BHM: National Black HIV Awareness Day

htp Sojourner’s Place

Today is African American HIV/AIDs Awareness Day. African Americans continue to contract HIV at alarming rates due to failures in outreach, homophobia, poverty and lack of health insurance, and misperceptions about the spread of the disease. African American women are the largest group infected with HIV/AIDs in the United States. According to the Kaiser Foundation our infection rates are also on the rise, as are Latin@s; European-American women’s infection rates are on the decline. So while many African American organizations and churches paint the issue as an African pandemic (as does the media throughout the world, adding in India as their numbers begin to soar), the reality is that we are facing alarming infection rates here and now. Ours is a global pandemic and the African Diaspora is at as much risk as the continent.

According to the CDC, African Americans have:

• More illness. Even though blacks (including African Americans) account for about 13% of the US population, they account for about half (49%) of the people who get HIV and AIDS.
• Shorter survival times. Blacks with AIDS often don’t live as long as people of other races and ethnic groups with AIDS. This is due to the barriers mentioned above.
• More deaths. For African Americans and other blacks, HIV/AIDS is a leading cause of death.

We represent 49% of the people infected in the U.S. while white people represent 31% and Latin@s 18%. Latin@s are the largest growing infected population (meaning gain in infections over the years vs. number of people infected). What this means is that communities of color continue to receive disproportionate outreach, education, and care as well as grapple with internal issues like homophobia and heterosexist analysis of HIV/AIDs as well as religious biases about sexuality in general.

Much of the problem in the early years, was the American media’s portrayal of AIDS as a disease of white gay men. Black Americans were given few reasons to believe that AIDS could affect them, even though black men made up a large proportion of the early cases of AIDS in the gay and bisexual community, and from the outset, black heterosexual adults and children were significantly more likely to be infected than whites. (Androite 1999)

61% of all women infected with HIV or AIDs in this country are African American. That is more women than all the other ethnic groups combined. Latinas and white women make up less than 20% each, with slightly more white women infected than Latinas.

African American women & Latin@s are more likely to be dependent on medicare and other subsidized medical plans for their health care than other women. Questions of best practices toward black and brown women and expanded funding for preventative as well as maitenance care have not been a major part of the discussion of universal health care or government health care spending in general.

CDC research shows that these are the most common ways African Americans are contracting the virus:

Men

1. having unprotected sex with another man who has HIV
2. sharing injection drug works (like needles or syringes) with someone who has HIV
3. having unprotected sex with a woman who has HIV

Women

1. having unprotected sex with a man who has HIV
2. sharing injection drug works (like needles or syringes) with someone who has HIV

The ADVERT organization argues that the following factors contibute to our higher infectin rates:

• poverty
• lack of access to proper health care
• racism
• higher incidences of incarceration
• older male partners with less experienced younger female ones
• lack of outreach
• stigma
• drug use

Another factor is the lack of appropriate diversity in clinical research. Historically both women and people of color have been underrepresented in research on HIV and AIDs prevention. The Gender Race and Clinical Experience (GRACE) study was one of the first attempts to correct this problem. It was the largest HIV and AIDs study ever undertaken to focus specifically on women and people of color’s experiences. Unfortunately, 25% of the study participants vacated the study before its completion. While African Americans are understandably wary of medical research trials, our participation is critical to curbing the tide.

Black Aids Institute is also helping turn the tide by launching the HIV University, a program to educate African American college students, student services, and faculty about HIV and AIDs so that they can open their own campus appropriate outreach, education, and support centers. It is also supported by Ledge Magazine, a biannual magazine about HIV and AIDs for historically black colleges.

Black AIDs Institute has also put together a helpful pamphlet by and for African American women about the HIV and AIDs, you can download it by clicking here. (Please pass it around)

BHM: Black Women’s Cinema as Historiography

I’ve been trying to make these black herstory month posts about groups, collectives, the little known, or some of the unknowns in the well-know . . .

(Black Women Directors Honored by the BHERC 2007)

Today, as part of my commitment to also shine a light on African American female film directors, I am going to switch gears slightly and focus on a single artist. Since black women film makers are often completely invisible in Hollywood and in the popular imaginary, I think it is important to give each of these women there own space to shine as individuals who make up a collective body of cinematic knowledge and sacrifice. So every Friday for this month, and maybe into the next, we are going to spotlight a black woman director.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Cheryl Dunye

(Cheryl Dunye/ unattributed)

Cheryl Dunye’s first feature length film, Watermelon Woman, is largely credited as the first feature length film to star an out African American lesbian. While the film is significant for this reason alone, it has always interested me because of its critique historiography and cinema. Watermelon Woman tells the story of a struggling black filmmaker, Cheryl, who is researching an unnamed actress in old Hollywood who was having an interracial relationship with a white film star. Cheryl, played by Dunye, encounters multiple layers of oppression in attempting to uncover the story while also fielding the criticism of her black lesbian cohort for her own interracial relationship. Despite the fact the Fae Richards appears in many small parts throughout the golden age of hollywood she is neither credited in most, accept once as the “watermelon woman,” nor remembered. As a black woman, her career is both significant, because of the number of films she was in, and insignificant, because of the roles and position of black actors in mainstream Hollywood. Thus Cheryl is forced to try and piece together the woman’s life from old photographs and rapidly decaying film.

Her first clandestine efforts with cinematic archives is a failure precisely because the “watermelon woman” was not considered significant enough to document. Cheryl’s archival mismatches shine a light on what many historians of queer culture have argued, that often we are left with rumors, letters, journals, and the keen since of gaydar to find our way. Add in another layer of intersecting oppression and becomes that much harder.

