Black Women in White America

by Ann at Beautiful, Also, Are the Souls of My Black Sisters

Black women who have done so much, with so little.

Black women like Sojourner Truth. Harriet Tubman. Maria Stewart. Ida Wells-Barnett. Fannie Barrier Williams. Mary Ann Shadd Cary. The Black Washerwomen of 1866 in Jackson, Mississippi. Anna Julia Cooper. Mary Church Terrell. Mary McLeod Bethune. Zora Neale Hurston. Ella Baker. Fannie Lou Hamer. Daisy Bates.The many unknown black women who worked the grassroots level of the Civil Rights Movement. Jeanne Noble. Toni Cade Bambara. Toni Morrison. Darlene Clarke Hine. Angela Davis. Shirley Chisholm. Patricia Hill Collins.

And so too today, do black women still survive and keep on keeping on. Black women who derived a spiritual strength from all the many black people who came before them—black people who endured and triumphed over slavery, Reconstruction and segregation.

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With all that black women have survived in this country, America as a whole should be singing the praises of black women. America should be shouting out loud to the rooftops:

“Look at all that black women have gone through and survived. They have gone through the fire, and have come out through the other side stronger than all that has sought their destruction. Black women of America, we love, adore, salute and admire all that you have survived. We stand in awe at what you have overcome.”

You would think that America would bow in obeisance to black women for all they have been through. You would think that America would laud black women for taking that take which could have destroyed them, and instead, made it something that gave them strength to survive, keep on living, keep on loving, keep on holding on.

But, instead, America keeps up the heat against black women. America keeps up the beat down on black women.

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I sing of the many black women who gave their unique stamp on feminism—feminist thought that looked not only at the present, but, also at the future, feminist thought that was inclusionary of men, women and children. All the many black women of today who still continue to live up to the true ideals of feminism that speaks to the dismantling of a patriarchy that harms and destroys not only women and children, but men as well. When black women thrive and excel, all women thrive and excel. When black women benefit, all women benefit.

No woman is free, until all women are free.

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I sing praises of all the striving, hoping, praying, fighting, championing, trail-blazing, never-give-up black women who hurdled insurmountable odds in a country that we black women were never considered a part of. A country that never had the best interests, joys or hopes of the women of my race at heart. A country that never meant for us to survive.

But, survive we have, and thrive we will!

Black women,

Of Thee I Sing!

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