"Bonzell Rush Triplett"

Interview #2….

1. What is your name? Maiden and Marriage?

            “Bonzell Rush(Maiden) Triplett(Married)”

2. Where were you born?

            “Nesoba County”

3. Where did you grow up?

            “Louisville, MS”

4. What were your parents’ names and occupations?

            “Ruby Inell Houston(Mother) and Henry Lemar Rush(Father)”

5. Do you have any siblings? Yes or No, names?

            “(9)Sisters and (6)Brothers”

6. What was your life like growing up as a black girl in Louisville?

            “It was very hard. We had to work all the time so there was no time to do anything else.”

7. Did you ever encounter racism? Explain?

            “No, never any problems with racism. I would sometimes hear “white” people using the “N” word but I never had any direct problems with racism.”

8. What privileges or setbacks do you feel that you experienced growing up a black female in the North/South?

            “I had the privilege of having honest, fair parents and a united loving family. But also, a set back was that I felt that as Black people, especially females, did not get a chance to receive much eeducation.”

9. What, if anything, do you remember your parents telling you about race?

            “My parents never really talked about race but we knew that there was a difference and we were to always treat others as we wanted to be treated; and especially watch what we do and say around white people when I was growing up.”

10. What did your parents tell you or instill in you regarding being a woman, specifically a black woman?

            “My parents told me that in order to be successful, then as a Black woman I have to work 3 times as hard as a Black man and 10 times as hard as a White person.”

11. Did you attend school? Yes or No, why or why not? 

            Yes, I attended what is now our “Eiland Middle School” which was an all Black school.

12. Talk a little bit about those days...

            “This all black school was just a combination of all grades because we didn’t have an all black elementary, middle, and high school. Since everyone was the same race, the only problems occurred were amongst ourselves. Ten we worked all day on the plantation at home. ”

13. What was it like in school for you as a black female? 

            “I did not have any problems particularly as a black female because every other female was black as well.”

14. Did you graduate and attend college?

            “No, I stopped school in the ninth grade because with sixteen children we worked a lot. My family lived on a plantation (Garrigues Plantation) where we picked and pulled cotton as well as corn and whatever needed to be done. Also, there was no restroom so we had to go in the woods. The white boys would try to sneak up and watch us so my sisters and I always went in groups.”

15. Did you get married?  To who?  When?

            “Yes, I was a single parent and I married Gene Autry Triplett in 1982.”

16. Did you have any children? Yes or No? How many?  Why?  Was this a choice or just happened?

            “Yes, I have five children; Angela, Charlene, Dexter, and Jermaine and Gene (twins). During this time I did not know much about birth control so I just really did not take many precautions.”

17. Where did they work as an adult?

            “I was still working in the cotton field and I later on began working at a clock factory (a clock factory).”

18. Ask them about their adult life and what it was like living as a black woman? 

            “As a black female, I did not have many problems in adulthood. Mostly, it was hard to find work without a good education.”

19.  Ask them if there are any specific stories that they would like to share regarding their adulthood life and being a black woman.

            “I moved around a lot as an adult before I had my twins. I left Mississippi and moved to Chicago and stayed for a few years and worked in a nursing home. Then I left because the neighborhood became worse and I did not want my children growing up there. Then I moved backed to Mississippi and stayed for a couple of years.  There were not many jobs so I moved to California which also did not have many jobs. I could not take all of the earthquakes and mudslides so I finally moved back to Mississippi and stayed. I traveled to all of the places each time by bus.”

20.  What were their relationships like with other women?

            My relationship is normal with other women. My girlfriends (best friends) and I used to always hang out and even party. We all still stay in touch with each other.

21.  Would they consider themselves friends with white women?  Or do they have friends that are of another race?

            “Yes, one of my best friends is white woman. My parents even during their time were great friends with many white people; therefore, we were brought up with many white friends. That’s probably why we never really discussed racism or had any problems with it. I also have Indian friends. It did not matter what color the person’s skin, more of who they were as a person.”

22.  What type of relationship do you have with black men?

            “Black men during my time worked hard to take care of their women and children and I applaud them. Today, you do not see it much. Many men today depend on the woman’s paycheck that she brings home.”

23.  What do you think is the role of both black men and women in relationships and inside of the home should be?

            “The woman and man should be equal role models for their children in the home. Also, in my view, the man is the head of the household but both man and woman should compromise in their decisions to better their life.”

24.  What do you think about people dating outside of their race?  Black men marrying white women and black women marrying white men?

            “In the beginning, I thought that this was weird and maybe a little wrong because I did not see that much while growing up. However, I began to see it more and more and it did not bother me. I believe that it’s your right to be with whomever you fall in love with.”

25.  What issues do you think most affect black Americans today?

            “Money mostly affects Black Americans because that is what everyone is chasing. Then, there are many Black American who are out of work and staying home fitting the stereotypes.”

"Lanette Burkett Coleman"

Interview #1….

1. What is your name? Maiden and Marriage (if applicable)

            Lanette Burkett(Maiden) Coleman(Married)

2. Where were you born?

            Laurel, Mississippi…Born July 12, 1980

3. Where did you grow up?

            Collins, Mississippi

4. What were your parents’ names and occupations?

            Betty Burkett(Mother-Domestic Worker) Father(Unknown)

5. Do you have any siblings? Yes or No, names?

            Yes, (1)Sister-Lynn (4)Brothers- Joe, Kenny, Chris, Daniel(deceased)

6. What was your life like growing up as a black girl in Collins, MS?

            Lanette states, “Things were pretty leveled out. Racism was still around but not as much as when my parents were children.”

7. Did you ever encounter racism? Explain?

            “No, not really. Not explicitly but implicitly. Our school was balanced evenly.”

8. What privileges or setbacks do you feel that you experienced growing up a black female in the North/South?

            No privileges or setbacks.

9. What, if anything, do you remember your parents telling you about race?

            “My parents told me about their childhood during school. They were ridiculed and taunted by white people because whites did nit like going to school with the blacks.

10. What did your parents tell you or instill in you regarding being a woman, specifically a black woman?

            “Don’t let people try to down rate you or take advantage of your feelings…and don’t let ANYONE insult your intelligence because you are a Black woman.”

11. Did you attend school? Yes or No, why or why not? 

            Yes, because my parents wanted to make sure I received an education.

