Title: Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle
Author: Day F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi Woodard, eds.
Year of Publication: 2009
Thesis:
Using case studies, many of Black women who are and were well-known during the post-war period and beyond, the authors of this collection of essays shift the interpretation from supporters to key architects of Black radicalism. (4) Unique in their own right, each leader brought an intersectional approach, developing long-term, multivalent strategies that build bridges between groups and focused on "women's equality, anticolonialisms, and the redistribution of wealth." (4) The narrow geography, timeline, and lens on Black women paints them as the "backbone" behind movements, but not as leaders. (9) Grouped arguments:
- Anticommunism did not "destroy the black left." (11) - (see essays 1,3,4)
- Binaries begin to blur between integration/separation, nationalism/socialism, feminism/Black Power (see work on Jackson, Kennedy, Oliver, Huggins) (11)
- Respectable/radical (see Parks (12)
- Welfare rights interlinked with citizenship, "self-determination and self-respect." (see: Johnnie Tillmon - 12)
Restated 2/22: Black women were not the silent and subordinated backbone of the Black radical tradition, but rather the vanguard of it. In looking at Black women within the scope of the Long Black Freedom Struggle, this book traces Black women architects and activists from the 1930s through the 1970s and shows how examining their contributions widens the aperture beyond a male-centered lens focused solely on self-defense and separatism. In fact, examining their work demonstrates how women working within and across spaces put into question long-established binaries of integration/separation, nationalism/socialism, and feminism/Black Power.
Time: 1930-1980
Geography: U.S., Ghana, China
Organization:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
- Vicki Garvin's long career in organizing developing from school teacher to academic to labor organizer to pan-African liberation
- She guided Du Bois, Robeson, Williams, Angelou, Malcom X, etc.
- "Leading Man" approach has done a disservice
- This is a redirection; it re-casts already well-known activists in supporting roles to the leading seats they actually had (3)
- Expands "self-defense and separatism" by bringing the discussion back to post-war era and looking at labor and civil rights, as well. (4)
- Pushes on established timelines (Watts riot, 1965 & Carmichael, 1966) especially b/c they leave out women's roles (7)
- A male-oriented lens hides the fact that Black women "also shared a philosophical commitment to and practice of self-defense and armed resistance." (7)
- Charismatic and public leadership: Lillie Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Denise Oliver (13)
- Focus on infrastructure vs. public persona: Yuri Kochiyama & Rosa Parks (13)
- BPP school demonstrates Black women's commitment to the long-term struggle (14)
- Intersectional analysis by Esther Cooper Jackson dates to 1940. (14)
- That is, Black women's entry into feminist movement is not necessarily as separate, but is overlapping and intersecting, and comes much earlier than white feminist orgs in 1960s (15)
- Florynce Kennedy brings white feminists to Black Power meetings (in order to teach them) (15)
- Chisholm points out Farmer's insistence on masculine leadership (15)
- Authors caution against making women activists monolith - differed politically, LGBTQIA +, ideas about mentorship & motherhood, etc. (16)
- "Black women writing in The Black Woman thus sought to reframe intersectionality to demon- strate the interlocking nature of sexism, racism, economic inequality, and homophobia and push black liberation outside the narrow parameters of a “black family affair.”" (19)
1. "No Small Amount of Change Could Do": Esther Cooper Jackson and the Making of a Black Left Feminist - Erik S. McDuffie
2. What "the Cause" Needs Is a "Brainy and Energetic Woman": A Study of Female Charismatic Leadership in Baltimore - Prudence Cumberbatch
3. From Communist Politics to Black Power: The Visionary Politics and Transnational Solidarities of Victoria "Vicki" Ama Garvin - Dayo F. Gore
4. Shirley Graham Du Bois: Portrait of the Black Woman Artist as a Revolutionary - Gerald Horne and Margaret Stevens
5. "A Life History of Being Rebellious": The Radicalism of Rosa Parks - Jean Theoharis
6. Framing the Panther: Assata Shakur and Black Female Agency - Joy James
7. Revolutionary Women, Revolutionary Education: The Black Panther Party's Oakland Community School - Ericka Huggins and Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest
8. Must Revolution Be a Family Affiar? Revisiting The Black WOman - Margo Natalie Crawford
9. Retraining the Heartworks: Women in Atlanta's Black Arts Movement - James Smethurst
