Role Of Black Women Research Articles

Speak truth! The role of Black women's dialogue in the production of scholarship

In this article, we offer insights derived from an analysis of a structured dialogue on methodological decision making. Our analysis highlights the ways in which our dialogic process for revising a manuscript reflected key onto-epistemic qualities of Black women's ways of knowing. Drawing from an Afrocentric feminist epistemological standpoint, we tease apart how shared ways of knowing can facilitate heightened clarity about one's engagement in the research process. By positioning structured dialogues as a methodological tool, we offer several insights regarding their generative nature in facilitating researcher clarity on methodological decision making and in elucidating key shifts in the evolution of a researcher's methodological self. Indeed, as a form of facilitated reflexive praxis, engaging in structure dialogues about one's methodological choices is requisite for defining and understanding oneself as a researcher, scholar, and intellectual.

Work that: Kamala Harris, resistance, and the black dancing body

Work that: Kamala Harris, resistance, and the black dancing body

Representatividade da mulher negra em folhetos educativos sobre saúde da mulher

ABSTRACT Objective To identify the educational leaflets of the Brazilian Ministry of Health on women's health available in the Virtual Health Library; to classify the representation of women in these leaflets according to ethnicity / race / color; to analyze the representation of black women in these leaflets. Method Documentary, descriptive, exploratory study. Results From 2007 to 2019, 19 educational brochures related to women's health were identified, ten of which had images of women. White women were observed in the ten leaflets (100%) that contained images and illustrations, whereas black women were identified in three (30%) of the 10 leaflets. Two analytical categories emerged from the data analysis: “the underrepresented black woman” and “deconstructing stereotypes: the prominent role of black women”. Conclusion This study shows a low representation of black women in educational leaflets. However, when represented, black women are portrayed positively and equally in relation to women of other racial and ethnic groups.

"Overpoliced and Underprotected": Racialized Gendered Violence(s) in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me (2015) evidences the lack of visibility of black women in discourses on racial profiling. Far from tracing a complete representation of the dimensions of racism, Coates presents a masculinized portrayal of its victims, relegating black women to liminal positions even though they are one of the most overpoliced groups in US society, and disregarding the fact that they are also subject to other forms of harassment, such as sexual fondling and other forms of abusive frisking. In the face of this situation, many women have struggled, both from an academic and a political-activist angle, to raise the visibility of the role of black women in contemporary discourses on racism.

Protecting young Black female sexuality

In the USA, Black girls and women face significant health disparities and disproportionately experience violence, racism, discrimination, stereotype messaging and elevated STI/HIV rates. Research shows the importance of familial systems and effective communication in decreasing risky behaviours among Black girls. This grounded theory study explored the sociocultural conditions that influence the process of becoming a sexual Black woman. Analytic results of interviews with 20 Black women identified protection as a major category associated with Black female sexual development and related risk behaviour. This paper describes the role of Black women as protectors of young Black female sexuality, the sociocultural protective strategies they used across the life course and the consequences of absent protection. Findings can inform future evidence-based, culturally sensitive interventions to promote the sexual health and development of Black girls and women in the USA.

Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. by Treva B. Lindsey

Reviewed by: Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. by Treva B. Lindsey Natasha N. Croom Treva B. Lindsey. Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2017. 204 pp. Hardcover: $95.00, Paperback: $26.00. ISBN 978-0-252-04102-0 In Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C., Treva Lindsey's message is clear: gender, class, and sexuality have always mattered in constructing racial discourse in the United States. With this text, Lindsey "offer[s] new ways to think about what constituted the discourse of New Negro womanhood" (p. 9). Moreover, through this project she further complicates colored as a racialized signifier suggesting "its preeminence as the singular signifier re-inscribes a historical narrative in which we discuss black women as secondary or 'less-violated' victims of antiblack racial terror" (p. 11). Put more simply, in the context of the U.S., race, and particularly Blackness in all iterations, has always been and continues to be gendered, classed, and further influenced by other individual social identities and their accompanying systems of oppression (e.g., racism, colorism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc.). In the Introduction, Lindsey immediately captures my attention by painting a vivid image of something I might not have ever imagined: Black women scholars speaking on the oppressions faced by colored women at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Before this point, Anna Julia Cooper, Fanny Jackson Coppin, Frances E. Harper, and others had spoken, written and published works on the experiences of "colored" communities and "colored" women, making clear the distinct intersections of race and gender on those experiences. Lindsey uses the early parts of the introduction to highlight the various messages at the heart of the work of each woman who spoke at the Fair. I believe this was an intentional move towards (re) affirming that the discourses of intersectionality present in her own work are not new; rather her approach to unpacking them is nuanced in her focus on the role of Black women in D.C. in New Negro conceptualizations. The introductory chapter appropriately provides a foundation for the articulation of the purpose of this work and the conceptual frameworks from which Lindsey is operating. She is quite clear that she is not interested in creating new Black feminist theories; rather she's interested in "unearth[ing] New Negro womencentered spaces, discourses, and sensibilities that directly and indirectly challenged the prioritizing of black men as the primary categorical signifier of the Colored experience" (p. 12). More importantly, she goes on to write, "shifting Colored from solely a racial construct to a distinct gender marker also renders legible the particular ways in which Jim Crow-era racial identifications relied heavily on hypergendered proscriptives and figurations for African Americans" (p. 13). In Chapter One, "Climbing the Hilltop: New Negro Womanhood at Howard University," Lindsey grapples with a relatively controversial point: historically Black colleges and universities, in this case Howard University, were inherently "rooted in conservative gendered ideologies" (p. 22). The author centers the life of Dean (of Women) Lucy Diggs Slowe to illuminate the ways in which the institution (e.g., policies and practices) was invested in White supremacist heteropatriarchy, thus replicating the problematic aspects of predominantly White institutions and beyond. Through Slowe's praxis (e.g., merging of her intellectualism and administrative practice) and experiences, Lindsey not only uncovers how gender, and sexism, mattered but also how heterosexism and religiosity served as barriers to Slowe's goals of providing education for Black women that would expand their opportunities in the world. The narratives in this chapter certainly recalled more contemporary examples of problematic policies, such as the cohabitation stipulation in the contract of former Alabama State University's first Black woman president, Dr. Gwendolyn Boyd (Elliott, 2014). Chapter Two, "Make Me Beautiful: Aesthetic Discourses of New Negro Womanhood," grapples with Black beauty culture, media, and respectability politics. Lindsey surmises that the "black beauty culture in the New Negro era … was both a race and a gender enterprise, in which black women played a central and dominant role" (p. 57). Further, Lindsey excavates the ways in which early Black publications, often not...

Black women’s bodies, ideology, and the public curriculum of the pro- and anti-choice movements in the US

ABSTRACTThis paper explores how opposite sides of the abortion debate employ a discourse of endangerment to mobilise political support for their ideologies about black women’s bodies. I examine the role of black women within that rhetorical strategy through various rhetorical artefacts. To analyse these artefacts, I employ the theoretical framework of ideological or ideographic criticism. This framework helps us see how the artefacts used by both pro and anti-choice movements ‘condition’ the audience not merely to adopt a set of ‘beliefs and behavior, but a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief’. Though the two sides of the abortion debate differ in their overt political views, they turn out to share an implicit ideology about black women. This ideology prevents the voices of black women from being heard and valued in a debate that is nonetheless focused on black women’s bodies.

The Retrospective Roles of Black Women in the Coddling of Black Boys

ABSTRACTThis study reports the secondary analysis of a theme that emerged from a larger study on Black women’s perceptions of Black men’s depression. This emerging theme was concerning the role of Black women in rearing Black boys. Eight focus groups with Black women (N = 46) were used to further explore this theme. Our secondary analysis identified three subthemes, including the (a) presence (or absence) of fathers in parenting Black children, (b) Black women’s role in coddling Black boys, and (c) Black women’s role in “raising” Black girls. Study implications include the contextual lens that underscores parenting variations within Black families.

Mules and Women: Identify and Rebel — Janie’s Identity Quest in “Their Eyes Were Watching God”

The paper explores the signification of the mule image in Their Eyes Were Watching God, and analyzes its equivalence with the role of black women in the American society. In his work, Hurston drew the pictures of a whole bunch of women, which doesn’t show a solo performance. In the paper, the author discussed the vivid picture of black community Hurston offered in “Their Eyes Were Watching God”.