Moving away from Hollywood as her source, the director then confronts racism in the queer and feminist archives, neither of which have bothered to spend a significant amount of time documenting the lives of black women. At the feminist archive, Cheryl is given a single box of unsorted materials and chastised for trying to use the documents within. At the queer archives she confronts both the absence of black herstory and the overwhelming emphasis on gay men’s history. In these moments she exposes the problems of the left in which race, class, and region often remain hegemonic even as the center shifts toward women or queer culture, which also continues to have the dual problem of addressing women and transpeople equally.

Failing once again to find any trace of our shared and overlapping histories, Cheryl goes to the family members of the Watermelon Woman’s possible girlfriend. At first, they are excited to meet her but as soon as they discover her film is about lesbians, they back out.  Family members claim they know nothing, despite having photos of the two together, or that they were coerced in their interviews. These fictional encounters mirror the homophobia surrounding the later release of Looking for Langston (1988 ) which was rejected by the Hughes’ family and barred from referring to Langston Hughes himself or his sexuality by the estate. In the latter case it was black homophobia that got in the way, in the Dunye film it is white homophobia.

The basic premise of the film, then forces us to confront the ways in which neither archives nor history are neutral but rather filtered through the same biases that govern our society. Instead of making a binary argument in which racism is the sole problem and progressives are all liberated, Dunye takes a critical to eye to the ways that multiple groups have failed to think and act intersectionally. In so doing, she clearly documents how our collective failures have robbed us of a rich mutlicultural, multi-gendered, multi-desiring, vision of our history that is much more accurate than the tightly boxed up ones we deal with now.

As Dunye put it:

By the end of the film it’s back in your face saying the Watermelon Woman is a fiction, I made it all up. What does that mean now, you have to do something (interview)

In other words, it is our task to confront both the oppressions of the past and the present in order to tell and display a more complete history of our world and the cultures within it.

Though Watermelon Woman did well on the independent circuit, Dunye also expressed concern about funding and commitment to the film. In a comment that we will see is all too typical of black women’s experiences in Hollywood, Dunye lamented how little funding she was able to garner from either the black community/ies or the queer one(s):

I’ve given up my life for the last four years and would have hoped that more progressive folks and those kind of communities of labels of identity politics and race politics, etc. would have made it out to the film or helped with the film or supported the film, but they haven’t so there’s a lot of work to do. (ibid)

While many independent filmmakers struggle to make their films and get distribution, one of the things that has plagued black cinema in particular is the failure to garner funding from within the black community or the usual channels accessed in Hollywood by independents. Part of this has to do with the limited resources available to the black community as opposed to the often affluent white first time directors. It also has to do with major structural inequities that make it easier for dominant culture to get loans, lines of credit, and introduced to other funding sources through affluent networks that are largely closed to African American, and especially African American female directors. A final layer of removal comes in the erasure of the black queer experience from both mainstream black culture(s) and white queer culture(s). Meaning that while Dunye expected to get funding and support from both black and queer culture, her subject matters seat in the intersection prevented such support. Worse, for certain segments of the queer of color communities, interracial dating is itself a controversy further removing Dunye’s film from a place of support.

Dunye is critical of the way the industry often requires black artists to seek white patrons, but astute enough to point out how this too is a historical process:

. . . most of the cast is of color and a lot of the producers aren’t. There are moments when I felt disempowered but with it but there were moments in history, looking back at the Harlem Renaissance which some of my film does look back to and you know, that’s how culture gets made with black people. Yes we have to break that chain but yes we have the kind of culture that functions on that philanthropy. (ibid)

Her words echo those of artists and intellectuals like Cullen, Baldwin, Dunham, and Hurston all of whom had scathing critiques for the way that philanthropy worked during the Harlem Renaissance particular within the queer community and across gender lines.

At the same time, Dunye is more philosophical about the possibilities embeded in philanthropy:

Being a token is, as Essex Hemphill said to me, “when you are given a token or made a token what do you do? you take a ride, you ride with it.” I feel like a lot of the kind of people that I worked with believed that themselves as well as I did in the sense of moving forward. I think we all got something out of it whether we work together again or not. There’s a certain sense of empowerment in creating art and there’s a certain sense of disempowerment in creating art and culture. (ibid)

The positive aspects show in all of Dunye’s films. The success of Watermelon Woman in particular had a lot to do with intersectional support. Much of the minimal budget for Watermelon Woman came through Women Make Movies, a feminist media group that helps ensure the production, promotion, distribution, etc. of female directors and films by and for women. As the fiscal sponsor, WMM helped Dunye secure funding she would not otherwise have been able to receive though they did not provide funds themselves (they don’t do that). And while I have long had issue with the price of WMM films and acquisitions, because schools like pov u are essentially priced out of owning or even exhibiting many of their films, their work not only ensures that women’s films get made but that those films are permanently archived.

First Run Features was also instrumental in the distribution of Watermelon Woman. FRF is one of the largest distributers of independent and documentary films in the U.S. and they have considerable holdings of queer and international films as well as films by people of color. They are also the distributers of a collection of Dunye’s early work which predates Watermelon Woman and includes: Greetings from Africa, The Potluck and the Passion, An Untitled Portrait, Vanilla Sex, She Don’t Fade, and Janine. Taken together, these shorts represent some of the key issues in lesbian experience from a black lesbian vantage point including: sexuality, family, interracial dating, and the potluck.

Dunye’s collection of early works was also debuted on the West Coast at the Queer Women of Color Film Festival which presents and promotes the work of women of colors from all racial backgrounds to an audience of white and women of color, the gay community, and its allies. Dunye also spoke at the event, further expanding the reach of her unique cinematic form, her stories of a black lesbian experience, and inspire a new generation of women of color filmmakers.

Despite her modesty about it, Dunye has always been a director who understands the necessity of history and the blending of historiographic and cinematic form. Not only did Watermelon Woman and several of her shorts combine these, but her next major film project Stranger Inside did as well.