12. Talk a little bit about those days...

            “There were not many problems with racism when I was growing up and going through school. Because of where my parents lived, I attended a predominantly white school. Yes, people still new that racism was around but most kids stuck with people of their own race. Not much hatred shown but not fully accepted yet either”

13. What was it like in school for you as a black female? 

            “Everything was fine mostly. Everyone just stayed with their group of friends. I had to work extra hard being a Black female because I know that I received the least respect from others.”

14. Did you graduate and attend college?

            “I graduated but I did not attend college. Right after high school I became pregnant and had to go straight into work.”

15. Did you get married?  To who?  When?

            “I married Eddie Coleman when I was 18.”

16. Did you have any children? Yes or No? How many?  Why?  Was this a choice or just happend?  If no children, you could ask them why they chose not to or was it medical reasons.

            Yes, we have two children together. The circumstances surrounding my marriage were mostly choice but also partly because I was pregnant also.”

17. Where did they work as an adult?

            “I own a business, a clothing boutique.”

18. Ask them about their adult life and what it was like living as a black woman? 

            “I had to work extra hard because I did not go to college and I also had a family to take care of and be there for.”

19.  Ask them if there are any specific stories that they would like to share regarding their adulthood life and being a black woman.

            No specific stories

20.  What were their relationships like with other women?  Specifically ask about white and black women.

            “I have a great relationship with other women. My best friend is Black but I do have friends of other races, mostly white.”

21.  Would they consider themselves friends with white women?  Or do they have friends that are of another race?

            “Yes, I am friends with white women but I do not have too many friends of other races.”

22.  What type of relationship do you have with black men?

            “Great relationship. I think Black are beautiful and handsome human beings, whom in which I love very much.”

23.  What do you think is the role of both black men and women in relationships and inside of the home should be?

            “I believe that the woman should be equally capable of maintaining the household, so that she can take care of her family if something happens to the husband. However, it should be the man’s responsibility to maintain the home and responsibilities with the woman by his side.”

24.  What do you think about people dating outside of their race?  Black men marrying white women and black women marrying white men?

            “My view on this is, ‘Wherever you find happiness is where you find it, no matter with whom it may be’.”

25.  What issues do you think most affect black Americans today?

            “The conceptual ideas surrounding race is a major issue even today that affect Black Americans. The reason for this is because many times the black race as well as other races conjure up ideas from the past and apply them to today’s society; therefore stunting their own growth and others by thinking that today is the same as it was 100 years ago.”

"My Feelings on the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill Case!!"

-When the nomination moved to the floor of the Senate, it took a sudden and dramatic turn when Anita Hill, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, came forward with accusations that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her.When Thomas testified about Hill's claims before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he called the hearings, "a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks." The incident became one person's word against another's. In the end, the Senate voted 52-48 to confirm Clarence Thomas as associate justice of the Supreme Court.

-Did Anita Hill air Black America's dirty laundry?
     I personally believe that it isn't "Black America's" dirty laundry, it is Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas. Yes, to me it seems trivial for this to be a huge nation wide case because she accuses Clarence Thomas of sexual. Was it that serious because he made a few inappropriate remarks against her? Maybe, however, I do understand that she feels wrong and that he should have to own up to what he did. Then again, why did Anita Hill wait so lng to come forward with these accusations? These are many questions I believe world wide readers and viewers are wondering as well as I am.

-Clarence Thomas's wife's voicemail...
     Yes, she is his wife, however I do not feel that she can just call up Anita Hill asking her to apologize without hearing her side and not just her husbands. She is probably upset but she was not there to see what happened between Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. Therefore, she can not determine who is right and who is wrong without seeing for herself. In conclusion, this is an ongoing controversy and will continue being one as long as people watch tv and read.

"Former Thomas Girlfriend Has Book Deal"

 

Lillian McEwen, recalls her experiences with Justice Clarence Thomas on Wednesday

A former girlfriend of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas has a deal for a "sexually driven" memoir.
Lillian McEwen, who dated Thomas in the 1980s, has signed with TitleTown Publishing, a Green Bay, Wis.-based publisher specializing in true crime and "inspirational" survivor stories. "D.C. Unmasked and Undressed" is scheduled to come out in early February, TitleTown announced Tuesday, adding that the book was "sexually driven."
McEwen, a retired administrative law judge, broke a long public silence last fall when she told The Washington Post that Thomas often made inappropriate comments and was "obsessed with porn," allegations made by former Thomas colleague Anita Hill during his 1991 confirmation hearings. Thomas vehemently denied such behavior.

Righting History!!

In February, 23-year-old editor Alex DiBranco at Change.org, saw news coverage reporting that Taylor and her brother wanted a public apology from the city of Abbeville and the state of Alabama. Before heading out on vacation on Feb. 16, DiBranco put up a petition asking Alabama officials to issue the requested apologies.
“When I came back I saw that it had garnered 1,000 signatures,” DiBranco said.
That was on Feb. 28. Now there are more than 2,100 signatures—all gathered organically, without any outreach from DiBranco to website members.
Following the initial success of the petition, DiBranco got in touch with Corbitt, who decided to put the petition under his name. She also got in touch with Grimsley, who represents Henry County, which includes Abbeville. Grimsley had read McGuire’s book and was watching the petition.
“We have a saying in the African American community that you want to give a person their flowers when they’re alive,” said Detroit attorney Diane Hutcherson, board member and past president of the Wolverine Bar Association, a Michigan group for African-American lawyers that has added its support to widening efforts to win recognition of the injustice Taylor suffered. “This was a woman who spoke out when she didn’t have to, despite enormous threats,” Hutcherson continued. “We want to give her her flowers while she’s living, meaning the apology and, if possible, a Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

NAACP Alabama State Conference President Bernard Simelton, when reached by phone on Tuesday, said that his organization wants “to see justice is served in this case and to see individuals responsible held accountable.”
Robert Corbitt says he’s been receiving letters and phone calls from around the country, as well as from Abbeville residents, white and black. “I haven’t got one negative comment about it,” he said.

