Our Fighting Women!

Dear friends,

On this Memorial Day holiday 2014, please do not let us to get that there have been women, especially African Americans ones, who have truly served as militant liberators in the history of Our country.

Lately, there has been a cry by Western feminists regarding all women being allowed to join active fighting units in the military. Of course, African American women have a long history of taking part in North American warfare, long before names like Harriet Tubman became widely known, and ever since, in groups like the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army.

A generation ago, during the early 90s,in the Amherst, Massachusetts area, Ingrid Askew and Nefertiti Burton, were two remarkable local performing artists who remind Us that African American women have never been pushovers. The duo's uplifting portrayals of African American liberators such as former Pioneer Valley resident Sojourner Truth and their popular dramatization of the life of Ida B. Wells stress the need for all people to take personal responsibility for fighting against their own oppression.

While the name of Sojourner Truth is fairly recognizable, few are familiar with the story of Ida B. Wells. She was a genuine gun-toting liberator (in fact, she carried two guns.) After the lynching of three African American businessmen in her native Memphis, Tennessee, 100 years or two grandmothers ago, Wells began a personal crusade of justice for her people that included lectures, rallies and other forms of protest. Additionally, readers should be reminded that Ida received a great deal of support from her African American sisters. She was no lone nut. Her fight lasted for decades (see When And Where I Enter by Paula Giddings)

While African American women have proven to be unafraid of physical confrontation, one of their greatest contributions to Our country has been their generations of pioneering efforts to make feminism a relevant movement, in spite of the negative actions by most European American feminists to exclude them.

It was around 185 years or not quite five grandmothers ago, when a woman named Matilda wrote to the "Freedom's Journal", an African American newspaper: "Messrs. Editors...Will you allow a female to offer a few remarks upon a subject that you must allow to be all important? I don't know that in any of your papers, you have said sufficient upon the education of females. I hope you are not to be classed with those, who think that Our mathematical knowledge should be limited to 'fathoming the dish-kettle,' and that We have acquired enough of history, if We know that Our grandfather's father lived and died...I would address myself to all mothers - it is their bounden duty to store their daughters' minds with useful learning. They should be made to devote their leisure time to reading books, whence they would derive information, which could never be taken from them. ( A Documentary History of the Negro People in the U. S. edited by Herbert Aptheker)

And The Struggle continues!

G. Djata Bumpus