Stranger Inside moved out of archival examination and into oral history. Dunye and her partners worked with inmates to collect stories about their experiences that were most important to them. As Dunye began to develop the script for her sophmore effort, she also asked inmates to workshop the characters and scenes with her in order to make them as authentic a reflection of prison life as she could. Rather than turning the experience into spectacle, Dunye wanted to give voice to the inmate experience and to respect the voices she found within the prison walls.

Stranger Inside follows the tragic decision of a teenage inmate searching for her mother.  Treasure Lee is a young inmate with only a few months left on her sentence. She and another friend have been sent to jail for gang activity, both of them having experienced the cycle of racism-poverty-and incarceration that is all too predicatable in N. America’s forgotten neighborhoods. Unlike her friend, who uses these last few months to start an education and develop a plan for her life away from the gangs, Treasure commits a capital offense in order to stay in prison and join the mother she barely remembers. The film has a tragic twist to it that I will not reveal but one that left my students stunned and silent as the film came to a close in our joint showing with a sociology of race course.

When the film was first introduced to me by both Netflix and a graduate student, both called it a “queer film.”  I would argue that most of the characters are not queer and it is unclear if Treasure is either or if she just getting her needs met on the inside. Either way, the film once again expands discussion of sexuality through the lens of prison hierarchies and lifers as well of shifting the meaning of a “woman’s prison” or “lesbians in prison” film.

This film also branches out from the black-white binary of Dunye’s earlier work by including Asian and Latina characters. I have some concerns about how the Asian woman comes across in this film as well as how the femme does, but the complexity of the script and the direction are such that I continue to mull these concerns over rather than landing on a single reading. That perhaps is the best sign of Dunye’s craft, that it makes you think and sticks with you in ways that keeps changing.

(I would argue that her religious symbolism is far less complex or thought provoking however.)

Dunye herself is quick to remind others that she is not alone in the struggle to represent positive black lesbian experiences in film. She pointed to Whoopi Goldberg’s role in Boys on the Side and Latifah’s role in Set It Off as two groundbreaking  mainstream examples that inspire her. These films are important because one was made for a mainstream independent film audience and the other was made for mainstream black audiences both of whom might not crossover to watching films about black lesbians. The inclusion of black lesbian characters in these films then expands the knowledge of its audience and exposes them to identities that are normally hidden to them. This is what Dunye is trying to accomplish with her own work.

She also places her work within the context of other black lesbian filmmakers such as: Jocelyn Taylor (who plays Cheryl’s bestfriend in Watermelon Woman), Leah Gilliam, Dawn Suggs, Shari Frilot, Michelle Parkerson, and Yvonne Welbon. She credits all of these women as a co-creative circle that critiques, curates, and lends love and support to one another’s projects. Yvonne Welbon’s work inspired me to write these film posts in the first place and I will be doing a post on all of these women as lesser known black women directors as part of this series.

And echoing a running, and yet unintentional thread, in the Black Herstory Posts, Dunye is a college professor. She currently teaches at Temple where I have no doubt a whole new group of intersectionally oriented cinematic historiographers are being born every day.

——

images:

• watermelon woman DVD cover
• lesbian history archive image
• black gay and lesbian archive project brochure cover
• Dunye and her ex-girlfriend
• stranger inside DVD cover
• Latifah movie still from Set it Off
• Whoopi, Barrymoore, and Parker movie still Boys on the Side
• Leah Gilliam in Saphire and the Slave Girl

BHM: Queering Rap

So I owe you one for yesterday . . . know this is not my area, but like I said these posts are about challenging my knowledge as well as yours. 😀

In mainstream feminist analysis of rap music, rap is the villain in which black thugs demean and debase both black and white women. The music becomes the emblem of a narrative in which black culture is more misogynist than the dominant culture and black men are more violent than other men. Thus the actual misogyny of much of rap music is filtered through the engendered racism of mainstream society in ways that erase the misogyny of mainstream culture both in its relationship to rap music, in which white male fantasies of masculinity are grafted on to those of black males ones in order to create a product that is then emulated in the sexist and misogynist encounters between white male suburban youth and their white female suburban girlfriends, and other forms of gender based abuse and inequality that exist outside of any rap or hip hop narrative.

Racial filtering also masks the libratory power of certain kinds of hip hop. Not only has hip hop been credited for giving voice to the forgotten urban slums and the plight of black youth within them, it has also been the source of feminist talk back. While there is nothing liberating about having a credit card swiped through a black woman’s cheeks none could argue that Queen Latifah’s “Lady’s first”(featuring Monie Love)

or Salt’n’Pepa’s “She Thing” were anything but feminist anthems.

In the former, there is a very clear narrative of black female empowerment that places it within a context of strong African and African diasporic women. Its unfortunate use of war footage and imagery to show women reclaiming Africa could also be reclaimed through the lens of previous African queens who once ruled vast empires across the content. It’s not a metaphor I would choose but certainly one that still pays homage to a female power narrative. The video also does something different with female sexuality, at once avoiding the spandexed “big butts” for clothes expressing black pride and putting forth a queer aesthetic. While I think the later was unintentional, it certainly could be credited as one of the moments in Rap video that paved the way for queer artists.

Salt’n’Pepa’s video played more clearly into an existing narrative of sexualized imagery on the screen. However, the used it in a similar vein to the soundtracks of the black exploitation films in which the image may put forward a standard narrative but the music decidedly critiqued. Thus they appear in shorty shorts and low cut tops in almost every frame, but all the while singing about how women can be anything they want to be and have the right and the strength to define their own lives as independent women:

It’s a she thing, and it’s all in me (It ain’t nothin’ but a she
thing,
I could be anything that I want to be baby

….

