The Importance Of Black Women In The 1866 Memphis Riot

Whatever the woman said it was treated as evidence, despite the story of the Afro-American. Southern white claimed to be the “guardians of the honor of Southern white women” because they were in charge of taking the Afro-American to trial and lynching them when charged with “rape”. They did it in hoped of making it clear that whites were the dominant race and to draw fear towards the Afro-Americans so they wouldn’t get involved with their Southern white ladies. It had a very double standard feel because for Southern white men, they could have an affair with an Afro-American woman and everything would be okay. It wouldn't be viewed as rape. As well as a Southern white male could rape an African American female, and they wouldn’t get lynched. The white male would be set free with a slap on the wrist. This Antebellum era was very sexist and racist and Ida B. Wells knew that, and the Southern whites knew that she knew that so they were doing everything in their power to stop her from getting the word

In a time period when women were considered inferior, as were blacks, it was unimaginable the horrors a black woman in the south had to endure during this period. African women were slaves and subject to the many horrors that come along with being in bondage, but because they were also women, they were subject to the cruelties of men who look down on women as inferior simply because of their sex. The sexual exploitation of these females often lead to the women fathering children of their white masters. Black women were also prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse, including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself she was often subjected to further beatings from the master. The black female was forced into sexual relationships for the slave master’s pleasure and profit. By doing this it was the slave owner ways of helping his slave population grow.

Another victim of white on black rape was Betty Jean Owens, she was kidnapped from a school dance and taken into the woods and was gang raped by four white different men. Betty was so hurt from this rape she was sent to the hospital. When the students from the school she attended in Tallahassee, Florida had heard about the rape they were enraged, “Early the next day more than a thousand students gathered in the university’s grassy quadrangle with signs, hymns, and prayers aimed at the national news media, which sent stories of the attack across the country” (McGuire 136). These students were no longer going to sit back and watch the women they love and care about get raped and treated as though they aren’t human. They were letting the world

Similarly, Patricia Hill’s work “Black Feminist Thought” explains the need for black feminism. For Hill U.S. black feminism is needed in order for black women to survive, cope with, and resist their differential treatment in society. Black feminist thought creates a collective identity among this marginalized group of African-American women. Hill provides several features that make U.S. Black feminist thought different than any other set of feminism. The first feature Hill speaks about is ‘blackness’ it is this concept that makes U.S. black feminist a different group that suffers a “double oppression”. Thus, U.S. Black women collectively participate in a dialectical relationship which links African American women’s oppression and activism. Hill speaks on the U.S. black feminist thought and the dilemma they face in American society. During the women’s right movement there was a tremendous difference between black and white women’s experiences, “while women of color were urged, at every turn, to become permanently infertile, white women enjoying prosperous economic conditions were urged, by the same forces, to reproduce themselves”. It is this difference in attitudes that demonstrate why there is a need to focuses on the linkage of experiences and ideas experienced by the black women in America. Consequently, Davis analyzes the hypocritical differences of the government of the

On January, 23 1906 a white woman named Nevada Taylor was dropped off the bus station in Chattanooga, Tennessee at 6:30 p.m. only two and half blocks from her home. Little did she know she was being followed? A man grabbed her by the neck and drug her ten feet before throwing her over a fence. She screamed and struggled as he put a leather strap around her neck and threatened to cut her throat. Taylor accounts waking up about ten minutes later in torn and dirty clothes covered in bruises. Her doctor later confirmed she had been raped. She claimed to have never of saw the face of the attacker but he had a soft voice of a black man. During this time of prejudice, segregation and hatred towards Negros was just a way of life for the

In 1910, a group of black women activist in Savannah spoke about the brutal lynching of eleven African Americans. They spoke against the brutal lynching of Mary Turner who was capture and murder with her eight months old unborn child (445). They saw this as injustice because they brutally murder a pregnant woman who was protesting the murder of her husband and was accused of killing a white person (445). The outrage felt by Black women call for the establishment of Federation of City Colored Women’s Club. The women passed a resolution that they send to President Woodrow Wilson, Governor Hugh Dorsey, and the president of the state and local white women’s club federations who allowed them to published their resolution in the Savannah Tribune titled “Negro Women Hold Humiliation Service.” This was a way of protesting against the brutality against women who had a similar experience as Mary Turner

In 1865-1900 the Civil War caused empty jobs, so women filled these positions till they came back. Once the soldiers came back, the women lost their jobs, having to go back to their previous way of living. Women, after the war, occupied nursing.