African American Women's Sexuality

I would like to thank Joanne Meyerowitz for organizing and inviting me to participate in this roundtable and for giving me the opportunity to refl ect briefl y on the importance of John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman’s seminal work, Intimate Matters. Few works have infl uenced the development of a fi eld both in laying the groundwork for future scholarship and in shaping pedagogical practice as powerfully as Intimate Matters has done in the fi eld of the history of sexuality in the United States. It is hard to believe it has been twentyfi ve years since its initial publication— like many others I continue to use it in my history of sexuality courses and to turn to it as a touchstone in my ongoing eff orts to grapple with the sweep of America’s sexual past and present and the place of black sexuality and, in particular, the sexual lives of African American women within that history. I reached for this book early and oft en in my own work on black women’s sex work in turnofthecentury Chicago. Th e interpretive framework John and Estelle off er in Intimate Matters provided a backdrop against which the crucial role of black women’s sexual labor and the interracial and intraracial politics surrounding it became visible for me. It helped me to understand the central connection between black migration and sexual modernization in the early twentieth century. And it provided a lens through which to see and further probe the historical criminalization of black sexuality and the role that the regulation of black bodies played in defi ning citizenship in earlytwentiethcentury cities. Th e analytical frameworks that John and Estelle developed in Intimate Matters— the mapping of the transformation in the meaning of sexuality from its primary association with reproduction and the family to an association with individual sexual pleasure, the development of the concepts of civilized morality and sexual liberalism, and their steady focus on the ways that sexuality has simultaneously refl ected and served to maintain systems of class, gender, and racial oppressions within the United States— have provided the scaf-

“Their Depression Is Something Different . . . It Would Have to Be”

This study reports findings from the Black Women's Perceptions of Black Men's Depression (BWP) study, which included eight focus groups with Black women (N = 46) from southeastern Michigan. Four themes illustrated the impressions of Black women from different socioeconomic backgrounds: Black men's depression is a cultured and gendered phenomenon, the role of Black women in Black men's depression, intergenerational differences with how depression is handled by Black men, and the need (and ways) to reach Black men with depression resources. Results underscore not only the importance of understanding the kind of depression in Black men that meets criteria described by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) but also the psychological distress that may coexist with (or be separate from) DSM depression. Implications for interventions that educate, diagnose, and treat depression in Black men are discussed.

Amy Biehl and the ANC: A Scholar-Activist in South Africa, 1992—93

ABSTRACT In the twenty years since her death in South Africa in 1993, American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl has been memorialised in numerous ways – by a historical marker in Gugulethu, a novel and play by Sindiwe Magona (Mother to Mother, 1998 and 2009), a documentary film on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Long Night's Journey Into Day 2000), and the continuing work of the Amy Biehl Foundation. Biehl's death was among the most highly publicized killings in the turbulent period before South Africa's first democratic election in 1994. Although the circumstances of her death were widely reported – she was attacked by a group of militant black students chanting anti-white slogans as she was giving several black friends a ride home – relatively little was revealed about her activities in South Africa before her death. This article outlines Biehl's work in South Africa in 1992–1993 and shows that she forged close ties with leading members of the African National Congress (ANC) and did substantive research on the role of black women in South Africa's transition to democracy. In documenting her work, the article also reveals how Biehl tried to balance the roles of scholar, activist and outsider during a crucial period in South Africa's recent history.

Post 80s black leadership: the family and crime

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to direct attention to social and cultural leadership in the area of family matters as they relate to black and disadvantaged communities. It seeks to reject and qualify the prevailing notions of victim status attributed to such groups in debates around the family and crime, while highlighting and challenging the various rationalities of the key actors involved. The paper calls for greater responsibility from those who view themselves as disadvantaged, and others who seek to advocate on their behalf.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on data gained from interviews carried out with black men, community activists, and participatory observation.FindingsBlack leaders for their own political motives continue to uncritically promote notions of female victimhood in the context of discussions around the family, youth delinquency, and crime. However, black lone‐parents are not passive victims and are often rational actors in the pursuit of personal goals, albeit often short‐sighted in terms of their social consequences.Practical implicationsMore research is required especially reflecting black male perspectives about parenthood and lone‐parent families. Research is also called for on the issue of policing, crime prevention, and related strategies utilised by community activists in addressing the complex range of problems experienced by their communities. The paper calls for a stop to the practice of demonising black men in the context of debates around family matters, and the adoption of a more balanced approach to the issues in question.Social implicationsThe paper contributes to a more informed debate on the topic, especially within affected communities, and discussions about parenting support/education, and the cultural specificity of some of the issues in question.Originality/valueThe paper highlights the role of black women's decision making in the context of family formation, and the role of sexism in black cultural practices in privileging female behaviour.