Go to work and get paid less than a man
When I’m doin’ the same damn thing that he can
When I’m aggressive then I’m a bitch
When I got attitude you call me a witch
Treat me like a sex-object (That ain’t smooth)
Underestimate the mind, oh yeah, you’re a fool
Weaker sex, yeah, right, that’s the joke (ha!)
Have you ever been in labor? I don’t think so, nope
I’m a genuine feminine female thang
Can you hang? Ain’t nothin’ but a she thang

(Salt’n’Pepa “She Thang”)

Not only do these lyrics put forward an empowered female anthem, they raise traditional feminist issues like equal pay, sexual agency, and misogyny. In another part of the song, they also pay homage to Peggy Lee’s “I’m a woman” reminding all of us that ultimately feminist theory always references across difference even tho we traditionally teach it as separated by various identities to the disservice of the movement(s).

Even now, my students who know Latifah as the Loreal woman and Salt’n’Pepa for their degrading reality show, still manage to find these and other feminist lyricists from the black female rap world to bring to class year after year as an example of feminist music. And yet feminist Hip Hop artists are astutely aware of how their voices are edited out of mainstream feminism as part of an anti-feminist industry:

They say it hurts
“It hurt when you talk like that”
They say it hurts
“It hurt blacks”; they talk back
They say it hurts
“It hurt women in rap”
They say it hurts
“It hurt. We rap back”

We gots a Message”

~Shayna “Sheness” Israel
12/19/07

In this excerpt from 3X a LADY CREW, a queer feminist Hip Hop group out of Bryn Mawr, undergraduate scholar Shayna Israel reminds that decolonizing theory opens the possibility to see the “message” in the music and other arenas that have been sworn off as feminist no fly zones. Taking her feminist praxis seriously, Shayna teaches high school and middle school students how to express themselves and critique the inequalities in their lives through hip hop, spoke word, and creative writing.

In fact, feminist hip hop has always been a place for girls and women of all ages. Prior to her hater turn, 14 year old Roxanne Shante, for instance, made it big with songs critiquing male rappers who sold out the message of poverty and oppression for money. She also was one of the youngest successful artists to rap about catcalls on the street and to break down not only the male privilege involved but also the hypocrisy of “shiftless” men hooting at women and girls trying to get an education or go to work.

What has been largely absent from both male and female hip hop artists work is a question of heteronormativity and hyper-dominant-heterosex.  Thus power shifts from largely misogynist male gangsta fantasy to dominating/dominatrix heterosexual female ones. Often hidden are those heterosexual rap songs in which mutuality (be it vanilla or kink) are centered. This again is as much an issue of marketing as anything else, in which mainstream commercialization of rap requires the selling and buying of racial stereotypes: violent black men and angry black women putting their sex out there for mainstream consumption and misappropriation. Even more hidden are those rap artists who are using rap as a revolutionary form from which to critique heteronormativity and heterosexism.

(MzFontain and friends)

While we have had many books and articles discussing the revolutionary power of rap as an art form for critiquing poverty, racism, colorism, classism, colonialism, and other major political and social forms of oppression no such cache has been given to those books and documentaries that look at the ways female artists around the world have claimed rap as a space to voice female empowerment and critique sexism nor to voice same sex desire and critique homophobia and hetersoexism. While documentaries on women in rock can be found in almost any women’s center or women’s studies library, very few stock either Nobody Knows My Name , which is about the unacknowledged female artists in the industry, or Pick Up the Mic, which focuses on the growth of “homohop” and queer artists. What is lost in this erasure is in fact the black (and global) feminisms, especially queer ones, within rap music.

“I’ve got you Babe” – Mélange

In this ode to her son and her family, young queer artist Mélange Lavonne expands the growing genre of rap expressing love for one’s children and family and places it decidedly within a queer narrative. Her song is particularly important in the post-prop 8 era in which it simultaneously critiques homophobic constructions of the queer community as predatory and racism that edits out both black and bi-racial families from the mainstream depiction of queerness.

Though relatively new, Mélange Lavonne’s contribution to the rap scene promises to be significant. As an artist that started out with a debut album devoid of homosexuality, she had developed a “mainstream” audience who then followed her to her sophomore album in which she is out and her subject matter includes critiques of homophobia and heterosexism. The shift was not only one that Lavonne credits for her own empowerment but also helped expand the audience for “homo hip hop.” She also wants to start her own label to make sure that other young women have access to an industry that feminists have rightly labeled notoriously sexist.

Artists like Shante Paradigm are also shifting the image of hip hop at both the lyrical and structural level. Her own music combines issues of gender, sexuality, race, and popular culture from a decidedly feminist lens. She is also the co-founder and Exec Producer of Peace Out East Festival, an east coast hip hop festival for queer rap artists.

Black queer feminist rappers not only discuss sexuality but also issues of gender oppression and racism. Artists Kin4Life breakdown such themes as environmental racism, black male misogyny, and other issues in this impromptu rap for an interview in 2008:

Their work also tackled issues of emotional abuse, healthy vs. destructive relationships, and desire. They are also important to the genre because their videos highlight empowered femmes not just studs.

Other artists, like J P.O.W move the discussion into spiritual connection between women and the connections of black women across the diaspora. Her song Earth Walker with Las Krudas (amazing Afra-Cubana hip hop artists) mixes languages, sounds, and forms in order to explore the power of African diasporic women on this earth. You can listen to many of her songs at her myspace page: here.

While most of these artists are young, we cannot forget the woman who is largely credited as starting the movement: Missy Elliot. While she has never explicitly addressed her sexuality, it is common knowledge that Missy plays on the home team. Her work with many of the mainstream rap and R&B artists in the industry has exposed all of them to a competent, successful, black lesbian rapper. That exposure and her own success as an artist have no doubt opened space for others since.

The influence hip hop has had on feminist and queer thinkers and spoken word artists is not limited to African Americans, all though it does come out of a particular African diasporic his/her/hirstory. If this was not black history month I would obviously highlight some other key artists that I have featured on this blog before. And while I have focused on some big name artists here, I hope that some of these others are people you do not know, since the point of these posts is to highlight the lesser known women in our shared histories. Other artists that I was unable to feature but that may be of interest: MZ Jonez (Shayvonna Jonz), Dr. P, E-cliff, Dalyrical, BOI Sha, Mz. Dyzihre, and Feloni, and so many others.

