by bell hooks
If women want a feminist revolution—ours is a world that is crying out for feminist revolution—then we must assume responsibility for drawing women together in political solidarity. That means we must assume responsibility for eliminating all the forces that divide women. Racism is one such force. Women, all women, are accountable for racism continuing to divide us. Our willingness to assume responsibility for the elimination of racism need not be engendered by
feelings of guilt, moral responsibility, victimization, or rage. It can spring from a heartfelt desire for sisterhood and the personal, intellectual realization that racism among women undermines the potential radicalism of feminism. It can spring from our knowledge that racism is an obstacle in our path that must be removed. More obstacles are created if we simply engage in endless debate as to who put it there.
Black Women and Feminism
More than a hundred years have passed since the day Sojourner Truth stood before an assembled body of white women and men at an anti-slavery rally in Indiana and bared her breasts to prove that she was indeed a woman. To Sojourner, who had traveled the long road from slavery to freedom, the baring of her breasts was a small matter. She faced her audience without fear, without shame, proud of having been born black and female. Yet the white man who yelled at Sojourner, “I don’t believe you really are a woman,” unwittingly voiced America’s contempt and disrespect for black womanhood. In the eyes of the 19th century white public, the black female was a creature unworthy of the title woman; she was mere chattel, a thing, an animal. When Sojourner Truth stood before the second annual convention of the women’s rights movement in Akron, Ohio, in 1852, white women who deemed it unfitting that a black woman should speak on a public platform in their presence screamed: “Don’t let her speak! Don’t let her speak! Don’t let her speak!” Sojourner endured their protests and became one of the first feminists to call their attention to the lot of the black slave woman who, compelled by
circumstance to labor alongside black men, was a living embodiment of the truth that women could be the work-equals of men.
It was no mere coincidence that Sojourner Truth was allowed on stage after a white male spoke against the idea of equal rights for women, basing his argument on the notion that woman was too weak to perform her share of manual labor— that she was innately the physical inferior to man. Sojourner quickly responded to his argument, telling her audience:
...Well, children, whar dar is so much racket dar must be something out o’ kilter. I tink dat ‘twixt de niggers of de Souf and de women at de Norf all a talkin ‘bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all dis here talkin’ ‘bout? Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have de best places. and ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm!. I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and ain’t I a woman? I could work as much as any man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as well—and ain’t I a woman? I have borne five children and I seen ’em mos all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus hear—and ain’t I a woman?
Unlike most white women’s rights advocates, Sojourner Truth could refer to her own personal life experience as evidence of woman’s ability to function as a parent; to be the work equal of man; to undergo persecution, physical abuse, rape, torture; and to not only survive but emerge triumphant.
Sojourner Truth was not the only black woman to advocate social equality for women. Her eagerness to speak publicly in favor of women’s rights despite public disapproval and resistance paved the way for other politically-minded black women to express their views. Sexism and racism have so informed the perspective of American historiographers that they have tended to overlook and exclude the effort of black women in discussions of the American women’s rights movement. White female scholars who support feminist ideology have also ignored the contribution of black women. In contemporary works, like The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism by Barbara Berg, Herstory by June Sochen, Hidden
from History by Sheila Rowbothan, The Women’s Movement by Barbara Deckard, to name a few, the role black women played as advocates for women’s rights in the 19th century is never mentioned. Eleanor Flexner’s Century of Struggle, which was first published in 1959, remains one of the very few book-length historical works on the women’s rights movement that documents the participation of black women.
Most women involved in the recent move toward a feminist revolution assume that white women have initiated all feminist resistance to male chauvinism in American society, and further assume that black women are not interested in women’s liberation. While it is true that white women have led every movement toward feminist revolution in American society, their dominance is less a sign of black female disinterest in feminist struggle than an indication that the politics of colonization and racial imperialism have made it historically impossible for black women in the United States to lead a women’s movement.
Nineteenth century black women were more aware of sexist oppression than any other female group in American society has ever been. Not only were they the female group most victimized by sexist discrimination and sexist oppression, their powerlessness was such that resistance on their part could rarely take the form of organized collective action. The 19th century women’s rights movement could have provided a forum for black women to address their grievances, but white female racism barred them from full participation in the movement. Furthermore, it served as a grave reminder that racism had to be eliminated before black women would be recognized as having an equal voice with white women on the issue of women’s rights. Women’s organizations and clubs in the 19th century were almost always racially segregated, but that did not mean that black female participants in such groups were any less committed to women’s rights than white participants.
