Year: 2019

January 30, 2019 at 02:30AM by CWC I’ve thought a lot lately about the stories time takes from us. A year or so ago I was deep into rummaging through Black history at the turn of the 20th century for a research project I was working on. In the process of digging into the strides Black folks had made in the three short decades since slavery ended, I began to encounter—over and over again—women. Black women. So many of us. They cropped up everywhere: in the shadows of famous men and well-documented events; delivering lectures at conferences with W.E.B. Du Bois; sharing stages with Frederick Douglass; leading movements alongside John Brown; running newspapers and writing books that celebrated other Black women from times earlier than theirs. Despite protests from their white sisters, they were there at the first women’s rights conventions. They were there, speaking and protesting at World’s Fairs, including Chicago’s storied Columbian Exposition in 1893—the setting of the Devil in the White City. In those places, they gave speeches of their own about how Black women’s freedoms would not be pushed aside. They coached a young Ida B. Wells on persuasive public speaking, and gathered their community together to help launch her anti-lynching campaign—a revolutionary catalyst that charged an entire generation to stay active in the fight for our lives. They were at Southern train stations and boat ports, helping young Black girls in search of better jobs gain safe passage north, after realizing they were too often

Read More