Black Women Have Shaped Our History
Justice for one is not justice for all. Progress for one minority group is sadly, not progress for others – not even their closest siblings. Behind every social movement are women – they’re behind every organization, every event, every piece of legislation. The Civil Rights Movement, the cornerstone of social movements in the US, was successful because of women. I don’t mean that they were great supporters of the Black men in the movement, or even that they played major roles – I mean that I’m pretty certain the Civil Rights Movement wouldn’t have succeeded if not for the women within it. The Bus Boycotts provide a great example. Seamstresses, maids, nannies and cooks made up the bulk of bus riders – and Black women were the people that held those jobs. The boycott would have failed without them. The leaders of Civil Rights groups were mostly Black women. Without them, protests and demonstrations would’ve fallen apart. Though they raised and shaped the movement, their roles were always overshadowed by men.
When we think of women involved in Civil Rights, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott-King come to mind. But Rosa isn’t just the seamstress who sat on the bus, nor is Coretta just MLK’s wife. Rosa Parks was involved with the NAACP since the 1940s and founded the NAACP Youth Council in Montgomery. She traveled around Alabama to interview victims of violence and discrimination and interview lynching witnesses. Though the story goes that Parks sat down in a white bus seat because she was an exhausted old woman, she stated herself in her autobiography; “I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was 42. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
In college, Coretta Scott-King received many academic accolades and was a member of her school’s chapter of the NAACP and Civil Rights Committees. During the Civil Rights Movement, she organized concerts and other events to raise money for the Southern christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), as well as served as a Women’s Strike for Peace Delegate which concerned disarmament. After MLK’s murder is when she truly stood out as a leader – very shortly after her husband’s death, she led a march for sanitation workers’ rights and a rally against the Vietnam War, as well as helped launch The Poor People’s Campaign. In the 70s and 80s, she formulated MLK day as a national holiday, participated in anti-apartheid protests, and was active in numerous women’s organizations.
These are just two of the most famous Civil Rights women, and even their fame and prominence didn’t give them as much recognition as their male counterparts. During the Civil Rights Movement, women were pushed to the side and often actively discriminated against. The March on Washington where MLK gave his “I Have a Dream Speech” was an event full of speakers and meetings. Women organized the bulk of the event, but were excluded from the speech roster and not invited to meet with President Kennedy later that evening. Sexual Harassment and sexist microaggressions also occurred across organizations and events, but were largely ignored.
The same struggle exists for Black trans women in Black social justice and LGBTQ+ movements. Though they have been instrumental in the movements’ success, they are often excluded from recognition, protection, and advocacy. In 2019, The American Medical Association declared the murders of Black trans women to be at epidemic levels. In 2022, the number of trans people reported killed reached its highest level, exceeding the record of 44 people from the year prior. Black Trans people in general face some of the highest rates of homelessness in this country. Groups often come together in the wake of police violence, but often only for male victims. Black cis and trans women who are victims of police brutality receive only fractions of the same attention and outrage (and media coverage). Progress for just cis Black men is not progress for all Black people.
The founders of the Black Lives Matter considered womens’ discrimination in social justice during the conception of the movement back in 2013. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi are the three women behind the movement. Sparked by the acquittal of George Zimmerman – the man who murdered Trayvon Martin, the women set out to create a movement without a leader. The movement is purposefully decentralized and guided by principles rather than a person. They also specifically wanted to create a movement where Black cis, queer, and trans women could be at the forefront of discussions and protests. They mention on their website:
“Black liberation movements in this country have created room, space, and leadership mostly for Black heterosexual, cisgender men — leaving women, queer and transgender people, and others either out of the movement or in the background to move the work forward with little or no recognition. As a network, we have always recognized the need to center the leadership of women and queer and trans people. To maximize our movement muscle, and to be intentional about not replicating harmful practices that excluded so many in past movements for liberation, we made a commitment to placing those at the margins closer to the center.”
I believe that racism and misogyny are symptoms of powerlessness. A book I once read theorized sexism has roots in feudalism – men served under oppressive rulers, and took out their frustrations by oppressing their wives and daughters. They didn’t know why they were doing it, but created narratives around femininity and masculinity to justify it. Suddenly if women defied narrow concepts, she was “wicked”. We know the same logic applies to racism – it started as an economic tool in the form of slavery, and later justified with things people essentially made up. From generation to generation, society has played into a game it doesn’t understand – following rules that have no meaning, beholden to baseless feelings about certain groups of people.