10. "Women's Liberation or . . . Black Liberation, You're Fighting the Same Enemies": Florynce Kennedy, Black Power, and Feminism - Sherie M. Randolph
11. To Make that Someday Come: Shirley Chisholm's Radical Politics of Possibility - Joshua Guild
12. Denise Oliver and the Young Lords Party: Stretching the Political Boundaries of Struggle - Johanna Fernández
13. Grassroots Leadership and Afro-Asian Solidarities: Yuri Kochiyama's Humanizing Radicalism - Diane C. Fujino
14. "We Do Whatever Becomes Necessary": Johnnie Tillmon, Welfare Rights, and Black Power - Premilla Nadasen
About the Contributors
Index
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
Historiography:
Widens the aperture of Black radicalism, focusing on politics, antipoverty, union organizing, education, and self-esteem. (5)
Closely examines women's roles as architects, leaders, and thinkers as well as activists, often uncredited. (5)
Pushes back on the notion of "race over gender," showing how Black women "negotiated race, class, and sexuality within thet black left, Black Power, and women's movements." (6)
Cruse (1967) - Drew a line between Black nationalism & integrationists (7)
Long movement scholarship:
- Tyson -Radio Free Dixie
- Singh - Black is a Country
- Biondi - To Stand and Fight
- Self - American Babylon
- Joseph - Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour
People:
- Robeson
- Williams
- Eard Guiner
"...far too many of these studies simply acknowledge various women as key participants and note the damage of sexism and the relevance of gender politics." (8)
Along the lines of this work:
- Payne - I've Got the Light of Freedom
- Dittmer - Local People
- Ransby - Ella Baker
- Belinda Robnett - How Long? How Long?
- See scholarship on SNCC, as well.
Important perspectives that foreground sexism (limitations of Black women):
- Evans - Personal Politics
- Echols - Daring to Be Bad
- Rosen - The World Split Wide Open
- Breines - The Trouble Between Us
- White - Too Heavy a Load
Perspectives that foreground Black women's politics:
- Springer - Living for the Revolution
- Nelson - Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement
- Franklin/Collier-Thomas - Sisters in hte Struggle
- Roth - Spearate Roads to Feminism
On Anti-poverty organizing:
Rhonda Williams - Politics of Public Housing
Premilla Nadasen - Welfare Warriors
Felicia Kornbluh - The Battle for Welfare Rights
Annelise Orleck - Storming Caesar's Palace
Keywords:
"Dominance through mentioning" (8) -
22. Apple argues, “Dominance is partly maintained here through compromise and the process of ‘mentioning.’ Here limited and isolated elements of the history and culture of less powerful groups are included in the texts. Thus, for example a small and often separate section is included on ‘the contributions of women’ and ‘minority groups,’ but without any substantive elaboration of the view of the world as seen from their perspective.” Michael Apple, Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a Conservative Age (New York: Routledge, 2000), 61.
Second-Wave Feminism
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
"Centering the roles and experiences of women in Black Power organizations, their contributions to the majority-white women's movement and the separate organizations and campaigns black women built allows for a clearer view of black women radicals' political interventions in these spaces." (15-16)
"Taken together, these fourteen essays push us to refocus how we un- derstand the history of the black freedom struggle and to reconceptualize the trajectory and cross-fertilization in radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Centering women in this anthology provides a wider lens on the range of postwar black radicalisms and thus a much-expanded view of postwar U.S. social movement history." (19)
Notes:
Very helpful historiographical essay.
See: Toni Cade Bambara - The Black Woman (1970) (16)
Selection of names to pay attention to (incomplete - see pp.17-):
- Esther Cooper (see early feminist analyses)
- Lillie Carroll Jackson (outwardly working in Baltimore & inwardly on sexism w/in NAACP)
- Juanita Jackson Mitchell (outwardly working in Baltimore & inwardly on sexism w/in NAACP)
- Victoria ("Vicki") Ama Garvin (labor, community organizing, women's movement, international connections - Ghana & China) (see mentorship of Malcom X)
- Shirley Graham Du Bois (Ghana & China) (see mentorship of Malcom X)
- Rosa Parks (longer durée of her activism)
- Assata Shakur (esp. on prisons, women's resistance)
- Toni Cade Bambara (feminism & nationalism working together - see: Smethurst)
- Pearl Cleage (feminism & nationalism working together - see: Smethurst)
- Denise Oliver & Yuri Kochiyama ("ethnic boundaries of black radicalism were porous and permeable" (19))
- Johnnie Tillmon - self-defense, self-determination, welfare rights all inextricably tied together
-