Women's History is Black Women's History

It’s Women’s History Month! It feels like Black History Month was just days ago. Before you know it, it will be April—Autism Awareness Month—and on to Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, among other things.

It’s wonderful that we have these dedicated times when we highlight and learn about identities, perspectives, and histories of people society has marginalized for too long. And, I’m finding myself thinking about what Audre Lorde said: “There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

As we pivot from Black history to women’s history, I want to highlight where those two identities overlap. Throughout history, Black women, as a group, have had a different experience than white women—and they have made history too. Let’s celebrate a few:

Writer and orator Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was one of the first to point out what we now call intersectionality back in 1866. She admonished suffragists for missing the human rights crisis Black women were enduring, saying, “You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs.”

Mary Church Terrell and other Black women organized the National Association of Colored Women to focus on the issues especially relevant to that group. They campaigned for voting rights, education, and childcare, and against segregation and lynching.

And in the 20th century, Pauli Murray formulated the legal framework that fueled the civil rights victories of the 1950s and 60s. But she also argued that gender discrimination was equally unconstitutional, calling it “Jane Crow.”

These pioneers teach us that diversity is more complex than single labels. Being a woman myself doesn’t automatically give me an understanding of every other woman—or even every other Black woman. Wealthier women are going to have interests that are different than women who are poorer. I don’t have the same lived experience as a trans woman, or a Muslim, or any of the infinite other intersections.

So this month, think about how you are creating space in your organizations for everyone who identifies as a woman. Acknowledge the diversity within that category, and foster conversations about the unique concerns that multiple identities bring out.

And, if you want to support a present-day organization that creates more inclusive spaces for women of color, check out YW Boston, an organization which is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all. Can’t argue with that!

Keep Black History Month present beyond February

Black History Month 2023 comes to a close today. I encourage you to find ways to keep learning throughout the year. Without a clear understanding of our history and acceptance that it includes systemic racism, we cannot effectively dismantle it.

Have you watched the 1619 Project series on Hulu yet? I’m in the middle and really impressed. Here are a few other resources I recommend to you:

• If you’ve already watched Ava Duvernay’s 13th on Netflix, it is well worth a second (and third) viewing. It pulls the threads together between slavery and the post-Civil War oppressions like segregation, convict leasing and mass incarceration.

• The author of Caste, Isabel Wilkerson, wrote another sweeping history back in 2010 about the Great Migration. The Warmth of Other Suns deepens the American narrative so that the “pioneers” going west to settle the plains isn’t the only epic journey that made our nation what it is today. The massive movement of Black Americans from the rural south to the northern cities represented equal bravery, endurance, determination, and humanity.

• And to connect our history to today’s challenging discourse on race and racism, I recommend Robert Livingston’s The Conversation. From the cover of the book: “How seeking and speaking the truth about racism can radically transform individuals and organizations.” Dr. Livingston’s talent of sharing research and theory through stories is powerful and accessible.

And if you’re an organizational leader, be sure to keep amplifying the stories and voices of Black people on your team. They’re making history every day.

Black History doesn’t need to make white people uncomfortable

**Guest Post from FC Consultant, Colin Stokes

If I heard that someone in my kids’ school district was working to prevent educators from making people “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or…psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin,” I would assume it was part of a DEI initiative. As a white parent, I’ve been learning about how microaggressions cause dangerous levels of psychological distress. So I’d be on board!

Unfortunately, this isn’t a racial justice committee in Brookline. It’s the Florida Department of Education. And their proposed legislation is meant to reduce the effects not of racism or sexism, but of white guilt. It would make it illegal to make someone feel that they “bear responsibility for…actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex or national origin.” Among the triggers for this distressful feeling, apparently, is Black history.

What is it about Black history that should make white people feel especially attacked? No one is worried that learning about the Boston Massacre would trigger British Americans, or that studying World War II is too sensitive for kids with German heritage. Any student can identify the moral heroes and villains of these struggles, and then identify with the former—regardless of their ancestry.

For some reason, though, racism is different. To these legislators, a white student learning about slavery can’t simply root for the enslaved person struggling for freedom. Better to censor history than to ask white kids to see “their” people on the wrong side of human rights. The implication underlying these laws is that white Americans can only identify with other white Americans—even when they committed evil acts.

I don’t believe this is true. All children can admire freedom fighters like Frederick Douglass and Harriett Tubman. What better role models for intellect, persistence, and being “created equal” than Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. DuBois? Add Pauli Murray and Bryan Stevenson to the list of the Constitution’s fiercest defenders. White students have no reason to feel attacked by these embodiments of the ideals of liberty, despite the fact that their antagonists were white. I draw inspiration from them every day.

The story of the Black freedom struggle is also packed with white characters worth identifying with. William Lloyd Garrison and Harriett Beecher Stowe aren’t the only white anti-racists who were pivotal in changing history. Look up Thaddeus Stevens, Frances Seward, Theodore Parker, William English Walling, Ann Braden, or Jane Elliott. If students need a white good guy to survive history class, these ordinary white Americans took risks to make their country better.

Black history makes me proud that my nation was shaped by geniuses like these. Their lives show me what’s possible as an American working to end racism today. Yes, knowing the depth of that struggle makes me distressed. The fact that so many leaders want to suppress that knowledge is a sign that the struggle goes on.