Obviously this post is simply scratching the surface. For more information on queer artists check out:

• out hip hop
• Peace Out East
• Lesbian Hip Hop

Related Articles

• Slideshow: theGrio’s 15 favorite female MC’s (thegrio.com)

BHM: Youngest Women and the March

In 1965, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. organized a march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama to raise awareness and challenge segregation and inequality in the U.S. That march was one of the bloodiest civil rights events in the country. On the first day, police demanded the marches turn back and when they did not, they released dogs, sprayed frontlines with hoses, and beat them back until the crowd broke ranks. Two days later, the marchers returned to complete their march undaunted, ultimately joined by three times their original ranks.  It was not until their third try on March 21st that nearly 25,000 people succeeded in reaching the courthouse in Montgomery. Among them was 8 year old Sheyann Webb and 9 year old Rachel West.

Second graders Webb and West had heard about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. from people around their neighborhood and events reported in the paper. On January 2, 1965, on her way to school, they noticed an interracial crowd forming outside of Brown’s Chapel AME. Unable to turn away, Webb followed them into what would become the first meeting of the civil right movement in Selma Alabama.

Rachel West’s parents were long time activists in the Civil Rights Movement. They often housed speakers and activists when they came to Selma or when they were hiding out from the police.

My father was the first to take in shelter for the civil rights workers; our home was called the second freedom house. We, my parents, I did, we influenced other project people to take in these people. (Eyes on the Prize interview transcripts)

West was moved by her interaction with all of the freedom fighters and the information she was able to pass on to those too afraid to join the movement. Her parents actively encouraged West to learn about the movement but had not expected her to become involved herself.

Webb’s mother was also an important touchstone for her intellectual development during the movement as well. Webb used to go home and ask her mother questions about civil rights to get a better understanding of the overarching issues facing black people in the U.S. Her mother would explain discrimination and inequality to her and try her best to encourage Sheyann to be a strong young girl. When Webb asked why her parents were not registered to vote her mother explained that they would lose their jobs without which they could also lose their home and the ability to feed and cloth their children.

Both of Webb’s parents encouraged her to stop attending civil rights meetings citing beatings, rape, lynching, and the burning down of their home in the night as possible repercussions. All of these things were common place in racially segregated N. America and it is the memory of them that makes it impossible for black people to see lynching metaphors as “jokes” the way so many white high school and college aged youth seem to think it is today. Sheyann also asked her parents to register to vote for her birthday, refusing to let fear win. They did. And she recalls that after the marches, they took her to the voting booth with them so that she would be a witness to the civic duty she had helped fight to ensure her community had equal access. The sense of voting pride would be echoed throughout the nation both in 1960s and again in 2008 when the country voted in its first black president.

Despite warnings from her parents, Webb refused to let go of  the urge to organize alongside adults active in the movement.  When Martin Luther King Jr. came to a local church in her neighborhood Webb and West determined to meet him. They pushed their way through the crowd and spoke to him directly before and then after the meeting:

Dr. King, he spoke to us, asked us how we were doing, and what did we want. And we said freedom . . .

. . .

And he asked us on the way out, were we going to march. And we said, we are going to march for our freedom. (interview)

Those moments cemented a relationship between the Reverend and the girls that helped keep them strengthened in the struggle to come.

Rachel West recalls also learning about the movement from both white and black civil rights leaders like Jonathan Daniels and Frank Sirocco. Daniels had been instrumental in registering people in Alabama to vote and had been shot by authorities for it. Sirocco, one of the first 4 white activists to join the struggle in Selma, saved West’s life when she had unwittingly walked right in front of a police officer hunting down civil rights activists.

Webb also used to ask male leaders in the movement, like Jesse Jackson, to walk her home to keep her safe. Because these men used their mediated male privilege to protect her, Webb was able to go to and from the meetings with a sense of safety other women and girls may not have had. (Though obviously, violence against black men was such that her sense of safety may have been largely false tho it was certainly safer than being a young girl alone on the road.) As such, she became the source of information about the civil right meetings and organizing for her local school and at home. Children and teachers throughout Clark School were galvanized by her stories and the movement grew.

My teachers would ask me questions when I used to go to school. They used to ask me questions because they were afraid to come to meetings and they knew that I was there . . . (ibid)

Webb and West presence helped strengthen civil rights organizers much older than her, including Martin Luther King Jr. himself. Their commitment to the cause at such a young age inspired others to keep fighting even in the face of reprisal and state sanctioned violence. Webb also strengthened marches that day and organizers at church meetings with her amazing singing voice. After their initial meeting with Dr. King, he would let them come up to the front and sit on his lap, often asking them to sing to inspire the congregation. One of the songs she often sang was “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around,” a song later made popular for mainstream audiences by Joan Baez and Pete Seeger.

(In the video below, deaf students perform the song at Gallaudet University)

Rachel West also sang for civil rights leaders at these meetings. She recalls that the song she sung most often was a localized version of “Come by Here Lord.” :

Come by here my Lord, Come by here,

Come by here my Lord, come by here.

Come by here my Lord, come by here.

Oh Lord, come by here.

Oh, Lord, come by here.

(Eyes on the Prize)

Selma needs you Lord, come by here.

Selma needs you Lord, come by here.

Selma needs you Lord, come by here.

This song would later inspire the title of a book the girls collaborated on, discussed below.

Even though Webb was only 8 years old, she was not naive. Her parents warnings and the growing violence around her made her acutely aware of the price of civil disobedience. When she and West decided to participate in the March from Selma, Webb wrote her obituary just in case she did not make it back:

Sheyann Webb, 8 years, was killed today in Selma. She was one of Dr. King freedom fighters. She was a student at Clark School, Selma. Sheyann want all people to be free and happy. (CNN)

Like others, 8 year old Sheyann was willing to give up her life for equality.

