sydneyflapper:

shelbysphotocoloring:

African-American girl, probably around the 1920’s judging by her finger-waved hair. 

Yup - second half of the 1920s, judging from her hem length.

amazonfeminist:

Barbara Smith (born December 16, 1946) in Cleveland is an American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic, teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities over the last twenty five years. Smith’s essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditions (magazine) and The Nation. In 1975 she reorganized the Boston chapter of the National Black Feminist Organization to establish the Combahee River Collective. Barbara has a twin sister, Beverly Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.

freececemcdonald:

Thanks to KC Newnam for creating such beautiful art work to spread the word about CeCe!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150680946754213&set=a.299792519212.146452.573384212&type=1&theater

Prompt: a white transguy in local queer health group this year said to me - dismissively - on issues of race + women’s representation being raised - that he hadn’t heard this being an issue with the local transwomen.

Which is odd, because they’d certainly shared these views with me ,at fairly public forums. But were very polite, mindful of other people’s feelings, politically astute, reflective etc. Used to not having ANY forums for themselves so they didn’t take the ones they had for granted; were overly kind, self aware, practical in their focus, informed and welcoming to others.

Note: Just because someone ‘rises above’ doesn’t mean you should ignore them while you claim to speak for them.

Just because someone doesn’t take for granted or always employ the ‘angry young male leftists’ rant talk all the time doesn’t mean they’re more privileged than you, or know less, or deserve to be ignored.

If someone with less that you ‘rises above’ like that, or has developed more ways of being articulate and doing politics with a range of people -  you could respect their effort, their POV and support them rather than dismiss anyone who isn’t playing the game like you, centering you.

Petition supporting her, which is only 70% of the way there.

unaguerrasinfondo:

Free Food for the Community Programme, 1971, Oakland. Photograph by Stephen Shames

“Known as the Motorcycle Queen of Miami, Bessie Stringfield started riding when she was 16. She was the first African-American woman to travel cross-country solo, and she did it at age 19 in 1929, riding a 1928 Indian Scout. Bessie traveled through all of the lower 48 states during the ’30s and ’40s at a time when the country was rife with prejudice and hatred. She later rode in Europe, Brazil, and Haiti and during World War II she served as one of the few motorcycle despatch riders for the United States military.”

via A Usable Past

fuckyeahimagedescriptions:

omnivory:

Via queerveganfeminist:

AUDRE LORDE by beeswax goatskull on Flickr.

[Image Description: Image is a tan poster with a portrait of poet and activist Audre Lorde. She is a black woman with glasses and short hair. Her name is across the top of the poster in large black letters. Underneath it in smaller text is “Born February 18, 1934. Died November.” Phrases and quotes pertaining to Lorde continue down the poster: 

“Gamba adisa”

“When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” 

“The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.”

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house…”

And underneath her portrait in large bold letters it reads “Black lesbian mother warrior poet.”

“She who makes her meaning known” - The meaning of her African name “Gamba adisa”

who do the legacy and gains of Black, Lesbian, Poet, Fighter, Mother, writers who never apologized for self love or the complex, messy, aspects of ethics belong to?

cartermagazine:

Today In History

‘Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, opened her historic campaign for President on this date January 25, 1972.’

(photo: Shirley Chisholm) - CARTER Magazine

Without wanting to trivialize the political boldness of Chisholm in campaigning for President, I’ll just state that, she also had such massive style.

Dr. Anna Pauline Murray, or Pauli, was a civil rights organizer, feminist, poet and priest. She did so much it was hard to decide what to include here.

Born in 1910 Murray was raised by relatives in Durham after her mother died when she was just 3.  Murray credited her family with giving her social justice values and an appreciation of education, however at 15 she turned down a scholarship to study at Wilberforce University in Ohio because she was opposed to segregated education. Moving to New York, Murray supported herself to attend the non-segregated Hunter College instead, completing a degree in English in 1933. She stayed on in NY for several years during the Depression; teaching and publishing her first book Angel of the Dessert.

After returning to Carolina in the late 30’s, three events shaped Murrays’ future politics.

First, in 1938 she was refused entry to the University of North Carolina law school due to her race, then refused again on appeal. In 1940, she was then arrested for breach of segregation statutes and public disturbance while traveling by Greyhound bus with a cousin, and met with lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NACCP] who suggested that she keep pursing law, after seeing her competence organizing her own case.  Finally she was an organizer for the Workers Defense League in the case of an African American sharecropper, Ordell Waller, who was sentenced to death for the murder of a white farmer. When he lost, Murray committed to become a  civil rights lawyer.

After finishing a law degree at Howard University first in her year, Murray was awarded a fellowship at Harvard. Harvard refused her admission though on grounds of gender. She graduated with a Masters in Law from the University of California Berkeley instead, writing her thesis on The Right to Equal Opportunity in Employment.

In 1942, she co-founded the Congress For Racial Equality [CORE]. CORE was a pacifist group influenced by  Ghandian non-violence, the close connections between it’s members including Murray and Bayrnard Rustion and Dr. Martin Luther King influenced the use of civil disobedience in the movement.

Murray returned to NY to work with the NAACP publishing the “bible for civil rights lawyers” States Laws on Race and Colour in 1951, and contributing to the famous 1954  Brown vs the Board of Education case which ended racial segregation in schools.

She also wrote a successful biography Proud Shoes:the Story of an American Family about her Southern Family in 1956, was appointed to President Kennedy’s Commitee on the Status of Women in 1961 and became the first African American to be awarded a law doctorate from Yale in 1965.

She also campaigned to have sex discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. When it was passed, she wrote a famous legal article Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII making links between sex discrimination and Jim Crow laws. Then in 1966, she co-founded NOW, the National Organization of Women after convincing Betty Friedan that the US needed a “NAACP for women”

Eventually in 1977, having turned away from the “militancy” of political organizing, she was ordained a Protestant Episcopal Priest.  She was able to celebrate her first service at the church in North Carolina where her grandmother had been baptised, as a slave, in 1864.

The election of Dora Martin Berry (Class of 1957, pictured on the left from the Saturday Evening Post) as the UI’s campus queen of 1955 attracted national press coverage as an example of racial tolerance, yet she was barred from carrying out the traditional honors and duties of her title.

via UI Libraries Presents African-American Student History Online- The University of Iowa Libraries

REVOLUTIONARY WOMAN OF THE DAY: Lucy Parsons (circa 1853 – March 7, 1942) was a labor organizer, socialist, and legendary orator. Lucy was of Native American, Black, and Mexican ancestry, born in Texas as a slave. She moved to Chicago where she was a key organizer in the labor movement and also participated in revolutionary activism on behalf of political prisoners, people of color, the homeless, and women. She said, “We [women] are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men.” We salute Lucy Parsons, known by the Chicago Police Department as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters”. Know your revolutionary women’s history.

via REVOLUTIONARY WOMAN OF THE DAY: Lucy Parsons | AF3IRM

Photo from Dr. Martin Luther King’s memorial service, 1968, displayed at the Muhammad Ali Center, Louisville, KY. The Supremes at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorial service in 1968.