I have been blessed. My late Dad was a full-time, hands-on Dad that believed that females had the right to do whatever their skills, talent, and intellect allowed them to do. I do not remember ever being told by my father that I should not do or try something because I was “a girl.” And it was Daddy who introduced me to great Jazz and Popular song. Manhood for me was defined by him as a love of Billy Eckstine, Nat “King” Cole, and Johnny Mathis (my favorite), but that is a story for another blog. I should add that in addition to his trying to be genteel or dapper as his musical heroes were, Daddy was also quick to intervene in situations when he thought a woman was in physical trouble. I thought of him and my Mama after a recent encounter with one of my Mama’s oldest and dearest friends.
I recently ran into one of my late Mama’s former co-workers and good friends. Like my late Mama, she was also an elementary school teacher. This particular schoolteacher remains one of my favorite people on the planet. She and I hit it off when I was about three-years-old, when I literally wandered in this woman’s classroom, a classroom adjacent to my Mama’s classroom via their shared cloakroom. She was also was one of the people who wrote one of my recommendation letters to college. Now in her eighties, she is still so much fun and packs a lot of spirit in one tiny mocha-colored frame.
This same schoolteacher told me that she had once been a battered wife. I never met or knew her first husband. I only knew her second husband that she married much later in life. He was a tall, handsome man with golden-colored skin and wavy-curly white hair. He was also funny and quite gentle, and thankfully nothing like her first husband. She and husband number two had a good time together for over thirty years before he passed away. Yet, she still remembered her tragic first marriage.
After more than a few beatings from her first husband, she told me she left him when their children were quite small and filed for divorce. One day, however, her soon-to-be ex-husband showed up unannounced at her new home waving a gun at her, angry that she had left him.
“Out of the corner of my eye,” she said, “I saw our five-year-old son walking toward us. All I could think about was what if this fool pulls the trigger or what if the gun goes off and kills my child.”
Therefore, this schoolteacher—who is barely five feet tall and who has never weighed more than a 115 pounds—wrestled with her six-foot-tall first husband for that gun.
“I was terrified that my child would get killed,” she said. “I finally got my hands on the handle of the gun, the barrel aimed at his chest; and I pulled the trigger and it only clicked. He brought an UNLOADED gun to scare me, but I ended up scaring him and I scared myself.”
“He was shaking like a leaf and he said, ‘You really would’ve killed me, wouldn’t you?!’ I looked down and saw that he had urinated in his pants because I pulled that trigger. It still bothers me that I pulled that trigger, but my child, all I could think of was my child. He left and never came back.”
For most of us, we remember at least one female schoolteacher that we liked or even loved. While I have plenty of male teachers to thank, like most of us, our female teachers were typically the majority when we were in grade school. There was always one teacher who sparked our desire to learn or who did something or said something that we fondly remember or that changed our lives for the better. At least I hope we all have that memory.
Now, I have nothing profound to say about domestic abuse or gun violence. I only ask that you remember your favorite female schoolteacher and try imagining her being beaten or having to face the same ugly scenario as my Mom’s friend faced over fifty years ago.
Coda: A couple of years ago the United Nations Secretary General initiated a campaign to end violence against women. U. N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon named it “Orange Day” and designated the 25th day of each month as Orange Dayin recognition of the ongoing fight to end violence against women.
The irony for me is that my mother, who was darker complexioned than I, had beautiful copper undertones in her skin and wore the color Orange better than anybody I know. And while my Dad never abused my mom or any woman, one of the last things my Mama told me before she passed on to the ancestors was that before she ever knew or married my Dad, was that she had an early boyfriend who did not hesitate to give her a black eye! So this blog is as much for her as it is for her good friend, and men like Dad.
As bad as things are in the USA—in particular, the killing of a young Black man named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—what we Black Americans are enduring is “a cakewalk” by comparison to some of the tragedies that are currently taking place in India, parts of Africa, Iraq, Israel, and so many other places around the world. Yet, our current Black leadership has been conspicuously silent on so many of these international matters, including the excessive policies of Israel against an already displaced Palestinian people. Yet, Arab, Jewish, African, and African American women found enough of a unified voice to write a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian people. I wonder why they could do it, but not our elected officials. These women understand an important component of previous human rights struggles—including the Civil Rights and Freedom struggles that took place during the 1950s well into the 1970s in the United States—the international component.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X always placed Black American freedom struggles in an international context. If you do not believe me, then read or listen to Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grass Roots” and listen to him rattle off the names of those nations and peoples that too many of us frequently ignore. Listen to King speak poetically and prophetically against the Vietnam War. These are only a few examples, often scary examples. Yet, there are many others.
What happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri is going to resonate with other people in other parts of the world. When we lost Trayvon Martin, you found people across the globe putting on “hoodies” in solidarity. And, if it were not for the women of Nigeria taking full advantage of social media, most of us would never have known anything about the kidnapping of the Nigerian girls, who have still not been returned to their families. Yet, when was the last time you saw a massive movement of Black Americans speaking out against and lending assistance to anyone outside of the USA. Arguably, there has been no massive international activity on OUR part, at least not since the zenith of an internationally led movement that demanded that colleges and businesses divest from South Africa in protest of the country’s brutal and virulent social system known as apartheid, and that was in the late 1970s into the 1980s.
The question is when are we going to get our international legs back, and stop looking at what and who we are as if we are isolated in one country called the United States. Does it not matter that two teenage Indian girls were gang-raped, and then lynched just a few months ago in Bengal, India? Does it not matter that several hundred Nigerian girls were kidnapped and—sorry to say this—will probably never return to their families? Does it not matter that former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stayed on top of the problem in Nigeria and spoken out about this problem of female trafficking in Nigeria and elsewhere, and more often than many Black American politicians and self-appointed pundits? You are damned right it matters.
I can count on one of my former English professors to regularly post articles and his own occasional eloquent outbursts on his page on Facebook about many of the atrocities that happen to women worldwide and, also what happens to Black Americans—He, however, was born in Pakistan. The Executive Director of Greenpeace International was born and raised in South Africa, and spent his teenage years in the anti-Apartheid movement. He regularly articulates how women’s oppression, the problems with the environment and human rights struggles are tied together. I knew something had become completely out-of-whack when the only men I could count on—with any real regularity—to lend their voices and support against sexism were men of color who were also NON-American. The difference is, they can and do connect the dots and see environmental problems, discrimination and the persecution of women, and battles to end racism and/or ethnic violence as connected problems in ways that so many Americans simply do not. Yet, a few Black Americans do connect the dots, but they are not part of what is traditional Black leadership, which is a good thing.
Ron Davis, the father of Jordan Davis—the Black teenage boy that was killed in Florida when a man shot into his vehicle over a quarrel about loud music—took his complaint about the senseless murders and expendability of young Black men to Geneva, Switzerland at the 85th annual meeting of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The talks in Geneva run from August 11 through August 29, 2014. This was a bold move by Mr. Davis, but proof positive that he was paying attention in the sixties and seventies when international opinion about the United States government’s slow response to discrimination and racial virulence damaged the USA’s image abroad. Both Mr. Davis and the women of all colors and nations who signed that Solidarity Pledge fully understand what Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to teach. We can hope that some citizens in Ferguson, Missouri are paying attention.
Now, thinking internationally or being concerned with tragedies or the well-being of people outside of the United States will not stop police officers from killing unarmed Black male teenagers. My interest and sadness over the senseless gang rape and lynching of two teenage girls in India several months ago will not stop the rape and abuse of women anywhere, neither will my continued anguish over the kidnapping of girls in Nigeria. Yet, to be a Black woman born and raised in the American South is to understand that racism and sexism come from all quarters of the country of my birth, and indeed all quarters of the world itself.
To fail to see the connections I have with peoples who may or may not speak my language or belong to the same racial and/or ethnic and/or gender group is to forget the real lessons of the Civil Rights Movement—that WE are not alone if WE will simply acknowledge that WE need allies, and international allies at that. Yet, WE will be alone if WE operate from the position that people in other parts of the world do not have anything to teach us. WE cannot afford to function from the position that because WE dwell in the United States that no one else’s problems or persecution matters as much as ours matter. If WE do, WE will have missed Martin and Malcolm’s most important lesson, namely that if WE labor alone, WE, and everybody else, will lose.
When I received the news that actor Ruby Dee had passed on, I immediately grabbed the phone and called my cousin and her good friend director-actor Billie Allen. These two women made history together and enjoyed over sixty years of friendship. I fondly remembered standing between them and feeling quite tall, although I barely stand 5 feet 5 inches tall myself…
Both of them are/were quite short—Ms. Dee barely stood 5 feet tall, and Billie is not too much taller. Yet, there was always something so big about both of them. Ruby Dee was one of the biggest women I ever had the pleasure to meet and my cousin Billie remains like a bottomless reservoir of wisdom…and then something hit me about both of them.
When a woman is quite small in physical stature, it is quite easy for folks to underestimate her. As Billie and I reminisced about Ruby, she reminded me of Ms. Dee’s fighting spirit that she demonstrated on more than one occasion. Ruby Dee was talented, brilliant, warm and loving and she took no mess!
I laughed, trying to imagine Ms. Dee—a waif of a woman who made damned good homemade soup, by the way—getting in anyone’s face. Yet, her entire existence of artistry and activism, coupled with her intellectual, culinary, and maternal gifts demonstrated that there is always a subtle beauty and power in being a woman, but an even greater power in being a small woman…No one really expects you to stand your ground until you do it. I know. I have encountered a few bullies (male and female) in my lifetime.