“There is a particular silence around rape with black women,” noted Aishah Shahidah Simmons, filmmaker of NO! The Rape Documentary. “It is outrageous that many prominent civil rights leaders haven’t spoken out against” these crimes, Simmons said. “By not addressing them we’re saying black women’s lives are not important. It plays a role [in] how black women’s lives are viewed contemporarily.”
Six of the southern, formerly segregated states place no statute of limitations on the crime of rape: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. Yet local police and county sheriffs rarely have the staff or the budgets to conduct investigations. Furthermore, in small communities officials may lack motivation because they would be investigating their own relatives or the politically powerful.
When it comes to decades-old racial murders, the FBI can investigate cases even when there is no federal jurisdiction. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act of 2008 directs the FBI to investigate and to do community outreach with the express purpose of supporting or encouraging state and local action.
Asked if the FBI could play a similar role in addressing decades-old racially motivated rapes, FBI spokesman Christopher Allen said, “The public is always welcome to report an allegation of a crime to their local FBI office, where it will be reviewed to determine if a federal violation exists.”
No special consideration would be made. “We would handle [It] as we do every other allegation of a crime: on its own merits,” said Allen.
Robert Corbitt has for some years been tracking the lives of the seven men alleged to have raped his sister: Hugo Wilson, Dillard York, Luther Lee, William Howerton, Joe Culpepper, Robert Gamble and Herbert Lovett. Six of the men are now dead, according to Corbitt, and there is one who may still be alive.
But Corbitt and his sister Taylor aren’t focused on the perpetrators now. They are focused, instead, on the state’s apology for failing to provide justice. They want the truth officially acknowledged by the city and state that so completely failed Taylor.
“I would like to see her have some peace before she leaves this earth,” Corbitt said. “What hurt her the most was their saying this never happened.”

Justice Denied!!

In October 1944, a Henry County grand jury heard Taylor’s case. All seven alleged perpetrators were identified, after one man who was picked up by the sheriff the night of the rape identified them and confessed most of the details. But no evidence was gathered, and the grand jury returned no indictments.
It might have ended there, but in November 1944, Rosa Parks and other prominent activists, supported by national labor unions, African-American organizations and women’s groups launched the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor, which brought her case to the national stage. International attention pressured segregationist Gov. Chauncey Sparks to grudgingly launch an investigation in December 1944. At various times, both the Henry County sheriff and the perpetrators lied to investigators with claims that Taylor was paid and was widely known as a prostitute.
Despite further admissions from perpetrators, signed affidavits from eyewitnesses, and other evidence, a second grand jury in February 1945 returned no indictments.
It therefore came as some surprise to Taylor’s youngest brother, Robert Corbitt in November 2007, when he typed his sister’s name into an Internet search box and found an article by McGuire detailing his sister’s story, answering many questions that had long gone unanswered, and correcting the alleged perpetrators’ lies about his sister.
“That was the first tiny bit of justice that we got,” Corbitt, 74, said in a phone interview.
Corbitt and Taylor are far from alone in waiting for justice. “My research covers about 64 cases of white on black rape from 1940 to 1975 and is not exhaustive in any way,” McGuire said about her book in an e-mail interview.
“I found black women’s testimonies of sexual violence everywhere I looked,” added McGuire. “I focused almost entirely on cases that had already become public in one way or another—mainly through a court hearing, congressional testimony, a letter to an NAACP or DOJ official or a newspaper story. I did not do a county by county survey in any southern state, nor did my research cover every southern state.
“Black women often testified about their assaults—in churches, courtrooms, and in congressional hearings. They wrote letters to their local NAACP chapter, to the Justice Department, and to other organizations. Their stories appeared on the front pages of black newspapers (and sometimes ‘white’ newspapers) throughout the 1940s and 1950s. And nearly every memoir written by a black woman who participated in the long freedom struggle, including the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement, talks about interracial sexual violence (either their own victimization or someone close to them) as being a motivator or catalyst for their entree into civil rights activism. A small sample includes: Harriet Jacobs, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Daisy Bates, Rosa Parks, Melba Patillo Beals, Endesha Ida Mae Holland, Fannie Lou Hamer, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Assata Shakur.”
Taylor’s willingness at age 24 to speak about what happened to her helped to spark an under-recognized mass-movement against sexual violence and racism in the 1940s. Further, McGuire shows in her book that the mobilization by Rosa Parks and others in the 1940s on behalf of Taylor established the community networks that became the basis for the Montgomery bus boycott a decade later.
Taylor’s willingness at 91 to again speak publicly about her experience has sparked the very new, mounting call to address the untold number of rapes that Taylor and other black women have historically suffered at the hands of whites.

Recy Taylor's Rape!!

Recy Taylor May Finally See Alabama Acknowledge Her 1944 Rape

Recy Taylor was abducted and raped at gunpoint by seven white men in Abbeville, Ala., on Sept. 3, 1944. Her attack, one of uncounted numbers on black women throughout the Jim Crow era in the South, sparked a national movement for justice and an international outcry, but justice never came. Now, decades later, there may finally be some solace for Taylor, 91, as Alabama state Rep. Dexter Grimsley tries to make his state issue a formal apology.
Reached by phone on Monday, Grimsley confirmed he is drafting a resolution for a state apology to Taylor. “The circumstances merit it,” he said. “It’s something that should be done. Recy Taylor found herself in a situation that wasn’t responded to, the way that the law would respond to something today.”
The FBI is currently investigating dozens of civil rights-era murders, mostly of men. But the sexual violence visited upon women like Taylor has never commanded the official attention of the FBI and other federal and state officials who have tried to right the crimes of our past.
“From slavery through the better part of the 20th century, white men in the segregated South abducted and assaulted black women with alarming regularity and often impunity,” explained historian Danielle McGuire, whose new book “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance” was the first history of white-on-black sexual violence and black women’s organized resistance to it. “They lured black women and girls away from home with promises of work and steady wages; attacked them on the job; abducted them at gunpoint while traveling to or from home, work, church or school; and sexually harassed them at bus stops, grocery stores and in other public spaces.”
New awareness of Taylor’s case, and of the pervasiveness of many more cases like it, has begun attracting new bands of supporters who want justice for past crimes of sexual violence against black women—from members of an online social network for social change, to the NAACP Alabama State Conference, to a black lawyers’ association in Michigan, to individual letter writers and callers from all over the country who have contacted Taylor’s family.

"Black Is Beautiful"

“Black is beautiful”

Thu 6 Aug 2009 by abagond

Disclaimer: Surprisingly, as much as this phrase is used, little is written online about it directly. So this is mainly from my imperfect memory:

“Black is beautiful” (1968) was a catchphrase from the Black Power movement in America. It meant that even though American society teaches in a thousand ways that white  is right and good and beautiful and that black is ugly and shameful and no-good, it was just so much brainwashing. “Black is beautiful” was an attempt to begin the unbrainwashing, to undo the internalized, black-on-black racism.

