February 2016 is Black Women’s History Month on this blog. That means that, with any luck, I will do more posts on Black women’s history than I do in most months.
Note: I have extended Black Women’s History Month to March, which is Women’s History Month.
I will do these posts:
- Flo Jo
- Sarah Rector
The following received three or more nominations. I will do as many of them as I can manage (some already have posts):
- 5 Alice Walker
- 5 Maya Angelou
- 5 Queen Nzingha
- 4 Fannie Lou Hamer
- 4 Lupita Nyong’o
- 4 Viola Davis
- 4 womanism
- 3 Angela Davis
- 3 Annie Easley
- 3 Audre Lorde
- 3 Bessie Smith
- 3 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- 3 Henrietta Lacks
- 3 Ida B. Wells
- 3 Mary McLeod Bethune
- 3 Nina Simone
- 3 misogynoir
I will fill in the links as I do them.
Those in bold are on my list of Promised Posts, as are these:
- Melissa V. Harris-Perry: Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
- Nichelle Nichols
- Rama Yade
- Shonda Rhimes
- Sophia Stewart (and The Matrix lawsuit against the Wachowski Brothers)
I also did these posts:
These received fewer than three nominations, but have already been done:
- Angela Bassett
- Assata Shakur
- bell hooks
- Bree Newsome
- Condoleezza Rice
- Dorothy Dandridge
- Lena Horne
- Lorraine Hansberry
- Madam C.J. Walker
- Marian Anderson
- Michelle Obama (from before she was First Lady)
- Oprah Winfrey
- Sade
- Serena Williams
- Stacey Dash
- Toni Morrison
Thank you for all of your wonderful nominations!
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
Excellent! Our sistas deserve to be praised for all the accomplishments and hard work they do!
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Much love for the Queens.
Tupac
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4 Lupita Nyong’o
3 Henrietta Lacks? What have these ladies accomplished? One dresses tastefully and the other one came down with a misdiagnosed cancer and her cells have been exploited by the medical science community after she died. I don’t see what’s being commemorated here.
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@Gro Jo: Maybe he won’t post on what they accomplished(Lupita won an oscar), but what they go through and what they demonstrate about Black people. Lupita is an oscar winner, but still can’t get a descent role in hollywood. Henrietta was misdiagnosed with and left to die and was only seen as value after she was dead and used for scientific research.
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Can’t wait! Even though some of the ladies I nominated did not make the list it will still be a great read. I think the list is a good mix of personalities and different types of contributions. I think this will allow for many different subjects and themes to be discussed.
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Are black women ignored during black History month or something? I don’t get the point of this…
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I think they often are, yes.
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The question should not be whether enough Black women (or men) are celebrated during Black History Month.
Shouldn’t WE as a people celebrate OUR HISTORY regarding Black women and Black men during twelve months of the year?
Why should we confine OURSELVES to just a month of celebrating our own history???
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@ Abagond
I guess I’m questioning the idea of celebrating Black History within the confines of some ‘appointed’ month.
As much as African and Black historical influence has been (and still is) purposely omitted, lost or destroyed, our commemoration of ourselves should be 12 months out of the year – with no end – or until the end of racism/white supremacy.
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Jabari Jones, what you are saying is more trivia and self-pity. Actresses are trivial and Lacks is another victim of racism. Black women who are doing important things such as fighting cancer with math, trying to use biology to improve industrial processes, etc. should be ignored.
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@Fan
I agree 100%. The biggest problem with Americans celebrating “black history” is it always seems to focus on slavery and segregation, with a few of the popular African-American inventors and politicians sprinkled in.
I think we should move away from history of just African-Americans in slavery/segregation-era America and focus more on the history of all people of African descent at all times of history.
@Lord of Mirkwood
Since you always seem shocked (wink, wink) that people on this blog think you’re racist, your comment is a perfect example why. Here’s an article and a comment from Fan on black women’s history month, and what do you comment on? Irish history month (no surprise). It implies your lack of interest, care in blacks and black history and your incessant (and psychotic) need to make the Irish and their history seem more important.
Giving you the same benefit of the doubt that whites are used to receiving, perhaps it was not your intention, but that’s how you come across.
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WHAT? Why should Black female scientists and mathematicians be ignored?!!
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@ resw77
Thank you.
@ LoM
At this juncture, I would have been surprised had you NOT mentioned the Irish!
Anyway, thanks for being a living breathing example of what a unaware and clueless racist (“I don’t have a racist bone in my body!”) looks like.