Rethinking Global Justice: Black Women Resist the Transnational Prison-Industrial Complex

This article explores the role of Black women in the U.S. and Canadian anti-prison movements and argues that anti-prison organizing is a critical site of anti-globalization activism. In the context of domestic economic restructuring, aggressive military interventions abroad and the global spread of neoliberal socio-economic policy agendas, increasing attention has been paid to the multifaceted global justice movement. At the same time, commentators in the U.S. and Canada have noted the underrepresentation of Black participation in anti-globalization activism. By identifying the work that prisons do in absorbing and disenfranchising communities who are surplus to the needs of global capital, and repressing and deflecting dissent to U.S. imperialism, the author reframes anti-prison activism as an overlooked site of global justice organizing. The article identifies six types of antiprison work—human rights advocacy; challenging “post-incarceration sentences”; campaigns for decarceration through legal reform; moratorium activism; abolitionist organizing for alternatives to the prison-industrial complex; and campaigns for the release of political prisoners—and examines Black women's labor as community activists and movement intellectuals in each.

The Launching of the Student Sit-in Movement: The Role of Black Women at Bennett College

This essay explores the involvement of the women of Bennett College in the student-led sit-in movement that was launched in Greensboro, North Carolina in February 1960. On 24 February 2003, Dr. Johnetta B. Cole at book talk at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with co-author Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall of Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities, mentioned that there has been very little research on the women of Bennett College who participated in the student-led sit-ins in the early 1960s. (1) This essay will examine the student participants in the movement and the theories of organization that help to provide explanations for these protest activities. Within the context of the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, background information on the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, will be presented. In addition, the significance and impact of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in general and the student-led sit-ins in particular on the evolving social consciousness in the African American community will be assessed. (2) When the United States Supreme Court made its unanimous ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case on 17 May 1954, legal segregation in public education became unconstitutional, overturning the separate but equal doctrine of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. (3) Civil Rights attorney Constance Baker Motley in Equal Justice Under the Law: An Autobiography, declared that the Brown decision ushered in the greatest period of social upheaval since the Civil War as the hopes and expectations of thousands of southern African Americans in particular were raised. (4) Expectations centered on the elimination of all Jim Crow practices because many believed that this would allow African Americans to enjoy the full rights and privileges of their U.S. citizenship. The launching of the Greensboro student-led sit-ins in 1960 represented new phase in the social upheavals associated with the Civil Rights Movement. GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA On 1 February 1960, four male North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (NCA & T) students walked into the F. W. Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, purchased school supplies and sundry items, then proceeded to the lunch counter and took seats to wait for service. (5) The act of taking seat at the lunch counter and requesting service represented an act of defiance aimed at the South's Jim Crow laws and practices that defined the nature of social interactions between whites and African Americans in the South. (6) The city of Greensboro was established as the county seat of Guilford County in 1808, and was a center of antislavery activity, way station of the Underground Railroad, and gathering place for Quakers. (7) Also considered city of the New South, Greensboro was considered by some to be free of old prejudices and ideally prepared to lead the region toward new levels of prosperity and enlightenment. (8) Therefore, given its reputation, there was the expectation among African Americans that following the Brown decision there would be little difficulty in the movement towards desegregating the schools and other public facilities. Unfortunately, it was not until 1971 that the Greensboro public school system was desegregated. (9) By 1960 Greensboro was home to five colleges; two HBCUs and three traditionally white institutions (TWIs). (10) The two HBCUs were Bennett College, private college for women, and NCA & T, public, coeducational institution. Bennett College was founded under the auspices of the Methodist Church, initially for the purpose of educating male and female students. Bennett first accepted students for collegiate study in 1920, forty-seven years after its founding, and in 1926 began admitting only female students. Among the more than one hundred HBCUs, only four were dedicated solely to the education of African American women. …

Closing in on the "Plantation": Coalition Building and the Role of Black Women's Grievances in Duke University Labor Disputes, 1965-1968

Closing in on the "Plantation": Coalition Building and the Role of Black Women's Grievances in Duke University Labor Disputes, 1965-1968

The Effects of Gender Stereotyping on the Career Aspirations of Gifted Black Adolescents

The politico-economic constraints facing black women in South Africa have fallen away with the growing emphasis on democracy and the emergence of a new Westernised, black middle class. The feminist movement, long associated with democracy, has meant that black girls and women are aware of new possibilities in terms of education, job opportunities, and social and legal status. However, patrilineal tradition still plays a cardinal role in women’s lives. The aim of this study was to explore the support systems and career aspirations of gifted black secondary school adolescents (aged 16-18). The researchers investigated whether there were gender differences in future career plans of black male and female gifted adolescents who had been given the same opportunity to realise academic potential, in the light of the far-reaching changes in South African society, and the traditional role of black women. Results suggested that the support systems of gifted black adolescents are influential in promoting their ability to achieve according to their potential irrespective of gender, although responses of girls were almost uniformly more positive than those of boys.

