2.4: Opportunities and Possibilities

We are all bound up together

The Black Feminist and Womanist movements within the American socio-historical system emerged within activism focused on abolition and women’s suffrage. The socio-political movements occurred through three distinct eras: The Abolitionist movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and the current Era of Retrenchment or Post-Civil Rights Movement.[1]

While the term Feminists was not used, the origin and foundation of Black Feminism is seen through key political activism and movements of anti-slavery, women’s suffrage, and promotion of equality for Black Americans. Born Black and female, Black women were often prevented from joining in women’s suffrage and male anti-slavery movements creating the need and opportunity to create women’s clubs, movements, and activist groups that sought to advance equality for all people. Despite their challenges, Black women organized and fought for their liberation, illustrating the needs of Intersectional thought and approaches throughout their historic struggle to realize liberation. Through a limited survey of some key political movements, we can see the impact of Black Feminist thought in transformative change.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): The pictured banner, used by the National Association of Colored Women’s Club, advertises the motto of the organization, “Lifting as we climb.” The banner was used by the Oklahoma Federation of Colored WOmen's Clubs in 1924. (Public Domain; Collection of Smithsonian NMAAHC via Smithsonian NMAAHC)

Abolitionist and Suffrage Movements

The Abolitionist and Suffrage Movements were notably influenced by the activism and work of early Black Feminist. Denied access to White women’s movements due to their race, and Black men’s movements due to their gender, Black women activists were forced to create spaces for themselves in order to demand change. We see this occur with the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in the mid 19^th century where Black women activists pushed the biracial society to provide for the everyday needs and practical needs of formerly enslaved fugitives. We also witness the roots of intersectional thinking and advocating through Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” Speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851. Despite being denied a platform to speak by white suffragists who believed that race would harm women’s suffrage, Truth outlines her condition and struggles working alongside men in the fields and still being obligated to perform women’s work in the home.

Following the 13^th Amendment, Black women such as Frances E.W. Harper, Sojourner Truth, Margaretta Forten, Sarah Remond, and Hattie Purvis, along with other Black women, join the American Equal Right Association (AERA), until its demise and split into two Suffrage movements, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). More Black women join AWSA because of its suffragist’s efforts on behalf of Black men. After the ratification of the 15^th Amendment in 1870, Black women continued to advocate for women’s suffrage and particularly Black women’s suffrage, highlighting the intersectional challenges Black women faced. During this period, Harper demands equal rights and access to education for Black women in addition to voting rights, highlighting the distinct differences Black women experienced compared to their white counterparts. In time, the organization merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which takes a state-by-state approach to achieving suffrage for women. The group sidelines Black women within the organization in order to achieve widespread support of Southern white women, yet this disenfranchise does not stop some Black women, such as Mary Church Terrell, to continue to attend meetings to raise the issue of Black men’s voting rights alongside those of all women. The widespread use of lynching to disenfranchise and terrorize Black men and women grew to be a grave concern of Terrell and her friend, Ida B. Wells Barnett, who worked tirelessly alongside other Black women to rid the nation of lynchings.

With widespread marginalization of Black women within White Suffragist movements, Black women go on to found the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACW) in 1896. The group goes on to form The National Federation of Afro American Women, using The Women’s Era, a newspaper, for their national press. NACW comprises the National League of Colored Women, The National Federation of Afro-American Women, and over 100 local Black women’s clubs. Their motto, “lifting as we climb” served as a call to advance all people while working to lift themselves out of oppressive conditions. Under the leadership of Terrell, the Board of Education commemorates Black History month in American schools in 1897, following the 1896 “separate but equal” ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson.

In 1920 the 19^th Amendment was passed, and with the passing of the 19^th amendment, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was disbanded and became the League of Women Voters. Despite the 19^th Amendment, Black women continue to face disenfranchisement alongside Black men, and routinely denied a platform within the League of Women Voters to discuss voter disenfranchisement. With time, the issue of disenfranchisement is viewed as a race issue and becomes a part of the Civil Rights movement.

