Womens Month
When and Where They Enter: African American Women Inventing Themselves
“Only the black woman can say when and where I enter in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole [black] race enters with me.”
-Anna Julia Cooper
African American Women have been at the core of African American and American History; yet, they have too often been relegated to the margins of this history or have been made a footnote in these historical narratives. In the preface to her acclaimed work on black women in America, author and Professor Paula Giddings notes that “despite the range and significance of our black women’s history, we have been perceived as token women in black texts and as token blacks in feminist ones.”
Refusing to be muted, by males or females, African American women have given voice to activism to the most important issues the evolving history of America and have insisted on taking their rightful place in history besides African American men and others in defining themselves and the world. Anna Julia Cooper spoke for all black women when she said: “All I claim is that there is a feminine as well as a masculine side to truth; that these are related not as inferior and superior, not as better and worse, not as weaker and stronger, but as complements-complements in one necessary and symmetric whole.”
In recognition and celebration of Women’s History Month, we are proud to salute African American women and their contributions to the forward flow of human history.
