Kill the Snake

Posted on January 16, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

Harriet Tubman was a nurse, a scout, and a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War. She is best known, however, as a leader of the Underground Railroad where she led many African American enslaved people from the state of Maryland to head north to Canada.

A majority of Black American runaway slaves never made it to Canada, which was the intended destination. Most of them landed somewhere in the Northeast where American chattel slavery was abolished during the 18th through the early 19th centuries.

I want to point out two things about Tubman and about Black American women during the late 19th century.

First, Tubman always kept a rifle or gun under her dress just in case one of her runaway slaves decided to run back to their plantation. After all, these journeys required hundreds of miles on foot while they worried about bounty hunters who searched for runaways in order to reap financial rewards. Slave patrols roamed all night looking for slaves out after dark without permission. If a slave was caught, punishment was severe, and occasionally fatal.

Tubman let her fellow Black freedom-seekers know that she would shoot them dead before she allowed any one of them to run back to their former owners who would inevitably beat them until they confessed about her mission, which would jeopardize the safety of everyone involved. All of the slaves who headed North with Tubman believed her. She never once had to use her gun.

Second, Tubman was clear about her mission to free and save her people. Her demand to, “Kill the Snake before it Kills you,” was her reference to the slave-holding Confederacy and its Army in the American South.

She did not necessarily want anyone to be killed, but she underscored that the Confederate Army was the Snake; and the Snake had to be stopped no matter the casualties it suffered.

During Reconstruction (1863 to 1877) after the Civil War ended, the Republican Party of the North sought to solidify its political dominance and economic control over the South. So, by 1870 it gave Black men who were former slaves the right to vote.

In spite of the fact that no women were granted the franchise, Black families sat down together and decided together how to cast that one vote afforded to male adults in their households. Many Black men were escorted to the polls by their wives, sisters, and mothers who also hid guns and rifles under their dresses just in case some white southerner/s, aka snake/s, decided to harm these Black male voters.

In this new year of 2025, we are again at a moment in our history where our capacity to protect ourselves and those we love, and our capacity to survive economically and to be free is at stake.

We must face the reality that we may have to do things we never thought we would ever have to do in our lifetimes. We must do more than complain about our representatives who are complacent, thereby complicit, about the objectives of the incoming administration.

We do not yet know what we may have to do. But I think about all of those Black women in the late nineteenth century prepared to protect Black men who were going to vote for the first time in their lives.

I also think about some of my sheroes like Congresswoman and former presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm. I think about her mentee, Congresswoman Barbara Lee. I think about the fact that Black Panther Party membership was 70 percent Black women. Then I think of Vice-President Kamala Harris and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

After I remember all of these sisters I admire, I then think of my late maternal grandmother who was a coed at then Clark College during the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 with her gun under her dress for her protection. I then remember my paternal aunt who had molotov cocktails thrown at her during protest marches in the 1960s, and one thrown in her home because she dared to register Black folks to vote.

Then I remember Tubman’s order to “Kill the Snake before it Kills you.” Then I prepare myself in the event I have to carry out this order, figuratively and literally.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

(Photo of Harriet Tubman by Harvey B. Lindsley, ca. 1871-1876, courtesy of the Library of Congress)

All blogs written by Leslye Joy Allen are protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. Postings or blogs placed here by other writers should clearly reference those writers. All Rights Reserved.

Barbara Lee, Her Terms

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I was nearing 12 years old when Barbara Lee’s mentor Shirley Chisholm ran for president. The young Barbara Lee was in college then and a single mother when she worked on Chisholm’s campaign. Kamala Harris was nearing 8 years old.

Shirley Chisholm knew that as a Black American woman with roots in the West Indies that she was not likely to win the nomination for president from the Democratic Party.

Yet, Chisholm knew that if we Black Democrats stuck together we could put some real teeth in the Democratic Party platform that ultimately nominated George McGovern, who lost.

Black Congressmen like Walter Fauntroy and Ronald Dellums cut back room deals and ultimately sold Shirley Chisholm out in order to win and/or maintain favor with white men who ran the Democratic Party. Do not bother to be surprised.

When Black American men have access to white men with power, they rarely give up that access in order to stand with any Black woman…and ALL Black women know this by instinct and from experience.

Chisholm ultimately forgave Dellums’ betrayal; and then Dellums gave Barbara Lee an internship in his office which she parlayed into a successful congressional run for Dellums’ old district which was once California’s 9th, now the 12th District.