Malcolm X in Harlem in 1964:

We must recapture our heritage and our identity if we are ever to liberate ourselves from the bonds of white supremacy. We must launch a cultural revolution to unbrainwash an entire people.

Stokely Carmichael in 1966:

We have to stop being ashamed of being black. A broad nose, a thick lip and nappy hair is us, and we are going to call that beautiful whether they like it or not. We are not going to fry our hair anymore.

James Brown in 1968, reaching far more people through his songs:

Say it loud – I’m black and I’m proud.

The song in fact was about equal rights and freedom, but that line is what stuck in people’s heads. The song came out just when “Black is beautiful” was on everyone’s lips and helped to push it to the forefront.
Back then part of the power of “Black is beautiful” – and of the James Brown song – was the word “black”. It was not yet the main term for blacks like it is in this post. Instead people said “Negro” or “coloured”.
“Black” was the opposite of white and proud of it. “Negro”, meanwhile, got a bad name as being used by those who thought blacks should try to be more like white people in order to fit in and be accepted – assimilation, integration. So much so that “Negro pride” seems laughable whereas “black pride” does not.
As to “beautiful”, the phrase came when the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement showed how White America was not always so good and right and beautiful as it imagined itself to be. Even some young whites began to question it, protesting the war, becoming hippies, etc.
Some things that “Black is beautiful” helped along, though most of these were already in motion by 1968:

• The term “black” instead of “Negro”
• Natural hairstyles become way more acceptable: Afros, dreadlocks, etc.
• Black ideas of female beauty become less openly white.
• Fake African names (Shaquanda, etc)
• African American Studies
• Afrocentrism
• Kwanzaa
• Black History Month
• Multiculturalism in America or, as the right puts it, cultural relativism
• Blacks all over the world take more pride in themselves and their background as well as other ethnic minorities, like American Indians.
• James Brown loses most of his white fans.

While it helped to increase black pride, internalized racism is still with us.

"Beautiful, Also, Are The Souls Of My Black Sisters!!"

BLACK WOMEN IN WHITE AMERICA

Four hundred years. Four hundred years of living in this country, this country which devalues, debases, defiles, degrades and dismisses the beauty, the contributions, the accomplishments of black women. Four hundred years of being told over and over again that we as black women are less than human, that we are not women.
Four hundred years of myths and outright lies, that black women-haters of many races have spread about us while raping us, while beating us, while forcibly impregnating us, while cutting and tearing us to pieces, while using our bodies, and our love, only to abandon us after they have satisfied their greed of our bodies, our hearts, our minds.
Four hundred years of having our bodies belonging to someone else. During slavery, when any child born of us was the master’s to sell as if it was some little pig or puppy, children that many times were his own flesh and blood.
Four hundred years of being called, “negresses”, “nigger bitch”, “nigger wench”, “black slut”, “whore”, “wanton”, “lascivious”, “hypersexual”————
———unrapeable.
Four hundred years of being considered as less woman compared to all women in the world.
Four hundred years of being the “mules of the world”.
Yes, America has sought the destruction of black women for over 400 years because we would not lie down and allow America to destroy us.
During slavery we would not let the savage viciousness of slavery’s tearing our children from our arms stop us from still loving those children, knowing that the evils of slavery would one day take them from us. During slavery we would still strive to give sustenance and love to children we knew within the next breath could die, due to our not being allowed to nurse them while we worked from sunup to sundown in the cotton fields. Children we had to lay in the fields as we were worked doing hard labor as if we were men. Children we had to steal away to just to give a few moments of mother’s love to them,  just a glance,  just a look at the child born of our bodies. Children that we carried for 9 months, close to our hearts, feeling their life stirring in us, knowing that they did not belong to us, but instead belonged to some monster who gave not a damn about those children’s humanity; children who were nothing but money, wealth, and financial gain for slavers who sought to annihilate the humanity of an entire race. Even still, we continued to love and cherish those children, holding on to the day when they and their children’s children would no longer live a nightmare of chattal slavery. Even when those children were sold far from us, we never stopped loving them nor longing to have them return to the arms of our loving embrace, whether in this life or the next.
But, we survived all that slavery sought to destroy us with.
Four hundred years that included the infamy of Reconstruction when the North allowed the white South to do anything within insanity towards black human beings. Black women saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan that rode through and terrorized entire black communities using mass gang rapes as a form of terrorism. The atrocities of being raped in front of their husbands, sons, brothers, uncles.
Black women survived that.
One hundred years of the humiliation of Jim Crow segregation, the hatred of Southern whites seeing black women finally begin to leave behind them, the hells of slavery, and to finally have the right to their bodies, their minds, their souls. One hundred years of humiliating segregation which told black women that they were not capable of being raped, whether they were a woman or a girl. Segregation which denied black women the right to be able to stay at home and raise their children. A racist hateful society that beat black women back into the fields, back into the servitude of wet-nursing white women’s babies, back into the near-slavery of demeaning domestic work, back into a peonage existence that was worse than slavery. A time when a black woman could count on being called “gal” or “bitch” more than she could count on being called, “lady”, “Ma’am”, “Miss”, or Mrs.”
Black women survived that.
One hundred years of lynching. One hundred years of seeing our sons, our husbands, our brothers, our nephews, our uncles, fall to the rope and the burning stake during the nadir of lynching. One hundred years of seeing our male relatives drug out of our homes, one hundred years of seeing our male relatives roasted, tortured, butchered, and castrated by sadistic psychotic mobs of white lynchers.
One hundred years of pleading and imploring with white women to demand that their men cease their murdering and destroying our men. One hundred years of begging white women to demand that their men cease their raping of defenseless black women and girls, only to have our cries fall on death ears while so many black lives were destroyed through rape and lynching, before white women finally took it upon themselves to finally begin to speak up to put a stop to the years and years of white lynch mobs murdering our male relatives.
Black women survived that.
Four hundred years of having the men who’ve raped and defiled us, turn around and have those same men blame us for all the degradations they did to us, as if we the victim deserved to be treated in ways no animal should be treated. Four hundred years of lies that said the we were the initiators of sexual aggression when it was those who raped and murdered us, who were guilty of the wanton racist, sexist hatred committed against us.
Black women survived that.
There is so much that black women have survived.
The known, and the unknown.
How many black women during slavery, Reconstruction and segregation went to their graves, taking with them the knowledge of all the cruelties done to them because there was no one, save their loved ones, who would hear or heed their cries? Who knows how many black women went insane during passage over on the slave ships that crossed the Atlantic during the horrific Middle Passage? How many black women went mad during slavery, Reconstruction and segregation? Who knows how many black women who disappeared in the night, or in the light of day, on American soil, only to meet their death at the hands of humans who were so brutal and bestial as to consider black women’s lives so cheaply?
We will never know.
What we do know is that black women survived so many trials and travails that it makes one wonder at how they were able to survive so many hells of such a hellish history.
When I look at all that the many black women who have come before me have gone through, the many thousand gone, and I look at all they have survived, all that sought so much to crush and pound them into the earth, so much that sought to take from them their humanity, their personhood, their womanhood—-my soul looks back in wonder.
I marvel at so much they lived through, I marvel at so much they survived.
Yet do I marvel.
Even now, I still ask:
“How did they survive all that in a world not of their making? How did they suvive so many hells?”
But, they did.
Black women who have done so much, with so little.
Black women like Sojourner Truth. Harriet Tubman. Maria Stewart. Ida Wells-Barnett. Fannie Barrier Williams. Mary Ann Shadd Cary. The Black Washerwomen of 1866 in Jackson, Missisippi. Anna Julia Cooper. Mary Church Terrell. Mary McLeod Bethune. Zora Neale Hurston. Ella Baker. Fannie Lou Hamer. Daisy Bates.The many unknown black women who worked the grassroots level of the Civil Rights Movement. Jeanne Noble. Toni Cade Bambara. Toni Morrison. Darlene Clarke Hine. Angela Davis. Shirley Chisholm. Patricia Hill Collins.
And so too today, do black women still survive and keep on keeping on. Black women who derived a sprititual strength from all the many black people who came before them—black people who endured and triumphed over slavery, Reconstruction and segregation.