Contemporary historiographers tend to over-emphasize the 19th century black female’s commitment to eliminating racism so as to make it seem that their involvement with anti-racist work precluded involvement in women’s rights activities. An example of this trend can be found in June Sochen’s work Herstory, where she discusses white women’s organizations in a chapter titled “The Women’s Movement” but discusses black women’s organizations in a chapter titled “Old Problems: Black Americans,” a categorization which implies that black women’s organizations emerged as part of the general effort of black people to end racism, not as part of their participation in the women’s movement. Sochen writes:
Black women’s clubs were organized locally to perform charitable and educational services. Similar in purpose and nature to white women’s clubs, the National Association of Colored Women was formed in 1896 and, led by Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), it had more than 100,000 members in 26 states within four years. While one local chapter would be organizing a hospital for blacks, another would be developing a kindergarten program for the black children of its community.
One of the first black women to graduate from Oberlin College, Mary Church Terrell was an articulate and prominent spokeswoman for black Americans’ rights. An extraordinary person, she spent her long life working for the freedom of black people. She was a good speaker and writer for a variety of causes. In addition to heading the NACW, Mrs. Terrell campaigned against lynching, became a charter member of the NAACP, and worked for the suffrage movement as well. She represented black women at many national and international meetings.
From the information provided in these paragraphs, readers might easily conclude that Mary Church Terrell was a passionate spokesperson for black American rights who was not overly concerned with rights for women. This was not so. As president of the National Association of Colored Women, Mary Church Terrell worked arduously to involve black women in the women’s rights struggle. She was particularly concerned that they struggle to obtain social equality for their sex in the educational sphere. That Mary Church Terrell, like most black wo
men’s rights advocates, was also committed to uplifting her race as a whole in no way diminished the fact that the focus of her attention was on changing the role of women in society. Had Terrell considered herself to be a spokesperson for the
black race as a whole she would not have published “A Colored Woman in a White World,” a narrative that discussed the social status of black women and the impact of racism and sexism on their lives.
No white feminist historian would write about the efforts of Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Stanton, Lucretia Mott and others to initiate social reforms that would affect primarily white women as if their efforts were completely divorced from the issue of women’s rights. Yet historians who label themselves feminist continually minimize the contribution of black women’s rights advocates by implying that their focus was solely on racial reform measures. Because of white racial imperialism, white women could organize groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Young Women’s Christian Association, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, without explicitly stating in their heading that these organizations were exclusively white. Black women identified themselves racially calling their groups Colored Women’s League, National Federation of Afro-American Women, National Association for Colored Women, and because they identified themselves by race scholars assume that their interest in the elevation of blacks as a group overshadowed their involvement with woman’s effort to effect social reform. In fact, black female reform organizations were solidly rooted in the women’s movement. It was in reaction to the racism of white women and to the fact that the U.S. remained a society with an apartheid social structure that compelled black women to focus on themselves rather than all women.
Black activist Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin tried to work with white women’s organizations and found that black women could not depend on racist white women to encourage them to fully participate in the women’s reform movement; consequently, she demanded that black women organize to address issues for themselves. At the First National
Conference of Colored Women held in Boston in 1895, she told her audience:
The reasons why we should confer are so apparent that it would seem hardly necessary to enumerate them, and yet there is none of them but demand our serious consideration. In the first place we need to feel the cheer and inspiration of meeting with each other, we need to gain the courage and fresh life that comes from the mingling of congenial souls, of those working for the same ends. Next, we need to talk over not only those things which are of vital importance to us as women, but also the things that are of especial interest to us as colored women, the training of our children, openings for our boys and girls how they can be prepared for occupations and occupations may be found or opened for them, what we especially can do in the moral education of the race with which we are identified, our mental elevation and physical development, the home training it is necessary to give our children in order to prepare them to meet the peculiar conditions in which they shall find themselves, how to make the most of our own, to some extent limited opportunities, these are some of our own peculiar questions to be discussed. Besides these are the general questions of the day, which we cannot afford to be indifferent to....
Ruffin did not encourage black women’s rights advocates to work solely to improve their own lot, she maintained that black women needed to organize so that they could lead a women’s movement that would address the concerns of all women:
Our woman’s movement is a woman’s movement that is led and directed by women for the good of women and men, for the benefit of all humanity, which is more than any one branch or section of it. We want, we ask the active interest of our men, and, too, we are not drawing the color line; we are women, American women, as intensely interested in all that pertains to us as such as all other American women; we are not alienating or withdrawing, we are only coming to the front, willing to join any others in the same work and cordially inviting and welcoming any others to join us.
