2 . Landmark texts in black feminist literary criticism are Barbara Smith’s “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” Conditions: Two (1977): 27—28, followed by Deborah McDowell’s “New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism,” Black American Literature Forum (October 1980). See also: Barbara Christian, Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers (New York: Pargamon Press, 1985), which critic Michele Wallace names “the Bible in the field of black feminist criticism” in Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory (London: Verso, 1990) 184; Gloria Wade-Gayles, No Crystal Stair: Visions of Race and Sex in Black Women’s Fiction (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984): Marjorie Pryse and Hortense J. Spillers, eds., Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction and Literary Tradition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); Cheryl A. Wall, ed., Changing Our Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writings by Black Women (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Joanne M. Braxton, Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); Valerie Smith, Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); Gloria T. Hull, Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Claudia Tate, Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine’s Text at the Turn of the Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and Karla Holloway, Moorings and Metaphors: Figures of Culture and Gender in Black Women’s Literature (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992). Feminist readings of black women writers have also been published by others, including Susan Willis, Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987); Calvin Hernton, The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers (New York: Anchor 1987); Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology (New York: Penguin, 1990); Houston A. Baker, Jr., Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); and most recently Madhu Dubey, Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Aesthetic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
3 Exceptions include E. Frances White, “Listening to the Voices of Black Feminism,” Radical America (1984): 7—25, which analyzes from a critical perspective the theoretical writing, excluding literary criticism, of contemporary black women since the 1970s on the themes of family, class, and sexuality; Wilson J. Moses, “Domestic Feminism, Conservatism, Sex Roles, and Black Women’s Clubs, 1893—1896,” Journal of Social and Behavioral Sciences 24 (Fall 1897): 166-177, in which he uses the phrase “genteel domestic feminism” to characterize the work of late-nineteenth-century black clubwomen, who, for the most part, accepted Victorian sexual values and the notion that women have the responsibility of upgrading the morality of home and family by toiling within the “women’s sphere.” More typical is the approach taken by Linda Perkins in “Black Women and Racial ‘Uplift’ Prior to Emancipation,” The Black Woman Cross-Culturally, ed. Filomina Steady (Cambridge: Scheckman Publishing, 1981), in which she employs a racefocused analysis in her discussion of the activist work of nineteenth-century black women.
4 The Washington and Jordan essays which appeared in the August 1974 issue of Black World signalled the importance of black women writers in the cultural history of African Americans and provided a catalyst for the development of black feminist criticism.
5 Ann duCille identifies such works as “the founding texts of contemporary black feminist studies,” in “The Occult of True Black Womanhood: Critical Demeanor and Black Feminist Studies,” Signs 19: 3 (1994): 591-629.
6 Wall, I. She chronicles “the community of Black women writing” beginning with Toni Cade’s The Black Woman (New York: Signet 1970) and marks a “few transformative moments in the development of black feminist criticism beginning with the work of critic Mary Helen Washington, which became more self-conscious with Barbara Smith’s 1977 landmark essay, ”Toward a Black Feminist Criticism.” She also locates Alice Walker’s ”In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,“ Ms. (May 1974), 64-70, in this tradition because it ”posits a theory of black female creativity and defines a tradition of black women’s art” (5).
7 bell hooks, ”Out of the Academy and into the Streets,” in Getting There: The Movement Toward Gender Equality, ed. Diana Wells (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994), 192-193. A longer version of this essay appeared as”Theory as Liberatory Practice,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 4: 1, 1—12.
8 For a discussion of the history of the use of the French terms “feminisme” and “feministe” in the 1880s and eventually the English term “feminism” in the early 1900s, see Nancy Cott’s The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New York: Yale University Press, 1987) in her chapter on “The Birth of Feminism.” Cott prefers not to use the term “feminism” in her discussions of the nineteenth-century women’s rights or suffrage movement and alludes to a December 1909 article in the American Suffragette, “Suffragism Not Feminism,” in which some American women distanced themselves from what they perceived to be radical terminology. Cott indicates that it was around 1913 that American women embraced the term “feminism,” which marked a ”new phase in thinking about women’s emancipation” (15).
9 hooks, Getting There, 193.
10 See Flora Davis, Moving the Mountain: The Women’s Movement Since 1960 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991) though she, unfortunately, does not always identify women racially.
