black women

1527 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The role of women in the civil rights movement

The abolition of slavery in the South forced all people—men, women, blacks, and whites alike—to reconsider how they defined their freedom in America. The plantation hierarchy, which had enforced the relative stratification of the southern population for centuries, placing white men at the top, followed by white women, then black men, and finally black women at the bottom, was put into jeopardy by the emancipation of the slaves. In particular, the demarcation between white women and freed black men was obscured. The curtailment of a clear division between the two groups led each to band together and vehemently advocate for and prioritize their freedom and rights. During discussions surrounding rights and freedom, the white women assumed one side of the debate and the black men the other. The double discrimination that characterized this epoch left black women positioned in the middle. This arrangement denied black women from reaping the benefits that were extended to either group—effectively excluding them from being a part of either group. Mary Eliza Church Terrell summarized this unique position eloquently during her address at the first National Association of Colored Women meeting (Brown, 39). She declared, “we refer to the fact that this is an association of colored women, because our peculiar status in this country at the present time seems to have demanded that we stand by ourselves” (Mary Eliza Church Terrell, 39). To pursue their rights and freedom, it was necessary, not only for black women to unite and fight together, but to advocate for the rights of all citizens of the United States of America. In the years leading up to and following 1870, when the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed black me... ... middle of paper ... ...e and gender, were by default always arguing for universal equality. In no instance could black women argue specifically for their rights and freedom, without necessarily raising up the all blacks and females. As the famous phrase declares, black women were “lifting as they climb” (Brown, 44). In their fight for enfranchisement, they were advocating for universal suffrage; in their movement to end lynching, they were urging, “that every human being should have a fair trial;” in the demand for fair, living wages, they were insisting that all people should have the capacity to live honestly and adequately from their pay (Brown, 34). Black women, not only assumed a peculiar position in society, where they had to band together to fight for their own rights, but also they were in a powerful situation, which granted them the capacity to fight for everyone’s rights.

Show More
Related

  • Civil Rights Dbq

    1239 Words  | 3 Pages

    “There must be the position of superior and inferior” was a statement by Lincoln which formed the basis of discrimination towards black Americans as it highlighted the attitudes of white Americans. Although civil rights for black people eventually improved through the years both socially and politically, it was difficult to change the white American view that black people are inferior to white people as the view was always enforced by the favour of having “the superior position assigned to the white race”. The period between 1880 and 1990 can be seen as a period of civil strife. The civil rights movement had little impact, with few significant improvements towards the overall goal of equality. Despite the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteen amendments had been set up acting as a baseline of change as it liberated black Americans from slavery and made them freedmen.

    Read More

  • Gender & Jim Crow: Book Review

    1309 Words  | 3 Pages

    Glenda Gilmore’s book Gender & Jim Crow shows a different point of view from a majority of history of the south and proves many convictions that are not often stated. Her stance from the African American point of view shows how harsh relations were at this time, as well as how hard they tried for equity in society. Gilmore’s portrayal of the Progressive Era is very straightforward and precise, by placing educated African American women at the center of Southern political history, instead of merely in the background.

    Read More

  • Patricia Hill Collins '' Intersectionality Is Not Neutral'

    561 Words  | 2 Pages

    As both Tracey Reynolds and Audre Lorde have emphasized, Black women are not perpetually passive victims, but active agents. It is totally possible for Black women to seize a form of empowerment, whether that be alternative education, or the creation of organizations that weren’t situated in either the Civil Rights movement or Women’s

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Mcguire's At The Dark End Of The Street

    1136 Words  | 3 Pages

    Malcolm X stated that the most disrespected, unprotected and neglected person in America is the black woman. Black women have long suffered from racism in American history and also from sexism in the broader aspect of American society and even within the black community; black women are victims of intersection between anti-blackness and misogyny sometimes denoted to as "misogynoir". Often when the civil rights movement is being retold, the black woman is forgotten or reduced to a lesser role within the movement and represented as absent in the struggle, McGuire 's At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power does not make this same mistake.

    Read More

  • Were Black Americans Made Free and Equal by the Abolition of Slavery, 1865-1915?

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.