@ AFRICAN/BLACK WOMEN
As far as I’m concerned we need to celebrate you women 365 days a year (for years non-stop) if only to regain SOME of which has been removed from our relationships (/culture) with you since our ancestors were forcibly taken from The Motherland!
Let us also celebrate regaining much of the wisdom we’ve had in pre-colonization Africa — and celebrate the beauty of possessing meaningful, productive and protective relationships with our Black (African) mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and friends — so that not one of them ever dares to think that they are not appreciated or wanted by their own men.
The revolution (or spirit of change) must begin in our own individual minds and hearts.
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King wrote: “WHAT? Why should Black female scientists and mathematicians be ignored?!!”
Obviously, you have no use for sarcasm, and can’t be bothered to read comments in context. Try rereading the first part of my comment to see that what I wrote was a plea to stop spending so much time on the trivial accomplishments of people like Lupita Nyong’o or Stacy Dash and to spend more time on people like my choices:
” on Mon 25 Jan 2016 at 17:47:40
gro jo
Kristala Jones Prather who’s working on turning cells into factories. (http://www2.technologyreview.com/tr35/profile.aspx?TRID=621)
Kay Igwe – Brain Gaming Developer (http://hackaday.com/2015/12/03/kay-igwe-explains-brain-gaming-through-ssvep/)
Trachette Jackson fighting cancer with math (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5u7-4yFLbY)”
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@ gro jo
Au contraire mon ami, it is you who fail to appreciate my sarcasms, I assure you!
She’s still a bit young, I suppose… would you prefer someone like Cicely Tyson?
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You were being sarcastic! My you’re subtle.
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Not really.
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@Fan
“I guess I’m questioning the idea of celebrating Black History within the confines of some ‘appointed’ month.”
Fan, I understand your frustration. However, please remember that Black History month is the outgrowth of Negro History Week. Negro History Week was created by Black historian, Carter G. Woodson in 1926. The second week of February was chosen because it usually contains the birthday of President Lincoln (Feb. 12th) and Frederick Douglass (Feb. 14th). Both dates were celebrated together by many African American communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
This article by Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) https://asalh100.org/origins-of-black-history-month/ details the origins of the month.
Carter G. Woodson felt that the commemoration of Black History was vital to the survival of Americans of African descent if this quote is any indication: “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.”
Black students at Kent State University in Ohio were the first to expand Negro History Week to Black History month in 1969.
I often hear Black people of various ages and backgrounds complain about Black History month’s placement in February (“the shortest month of the year”) with no historical understanding of why it exists, who promoted it and why it is necessary. I suppose those complaints show just how far we still have to go in understanding our own history both in this country and on the Continent. If it were not for Black History month, many Black people would be 100% ignorant of the contributions of their own ancestors instead of 90% ignorant. A sad state of affairs in 2016!
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” If it were not for Black History month, many Black people would be 100% ignorant of the contributions of their own ancestors instead of 90% ignorant. A sad state of affairs in 2016!”
@Afrofem
I respectfully disagree. I am not against Black History, or February, or the roots of how this month thing began.
What I’m saying is that (imo) it’s time to step it up!
Step what up?
Black people. African people. Africans and African descendants of slaves wherever in diaspora they might be.
Why?
Because for so long, too long, our true selves/identities/heritage/philosophies have been concealed, hidden, stolen from us to further the oppression, mistreatment and self-hate that Black people have been especially deluged with.
We are not like other people or groups whose histories and cultures are satisfied/sated by the celebration or mention of their contributions or whatever for a week or a month.
We should NOT feel content to muddle along in one month’s long celebration of who we are, or were.
We are so far behind (because of racism-white supremacy) that we owe it to our children, and to our selves to the point that we ought to be going full out in the ‘express lane’ learning/celebrating/commiserating WHO WE ARE AND WERE across the entire African diaspora – 365 days a year, rather than be content with the confines of one, or even six months learning of African Americans. We should be majoring in learning of all Africans, all of the time.
Don’t we owe at least this much to our selves, and to our progeny?
Especially now in this era of instant communication and access to information.
No one can love us as much as we can love our own selves, if we dare to do it!
We’ve been into a lot of other groups and people. Even to our own detriment. It’s now time for us to be into ourselves.
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@Fan
“We should be majoring in learning of all Africans, all of the time…No one can love us as much as we can love our own selves, if we dare to do it!