11 Three early anthologies of contemporary feminism-Joanne Cooke et al.’s The New Women: An Anthology of Women’s Liberation (1970), Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement (1970), and Deborah Babcox and Madeline Belkin’s Liberation Now! Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement (1970) pay some token attention to black women. They all include Frances Beale’s ”Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.” Morgan’s book includes a section on women in the black liberation movement, and a long essay by Flo Kennedy, a civil rights lawyer, a member of The Feminists, and one of the founding members of the National Organization for Women (NOW). “Liberation Now!” contains a section on “caste, class, and race” and “sisters in revolution,” which includes an essay by an African woman.
Selections
The publisher is grateful for permission to reprint the following copyrighted material.
Margaret Walker Alexander, “Black Women in Academia,” How I Wrote Jubilee (New York: Feminist Press, 1990).
Sadie T. M. Alexander, “Negro Women in Our Economic Life,” Opportunity (July 1930): 201-203
Frances Beale, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” The Black Woman, ed. Toni Cade (New York: Signet, 1970).
Shirley Chisholm, “Facing the Abortion Question,” Unbought and Unbossed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), 127-136.
Cheryl Clarke, “Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance,” This Bridge Called My Back, ed. Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press), 128—137.
Pearl Cleage “What Can I Say,” Atlanta Tribune, June 1994.
Patricia
Hill Collins, “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought,” Signs 14 (August 1989): 745-773.
The Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, ed. Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (New York: Feminist Press, 1982).
Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (Xenia, OH: Aldine Printing House, 1892).
Angela Davis, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” Black Scholar 3 (December 1971): 2—15.
Alice Dunbar-Nelson, “The Negro Woman and the Ballot,” Messenger IX (April 1927).
Julia A. J. Foote, “Women in the Gospel,” A Brand Plucked from the Fire: An Autobiographical Sketch (Cleveland, OH: Lauer and Yost, 1886).
Amy Jacques Garvey, “The Role of Women in Liberation
Struggles,” Massachusetts Review (Winter/Spring 1972): 109—112.
-----, “Women as Leaders,” The Negro World, October 25, 1925.
-----, “No Sex in Brains and Ability,” The Negro World, December 27, 1924.
Paula Giddings, “The Last Taboo,” Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 441-465.
Jacquelyn Grant, “Black Theology and the Black Woman,” Black Theology: A Documentary History, 1966—1979, ed. S. Welmore and J. Cone (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979).
Patricia Haden, Donna Middleton, and Patricia Robinson, “A Historical and Critical Essay for Black Women,” Voices of the New Feminism, ed. Mary L. Thompson (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 316—324.
Evelynn Hammonds, “Missing Persons: African American Women, AIDS, and the History of Disease,” Radical America 20 (1986): 7-23.
Lorraine Hansberry, “Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex: An American Commentary,” unpublished manuscript. Lorraine Hansberry Archives, Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
Frances E. W. Harper, “Woman’s Political Future,” World’s Congress of Representative Women, ed. May Wright Sewall (Chicago: Rand, McNally and Co., 1894), 433—437.
Elizabeth Higginbotham, “Designing an Inclusive Curriculum: Bringing All Women into the Core,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 18 (Spring/Summer 1990): 7-23.
Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance,” Signs 14 (August 1988): 912-920.
bell hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory,” Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984).
Claudia Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman,” Political Affairs, 1947, reprinted in Buzz Johnson’s I Think of My Mother: Notes on the Life and Times of Claudia Jones (London: Karia Press, 1985).
June Jordan, “A New Politics of Sexuality,” Technical Difficulties (New York: Pantheon, 1992), 181–193.
Gloria Joseph, “Black Feminist Pedagogy and Schooling in Capitalist White America,” Bowles and Gintes Revisited: Correspondence and Contradiction in Educational Theory, ed. Mike Cole (London and New York: Falmer, 1988).
Florynce Kennedy, “A Comparative Study: Accentuating the Similarities of the Societal Position of Women and Negroes,” Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976).
Deborah K. King, “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology,” Signs 14 (Autumn 1988): 42–72.
Linda La Rue, “The Black Movement and Women’s Liberation,” Black Scholar 1 (May 1970): 36-42.
Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” Sister Outsider (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984).
Elise Johnson McDougald, “The Double Task: The Struggle of Negro Women for Sex and Race Emancipation,” Survey Graphic LIII (October 1924–March 1925): 689–691.