Other black women’s rights advocates echoed Ruffin’s sentiments. Despite the fact that white racial imperialism excluded black women from participating in groups with white women, they remained committed to the belief that women’s rights could be attained only if women joined together to present a united front. Addressing the World Congress of Representative Women, black suffragist Fannie Barrier Williams made it known that black women were as committed to
the struggle for women’s rights as any other group of women. In her address she voiced the belief that women joined in political solidarity would have a tremendous impact on American culture:
The power of organized womanhood is one of the most interesting studies of modern sociology. Formerly women knew so little of each other mentally, their common interests were so sentimental and gossipy, and their knowledge of all the larger affairs of human society was so meager that organization among them, in the modern sense, was impossible. Now their liberal intelligence, their contact in all the great interest of education, and their increasing influence for good in all the great reformatory movements of the age has created in them a greater respect for each other, and furnished the elements of organization for large and splendid purposes. The highest ascendancy of woman’s development has been reached when they have become mentally strong enough to find bonds of association interwoven with sympathy, loyalty, and mutual trustfulness. To-day union is the watchword of woman’s onward march.
Although racial segregation was the norm in women’s organizations, reform measures initiated by white and black women’s groups were not radically different. They differed only in that black women included in their reform efforts measures that were aimed at solving specific problems they faced. One such problem was the general tendency among white Americans and even some brainwashed blacks to regard all black women as sexually immoral, licentious, and wanton—a negative stereotype that had its origin in American sexist mythology. Consequently, while white women’s organizations could concentrate their attentions on general reform measures, black women had to launch a campaign to defend their “virtue.” As part of their campaign they wrote articles and speeches upholding black female sexual morality.
White women’s organizations could confine their attention to issues such as education, charity, or to the formation of literary societies, while black women were concerned with issues such as poverty, care for the elderly and disabled, or prostitution. Black female clubs and organizations were potentially
more feminist and radical in nature than white women’s clubs because of the difference in their circumstance created by racist oppression. White women as a group did not have to launch an attack on prostitution as did black women. Many young black women leaving the South and migrating north were compelled to work as prostitutes. In some cases, they would come north on what was called a Justice ticket, supplied them by employment agencies or labor agents. In exchange for transportation and the guarantee of a job on arrival, black women signed contracts to work where the agent placed them and agreed to pay a fee equivalent to one or two months’ wages. On arriving north they would find their jobs were mainly as maids in houses of prostitution. Unable to survive on the low salary paid them, they would be encouraged to become prostitutes by white “pimps.” The National League for the Protection of Colored Women was formed to inform and aid southern black women migrating north. In 1897, black activist Victoria Earle Matthews formed the White Rose Working Girl’s Home and a Black Protection and Women’s Rights Society in the Women’s Loyal Union of New York and Brooklyn. To further acquaint the public with the plight of white women, Victoria Matthews delivered a lecture on “The Awakening of the Afro-American Woman.” Her work was not done in isolation. Numerous black women’s organizations were formed to help black women in their struggle for self-improvement.
Of those black women who advocated social equality for women, Anna Julia Cooper was one of the most outstanding. She was one of the first black activists to urge black women to articulate their own experiences and to m
ake the public aware of the way in which racism and sexism together affected their social status. Ann Cooper wrote:
The colored woman of today occupies, one might say, a unique position in this country. In a period of itself transitional and unsettled, her status seems one of the ascertainable and definitive of all the forces which makes for our civilization. She is confronted by a woman question and a race problem, and is as yet an unknown or unacknowledged factor in both.
Anna Cooper wanted the U.S. public to recognize the role black women played not just as spokespersons for their race but as advocates of rights for women. To spread her views on women’s rights, she published A Voice from the South in 1892, one of the first feminist discussions of the social status of black women and a lengthy discussion of woman’s right to higher education. In A Voice from the South, Cooper reiterated her belief that black women should not assume a passive subordinate position in relationship to black men. She also criticized black males for their refusal to support woman’s effort to obtain equal rights. Since it was common for black leaders to question whether or not black female involvement in the struggle for women’s rights would undermine their involvement in the struggle to eliminate racism, Cooper maintained that social equality of the sexes would mean that black women would be able to serve as leaders in the struggle against racism. She further argued that they had in fact shown themselves to be as committed to the black liberation struggle as black men, if not more so.