The tremendous impacts and contributions black women have made to the arts and  sciences.  Black women who have always combined their role as wife/mother with the role of provider/fighter in the struggle for all black people’s liberation. The tremendous impact that black women made in the labor movement, religion, science, politics, medicine, education—every place where there was a struggle, there black women were, making their profound and positive impact in ways that only they could make. The fight against racism and sexism that black women fought  because they knew that if racism and sexism was allowed to continue, then the black race would be utterly destroyed: men, women and children. The many numerous contributions that black women gave to America helped not just black people, those many endeavors that so many black women lost their lives in to make this a better country, in the end, helped all Americans.

Yet do I marvel.
Today, black women are still looked upon as less than human, as less than woman.
Unlike women of many other races/ethnic groups—Asian-, Arab-, European-, Native-, Latina-American—black women are looked upon as less than these women. They are not accorded the rights to be treated as women. The beauty of black women is considered as less than, as not worthy of adoration and respect. The tightly-coiled hair of black women, the full lips, the womanly derrieres are derided and caricatured by many men from many races—womanly attributes that are just as beautiful and worthy of respect as is the beauty of all other women in the world.
Black women are the last to be considered as worthy of love, respect and protection. They are more likely to be called “bitch” no matter how much respect they have for themselves, no matter how they carry themselves. They are considered as liars not capapable of telling the truth, and of course, they are still considered as being unrapeble.
When many black women go missing they are not given the same media treatment that “Missing Pretty White Women” are given. When many black women go missing, American society does not call out the U.S. Cavalry, all the military, all the law enforcements across the country to search high and low for them. When black women and girls go missing, many people do not care, and many consider that black woman or girl who is found dead as one less black woman who no longer lives in this world.
With all that black women have survived in this country, America as a whole should be singing the praises of black women. America should be shouting out loud to the rooftops:
“Look at all that black women have gone through and survived. They have gone through the fire, and have come out through the other side stronger than all that has sought their destruction. Black women of America, we love, adore, salute and admire all that you have survived. We stand in awe at what you have overcome.”
You would think that America would bow in obeisance to black women for all they have been through. You would think that America would laud black women for taking that take which could have destroyed them, and instead, made it something that gave them strength to survive,  keep on living, keep on loving, keep on holding on.

 But, instead, America keeps up the heat against black women. America keeps up the beat down on black women.

We are the last and least desirable of potential mates or marriage partners. Websites all over America look past, push past, shove aside the beauty of black women to get to non-black women. Anyone, everyone, but a BLACK WOMAN. America in advertising shows it has no neeed for the beauty of black women. America knows that it can dump on and degrade the sanctity of black women’s humanity and womanhood, because our beauty, our humanity, our womanhood has never been accorded protection nor respect.

America should sing to the high heavens, its praise of black women, but, it does not.

Black women may not matter to many Americans, but, they matter to me.

Therefore, I will sing to the praises of black women.

I, sing of the black women who came before me who took the blows of the lash, so that I would not have to suffer the degradation of slavery.

I sing of the black women who suffered in silence and went hungry so that their children could have the last piece of bread.

I sing of the many black clubwomen who looked after the black community, North, South, East and West.

I sing of the many black women who gave their unique stamp on feminism—womanism—feminist thought that looked not only at the present, but, also at the future, feminist thought that was inclusionary of men, women and children. All the many black women of today who still continue to live up to the true ideals of feminism that speaks to the dismantling of a patriarchy that harms and destroys not only women and children, but men as well. When black women thrive and excel, all women thrive and excel. When black women benefit, all women benefit.

No woman is free, until all women are free.

I sing of the many black women, who fought against , in the past, and still fight against, in the present, all the demeaning racist and sexist stereotypes created to thwart, deny, and subjugate the womanhood of all black women.

I sing of the many black women who gave voice to their passions, beliefs and values in their literature, their creative arts, their plays, their books—for if we do not speak for ourselves, there are many who will not.

I sing of the black women who had to bear the brutal pain of forced rape, rapes that did not stop with the abolition of slavery, but, instead continued for another 100 years well up into the 1970s.

I sing of the black women who wore, and still wear, their beauty proudly and fiercely, even when the society around them constantly tells them that their beauty will never amount to anything in anyone’s eyes.

I sing of the many black women who went out to work low-wage paying jobs to keep food in their children’s mouths because a savage society would not allow their husbands gainful employment. I sing of the many black women who worked not because they wanted to, but, because they had to. Because that is what black women have been doing since 1619—working, working……working. Because they lived in a society that refused to allow them the chance to have at least one generation of wives and mothers be able to sit.rest.and —-enjoy some portion of their lives.