N. F. Mossell, The Work of the Afro-American Woman (Philadelphia: George S. Ferguson, 1894).
Pauli Murray, “The Liberation of Black Women,” Voices of the New Feminism, ed. Mary Lou Thompson (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 87–102.
Barbara Omolade, “Hearts of Darkness,” Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 350–367.
Barbara Ransby and Tracye Matthews, “Black Popular Culture and the Transcendence of Patriarchal Illusions,” Race and Class 35: No. 1 (1993): 57-68.
Marilyn Richardson, ed., Maria W. Stewart, America’s First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 ).
Beth Richie, “Battered Black Women: A Challenge for the Black Community,” Black Scholar 16 (March/April 1985): 40–44.
Barbara Smith, “Some Home Truths on the Contemporary Black Feminist Movement,” Black Scholar 16 (March/April 1985): 4–13.
Mary Church Terrell, “The Progress of Colored Women,” Voice of the Negro (July 1904): 291–294.
Pauline Terrelonge, “Feminist Consciousness and Black Women,” Women: A Feminist Perspective, ed. Jo Freeman (Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1984).
Sojourner Truth, “When Woman Gets Her Rights Man Will Be Right,” Major Speeches by Negroes in the U.S., 1797–1971, ed. Eric Foner (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 345–346.
Alice Walker, “In the Closet of the Soul,” Living by the Word (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).
Michele Wallace, “Anger in Isolation: A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood,” Invisibility Blues (London: Verso, 1990). First published in Village Voice 28 (July 28, 1975): 6—7.
Mary Ann Weathers, “An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force,” Voices of the New Feminism, ed. Mary Lou Thompson (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 303–307.
Ida Wells-Barnett, “Lynch Law in America,” Arena (January 1990), 15–24.
E. Frances White, “Africa on My Mind: Gender, Counterdiscourse and African American Nationalism,” Journal of Women’s History 2 (Spring 1990): 73-97.
Acknowledgments
This project has had both a long and short history. I have been reading and collecting, on a sustained basis, the writings of African American women since I joined the English Department at Spelman College in 1971. Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature (Doubleday, 1979) —co-edited by my deceased and beloved colleague, Roseann P. Bell, and friend Bettye J. Parker—was the first flowering of my passion for the wisdom, too often buried, of black women. My involvement with SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women and my many years of work on the doctoral dissertation Daughters of Sorrow: Attitudes Toward Black Women, 1880–1920 (Carlson, 1990) confirmed what I had discovered during the lengthy evolution of my first publishing effort which was that black women have struggled against racism and sexism and many other “isms” during our involuntary sojourn in this country and that these courageous efforts have been ignored, misinterpreted, or maligned. I and many others name this work, among other descriptors, “feminist,” though I’m not bothered if others prefer different labels. Keeping this in mind, I would first of all like to thank all those sister-writers, especially the contributors to this anthology, who have validated our existence in the world.
Words of Fire also has another, less complicated history. Several years ago a colleague and I started compiling feminist essays by black women going back to Maria Stewart which we planned to publish when we could get around to it, but we never did. Eventually Dawn Davis, editor at The New Press, contacted me about publishing with them and since I liked what they were doing, I agreed to reconceptualize and complete this first collection of readings on the evolution of feminist thought among African American women. I am grateful to my colleague for encouraging me to complete the project. I am also pleased that Dawn was persistent and allowed me the freedom to proceed. Her editorial judgment has been invaluable and I owe her a big thanks for helping me to fulfill one of my dreams. I would also like to acknowledge the cooperation of two friends. Jewell Gresham Nemiroff granted me permission to include Lorraine Hansberry’s unpublished essay on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. This gesture of friendship I am deeply grateful for. I would also like to thank Professor Margaret Wilkerson, Lorraine Hansberry’s biographer, for agreeing to edit the unfinished essay on very short notice and for writing an eloquent introduction. I would like to thank as well Professor Ula Taylor for helping me to select from the numerous editorials which Amy Jacques Garvey wrote and for writing an introduction.
And finally I want to remember my own mother—the first feminist I ever knew. She encouraged me to live freely, be independent, sit on my own bottom, develop my intellect, treasure friendships with women, and recognize a good man when I saw one.
Introduction
THE EVOLUTION OF FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN WOM
EN
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