while publishing breakthrough studies on international relations between the U.S. and the world. An intrepid Black woman scholar of the mid-twentieth century, Merze Tate finally meets her match in an equally brilliant Black woman biographer who lays bare the stakes of her life and work.”—Tiya Miles, author of All That She Carried

“Barbara Savage, a scholar’s scholar, masterfully tackles the intricacies of the life and intellectual journey of Merze Tate. Savage meticulously unpacks and analyzes how Tate navigated the Scylla and Charybdis of racism and misogyny to live life on her own terms, producing the work she wanted, on the topics she wanted, especially when this was not supposed to be women’s work and particularly not an African American woman’s work.”—Carol Anderson, author of White Rage