I sing of the many black women who went into white homes to work to prevent their daughters from having to experience defilement and degradation of their chastity and honor, chastity and honor that was not recognized in the eyes of America.

And still is not.

I sing praises of all the striving, hoping, praying, fighting, championing, trail-blazing, never-give-up black women who hurdled insumountable odds in a country that we black women were never considered a part of. A country that never had the best interests, joys or hopes of the women of my race at heart. A country that never meant for us to survive.

But, survive we have, and thrive we will!

Black women,

Of Thee I Sing!

"Anita Hill on Clarence Thomas..."

Anita Hill on Clarence Thomas: "I Will Not Stand By Silently and Allow Him to Reinvent Me"

"This post, written by Oliver Willis, originally appeared on Like Kryptonite to Stupid"

Eugene Robinson hits the nail so hard on the head about just how dumb Clarence Thomas is.

There are, as he ought to know, plenty of black conservatives. There are plenty of African American parents teaching their children the same lessons of hard work and self-reliance that Thomas's grandfather taught him. The black church, I would argue, is one of the more socially conservative major institutions in the nation.

Black America has never been monolithic in its views, but black Americans do vote almost monolithically for Democrats. That wouldn't necessarily be the case if Richard Nixon hadn't built an electoral strategy on a race-based appeal to Southern whites -- and if every Republican presidential candidate and party leader since Nixon hadn't followed suit. Just last week, the four leading contenders for the Republican nomination all skipped a forum at historically black Morgan State University. As long as snubbing black voters is seen as smart politics in the Republican Party, black conservatives have good reason to stick with the Democrats.

Robinson goes on to explain why, until the cows come home, black conservatives like Clarence Thomas will be known as the self-loathers they are.

UPDATE: Professor Anita Hill, the woman that this... troll... sexually harassed has written an op-ed in the NY Times to counter his slander of her in his book pimping tour.

ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of Clarence Thomas' at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

I stand by my testimony.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, "My Grandfather's Son." He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee -- that I was a "combative left-winger" who was "touchy" and prone to overreacting to "slights." A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. What's more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas's behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It's no longer my word against his.

See, people. This is why the Supreme Court is more than Roe v. Wade. It's about getting good, decent people on the highest court in the land, and not absolute filth like Clarence Thomas whose odor wafts from every case he gets his grubby little paws on.

Post by The Angry Black Woman!!!

U.S. Justice System Disparity Spelled Out In Two Headlines The…

Posted by: The Angry Black Woman
Category: Bigotry & Prejudice, Tumbled
June 24th, 2011 | 4 comments

U.S. Justice System Disparity Spelled Out In Two Headlines
The image is screencaps of two stories. The first is:
Ex-Mortgage CEO Sentenced to Prison for $3B Fraud

The CEO of what had been one of the nation’s largest privately held mortgage lenders was sentenced Tuesday to more than three years in prison for his role in a $3 billion scheme that officials called one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history.
The 40-month sentence for Paul R. Allen, 55, of Oakton, Va., is slightly less than the six-year term sought by federal prosecutors.

The second is:
Homeless man gets 15 years for stealing $100

A homeless man robbed a Louisiana bank and took a $100 bill. After feeling remorseful, he surrendered to police the next day. The judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
Roy Brown, 54, robbed the Capital One bank in Shreveport, Louisiana in December 2007. He approached the teller with one of his hands under his jacket and told her that it was a robbery.
The teller handed Brown three stacks of bill but he only took a single $100 bill and returned the remaining money back to her. He said that he was homeless and hungry and left the bank.
The next day he surrendered to the police voluntarily and told them that his mother didn’t raise him that way.
Brown told the police he needed the money to stay at the detox center and had no other place to stay and was hungry.
In Caddo District Court, he pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison for first degree robbery.

"Was Helga Crane Ever Truly Happy?"

            In Quicksand, I don't think Helga was ever truly happy. She always said she was "Happy"; however I think she was more of trying to convince herself that she was happy. Helga didn't know herself and until she accepted who she was, as a biracial woman, she would never truly find peace, happiness, or even a place where she felt she belonged. Helga thought she was happy in New York where she had a job during the day and had her nights filled with parties, theaters, friends, etc. Then she would get to a point where she began hating this life and even these people. Helga Crane was a very confused woman in my opinion and she was never satisfied with herself so of course she didn't think others accepted her either. So, she runs to Denmark thinking she would be much happier and more accepted there among her mother's people. For awhile Helga was "Happy" until she started disliking these people as well and "missing Negroes". So she goes back to New York. Helga just runs around everywhere trying to find herself and when she gets "heartbroken" by Mr. Anderson, she kind of becomes "dazed" and just quits thinking in my opinion. Therefore, she is vulnerable when she meets Rev. Green and I don't think she fully understood what she was doing when she convinced herself that she was in love with him. However, she marries him and moves to a small town in Alabama where she once again is "Happy". However, after a few children and living here for awhile, Helga once again becomes restless and seeks more. She even considers leaving knowing her children had there father and would always taken care of, not having the kind of child hood that she had. But, Helga doesn't leave because she finally starts to get accepted by the community. Helga states at the end of Quicksand, "They are all black together." However, she ended this novel thinking she still had to find a way to escape even though she didn't want to desert her children. So, no I don't believe she was ever truly happy anywhere or with anyone.