Is the paper well-structured? Do parts fit together to back up the author 's argument?

In America, rape has been around since the 1800’s. Rape culture in the U.S. started with white men raping black women during slavery and unfortunately it was allowed. When black women were raped, they wouldn’t consider it a crime because it was the norm. According to the article, “History of the Rape Crisis Movement” written by Gillian Greensite, “White men would get in groups and rape black women.” African American women had no rights and therefore no voice to protest these action until 1866, when a group of African American women finally spoke out about being raped during a memphis riot by a gang of white men. (Sniffen)

Minrose Gwin‘s book, Black and White Women of the Old South, argues that history has problems with objectiveness. Her book brings to life interesting interpretations on the view of the women of the old south and chattel slavery in historical American fiction and autobiography. Gwin’s main arguments discussed how the white women of the south in no way wanted to display any kind of compassion for a fellow woman of African descent. Gwin described the "sisterhood" between black and white women as a "violent connection"(pg 4). Not only that, Gwin’s book discusses the idea that for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, a black woman usually got subjected to displacement of sexual and mental

Black feminists have investigated how rape as a specific form of sexual violence is embedded in a system of interlocking race, gender, and class oppression (Davis 1978, 1981, 1989; Hall 1983). Reproductive rights issues such as access to information on sexuality and birth control, the struggles for abortion rights, and patterns of forced sterilization have also garnered attention

“He told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his…” The treatment of slaves varied in their personal experiences as well as in the experiences of others they knew, but Harriet Jacobs phenomenally described the dynamics of the relationship between many female slaves and their superiors with these words from her personal narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Before slavery was outlawed it was not uncommon for young female slaves to be sexually abused and exploited by their masters. Although many people know about the cruelty of the sexual assaults that made too many young girls victims of rape in the Antebellum South, most people are unaware of the complexity of the issue and how many different ways these women were abused.

In an attempt to define Black Feminism, Collins clarifies that it must “avoid the idealist position that ideas can be evaluated in isolation from the groups that create them (Collins 385).” This clarification forms her basis for why Black Feminism is necessary, and who it serves. Thinking about feminism historically, the concerns of black women were pushed aside in favor of fighting sexism; a notable example occurs within the Suffrage movement, where votes for white women were prioritized over women of color in order to push such legislation through. And even when feminism began looking at other social injustices, such as racism and class issues, often only prominent feminists were invited to the discussion. What resulted was, and often continues to be, a problem of white women speaking for oppressed people. It’s impossible, Collins argues, to have Black Feminist thought without examining the experiences and positions of African American women. Therefore, Black Feminism must be a movement that “encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live in it (Collins 386).” However, such a definition brings about many questions:

In an attempt to define Black Feminism, Collins clarifies that it must “avoid the idealist position that ideas can be evaluated in isolation from the groups that create them (Collins 385).” In reality, this forms her basis for why Black Feminism is necessary, and who it serves. Thinking about feminism historically, the concerns of black women were pushed aside in favor of fighting sexism, most notably during the Suffrage movement. And even when feminism began looking at other social injustices, such as racism and class issues, only prominent feminists were invited to the discussion. What resulted was, and often continues to be, a problem of white women speaking for oppressed people. It’s impossible, Collins argues, to have Black Feminist thought without examining the experiences and positions of African American women. Therefore, Black Feminism must be a movement that “encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live in it (Collins 386).” However, such a definition brings about many questions: who’s experiences are valued, how do black women take their voice back, and how can they center feminist thinking on their own unique standpoint?

White’s feminist and racial analysis of slavery in the American South shows how white men used the perceived sensuality and promiscuity of slave women to justify their physical and sexual abuse. It also acted as a foil for the sexual restraint and virtue expected of white women. White women created an identity as the social and moral superiors of black women. This perpetuated the cycle of slavery and the mistreatment of black women in America.