    Read More

  • Slavery and the Life of Harriet Jacobs

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000

    Read More

  • Leith Mullings' On Our Own Terms: Race, Class, And Gender In The Lives Of African American Women

    874 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.

    Read More

  • Moynihan Negro Family

    1321 Words  | 3 Pages

    Beale, Frances. "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female." An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. New York: New, 1995. 146. Print.

    Read More

  • Angela Y. Davis: A Critical Analysis Of Women, Race And Class

    1429 Words  | 3 Pages

    Women, Race and Class is the prolific analysis of the women's rights movement in the United States as observed by celebrated author, scholar, academic and political activist. Angela Y. Davis, Ph.D. The book is written in the same spirit as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Davis does not merely recount the glorious deeds of history. traditional feminist icons, but rather tells the story of women's liberation from the perspective of former black slaves and wage laborers. Essential to this approach is the salient omnipresent concept known as intersectionality.

    Read More

  • Comparison of the Women’s Movement in Europe and United States

    1738 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the United States, many political factors helped to develop the women’s revolution. After the Civil War took place in 1865, the major issues that arose came from the proposed 15th Amendment. This amendment, which gave black men the right to vote, created a huge controversy, not only between white and b...

    Read More

  • Black Status: Post Civil War America

    1111 Words  | 3 Pages

    After the emancipation of slaves in 1862, the status of African-Americans in post civil war America up until the beginning of the twentieth century did not go through a great deal of change. Much legislation was passed to help blacks in this period. The Civil Rights act of 1875 prohibited segregation in public facilities and various government amendments gave African-Americans even more guaranteed rights. Even with this government legislation, the newly dubbed 'freedmen' were still discriminated against by most people and, ironically, they were soon to be restricted and segregated once again under government rulings in important court cases of the era.

    Read More

  • Gender Slavery And Freedom Essay

    1004 Words  | 3 Pages

    Freedom was knowledge, education and family, but “The root of oppression decided as a “tangle of pathology” created by the absence of male authority among Black people” (Davis, 15). Therefore, they enjoyed “as much autonomy as they could seize, slave men and women manifested irrepressible talent in humanizing an environment designed to convert them into a herd of subhuman labor units” (Davis). Instead of being the head of the “household”, he and the women treated each other as an equal. This thought would soon become a historical turning point that initiated the fight for gender

    Read More

  • Essay On The Constitutional Revolution

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    Alongside the brutal, bloody Civil War and makeshift post-war reconstruction in the South were several monumental changes within the United States. As federal power increased, so did the power of the Constitution, as it began to expand and shift to encompass more and more people. With this also came a social change; millions of blacks, now freed by the thirteenth amendment, had the potential to be just as successful as their white brethren. As time went by, however, numerous pitfalls and opposing viewpoints challenged the idea of constitutional and social transformation. While there was a constitutional revolution occurring from 1860-1877, there was little to no social revolution happening at the same time.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Angelina Grimke And Sojourner Truth

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the Women’s Rights Convention of 1851, Truth repeatedly equates her worth to that of a man by her physical and intellectual abilities. Some of Truth’s statements at this convention include: “I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I can carry as much as any mean, and I can eat as much too”. These statements highlight the fact that women were thought to have less physical and intellectual ability than men, and as such were afforded fewer rights. By recurrently equating herself to men in all of these arenas, Truth displayed the commonalities between men and women. Furthermore, Truth’s views came from the stance of a former African American slave, who were not. In this speech, Truth paralleled herself, a black woman, to have the same abilities as a white man, thereby attempting to change her audience’s view of the current existing American capitalist patriarchal structure that put white men at the top and women of color at the bottom of the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Michael Kimmel's 'Masculinity As Homophobia'

    1705 Words  | 4 Pages

    Their rights continued to progress when both white and black women were given the right to vote, although it still didn’t have the impact that was expected. Not only were women given more rights, but they also started attending schools and seeking employment. This was a big step for women, but men interpreted this as a threat to the balance of power. Weitz stated that after new “scientific” ideas were combined with old definitions of women’s bodies, due to their ill and fragile bodies, “white middle-class women were unable to sustain the responsibilities of political power or the burdens of education or employment.”

    Read More

More about black women

Open Document