Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Nickel and a Prayer

A Nickel and a Prayer

Thomas, Rhondda Robinson
Moody, Joycelyn K.
Hunter, Jane Edna

Paperback

Series: Regenerations

Biographies GeneralBlack American History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1644533944
ISBN13: 9781644533949
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Published: Feb 17 2026
Pages: 287
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.72 Width: 5.52 Depth: 8.44
Language: English

Virtually unknown outside of her adopted hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, Jane Edna Hunter was one of the most influential African American social workers and progressive activists of the early to mid-twentieth century.

In her autobiography A Nickel and a Prayer, Hunter presents an enlightening two-part narrative that recollects her formative years in the post-Civil War South and her activist years in Cleveland. Published in 1940, Hunter's autobiography recalls a childhood filled with the pleasures and pains of family life on the former plantation where her ancestors had toiled, adventures and achievements in schools for African American children, tests and trials during her brief marriage, and recognition and respect while completing nursing training and law school. When sharing the story of her life as an activist, Hunter describes the immense obstacles she overcame while developing an interracial coalition to support the establishment of the Working Girls Home Association (later, the Phillis Wheatley Association), a progressive institution intended to house and help unmarried African American women and girls, and nurture its growth from a rented home that provided accommodations for twenty-two women to a nine-story building that featured 135 rooms.

This new and annotated edition of A Nickel and a Prayer includes the final chapter, Fireside Musings, that Hunter added to the second, limited printing of her autobiography and an introduction that lauds her as a multifaceted social activist who not only engaged in racial uplift work, but impacted African American cultural production, increased higher education opportunities for women, and invigorated African American philanthropy. This important text restores Jane Edna Hunter to her rightful place among prominent African American leaders of the twentieth century.

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