African American Women Of The North And South During The War

“Zorthian” Harris became the first black woman to hold a Cabinet position in 1977. She was questioned at one of her hearings if she could accomplish her job being African American, she replied, “Senator, I am one of them,” Harris said. ”You do not understand who I am. I am a black woman, the daughter of a dining car worker. I am a black woman who even eight years ago could not buy a house in parts of the District of Columbia. I did not start out as a member of a prestigious law firm, but as a woman who needed the scholarship to go to school. If you think I have forgotten that, you are wrong.”. Barbara Jordan was the first African American to be president of the Texas Senate and also served in The House Of Representatives. She was most well known in the Watergate scandal and was the first African American keynote speaker for the Democratic National Convention. Woman have done many things to try to change the way things are and made an impact on what woman can do today career-wise and many other things. Woman have made a large impact on many things, not just government and have given future woman more opportunities to gain jobs or get the same education and a lot more

The 1930’s were hard times for the entire working class, but as usual in history, minorities were hit the hardest. Especially the African American society had to suffer the most under the effects of the great economic depression; they were the first to be discharged from their jobs and the last to be hired. African Americans were even pushed out of jobs, which were previously scorned out by whites. Even if they were allowed to keep their jobs, they still had to face daily racism. Compared to the white folks, the wages of African American workers were at least 30% below white’s wages, even when performing the same job; considering, that even the normal wage of a white American was not enough to cover the subsistent level of expanses of a household.

They never were able to enjoy the luxury of womanhood. As one historian said, "being a women never saved a single female from hard labor, beatings, rape, family separation, and death" (“Women in the Civil War”). Many women had to do the work of their partners. (“Women in the Civil War.”)

I learned how Ida B. Wells-Barnett started her life. Born as a slave, orphaned at 16, she became a teacher to support her surviving brothers and sisters. With the difficult circumstances brought upon her, it took an amazing amount of determination for her to fight for black civil rights and women’s rights in the 19th century. In a more civilized age, it’s harder to witness the courage she represented for the disadvantaged.

Traditionally, African Americans were not even allowed an education. The racism of American citizens prevented that right. As civil rights were getting ratified, that fact change. However, it moved slower with African American women. Despite that, some great African American women were able to learn practical and technical skills that lead to the advancement of African Americans.

African American women in the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, the National Urban League, to name a few organizations, were very prominent in the civil rights era. They “sought Black women’s full rights as women and as citizens, repeatedly insisting that women’s rights to good schools, jobs, and protection from physical and sexual assault were essential planks in the black freedom struggle” (Feminism Unfinished, 5). Addie Wyatt is an example of what the average woman of color experienced in the job force after the war. Addie Wyatt was a leader in the United States Labor movement, and a civil rights activist. Wyatt is known for being the first African-American woman to hold senior office in an American labor union, the United Packinghouse

As their social class and society disintegrated around them, some women struggled to manage slave-worked planting fields or command female households, while others performed paid jobs in schools as teachers, in hospitals as nurses, and government occupations across the Confederacy. Lizzie Neblett, a Texan housewife, for example, gained more pivotal duties in a short span of time than she ever had in her entire life, she found strenuous labor especially cumbersome physically and mentally.

African American women had a huge impact on impact of society. For many years African American women fought for their equal rights. These women fought for every woman to have a voice to prove that a woman can do anything a man can. They started by protesting for women's rights. They wore and held high in the sky to prove they mean it. We have women battling through breast cancer and they are not giving up. As long as you fight and never give up you shall reach your goal.

It’s through these Black women that social transformation was achieved when racial segregation and other forms of oppressions were effectively turned into social action. Black women took on community oriented activism rather than their counterparts who concentrated on institutions and power. Working in an institutional set up led to people being held up informal board meetings strategizing in a significant scale. However what was more important was community engagement by bridge leaders who carried out civic education on the relevance of the civil rights movements and fighting myths and propaganda being fronted by those who were against the association. The major advantage of these is that the black community remained united and committed to the noble cause of fighting segregation.

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust chronicles the transition of women’s roles and attitudes in the South during the Civil War. The work of Faust does not only deal with the roles of women but also the changing attitudes of men in relation to the status of women in the South. The war itself was integral in the transformation of women and would bring about these changes for the better but would be painful for many who were raised in the subservient culture of southern society. With attitudes and the environment of a world without men, women were forced to change as were the patriarchs of the society who were no longer able to cling to outdated gender roles. Faust points

In a time when great uncertainty and chaos permeated throughout the United States, the Civil War necessitated the involvement of millions of Americans. Among those millions, women found themselves in conditions that had been previously unknown to them. Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, written in 1863, exemplifies a Northern woman's changing role in society as she enters the previously unchartered territory of war. New conditions aside, one cannot argue that the Civil War solved gender inequality in the United States. How, then, was the Civil War simultaneously a step forward and a step backward for Northern women? The Civil War indeed broadened the scope of a Northern woman’s position in society militarily, professionally, and politically. However, as shown by Hospital Sketches protagonist, Tribulation Periwinkle’s, position as an army nurse, those opportunities did not extend outside the domestic sphere to which women had been confined since the creation of the United States.

Here, Shetterly establishes the type of labor generally available to black women at the time when Langley opened its doors to them. Shetterly is about to show us how much more they are capable of, and how much they are able to prove themselves once they get higher level jobs. This contrast drives home the injustice of the denial of equal opportunity for black women.

The United States has observed an era of progressive activism for women. But, feminism is by its nature a complex notion and one can’t fully appreciate its effectiveness forgetting the aspect of ethnic discriminations in the country (Collin, p.p 47). Race matters exist in diverse places and at unusual times under extensively unreliable circumstances. It is different from white feminism as they have managed to attain their own freedom in a different way. This was because Black women were hardly seen as an active figure in such movements over the history. Currently, the issues of black feminism are hardly discussed at any forum. One must agree with the fact that black women have now managed to get significant positions in many fields.

In the movie Hidden Figures, African American women are portrayed as uneducated by white men. In order to find the calculations to launch the spaceflight program, it required a fair amount of time and effort to put in. The main character Katherine G. Johnson put in her all and found the perfect solution to the calculations even

The 1850’s was a very challenging time for minority groups in the United States, especially for African American women. It was a time where slavery was ungovernable. There were unfair conditions such as discrimination against job, education and equal rights. This speech not only tells a story from the speaker’s perspective but it also gives you a real insight on what it was to be a black woman in the women’s suffrage era. Women were looked over in every aspect of society. Men felt inferior to women. They felt that there were certain things women just could not do. Women were seen as fragile and in need of protection from society. But Sojourner Truth challenges all of those thoughts with this strong and powerful speech “A’r’nt I Woman.” She brings the real issues women face in life to the center stage of attention.