Civil Rights Movement

Despite Presidents Harry Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Orders outlawing discrimination in governmental jobs and the U.S. military (Executive order 8802 and Executive Order 9981, respectively) in 1941 and 1948, Black Americans continued to face discrimination and the lasting effects of Jim Crow laws, voter disenfranchisement, and “separate but equal” laws. Black women continued to fight for equality, taking an intersectionality approach or view of their experiences. They acted by organizing and protesting during the Civil Rights, often serving as the liaison or bridge between grassroots organizations that mobilized Black activism and the national groups and leadership that served as the public head or figures of the group despite inner tension and sexual discrimination. Often, organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) believed that focusing on gender issues detracted from what was seen as the larger issue, race, while they also upheld an American patriarchal view of leadership that relegated women to clerical, supportive roles that reinforced gender norms instead of placing Black women into leadership roles. Many Black women reported sexism within leading civil rights organizations and found themselves overly dominated by men placed in leadership and decision-making positions, while they were relegated to supportive and voiceless roles. Because many of these organizations were often rooted within the Black Church, women were expected to adhere to Euro-Christian norms that failed to challenge societal norms of women leadership. This led to many of the women wondering about their place and position within the larger national organizations and challenging patriarchy and misogynoir.

As discontentment grew, Black women organized their own form of revolution that sought to join women’s liberation and race liberation. Ella Baker, a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), and Martin Luther King Jr.’s SCLC executive secretary, started the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960 with the goal of avoiding top-down leadership and giving students the chance to protest and organize through participation democracy—those who did the work made the decisions. The SNCC focused on sit-ins and boycotts of establishments that reinforced Jim Crow and segregation, and eventually included “freedom rides'' and voter registration campaigns. While SNCC was founded to avoid the misygonoir faced by Black women, many women voiced sexism raising within the organization and the term “Jane Crow,” coined by activist and writer Pauli Murray, describing the intersectional condition of being both Black and female and the need for Black women to not abandon the fight for gender equality for racial equality, but the need to simultaneously works towards both rights.

In the two years leading up to Civil Rights Act of 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper attempts to vote and is evicted from her home and experiences continual threats and routine violence. Despite being able to successfully vote, Hamer and other women are arrested and jailed following a voter registration workshop in South Carolina for entering a segregated area reserved for whites. While all the women arrested are beaten, Hamer suffers a savage beating. By 1965, amidst continued challenges faced by Black men and women, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, solidifying the right to vote laid out in the 15^th and 19^th amendments, representing a centuries long struggle to give Black women and men the right to vote.

Spotlight: The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS)

In 1833 Charlotte Vandine Forten and her daughters founded the first biracial female abolitionist organization, The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, which ran until March 1870 and the ratification of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution. Composed of 18 women, including Forten and three of her daughters, PFASS was allied with the American Anti-Slavery Society, a male abolitionists society created the same year. While the women’s society was affiliated with the male’s society, PFASS was created because the women were denied membership into the male’s organization. Though gender and race within America's patriarchal system created challenges for Black women, their role in abolition was crucial and necessary.

It must be noted that the Black women within PFASS were considered Philadelphia’s most elite African American women and other Black women members were also free and literate. This intersection of literacy and class within the free black middle-class women of Philadelphia coincided with other literary societies of Black middle-class women who were interested in educating women and children to become future leaders in the fight for equality. Those activists for education and literacy were also key and integral activists for abolition. While Philadelphia was a free city, PFASS’s integrated status, as well as the prominent leadership roles Black women held within the society was considered a rare occurrence.

The society’s abolitionist activities included holding public meetings, organizing and fundraising, financing community efforts on behalf of free Blacks, sending petitions to state legislatures and Congress, and petitioning Congress to abolish slavery in D.C. and prohibit interstate slave trade. Facing challenges over the years, PFASS found new strategies to support the abolitionist movement. During the 1840s the society focused on fundraising through an annual fair where handcrafted needlework inscribed with abolitionist and antislavery sentiments, along with anti-slavery publication were sold. PFASS’s Black membership led the charge to financially support education for free Black girls as well as the Black community. Additionally, PFASS fundraised money to provide clothing, shelter, and food to formally enslaved fugitives. This included providing room and board, clothing, medical assistance, employment and financial aid, as well as legal counsel concerning their rights. PFASS also supported and worked towards women’s suffrage.