Ruby and Billie’s friendship and tenacity never had anything to do with their height or size, but rather with a spirit, a certain fierceness that defied size and gender. If that fierceness was unleashed at the right moment, it could either empower you or scare the hell out of you—and in that glorious combination and contradiction of both empowerment and fear is what it really means to be a real woman. This is a lesson that only a woman can teach you and I am eternally grateful to both of them for that lesson.
When Erich McMillan-McCall, founder of Project1Voice said, “We need a bibliography,” I knew I was about to be called upon to begin pulling together books that focused on the lives and accomplishments of Black women. I almost declined because there really is no shortage of books written by or about or which target Black women and girls as a reading audience. The real task was not finding books, but rather which ones should be on the list. Erich (pronounced “Eh-rish”) asked me to do this as part of his overall focus on Black women, but also in some ways as a response to the reading of the Christina Ham play “Four Little Girls” that streamed live online at the Kennedy-Center’s website at 6:00 PM EST on Sunday, September 15, 2013.
Although Diane McWhorter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Carry Me Home gives a detailed account of that fateful Sunday morning when Cynthia, Addie Mae, Carole, and Denise were killed, there is no book written exclusively about these four little girls who died in that church bombing on September 15, 1963. Indeed, it can be debated that the White racist terrorists that bombed Birmingham, Alabama’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that ended the lives of these girls did not specifically set out to kill young Black females. Often the targets of racial violence were and tend to be Black males, or at least many folks think the targets are always Black males. After all, two Black boys, 16-year-old Johnny Robinson and 13-year-old Virgil Ware were shot and killed the same day in the immediate aftermath of the church bombing. Yet, Black women and girls were not only routine victims of sexual violence, but were often beaten or killed with impunity during slavery, the era of Jim Crow, and well into and beyond the Civil Rights era. Black female martyrdom and valor in the struggle for human and civil rights is often muted in favor of other types of narratives. A perfect example of this is how most people view Rosa Parks.
Too often the public (and a few historians) mistakes Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat to a White person in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 as just an example of what happens when a Black woman simply gets tired of racial injustice. But it was much, much more than that. Historian Danielle L. McGuire aptly noted that Parks had a long career of dangerous work as an NAACP investigator in the decades before her fateful act in 1955. McGuire also reported that the very first question Rosa Parks’ mother asked her after Parks was released from jail for her now-famous refusal to give up her seat to a white bus passenger was: “Did they beat you?” That kind of question was, at one time, almost as typical for Black women as the sun coming up.
One way to dispel myths and increase our understanding of our lives and the world we live in is to read and do our own research. One way to honor those four little girls tragically killed on that fateful Sunday in 1963 (and all of our Black heroines) is to examine and celebrate our resilient and diverse and often brilliant Black womanhood, a womanhood denied to them. So here goes…
The books contained in the .pdf attachment at the end of this blog were my favorites and the first books that came to mind, along with a few marvelous book suggestions about Black female musicians courtesy of my good friend and alumna sister from Agnes Scott College, ethnomusicologist Dr. Birgitta Johnson.
Some books are old and some relatively new. There are no separate sections where fiction is separated from nonfiction. The only separate section in this bibliography is a section of books devoted exclusively to and for Black girls from preschool to middle school. A few parents might find this useful. I am also happy to report that books for and about Black girls is a growing industry.
My book list is not comprehensive. For some of you who read all the time, you might find some glaring omissions. I make no apologies. I never choose a book simply because it was or is popular, and neither should you. I also have not been fond of everything on the bestseller list now or in the past. This list is MY LIST and it is hardly an exhaustive list of all the books I have read about Black women and/or any other subject. Yet it is a beginning. For those of you who read occasionally, you might find this list particularly useful so that you can begin that journey where you read and discover new things, new ideas, and new writers.
Now, for those of you who might be tempted to send me some remark about how I left out what you consider to be the “best book ever,” do not despair and save your energy. The attached bibliography has an important page with a header that reads: “Add Your Favorite Books Here.” THIS IS YOUR PAGE. This is where I hope you will begin to write down the authors and titles of those books that have mattered the most to you. I hope you will create your own bibliography, because if you do, we can begin to shape a real dialogue that is truly about ALL OF US. I invite you to start one part of your/our journey by clicking here: **By, About, and For Black Women, a Personal Bibliography by Leslye Joy Allen.pdf**
Portable Document Files (.pdf ) have to be opened with an Adobe Reader. If you have a problem opening the file above, please visit http://www.adobe.com, click on the section near the top of the page that is marked “Download,” then highlight and click “Adobe Reader” and download the Adobe Reader free of charge.
Also be sure to visit the Gist of Freedom, free podcasts devoted to preserving our rich African American History at: http://www.blackhistoryuniversity.com