(Sheyann Webb 8 knelt down on curb, Racehl West 9, standing behind her at the Edmond Petis Bridge the day of the first March)

On Sunday March 7, 1965, both girls joined the march despite having been forbade by their parents to participate. Asd they approached the bridge, fear got the best of Rachel and she ran away. Mrs. Margaret Moore, one of Sheyann’s black female school teachers, took Sheyann’s hand and vowed to stay with as they continued to march. This act of intergenerational feminist solidarity likely saved the Sheyann from being trampled when the police later beat down and drove the crowd back.

Webb remembers Moore’s words to this day:

Baby, Don’t be afraid. I know your young, but don’t be afraid. (Interview)

Those words held Webb together despite the growing urge to run. When the tear gas hit the crowd and she finally did run, prominent freedom fighter, Hosea Williams, scooped her up to carry her to safety but she told him to put her down and made it home safely on her own.

the experience that I had as a child crossing the Edmund Pettus (ph) Bridge, really made me understand what the movement was truly about. The picture of Bloody Sunday has never left my mind, neither my heart.(CNN)

Webb’s involvement in that first attempt to march was not unpunished. White school teachers and students harassed and threatened her regularly after the march.  Other white people in her town also threatened her parents and their home if Webb did not stop participating in the movement.

West recalls her older sister being put in a sweatbox by the police just for being part of their family. Two of her other sisters were thrown in jail for helping out civil rights workers with the registration effort.

Despite the increasing threats and the toll it was taking on her school work, Webb determined to march again. Rachel West did as well. They were among the crowd on March 21st again joined by fellow feminist & civil rights advocate and teacher Mrs. Moore. (Dr. King had both women shuttled in a van for 50% of the march after learning Sheyann did not have permission from her parents to be there. It was an unfortunate act of patriarchy that prevented both women from doing what they had set out to do in order to “protect them.”)

Years later, Sheyann Web and Rachel West would collaborate with journalist Frank Sikora on a memoir of their experience as the youngest women in the civil rights movement in Alabama. The book was called Selma Lord Selma. It would later win book awards and be turned into a low budget Disney film starring Jurnee Smollet. Smollet would go on to star in the Great Debaters having been partially inspired by her role in Selma Lord Selma.

Sheyann Webb is currently the Coordinator of Student Activities at Alabama State University and Director of KEEP, a youth empowerment and education program for children 2-18, once again reminding us of the enduring commitment to education that is part of black social justice in N. America. She continues to give talks on the importance of youth involvement in social justice and her experiences as a youth in the civil rights movement to college campuses and other organizations.

Rachel West has largely staid out of the limelight.

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images

• Sheyann Webb unattributed
• Rachel West unattributed
• The prayer on the bridge before the march unattributed
• the cover of Selma Lord Selma

Resources for Radical Black Women (And All Y’All Too)

—- post edited due to thought police intervention —–

I stumbled on Alexis Pauline Gumbs DIY site for radical feminists of color and it is amazing!!! So, since I cannot talk about revolution in my classes today, lest I encourage them to topple the economic disparity that is riddling the nation’s campuses or at least the one here at Pov U (ok, yes I can, but I’m not supposed to . . .) I’m passing the revolution on to you. Go visit this site for radical zines, tools for healing and love, good reads, and a brilliant and beautiful look into what young feminists of color are up to in this crazy crazy world.

Are you still here? Go there NOW!!!

BHM: The Obama Puzzle

I have to teach today, so I am giving you a game to play for today’s Black Herstory Month post. You should recognize the image from a critical moment in the shifting of this nation’s political landscape.

While Barack Obama was not the first black presidential hopeful to grace the DNC, he was the first to be the nominee. Making Michelle Obama the first black woman to have a 50% chance of becoming first lady at the time this photo was taken.

I am going to do a post on Michelle Obama later this month because I think the work she has done in her own right and as part of this history making family require their own attention. As I’ve said before, she inspires me to be a better woman. For now, enjoy the distraction. 😀

PS. Don’t forget to tell me if you liked it. It’s my first puzzle and embedding on wordpress is a pain. 😀

BHM: Joan Gibson, Rosa Parks, and the Women’s Political Counsel

(Bus Boycott Mosaic co Prof Susurro; mugshots found at Smoking Gun)

Often when we think about the Bus Boycotts and the start of the civil rights movement, we think of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. The importance of these iconic figures cannot be underestimated. At the same time, the emphasis on extraordinary figures rather than extraordinary acts in the face of ordinary discrimination, mask the wide body of individuals who help make a movement. And as I have argued in a previous post, this masking of ordinary folk for extraordinary ones, often done on gender lines. Thus while we do canonize Rosa Parks, the civil rights movement and the bus boycott are often re/membered as male.

The reality is that the bus boycotts could not have been successful without the participation of black women. At the very basic level, it was black women who had to ride the bus on the long trips to and from their own neighborhoods to those of the white people’s homes in which many of them worked. While black men also rode the bus, the majority of riders were women; meaning, if women did not boycott the bus protest would not have succeeded. At the same time, when the protests occurred, we cannot forget that black men provided needed escort and rides to women as part of the effort and that sympathetic white people also provided rides in solidarity. These actions illustrate how solidarity across identities is essential to ensuring the equality of both people of color and women. And in a world that has increasingly failed to mobilize successful boycotts or support needed boycotts and girlcotts, the most recent being the disdain showered on the gay community for calling for boycotts of businesses that supported prop 8 or some white feminists decision to stand in solidarity with Seal Press against the women of color they called “haters” and said spoke “best in conflict” and admitted to publishing less in the past few years b/c they were “focused on sexuality” as if women of color have none, I think the example of the busboycott and the women who made it happen is a critical one.

