Womanism

“I am a black feminist… I recognize that my power as well as my primary obsessions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable” … As a woman of color, I find that some feminists don’t seem terribly concerned with the issues unique to women of color—the ongoing effects of racism and post-colonialism, the status of women in the Third World, working against the trenchant archetypes black women are forced into (angry black woman, mammy, hottentot, and the like). (Gay 173).

Patricia Hill Collins’s work, Black Feminist Thought seeks to center Black Women into intersectionalist thought, addressing the power struggles that face them not only due to their race but also to the gender. Masculine rhetoric and powerful male leaders such as Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver have overshadowed Black Women’s stories, both in and out of the Civil Right Rights/Black Power

African American women have long been stereotyped, discriminated against and generalized in this country. They have had to face both being black in America while also being a woman in America. African American women encountered and still do encounter double discrimination of both sex and race (Cuthbert, 117). Women like Elise Johnson McDougald, Marion Vera Cuthbert and Alice Dunbar-Nelson all tried to shed light on what it was like to be an African American woman living in the 20th century yet literature often portrayed them as emotional, hypersexual, unintelligent and of lesser worth. The literature highlighted that African American women have to serve both their employer and their husbands and families. They are not supposed to have an opinion or stand up for themselves, especially to a white man. ***Concluding sentence?

To be a woman meant that one had no say in regards to political affairs or in government making decisions. If being a woman had limitations, imagine what a black woman experienced, as they were considered less than human and mistreated more than any other female from any different background. In “A Plea for the Oppressed”, Lucy Stanton, one such black woman, tried to avail her people’s plight upon an audience of white women, to support the antislavery and reform cause.

The role of women in society has grown and changed tremendously with the development of the world. Within the American culture, women’s rights have expanded to the extent of being able to vote for who runs our country or even possibly being the person that does run our country. Although the American culture has somewhat promoted the growth of a woman’s role in society, does not mean women receive the same respect in other cultures around world. For example, in Africa women are viewed lower on the totem pole of importance even though without them the village would fall apart. Chinua Achebe is an author that was born and raised in a village of Nigeria. From growing up there, Achebe understands the culture of Africa better than

Harriet Tubman was an African American bondwomen who escaped slavery in the south. Harriet Tubman became famous as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad during the turbulent 1850s. Tubman was born a slave, she worked in the field ever since she was old enough to walk. She also endured brutal beatings. She couldn’t deal with the horrible life style she lived any longer. Tubman decided that it was time for a change. Though she was a slave, she was smart enough to come up with a master plan to get away from it all and take her people with her. In 1849 she fled slavery, leaving her husband and family behind in order to escape. Despite a bounty on her head, she returned to the South at least 19 times to lead her family and hundreds of other slaves to freedom using the Underground Railroad. Slaves suffered and weren’t treated fairly. Every slave wanted to be free and many attempted to escape but Harriet was the only one who didn’t get captured. “She was one of very few women whose escape from slavery was widely publicized in her own time among antislavery activists, and was virtually the only women celebrated as a guide for fleeing fugitives.” (Humez 5) Harriet’s bravery is what freed many slaves and also gave many slaves hope that they would see better days. She led her people to a new world where slavery was abolished. Harriet Tubman’s accomplishments and bravery as a leader on the Underground

Harriet Tubman, an African American slave during the early 1800s, believed she deserved to be treated with respect and have a better life. What stopped her were her surroundings, she saw others like her who were treated like a piece of trash on the side of a road and wanted them to have a better life as well. Harriet Tubman’s many contributions as the “conductor” of the Underground Railroad and a civil rights activist helped many African Americans thrive.

Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? details the grueling experiences of the African American female slaves on Southern plantations. White resented the fact that African American women were nearly invisible throughout historical text, because many historians failed to see them as important contributors to America’s social, economic, or political development (3). Despite limited historical sources, she was determined to establish the African American woman as an intricate part of American history, and thus, White first published her novel in 1985. However, the novel has since been revised to include newly revealed sources that have been worked into the novel. Ar’n’t I a Woman? presents African American females’ struggle with race and

This critical reflection will focus the very interesting things that were written about women and their role in that resistance of slavery in “Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves” by Angela Davis and “Hard Labour: Women, Childbirth and Resistance in British Caribbean Slave Societies” by Barbara Bush-Slimani. Both authors focus on the fact that women are never recognized as being apart of slave revolts and sometimes are barely mentioned at all. Although both agree that there was a lot resistance on the women’s part they focus on different ways they expressed that resistance. Angela Davis speaks about visible acts of resistance and how treating black women no different than black men affected their actions. On the

The author(s) identifies the importance of Black women standing up and fighting for their own liberation, not only because they are the only ones willing to put in the strenuous time and effort

Slavery has always been an anomaly, although abolitionists such as Harriet Tubman did much to ameliorate, and later, abolish slavery. Harriet was a strong and courageous woman and a well-known conductor of the Underground Railroads, around the 1850s. Harriet Tubman personal experiences throughout her life have shaped her to become the stout-hearted woman who helped many slaves escape to freedom, by using the Underground Railroad—a network of secret routes.

In history, women have always struggled to gain equality, respect, and the same rights as men. Women had had to endure years of sexism and struggle to get to where we are today. The struggle was even more difficult for women of color because not only were they dealing with issues of sexism, but also racism. Many movements have helped black women during the past centuries to overcome sexism, racism, and adversities that were set against them. History tells us that movements such as the Feminist Movement helped empower all women, but this fact is not totally true. In this paper, I will discuss feminism, the movements, and its "minimal" affects on black women.

In the twentieth and twenty-first century, African American women have made considerable progress in history, politics, culture, religion, and in the economy. The contributions of the strong black female leaders such as Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Rosa Parks, and more currently; Oprah Winfrey, and Michelle Obama, all have influenced the history of the United States.

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:

It critically addresses the dynamics of the conflict between the main stream feminist, the Black Feminist, the African Feminist and the Africana Womanist. The conclusion is that Africana Womanism and its agenda are unique and separate from both white feminism and Black Feminism, and more over, to the extent of naming in particular, Africana Womanisms differs from Africana feminism”(Alexander-Floyd & Simien 2006: 67).