Reviews

Despite the increasing scope and authority of women's studies, the role of Black women in Canada's history has remained largely unwritten and unacknowledged. This silence supports the common belief that Black people have only recently arrived in Canada and that racism is also a fairly recent development. This book sets the record straight. The six essays collected here explore three hundred years of Black women in Canada, from the seventeenth century to the immediate post-Second World War period. Sylvia Hamilton documents the experiences of Black women in Nova Scotia, from early slaves and Loyalists to modern immigrants. Adrienne Shadd looks at the gripping realities of the Underground Railroad, focusing on activities on this side of the border. Peggy Bristow examines the lives of Black women in Buxton and Chatham, Ontario, between 1850 and 1865. Afua Cooper describes the career of Mary Bibb, a nineteenth-century Black teacher in Ontario. Dionne Brand, through oral accounts, examines labourers between the wars and their recruitment as factory workers during the Second World War. And, finally, Linda Carty explores relations between Black women and the Canadian state. This long overdue history will prove welcome reading for anyone interested in Black history and race relations. It provides a much-needed text for senior high school and university courses in Canadian history, women's history, and women's studies. Winner of the Ontario Historical Society's 1996 Joesph Brant award.

"We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us up": Essays in African Canadian Women's History

Despite the increasing scope and authority of women's studies, the role of Black women in Canada's history has remained largely unwritten and unacknowledged. This silence supports the common belief that Black people have only recently arrived in Canada and that racism is also a fairly recent development. This book sets the record straight. The six essays collected here explore three hundred years of Black women in Canada, from the seventeenth century to the immediate post-Second World War period. Sylvia Hamilton documents the experiences of Black women in Nova Scotia, from early slaves and Loyalists to modern immigrants. Adrienne Shadd looks at the gripping realities of the Underground Railroad, focusing on activities on this side of the border. Peggy Bristow examines the lives of Black women in Buxton and Chatham, Ontario, between 1850 and 1865. Afua Cooper describes the career of Mary Bibb, a nineteenth-century Black teacher in Ontario. Dionne Brand, through oral accounts, examines labourers between the wars and their recruitment as factory workers during the Second World War. And, finally, Linda Carty explores relations between Black women and the Canadian state. This long overdue history will prove welcome reading for anyone interested in Black history and race relations. It provides a much-needed text for senior high school and university courses in Canadian history, women's history, and women's studies. Winner of the Ontario Historical Society's 1996 Joesph Brant award.

Women in the civil rights movement: trailblazers and torchbearers, 1941-1965

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS EDITORS' INTRODUCTION 1. Men Led, but Women Organized: Movement Participation of Women in the Mississippi Delta, by Charles Payne 2. Beyond the Human Self: Grassroots Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, by Vicki Crawford 3. Is This Amer? Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, by Mamie E. Locke 4. Civil Rights Women: A Source for Doing Womanist Theology, by Jacquelyn Grant 5. Ella Baker and the Origins of Participatory Democracy, by Carol Mueller 6. Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, by Mary Fair Burks 7. Septima P. Clark and the Struggle for Human Rights, by Grace Jordan McFadden 8. Modjeska Simkins and the South Carolina Conference of the NAACP, 1939-1957, by Barbara A. Woods 9. Gloria Richardson and the Cambridge Movement, by Annette K. Brock 10. The Women of Highlander, by Donna Langston 11. The South Carolina Sea Island Citizenship Schools, 1957-1961, by Sandra B. Oledendorf 12. The Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement, by Anne Standley 13. Women as Culture Carriers in the Civil Rights Movement: Fannie Lou Hamer, by Bernice Johnson Reagon 14. Behind the Scenes: Doris Derby, Denise Nicholas and the Free Southern Theater, by Clarissa Myrick-Harris 15. A Reluctant by Persistent Warrior: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Early Civil Rights Movement, by Allida M. Black 16. Methodist Women Integrate Schools and Housing, 1952-1959, by Alice G. Knotts 17. And the Pressure Never Let Up: Black Women, White Women, and the Boston YWCA, 1918-1948, by Sharlene Voogd Cochrane The Contributors Index