“I called two or three people, and I stood right there for several hours because I was just so happy not to see anybody on it. It’s a feeling of such happiness and accomplishment that you just can’t quite explain.” – Thelma Glass, member of the Women’s Political Counsel (Montgomery Advertiser)

The Women’s Political Counsel

Mary Fair Burks, an academic and activist who would later give up her teaching position in solidarity with several black faculty who were fired for civil rights activism, founded the Women’s Political Counsel in 1946 in Montgomery Alabama. Its founding was the direct result of the intersection of race and gender; that same year, Burks had been arrested in a traffic incident in which she was arrested for defending herself against the white woman who had caused it. The male police officer struck Burks in the face and aggressively dragged her to the police car before arresting her. Burks felt that unequal treatment under the law had gone unchecked in Alabama far too long. More than that, she wanted to ensure that African American women, who had no legal access to “womanhood” and “innocence,” knew their rights and were able to advocate for themselves.

Burks had long challenged segregation on her own referring to transgressions against “whites only” bathrooms, elevators, and fountains as “my own private guerrilla warfare.” (Burks 1990) Thus she used her own experiences to help empower other women to know how to challenge the system successfully.

The WPC focused on three areas of empowerment:

1. education
2. political equality
3. equal access to services

In its first 4 years, the WPC grew from 40 women to over 300. As part of their commitment to political equality, all of their members were registered to vote. They also appointed a group of women, including Thelma Glass, quoted above, to act as advocates at voter registration and the police station. Their job was to support, advocate, and report, so that discrimination no longer went on behind closed doors.

Joan Gibson (Robinson)

In 1950, Joan Gibson (Robinson), another academic, took over the organization and increased the focus on bus segregation. Since many African American women were dependent on the transit system to make the long journery to and from work, the rule of making black people sit in the back 1/3 of the bus and exit when the first 2/3 were full and white people continued to board, was particularly taxing on them.  Worse, since they were seen as immanently violatable, being ejected from the bus outside of urban centers could prove particularly dangerous for them. Not only did they face long walks, or waits, but also the threat of assault.

In may of 1954, shortly after the outcome of Brown v The Board of Ed, Robinson wrote the mayor warning that if something was not done about segregation in Alabama the WPC would encourage a boycott of the bus system and other segregated services.

Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955 the issue came to ahead, when NAACP secretary, Rosa Parks not only refused to give up her seat but also to move to the back of the bus. When confronted by police officers, Parks said she would rather be arrested than dehumanized. Her arrest was the spark the WPC and other civil rights advocates needed for the bus boycott. And in the days to come, she would give both eloquent and defiant speeches about the equality of black women and black people.

As well all know, Rosa Parks’actions would become a rallying cry for women and men in the civil rights movement and her image would symbolize the dual needs for equality amongst women, people of color, and women of color in particular. Her statement that she was tired and had worked hard all day and therefore should not have to move, also motivated people to discuss the treatment of care workers, women’s labor, and the space for solidarity between white women employers and their largely black female workforce. Discussions that continue to this day.

Mary Louis Smith & Claudette Colvin

Several women began to challenge segregated bus policies by refusing to give up their seats. 18 year old Mary Louis Smith defied authorities and remained in her seat on a crowded Montgomery bus before 1955, ultimately being ejected by the bus driver and police. Claudette Colvin was only 15 years old when she refused to give up her seat in March of 1955. She was the first black woman/girl to be arrested that year for challenging the system. While both women gave testimony in the Browder vs. Gayle case that desegregated the buses, neither was chosen to be the face of the movement.

While the WPC has been instrumental in consciousness raising and advocacy for black women, it had not challenged traditional female roles nor class differences. For instance, Joan Gibson, always went by her married name Joan Robinson even though she had gotten divorced after becoming the head of the WPC. The membership of the WPC was decidedly middle class, married, and traditional.

Smith’s well known alcoholic father was seen as a distraction to the movement. The WPC worried that people would not rally around a girl whose father could be found drunk in the streets. Nor were they willing to embrace 15 year old Claudette who was known to be sexually active and unmarried. (Many histories erroneously report that Claudette was pregnant at the time of her bus arrest, but the birth of her first son was over 9 months after her arrest.) Interestingly, Claudette had been the test case as she was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and had been an active participant in discussions about bus segregation.

Colvin said her civil disobedience in 1955 came soon after studying her heritage in school and hearing teachers talk about the injustices against African Americans, including the Jim Crow laws. She was inspired and supported by two teachers. (Montgomery Advertiser)

Claudette’s books had been thrown off the bus first and then she was dragged off herself. After her arrest, rather than being embraced, she felt young people in her neighborhood distanced themselves from her as “a troublemaker.” Yet her own faith in the cause kept her from wavering and she is largely credited by scholars as a key figure even though history and museums have largely erased her efforts.

The Bus Boycott

Between Dec. 1 and Dec. 5, 1955 the WPC mobilized a massive effort to raise awareness about the impending Boycott. All of their members were sent out to leaflet neighborhoods, businesses, and churches. They activated a massive phone tree not only to get the word out but also to organize alternative transportation and walking groups (groups of women on their own and/or flanked by men to get to work). Thelma Glass describes her own car as its own bus service, as she and other members of the WPC shuttled everyone they knew in groups to and from work for the entire year.

The result was that the buses were completely empty on Dec. 5 and that they continued to remain that way throughout the year.

The WPC and the women’s wing of the NAACP also took on the bulk of the care work necessary to support bus boycotters turned full fledged civil rights activists. They provided food, clothing, and shelter to families who lost their jobs or primary breadwinners in their families as a result of civil rights activity and police brutality. They also provided childcare for women and men attending civil rights meetings. Some also helped provide traige medical care, based on knowledge and supplies gained as nurses, and in transporting wounded activists to friendly hospitals. Their care work, though gendered, was invaluable to the survival of the movement.