"Quicksand" by Nella Larsen

During this novel Quicksand, by Nella Larsen, Helga was a biracial (mulatto) young woman living through the period where people had a strong sense of racial identity and were separated by this. Throughout this entire novel, it seemed as if Helga crane was always seeking and chasing something; whether it was a sense of happiness or just a place of belonging. In my opinion, Helga leaves Naxos because she doesn't like the feel of it and it seems as if these 'Black' people are just compressed together in this one place ruled by the white man (the preacher). So, she decides to leave then and there, not even waiting to the end of the school year. During Helga's meeting with Dr. Anderson, she almost gives in and stays when he is explaining to her that she is right in her feelings. Therefore, she should stay to help Naxos for the good instead of running off because things aren't to her liking. Then when Dr. Anderson tells Helga that she is from good stock, she flips out and becomes defensive just because of her background; even though a person's background doesn't shape them into whom they are or what they can become. Helga leaves because she is not, in her definition, "Happy". So, Helga believes that in Chicago, Uncle Peter will loan her money to get on her feet and until she stables herself. However, Uncle Peter's wife sends Helga off instilling in her head that she isn't Uncle Peter's niece because of her "background, with her mother and father not being married. Why should this matter? Her mother was still Peter's sister so I don't understand how Helga sat there and believed what Peter's wife said. To anyone else, Helga would have stood up but she sat there and took what was town at her and fled. When Helga finally gets a job after struggling to find work to support herself, she seems almost ungrateful. Helga thinks to herself how can they think that she would just jump at the first job even though she knew deep down that that was exactly what she would have done anyway. So, she worked for Mrs. Hayesrore and left for New York. Mrs. Hayesrore took Helga under her wing and helped her get a job and a place to live. Helga always stated that "money doesn't matter", but when she saw Anne's house she immediately wanted to stay because of all the materialistic things she saw. Everything was going great and Helga was "Happy" until one day she starts to hate everyone there. Then "Uncle" Peter sends her a letter apologizing while also disowning her; and he also leaves her five thousand dollars. She again states, "Money doesn't matter", but she keeps the money. He encourages Helga to go to Denmark to her Aunt Katrina who "always wanted her." So Helga goes thinking she will be better accepted here and of course she will finally be "Happy". Here, Helga is welcomed with open arms by her aunt Katrina and her husband. However, they start buying Helga all of these flamboyant clothes and parading her around. So Helga begins to feel as if she isn't exactly accepted all the way. Aunt Katrina thinks Helga needs to marry but Helga doesn't like any one there and when asked to marry by Mr. Olsen she declines and disappoints her aunt and uncle. So now Helga is not "Happy" anymore and takes a vacation back to New York for Anne and Mr. Anderson's wedding. She is upset by this and when she meets up with Mr. Anderson; they start dancing at a party and even share a kiss. Now Helga fancies herself in love with him and thinks he feels the same way. Mr. Anderson arranges a meeting but he tells Helga that it was the alcohol that made him do what he did. This shatters Helga's heart and she slaps Mr. Anderson and runs off into the rain. She ends up at a revival and people thinks she is a sinner coming in off the street. Helga has never been a religious person but she seems to catch the "Spirit" here and afterwards Rev. Green walks her home. Meanwhile Helga looks up into his face and starts to feel something for him. So Helga is in "Love" now and marries Rev. Green and moves to Alabama. Now, once again Helga is "Happy". The people of this small town in Alabama don't really except Helga at first because she is so uptight and deems herself above everyone else. However, they have children and Helga falls sick, and the neighbors all take care of the children until she gets well. They even start having empathy for Helga and finally began to except her. Helga seems not to be "Happy" anymore so she plans to leave; but stays for her children and began to except her life there with her husband and other "black" people. She finally feels as if she has a place where she "belongs and is truly “Happy". I really enjoyed the novel Quicksand by Nella Larsen. However, while reading this novel, I went through a conflict of emotions through reading from the character Helga Crane's point of view.

"Their Eyes Were Watching God"

     This movie is adapted from the 1937 novel by Zora Neale Hurston, in which was produced by Oprah Winfrey on the basis of Hurston's novel. During class today, I did not expext for this film to be as interesting and entertaining as it was. Halle Berry(Janie) and Michael Ealy(Tea Cake) both played an exceptional role and did wonderful. This film was about an African American woman in which was a mixture of both the white and black race. However, they lived in an all black town, Edenville, in which Janie didn't have to worry about being treated differently even though she was of mixed race. However, when she became the wife of the mayor and he expected for her to change; then she began being looked upon differently by the townspeople becuse it suddenly seemed as if she was deemed to act above them (like White people). Janie never really cared about what anyone thought anyways which was rare for black people during this time. They were always trying to live by the rules of society after being oppressed for so long by the white race as well as even the black. Therefore, African American women seldomly ever did anything to draw attention to themselves or give others an even more reason to downgrade them further.
     When this film began a quote became embedded in my head, Janie stated, "Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh themselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' for themselves." This was Janie's motto about life. Because of this quote, she succeeded through each twist and turn life threw her way. Janie's character was very strongwilled but sometimes she submitted a little to her husband(Mr. Mayor Starks), because after all every African American woman was raised with the understanding that the man is "the head of the home." Therefore, Janie settled for what she had and became complacent while just passing through life
     Another favorite quote of mine from this film is the quote about 'Love' that Janie began the movie with as well as ended it, which stated,
 "Love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore."
This quote began the film and throughout it, Oprah explored Hurston's reasons for the belief of this quote as well as made readers all around come to understand for themselves also the meaning of this quote.
However, from researching the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the movie doesn't seem to do its justice. From reading the first twenty-five chapters this novel, I can understand the whole story from Hurson's point of view; instead of watching this film which mostly centers around romance than actual life. In my opinion, no this film wasn't an actual true depiction of this novel.

Nella Larsen, "Helga Crane"

Born to a white mother and an absent black father, and despised for her dark skin, Helga Crane has long had to fend for herself. As a young woman, Helga teaches at an all-black school in the South, but even here she feels different. Moving to Harlem and eventually to Denmark, she attempts to carve out a comfortable life and place for herself, but ends up back where she started, choosing emotional freedom that quickly translates into a narrow existence. Helga almost seems bipolar as her moods swing from optimistic and deliriously happy to dissatisfi ed and desperate for change. Although Helga frequently captivates men, most notably Swedish artist Axel Olsen and American academic Robert Anderson, she either loses interest in them or rejects their proposals. Despite Helga’s considerable power as a woman, she isfi ed and restless, she is constantly impelled to move on—to a new state, a new city, a new country, a new relationship—and she eventually succumbs to her own fruitless searching and lack of self-knowledge.Quicksand , Nella Larsen's first novel, has many parallels to Larsen's own autobiography and at the same time invokes the dimension of African American culture of the 1920s. It also portrays the racial and gender restrictions that can mark a life.

never able to achieve personal happiness that lasts more than a couple of years. Becoming dissatis

The is a portrayal of Helga Crane in Quicksand and about racist beliefs concerning black women’s sexuality in both literature and society. Larsen details the ways social forces can ruin an individual’s perception of herself. Helga, a biracial woman, has a dual personality and is able to see both black and white people’s perspectives about life. She struggles to find her racial identity while also trying to work through her sexual desires. Through her journey, she identifies and disproves the stereotypes concerning black women.

"Fine, thoughtful and courageous. It is, on the whole, the best piece of fiction that Negro America has produced since the heyday of [Charles] Chesnutt." (W. E. B. Du Bois)

Colored Girl

“The term “colored girl” is almost a term of reproach in the social life of America is all too true; she is not known and hence not believed in; she belongs to a race that is best designated by the term “problem,” and she lives beneath the shadow of that problem which envelopes and obscures her.”

