By Angelique Fullwood
The month of February is the time of year in the United States when folks acknowledge Black History. While Black Americans started observing Negro History Week back in 1926, it wasn’t until 1976 that it expanded into a national holiday under President Gerald Ford, he told Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”
At any other time of the year it is very rare, if ever, that students learn about the African Diaspora and culture, outside of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, in American History classes. The Black experience is never quite centered; an individual would have to sign up for an elective course to study/cover it. During Black History Month, we lift up the names of the same individuals Martin Luther King, Fredrick Douglass, George Washington Carver and others. Even during a time of acknowledging a marginalized race, we tend to marginalize the powerful women who were on the front lines of progress.
Standing at the intersections of race and sex, Black women’s experiences have been often discarded. This was apparent during the Civil Rights Movement, while women like Ella Baker or Fannie Lou Hamer were great organizers, the media, and history, focused on the men. During the Women’s Suffrage movement, it was Soujourner Truth who gave the speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” during the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, criticizing how the Women’s Movement disregarded the plight of Black women.
“ Look at me! Look at my arm! I could have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”
To dedicate this Black History month to the not-so-visible forces of change, here are six great works written by Black women that everyone should read.
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
These words from the renowned Black queer feminist, Audre Lorde summarizes the over all theme of her life’s work and contributions to identity politics, activism and poetry. Sister Outsider is a collection of essays and poems that offers thought provoking analysis on the complexity of intersectional identity of race, class, gender and sexuality.
Assata an Autobiography by Assata Shakur
Assata Shakur was a former member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army and is currently living in Cuba under political asylum since escaping prison in 1979. A Black radical hero, this book is intense and personal. Her story reveals how the FBI repressed movements and made targets of its leaders and includes insightful analysis on political theory.
Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis
This book is a classic in any women’s study classroom. When discussing the history of relationships between gender and race, Angela Davis is a must-read to understand the Women’s Movement in the context of a society built on institutions that uphold patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander is a law professor and writer who exposed mass incarceration as a systemic form of oppression, coining the term “New Jim Crow.” Alexander’s book offers insight on how the War on Drugs helped maintained a “racial caste system” in the United States.
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ramsby
Ella Baker is arguably one of the most important leaders during the Civil Rights Movement, but the least mentioned in American classrooms. Barbara Ramsby, historian and African American Studies professor, chronicles Baker’s extraordinary life and leadership in this book.
Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 by Ida B. Wells
Seventy years before Rosa Parks, Ida B. Wells was dragged off a train for refusing to give up her seat. This sparked her legendary and brave investigative journalism career in which she published articles criticizing the terrorism that Black people across the South were subjected to after the Civil War.