It is argued by some scholars that PFASS was the foundational cradle of American feminism; however, this is often noting the roles the white female leaders had within the birth of the women’s movement and the inception of the Seneca Falls Convention. The active role the Black women of PFASS played in providing practical and everyday support to the formerly enslaved was often viewed as counter to the larger goal of ending slavery at the legislative level. This tension between subversive and overt strategies illustrates some of the key differences between Black and white women engaged in activist work, highlighting the difference of intersectionality between the women. White women often questioned whether providing aid directly to formerly enslaved fugitives as anti-slavery work, whereas Black women often worked directly with the formerly enslaved to subversively aid freedom.

Post-Civil Rights Movements

Following the Civil Rights Movements, many Black women continued to organize and build platforms for the advancement of Black women’s rights. The struggle for freedom and equality was not fully realized with the right to vote, as Black women still found themselves experiencing sexism, racism, and discrimination based on sexuality. Black women routinely found themselves relegated to submissive positions within the Black Power Movement and their voices drowned out of the Black Arts Movement.

As the 1960s and 1970s progressed, Black Feminists began to organize other liberatory organizations aimed at critically interrogating the intersecting positions of Black women. In 1973, feeling like they had no space or place within mainstream Feminism and the Civil Rights/Black Power movements, Florynce Kennedy, Michele Wallace, Faith Ringgold, Doris Wright, and Margaret Sloan-Hunter founded the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) to address the racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and lesbophobia Black women experienced. The group held their first regional conference the same year, establishing ten chapters across the U.S., where one, the Boston Chapter, broke off and founded the Combahee River Collective in 1974.

The Combahee River Collective is most notably known for developing the Combahee River Collective Statement, which has become a key contemporary document that outlines Black Feminism, identity politics as used by political and social theorists and organizers and defines the intersectional systems of oppressions Black women face—discriminations based on gender, race, sexuality, and class. Scholars note the CRC as the first to use the term “identify politics,” which has been used by many political organizers and theorists to galvanize grassroots organizations committed to revolutionary social and political change. The CRC must be understood as a piece, part, and continuation of the trajectory of Black Feminism originating within the Abolitionist and Suffrage movements of the 19^th century, and as a bridge to contemporary Black Feminist work continuing to labor towards the liberation of Black women, men, and children within the American system.

Within the 21^st century Black women have utilized and drawn from the legacies of Black Women's Clubs to continue to galvanize for equality. They have formed grassroots political organizations such as Black Lives Matter, #TheMeToo Movement, #BlackGirlMagic, and the #SayHerName campaign (organized by the African American Policy Forum), which focus on collective liberation for Black women, Black lives, and other marginalized people. Within the contemporary context, Black Feminists continue the liberatory work of Black Feminist Abolitionist and Suffrages, Black Civil Rights Activists and Freedom workers; they bring activism into the 21^st Century by drawing from technology while utilizing the frameworks Black women have drawn from for over a century and a half of activism towards collective liberation.

Spotlight: National Association of Colored Women (NACW)

During the late 19^th century Black activists started to organize and in 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), was founded and went on to become the biggest Black woman’s club. Mary Church Terrell was elected as the first president of the group, followed by other notable women as Margaret James Murray (Mrs. Booker T. Washington) as the 5^th President, Mary B. Talbert as the 6^th President, and Mary McLeod Bethune as the 8^th President. 

            While suffrage was a primary goal and purpose for the women of NACW, the women also organized and advocated to improve and reform all suffering of Black Americans. As an organization NACW sought to end Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation, and their approach to suffrage did not end with Black women—it focused on ensuring Black men could exercise their right to vote without literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses that prevented Black men from voting.

            While working towards suffrage like their white counterparts, Black women faced racism that separated them from the dominant white suffrage organizations. They were not allowed to attend suffrage conventions and forced to march separately in suffrage parades, while also often overlooked in suffrage history.  Their motto, “Lifting as We Climb,” highlights their goal to fight for their rights while also lifting or uplifting the race and lives of Black Americans while they improved their lives. This idea of joint uplift of the Black race and not primarily focusing on the rights and lives of Black women highlights one of the key distinctions of Black Feminism/Womanism from mainstream white Feminism.

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Endnotes

[1] Feminist Movements in the United States