To this day this quote is still true in various ways. African American women are looked down upon and always associated with may stereotypes, mainly problems. When she strives to succeed, who is there to motivate her and push her own? Certainly not society. In this article, Fannie Barrier Williams depicts the treatment of colored women and questions why. Williams explains how the colored woman is beautiful and has charm and a great charater just like other women but she is depised by the white manhood. Also, while other races of women are admired and worshiped while the "colored girl" 'abides in his shadow of contempt, mistrust, and indifference.'(150) Williams throws out question after question trying to get her reader to understand what is the basis of the treatment of the "colored girl". She uses examples to compare "White" and "Black" woman and wants to know what is the difference. Williams staes "color is only skin deep". No matter how true this statement is, people even today still look no further the a person's skin and that's how they judge a person. To Williams understanding, she belives that the cause of all the "colored girl's" mistreatmen is because of "race prejudice". In my opinion, this staement is very true. During this time period, all "Whites" cared about was exorting their authority and making everyone else beneath them. Their was no other reason than them being the 'supreme beings' especyially compared to "Blacks". The black man as well as the white degrade the "colored girl" therefore, who does she have on her side? No one, except her fellow "colored women. They have to take a stand for each other and prosper because they can't do it waiting on the "White" or "Black" men. Williams ends by stating that "colored women" have just as much right as any other woman or man in society and the only way for them to be exalted is to place a higher premium on character than they do upon the occupation of the "colored girl"

Marita O. Bonner

To my understanding, Marita O. Bonner's essay, "On Being Young-A Woman-And Colored", examines what it is to be a ‘race woman’ in the1920’s. Her main obective is for the women and the obstacles a that they must overcome because they are women during this time period. Bonner also advices these women on how to fight against the oppression of being a 'race woman'. Marita Bonner writes about the weight of oppression on the black female. She argues against racism and sexism and counsels her fellow black women to remain silent in order to gain 'knowledge, understanding, and truth' to fight against the double oppressions of race and gender. Based on Bonner's own knowledge, she believes that a woman of the 1920’s, especially a black woman ,has no voice and therefore must use the tools of 'knowledge, writing, and teaching' to conquer this inequality. She also brings religion into her essay and states that they will know what to do and where to go only when God is ready and tells them.

"So, you too. Still; quiet; with a smile, ever so slight, at the eyes so that Life will flow into and not by you. And you can gather, as it passes, the essences, the overtones, the tints, the shadows; draw understanding to your self.

            And then you can, when Time is ripe, swoop to your feet-at your full height-at a single gesture.

            Ready to go where?

            Why…Wherever God motions."

Fannie Barrier Williams, "The Colored Girl"

Fannie Barrier Williams states in her article "The Colored Girl",

 “The way to exalt the colored girl is to place a higher premium on character than we do upon the quality of her occupation. A fine girl is the supreme thing. Let her be loved, admired, encouraged, and above all things heroically protected against the scorn and contempt of men, black as well as white.”

Incidents in the Lige of a Slave Girl

        Family and the attempt to preserve some sort of domestic was a key goal in Jacobs life. Jacobs viewed her refuge in the garret as a means to keep some semblance of domesticity and family life by being near her children. She suffered in seclusion for seven years, residing in the garret that ."..was only nine feet long and seven wide. The highest part was three feet high..." (91). Jacobs did in the name of family, in yearning for domesticity, for through all her discomfort she was able to take solace and even joy in at least being able to be near her children, "But I was not comfortless. I heard the voices of my children" (92). Jacobs' pains illustrate how strong of a desire for the domestic family life that was denied. Even after obtaining freedom for her children and herself, she writes, "The dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own. I still long for a hearthstone of my own" (156). A traditional family life remained Jacobs' most desperate dream which she partially obtained in her freedom, but not in the same manner that a white woman could enjoy.

Willaim Lyoyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison was a member of the abolition movement. He believed in equal rights for all, black and white. Garrison started an anti-slavery newspaper, called the Liberator. In his first, Garrison stated,  "I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD." And Garrison was heard. From the first issue of his weekly paper until when the last issue was published in 1865, Garrison spoke out passionately against slavery and for the rights of African Americans.

Poem....
Oppression! I have seen thee, face to face,
And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow;
But thy soul-withering glance I fear not now --
For dread to prouder feelings doth give place
Of deep abhorrence! Scorning the disgrace
Of slavish knees that at thy footstool bow,
I also kneel -- but with far other vow
Do hail thee and thy hord of hirelings base: --
I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing veins,
Still to oppose and thwart, with heart and hand,
Thy brutalising sway -- till Afric's chains
Are burst, and Freedom rules the rescued land, --
Trampling Oppression and his iron rod:
Such is the vow I take -- SO HELP ME GOD!

-William Lloyd Garrison

Jacob's Quote

"There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment. There may be some sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible. "

Harriet Jacobs

"The Hotentot Venus" Sarah Baartman

"The Life and Times of Sarah Baartman" was an interesting documentary. The things that this young African-American Khosian(Khoi Khoi) woman went through was the most degradable act that any human being should have to endure. To my understanding, young Sarah did not know exactly what she was committing her life to when she signed that contract. She was persuaded by the promise of money and a better life, since she had already lost her family. However, Cezar just saw her as a means of making money and becoming rich. In Englan, Sarah was treated as a beast, something inhuman, in which she deserved whatever they did to her just because. The way in which she was exploited hurt my heart because that is just wrong and whether it's a human, animal, or whatever, nothing should be treated like that and poked at. Sarah was just a Khoi Khoi girl running from one form of slavery to an even more degradable form of slavery. Her only dream was to get back to her home, Capetown in South Africa, and one day be united with her family. However, her dream did not come true because she died three months before her contract was up. Why did this woman die so young? Noone cared to invest it because their only thought was to get her body so they could study it even more. Even after death, Sarah Bartman was stilll studied while scientist tried to find reasons to conclude that she was indeed not human because of her physical features. Sarah Baartman had a very sad and lonely life and evn though they still exploited her body, and statues, she finaly had peace through her death. And it just goes to show that in the 19th century, anything different from the normal was consered to be unreal or beneath the European. Centuries later, we are still looking at documentaries of this young woman. Are we not in a way still degrading Sarah Baatman even though we mean it in a good way??