The WPC’s efforts were also instrumental in getting people to come out to the midday church meeting held during Dec. 5, 1955. That meeting is largely credited as the first meeting of the modern civil rights movement. On that day, they elected Martin Luther King Jr. to head the new Montgomery Improvement Association which would began by challenging the buses.

In recognition of the WPC’s instrumental contribution, Robinson was voted onto the exec board. She also became the editor of the MIA paper, the source for much of the early information on the civil rights struggle in Alabama.

The Battle with the Law

Several women were arrested as part of the boycott efforts including those pictured in the mosaic at the beginning of this post: Everetta Adair, Addie Hamerter, Alberta James, Jo Ann Robinson, Irene A.W. West Sr., Cora McHaney, Mentha Johnson, Ida Mae Caldwell, Audrey Belle Langford, and Lottie Green Varner. The entire membership of the MIA was also arrested later that year in the hopes of busting the boycott, among the women arrested were Robinson, Parks, and West. Rather than hampering the movement, these arrests galvanized neighboring towns and cities and lit the spark of civil rights across the nation.

In 1960 both Burks and Robinson were investigated for their civil rights activities by an organization that gave heavily to the university where they taught. While Burks resigned, writing to Dr. King about the future of her employment, Robinson was fired. Both women went on to work in other universities outside of Alabama but their loss to the state was immeasurable.

Both women continued to be active advocates for women’s rights, education reform and equity, and civil rights until they died.

——

more info:

• Black Past, University of Washington
• Burks, Mary Fair. “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” in Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965, ed. Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods (1990); Daily Times, Obituary (July 25, 1991).
• Martin Luther King, Clayborne Carson, Peter Holloran, Ralph Luker, Penny A. Russell, Tenisha Armstrong, Adrienne Clay. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Threshold of a New Decade, January 1959-December 1960 CA: University of California Press, 1992
• Montgomer Advertiser

Freedom Schools: A little More on the Importance of Radical Pedagogy and Social Justice

“The atmosphere in the class is unbelievable. It is what every teacher dreams about — real, honest enthusiasm and desire to learn anything and everything. The girls come to class of their own free will. They respond to everything that is said. They are excited about learning. They drain me of everything that I have to offer so that I go home at night completely exhausted but very happy in spirit…”  — Pam Parker

The Freedom Schools challenged not only Mississippi but the nation. There was, to begin with, the provocative suggestion that an entire school system can be created in any community outside the official order, and critical of its suppositions. – Howard Zine

The pedagogical imperative of freedom schools:

In the matter of classroom procedure, questioning is the vital tool.

Freedom schools began out of a struggle for relevant and equal education for black students, as well as an offshoot of existing radicalization of the left by violent abuses of African American people in the South. After over 100 African American students were expelled from school for daring to question racial inequality and engaging in social justice activities, education efforts became part of the SNCC organizing agenda.

A women’s college in Ohio volunteered to be the site of teacher training for the freedom schools. As an important part of women’s history, the classes were largely taught by white women hoping to stand in solidarity with their black sisters and brothers. Black women also provided the backbone of the daily running of the schools, working alongside these white teachers. While there were some problems, black female students in particular felt empowered by the freedom school experience.

(Learn More about the Freedom Schools here)

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all quotes come from here

Black Women in Education – Thanks Stephanie Evans!

While updating the “Historical Readings List” page, I came across a video by Dr. Stephanie Evans, professor of Women’s Studies and African American Studies at the University of Florida Gainsville. She wrote one of the books recommended by another black feminist blogger on the HRL, who has since closed down her blog. Her research is on black women’s contributions to education in the U.S. and as part of her own feminist commitment to ensuring we know women’s history she made this video:

Since education is such a core part of how African American women influenced political change and social justice, it is only fitting to start my Black Herstory Month with this great video. 😀

Black History Month!: Important Black Women Quiz

(quiz link is at the bottom of the post)

It is almost February, the shortest month of the year, so you know what that means . . . Black History Month!

(this amazing image is unattributed -grr- comes from here)

As long time readers know, last year I did a post on African-American feminists as part of my multicultural feminism(s) series (see sidebar for other multiculti feminisms links). I also decided to celebrate Female Presidents of African descent and key figures in African American women’s political history with a pictorial post at the end of black history month 2008. Despite the later having very little accompanying text, it was one of the most widely read pieces on the old blog – widely being defined as a geographic location – and was among one of a handful of posts that steadily brought in readers. Clearly there is a thirst for knowledge about black female political leadership.

Now I’d like to delve a little deeper into that same narrative of African American female political and social justice leadership by doing a series this month on African American women who have changed our political landscape. I have defined the category narrowly in the sense that I have not included female performers while I do think that artists, blues singers, and actresses did help shift the black political landscape by nature of being visible, regularly present, and often contributing subtly and/or pointedly subversive texts to the world. Instead, I am going to focus on African American women who started or participated in political parties and movements, as well as held government offices. And I am going to try and choose people you may be less familiar with, while still honoring those whom we should all already know.

At the same time, since I teach media, I also want to focus this month on African American women Directors, since many of them are unsung heroines of the craft who have given their savings, labor, and personal lives over to breaking into an industry that continues to largely exclude them. I hope that by highlighting them, I will encourage all of you to go out and watch their films an write reviews, encourage others to rent or purchase their films, and help keep their industry afloat in a world that has become less open to African American cinema rather than more open. And while I’m going to represent their craft and commitment here at the spot, I’ll admit that not all of them will be people whose films I have seen in advance; so in a way, this is a challenge for me to go out and do the work that I am hoping to foster with you, my new readers.

So, to start the ball rolling. Here is a quiz on “Important African American Women throughout history.” If you take the quiz, come back and tell us how you did. 😀

for quiz click here