We can’t really escape this, at least not right now, but that’s why we need to be cognisant of it. As much as we’d like to believe minority groups automatically advocate for and accept other minority groups, they might not. In our modern Civil Rights movements, it’s important to not make the same mistakes that were made in the 50s and 60s (or in the 70s with racism in feminist movements). It’s important to understand our freedoms across the board statistically come from women of color and especially Black women. Womens’ rights, immigration rights, civil rights, gay rights, workers rights – Black women are leaders in all of those areas.
To conclude this article, I’d like to share a few of the many Black women who have led social movements. These women are not often spoken about, but have led and created organizations for the betterment of Black people. During this month – Womens’ History Month – and every day moving forward, remember the heroes who got us to where we are now, and remember that they’re Black women.
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha Johnson is mostly remembered for being the person to throw the first brick, starting the Stonewall Riots. Whether or not this is true, we will never know, but we do know that she helped the early LGBT rights movement in many ways. Along with Sylvia Rivera, she created Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries (STAR). Through STAR, she tried to keep young LGBT people and sex workers safe from rampant violence. She was the subject of many interviews, photographs, and art films (made by Andy Warhol), and was a frequent advocate for prison reform, anti-police violence, and anti-AIDS stigma.
Johnnie Carr
In 1955, shortly after Rosa Parks was arrested, Johnnie Carr helped form the Montgomery Improvement Association – the group that organized the Bus Boycotts. MLK was the group’s first president, and Carr was his successor. She held her role from 1967 until her death in 2008. Carr was childhood friends with Parks, as well as a member of the NAACP, where she was a secretary and youth group director. Throughout her life, she participated in Civil Rights initiatives, including raising money for the Scottsboro Trials, where nine Black men were falsely accused of assaulting a white woman. Her most influential action was her lawsuit against the Montgomery County Board of Education. She and her husband sued on behalf of their son to desegregate the school district. They won the case in 1969.
Ella Baker
While a student at Shaw University, Ella Baker consistently challenged her school’s racist policies. After graduating as valedictorian, her spirit for activism carried her to the NAACP, where she worked as a field secretary and a branch director. In 1955, she helped create the In Friendship organization which raised money to combat Jim Crow Laws in the deep south. A few years after forming In Friendship, Baker was recruited to help organize another group – the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). And that’s not the end of her story. She went on to create a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for Citizenship and went back to Shaw University in 1960 to meet with student leaders, leading to the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Nikole Hannah-Jones
A writer for The New York Times, Hannah-Jones created The 1619 Project in 2019 as a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in America. The special issue of the magazine included works from journalists, historians, and artists about the legacy of slavery and modern Black oppression in the U.S. The 1619 Project has expanded into a podcast, a series on Hulu, books, and an education partner with the Pulitzer Center. Along with the success of her project, Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pultizer winning journalist, host of The 1619 Project series, and co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting – a mentorship program for reporters of color.
Dorothy Height
After graduating from New York University, Height’s first job was as a social worker in Harlem where she helped Black people cope with the struggles of racism and their everyday challenges. Later, Height began working with the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). There, she focused on ending lynchings and restructuring the criminal justice system. In 1957, she became the fourth president of the NCNW, and shifted the group’s focus to voter registration and funding Civil Rights causes. She became a trusted advisor to many political figures – Martin Luther King, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson. She was a key organizer in the March on Washington, but like other women, was not invited to speak at the event.
Georgia Gilmore
A little while before Rosa Parks, Georgia Gilmore was screamed at for entering a bus through the front door rather than the back (where Black people were expected to enter). She argued with the driver for several minutes, before she was made to get off and reenter “the right way”. When she got off, the bus drove away, leaving her standing on the curb. In the wake of the Bus Boycotts, Georgia Gilmore organized the Club from Nowhere. Gilmore was a cook, and realized she could use her skills to feed those protesting. Further, she and the Club from Nowhere sold meals to raise money for Civil Rights Groups, provided food for meetings, organized protests and created a carpool system to drive those who would normally take the bus to work. MLK repaid her by giving her money to open her own restaurant after being fired for her Civil Rights participation. After the Boycotts, Gilmore was part of a class-action lawsuit to desegregate Montgomery public parks. My favorite actions of Gilmore come in her private life, when she fought charges against her son who was arrested for walking in a “whites only neighborhood” (Mark Gilmore went on to be a city councilman), and when she hit a racist store clerk with his own pistol after refusing to sell her grandson bread and laundry detergent.
Side Note
Similarly to Georgia, Ianne created The Okra Project to feed others, in this case, Black trans and gender non-conforming people. Ianne (who uses she/her and they/them pronouns and identifies as transfemme) created the project to provide food-insecure people in the LGBTQ+ community with nutritious food cooked by fellow Black trans people. Check out The Okra Project here.
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