Much later, I remembered Congresswoman Lee as being the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) that voted against giving then-president George W. Bush the right to invade Iraq shortly after this country endured the tragedy of 9/11.

Lee knew, like most folks with any degree of sense, that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the terrorists that struck the Twin Towers on 9/11.

One of the ugliest confrontations I ever had with my then-Congressman John Lewis occurred not long after he, along with the rest of the CBC, voted to grant Bush the power to invade Iraq. I called Lewis a traitor to his face and accused him of violating every principle Martin Luther King, Jr. ever taught him.

“You didn’t even bother to ask for a vote on this!,” I said. I love/d the late John Lewis, but he and the rest of the CBC, were dead wrong for abdicating their duties as representatives in order to grant a sitting president the right to invade another country. The next time I saw him, we hugged. He was feeble. Soon after that last hug, he was gone.

I remember that Congresswoman Barbara Lee had to have extra security because she did not vote in favor of such an invasion in a climate where Americans wanted to feel like we were going after our real enemies.

Instead, Lee used her conscience and common sense, knowing full well that she would be re-elected to her district no matter how she voted. Just imagine if our representatives had enough of a spine to hold on to their principles and to the knowledge that their constituents are in their corner?

Back when Lee took this stand, I was working part-time at my alma mater Agnes Scott College. As the nation was bracing for the possibility of sending US Troops to Iraq, the Agnes Scott College community was having regular talks about the potential for war.

When a faculty member worried that we were heading to war and that there was nothing we could do, I just couldn’t stand that phrase “there’s nothing we can do.”

I said, “You can send a letter of support to California Congresswoman Barbara Lee.”

I have never regretted that suggestion.

©️ Leslye Joy Allen

Something That Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò Made Me Think About By Default

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I read Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s book Elite Capture in a day. And even though I highly recommend it, this blog is not a review of his book. You can read a great review of it right here by Hunter Hilinski. It is what this book made me think about much later that I’m addressing here.

I thought a lot about Táíwò’s ideas after this 2024 United States presidential election. Published in 2022, I was intrigued by Táíwò’s observation that during the Covid-19 pandemic, police violence went on unabated not only in the United States but in various countries across the continent of Africa and in Latin America.

While most of the police violence against primarily Black victims in the United States was racially motivated, that was not always the case across countries in Africa and Latin America. So, here’s why that particular piece of information popped back into my head after the election.

I had the extreme misfortune to speak with a few young men (both Black and White) who voted for Trump because they “liked the way he pushes people around.” They also did not think a woman could run anything as well as a man.

To the 78% of Black men who voted for Kamala Harris, I thank you, but that percentage of you was much too low. You now have another dilemma where Black women can no longer help you.

Black women cannot correct or fix the sexists and misogynists among us as a people. Those kinds of men do not listen to women or engage in any meaningful dialogue with us. I have learned my lesson. I have wasted my time with them.

When we got hit with a wave of police violence during the pandemic in the USA, Africa, and Latin America as Elite Capture points out, I wondered out loud if men on police forces enjoyed the abuse they heaped on citizens. Was that their definition of manhood, of power? Is pushing someone around attractive?

I cannot speak to anyone else’s experience except my own—The men I grew up around were not violent. A violent man, an abusive man, and a thug were anomalies in my childhood. The boys I attended elementary and high school with were not saints, but the majority of them were respectful and none of them ever wanted to be a “thug.” I was never once called out of my name by any man, at least not to my face.

The ironies for me are endless. All of my mentees—I have about eight of them—are young men in their 20s and 30s. All but two of them were born outside of the United States. Well-educated and feminist, they hail from Ghana, The Gambia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and India. I did not go looking for them. They came and found me. I am grateful to them because they prevent me from being insular and American-centric.

While increases in thuggery and sexism seem to be a worldwide phenomenon now that is either praised as a path to follow or justified by bullshit theories about Black and Brown boys not having enough role models and being unjustly incarcerated, I wonder how Black men will address these problems in the aftermath of this election. I wonder where my mentees will fit in.

Will conversations at barbershops and lodge meetings and board meetings and conferences and church council meetings ever focus on and address the core issues of sexism and misogyny and how you might approach and speak to these disaffected and misinformed young Black men? Black women cannot do it anymore. We are not going anywhere near these types of young men anymore.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

An Aging, Weary Black Woman’s Directives

Posted on December 4, 2024 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

©️ by Leslye Joy Allen

1. Do not waste what is left of your life on sexists, misogynists, practitioners of misogynoir, racists, homomisics, transmisics, xenomisics, and on people too lazy to look inside a dictionary to discover what these words, with their prefixes and suffixes, mean.

