"Ava Purkiss examines how Black women demonstrated their literal and figurative 'fitness' for citizenship through exercise. Using public health records, beauty columns, physical education reports, cookbooks, newspapers, and magazines, she centers race and gender; challenges how historians have written about the relationship between physical fitness, civic fitness, and national belonging; and provides historical context for numerous public health studies concerned with the health of African American women and girls"--
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"Ava Purkiss examines how Black women demonstrated their literal and figurative 'fitness' for citizenship through exercise. Using public health records, beauty columns, physical education reports, cookbooks, newspapers, and magazines, she centers race and gender; challenges how historians have written about the relationship between physical fitness, civic fitness, and national belonging; and provides historical context for numerous public health studies concerned with the health of African American women and girls"--
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