I applaud your insight and passion. I agree with your main points.
Fan, I urge you to shift your focus from the what to the why and the how. To me, it is not enough to see the problem (you are far ahead of many on that), it is vital to delve into why the problem exists and how to ultimately solve the problem.
I have read many books, newspapers (both domestic and English language foreign), magazine and web articles, viewed films, gone to lectures, listened to radio shows and podcasts in my quest to understand what, why, when, where and how Africans in the Diaspora became oppressed and stay that way today.
A trio of sources helped me make sense of the mountain of information that looms over anyone who starts such a journey:
1. Africa: a multi-part documentary narrated by British historian, Basil Davidson. This series is out of print and very difficult to find, even on Youtube. If you can ever get your hands on it, look at it and you will never see Africans through the eyes of Whites again.
2. Faces At The Bottom Of The Well by Professor Derrick Bell. He does an excellent job of dissecting White Supremacist ideology and why people of European descent cling to it so desperately. It is entertaining, enlightening and it chills you to the bone.
3. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary. She goes deep into why and how Americans of African descent suffer from intergenerational trauma and the stunting effects of that trauma on all of us. She helps the reader understand why as you put it,
“…our true selves/identities/heritage/philosophies have been concealed, hidden, stolen from us to further the oppression, mistreatment and self-hate that Black people have been especially deluged with.”
Learning is strange in that the more you learn, the more you are aware of what you don’t know…it is a never ending journey.
Fan, it seems you are also a seeker. What books, etc. have helped you on your quest? I would love to learn more….
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@Afrofem – who wrote:
“I have read many books, newspapers (both domestic and English language foreign), magazine and web articles, viewed films, gone to lectures, listened to radio shows and podcasts in my quest to understand what, why, when, where and how Africans in the Diaspora became oppressed and stay that way today.”
.
AF, I think you’re missing my point.
I am not excited about our people or children to learn or “understand what, why, when, where and how Africans in the Diaspora became oppressed and stay that way today.”
That meme is already imprinted, even over imprinted on our collective psyches. That’s not where I’m coming from, or where I’m trying to go with this thought.
I’m essentially saying that we as a collective do not know enough good things about those who look like us, past and present. And because we do not know enough about who we truly are, African Black history should be viewed BY US as a 24/7, 365 day thing instead of a month long thing. Let them (whomever) celebrate us for a month if they choose to. We need to celebrate ourselves, non-stop. That is the idea I’m trying to give a voice to.
This discussion began with some talk about how Black women were being underrepresented during Black History Month.. and how Abagond should have more posts commiserating Black women during this time.
It occurred to me that this (BHM) time is really part-time, and that we need to be going at this full-time. All of the time.
And, if we don’t help each other to do this – lift up the positiveness we are – then many of us will remain in the clutches of self-hate, dis-trust, suspicion, jealousy, hatred and other nonsense that has been put upon us.
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@Fan
“We need to celebrate ourselves, non-stop. That is the idea I’m trying to give a voice to.”
Fan, that is a worthy goal. I question how a group as oppressed and brainwashed as African Americans can get to the state of celebrating ourselves non-stop if we don’t know our own history.
There are too many Black people who have a White Supremacist worldview. They can’t even look in the mirror without seeing someone they hate. How would they get to the place of celebrating themselves?
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“There are too many Black people who have a White Supremacist worldview. They can’t even look in the mirror without seeing someone they hate. How would they get to the place of celebrating themselves?”
Okay, Afrofem.
What must I’ve been thinking????
I wish you well. 🙂
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Don’t forget Kimberle Crenshaw and her groundbreaking theory of intersectionality. How intersectionality affects Black women and other women of Color in everyday life. Also, Ms. Crenshaw started the hastag #sayhername to bring to the fore the abuse Black and women of Color suffer at the hands of the police in America in recent times.
She deserves to be mentioned in the Black women’s history month, Abagond. Let’s not forget her like many people tend to do when it comes to Black women’s accomplishments.
Stephaniegirl-La Reyna
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I suggest people look at following article that came up recently in the CNN Website:
(http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/03/africa/sibongile-sambo-srs-aviation-feat/index.html)
Here we see a clear example of Black woman succeeding in an area were until recently only White men could be seen.
This example shows that when it comes to Black women and African women in particular, their main trait is resilience and resourcefulness.
This example illustrates also something many people outside the continent of Africa barely notice and understand: that Africa is growing and is giving more and more opportunities to its people.
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