2. Never render CPR nor succor to those who are not kind, who cannot be kind, and who think it is a waste of their time to be kind.

3. Follow Malcolm X’s request to never call any man “brother” until he demonstrates that he is one.

4. When confronted by sworn enemies, do not, as my late Mama would say, “bother to piss down their throats even if their guts are on fire.”

5. If some illiterate soul wants to learn how to read, point them to the nearest literacy class. If some soul doesn’t read much, but wants to read more, give them books. The ones who refuse to read, leave them alone.

6. Per the instructions of my second grade teacher Sister Mary Gemma, always remember that, “you only have two cheeks. Therefore, you only turn the other cheek once.”

7. Rest on purpose. My late Daddy used to say, “Let the men do some of the work because they owe you the same things they already believe you owe them, on demand.”

8. Stop fighting every battle. My late cousin Billie used to say, “You can’t fight in every skirmish if you plan to win the war.”

9. Stop adding caveats like, “I don’t want anybody to take this the wrong way, but…” or “I don’t want anybody to get upset, but…”to your opinions. These kinds of caveats and prefaces, as Dr. Jacqueline Howard Matthews would say, is an apology for your opinion before you even render your opinion.

10. As Black women en masse we have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.

#MakeAmericaLiterateAgain

Blogs written by Leslye Joy Allen are protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a reference to this hyperlink: https:/leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. Postings or blogs placed here by other writers should clearly reference those writers. All Rights Reserved.

A Word For Democrats About 2020

Posted on August 6, 2019 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

I cannot really comment right now about the recent mass shootings because I am soul weary from it. I will write about it another day. I will only say we need to look very carefully at all candidates on this issue of gun control and the banishment of assault rifles. Democrats also better learn to really listen to young people, those Millennials who out-voted Baby Boomers in the 2018 national elections, if they want to win the Whitehouse and put a reasonable dent in the Republican-dominated Senate.

I watched political pundit Thomas Friedman talk about the possibility of Trump winning re-election on MSNBC, right after the publication of his New York Times op-ed “Trump’s Going to Get Re-elected, Isn’t He?”. It’s a chilling thought. Friedman noted that Democratic candidates for president produced some pretty radical ideas in the first debate: everything from advocating for open borders, to free healthcare for anyone who crossed our borders. He was right when he said most Americans, including many on the Left, are not going for any of this. So, after I listened to Friedman, and watched as much of the two Democratic presidential debates I could stomach, I saw several problems Democrats must overcome in order to win the White House in 2020 and possibly pick up more seats in the Senate.

Democrats must recognize that they are no match for our current president when it comes to spin. The current president is a damned reality TV star. He knows how to spin a story, create a repetitive slogan and throw his base enough raw meat to keep them snapping and cheering. If Trump (who already said as much) murdered a man in broad daylight for no reason, most of his supporters will still support him because they are, after all, frightened white people who are now forced to come to terms with what author James Baldwin tried to tell them a long time ago, mainly, that “the world is not white.” Europeans and White Americans are older than everyone else on the planet save the Japanese. Europe’s average age is 42 years old and that fact is coupled with a low birthrate. Of course we must also consider that 11 percent of Black American men who voted for the current president too. These are the Black ass, sexist and self-defeating Neanderthals who are scared to death of women being in any kind of control to the point where they would willingly throw their own people (and themselves) under the bus in the antiquated belief that only men, and only white men at that, can get anything done…But I have not the time to digress about the current Massa’s favorite Darkies…let me get back to the demographics that matter.

When you toss in the relative youth of the rest of the world, it gets even scarier for some folks. Across the entire African continent, the average age is around 20 years old. With the continent of Africa, South America, the Caribbean, India and much of Southeast Asia containing young fertile populations, the death knell of worldwide white supremacy is ringing in many white folks’ ears. We already know the kinds of fears our current president stokes among his supporters, but we cannot spend all of our energy responding to his spin and his lies; we have to use them as fuel for some other strategy to beat him because the Democrats are never going to be able to beat him at propaganda, which leads me to something one of my young friends said. His name is John Jordan, Jr. and he’s a Black, 29-year-old entrepreneur and Morehouse College graduate. We trade ideas often. As Joe Biden seems to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president, John said this:

“I’m a millenial and the one thing I know is the world has changed and will continue to change. Baby Boomers, especially politicians try to act like they know…Biden’s entire candidacy will rest on his ability to show that as an old, white man he can listen and adapt based on what he is learning.”

John, who was mentored by a Black woman, is right. Democrats are going to have to overcome the generational gap and the intra-party gender and racial biases that threaten the best work of our most activist and youngest Congress persons, namely Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. Our current president has continued to verbally beat up on these four women, not simply because they are people of color, but also because they are women, and young women at that. Tragically, many men of color and white men will not defend women of color whenever those men fear that such a defense will cost them their own personal connections and favor with powerful white men. Additionally, men of a certain age (along with women who’ve learned to adapt to their habits), even when they respect the abilities of women, still tend to expect to direct women. Many of the men I know well over the age of 50 (and I will exit my 50s at the end of 2020), don’t always know how to not place themselves at the center of attention or how to not always have to direct the proceedings.

In my experiences mentoring and/or doing business with well-educated Black men in their 20s to early 40s, I learned that most of them are not terrified of the word “feminist” and can accept direction from a woman, particularly if they think she has a great idea or a better idea. They do not flinch from matters that concern or affect LGBTQIA communities either, but, more often than not, recognize those concerns as inextricably tied to the fabric of our entire community. They tend to worry a whole, whole, whole lot less than their older counterparts about who is going to get the most credit and the most limelight and the most money. Importantly, they don’t see women as competition, and are rarely as defensive as some of their older counterparts when a woman offers an honest critique. In fact, they welcome these critiques as a way to brainstorm and look for new and better ideas. While I cannot speak for other people’s experiences, I can say the young, college-educated Black men I’ve been privileged to meet and mentor are a breath of fresh air.

So, when Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden got blind-sided by Kamala Harris in the first Democratic debate about the subject of bussing, it was largely due to his underestimating Harris’s abilities at debate, and it was also due to his walking into that debate with a set of assumptions, which are, thank Goddess, becoming obsolete. The second Democratic debate became, unfortunately, one where the candidates spent far too much time critiquing Obama’s policies than expressing in clear language what they would do as president and how they would reverse much of the damage done by the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I really do not care much for Democrats savaging each other, but Harris’ one-two punch in the first debate exposed some of Biden’s weaknesses.

Young adults of all genders, women, and Black women in particular, are underestimated by a lot of Baby Boomers and older folks ALL THE TIME. It dawned on me that Biden could easily have his ass handed to him in a debate with the incoming first-year classes of all-women Agnes Scott College or all-women and historically Black Spelman College with ease. Biden wouldn’t fare too well with the students of all-men and historically Black Morehouse College either. If you don’t believe me, go visit those campuses. Go listen to them. Go sit and answer their tough questions. Better yet, go unprepared with the same old weak assumptions about what you think you don’t have to know in order to persuade these brilliant young women and men to vote for you. See what happens to you.

If Biden remains the frontrunner, and eventually the Democratic nominee for president, and the best choice for beating our current president, then there are two things he needs to correct ASAP. First, he cannot dig in his heels and shrug off complaints about something he said simply because he feels like he didn’t do or say anything wrong or potentially offensive. I understood what Biden meant when he said he worked with segregationists because I was born in 1960 during a period when civil rights legislation was being passed, and there was no choice but to work with those segregationists. A young man or woman born in the 80s, 90s or early 2000s would not/will not interpret his comments the same way I do. So, he needs to get over himself enough to listen to and respond effectively to younger voters who he needs to win.

Second, Black women of all ages vote more consistently and solidly Democrat, more often, and in higher numbers than any other voting bloc. In the last election, this group voted 8 percentage points higher than the national average. Black women’s interests cannot be ignored and will be central to most Democratic victories. Black women, along with Millennials helped usher in a massive wave of Democrats in the House of Representatives with over 100 Congresswomen whose ideas and talents have been muted for far too long. Most of these newly-elected women are Millennials, with enough stamina to weather this current hate-filled political climate and most of them, if they wish to do so, will still be here 40 years from now.

I’ve lived long enough to become an elder. I relish my conversations with young Black men and women all the time. And as one told me, “We respect you because you respect us.” Whoever is the Democratic nominee for president better understand that the overwhelmingly young, Black and women voters that turned the House of Representatives BLUE in 2018 need to be listened to, not talked at. Democrats will not, cannot win without them.

This blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives-4.0 International License. Any partial or total reference to this or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Category Archives: sexism