Welcome back! This is the next article of my column, “Feminists to look up to.”
As you may already know, this month is Women’s History Month. Every day we must celebrate feminists for their dedication to combating a society predominantly built to be ruled by men. Still, this month especially- we must honour them twice as hard. We can do this by researching and learning more about feminists. We can find out more about the sacrifices they have made, which are often overlooked, and celebrate the past women, which have moulded a more equal society for us to thrive in today.
Sojourner Truth
Truth was one of the first black women to attend court against a white man, who won her case and gained custody of her 5-year-old son, who was illegally sold to a slave owner from New York to Alabama.
In 1843, Truth became a Methodist after seeing and hearing voices that she claimed were communications from God. Truth travelled around the US as a campaigner to abolish slavery and drive her voice to be heard. Eventually, in 1844 Truth became part of the abolishment founded group Northampton Association of Education and Industry. This group was for forward thinkers who supported women’s rights, religious tolerance, and Pacifism. With this group supporting Truth, she delivered her first-ever anti-slavery speech, which is where her life as an activist began.
Truth was a guest speaker at the first-ever national women’s rights conversion held in Massachusetts- pretty cool, right. In May of that year, she attended the Ohio women’s rights convention and delivered what’s now known to be her most famous speech on women’s rights “ain’t I a woman”. In this speech, Truth demanded political equality for all women and sought for civil rights not just for black women for black men too, and for abolishing slavery.
As its women’s history month, we must recognize the strength and wisdom of Truth, the amount of strength she had to stand firm against a system grounded to be against her- to be resilient and to let her voice be heard during a time where it was silenced. Truth devoted her life to overthrow inequalities towards race and gender.
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is a human rights activist, a scholar, and an author; she came into prominence in the late 60s/ early 70s. During that time, she became involved with a prison movement after being accused of being connected with a shooting. Her trial was highly publicized and started a global “Free Angela Davis” campaign. In the cells, she discovered prisoners’ poor conditions- having the insight of what it is like to be a prisoner. Davis then became much more involved with the prison movement. Angela highlighted that her imprisonment was due to systematic racism and sexist oppression within the American justice system.
In addition to starting the movement, Davis has contributed a lot of her time towards researching women’s concerns, particularly black women. Davis highlighted the similarities of oppressions between race, gender, and class for black women in the US throughout her many books.
Davis used her platform as an author to educate people on racism and sexism and how she believes change can be brought for individuals’ liberation. Davis also believes that to achieve the liberation of all individuals, we must work within a socialist system. All kinds of oppression must stop, even within the socialist movement. Otherwise, the movement will fail.
Davis criticized movements such as the civil rights movement for enforcing sexism, making it difficult for women to voice their concerns and injustice. In particular, Davis highlighted that it was tough for black women to contribute to movements such as this, as their problems and struggles were often overlooked.
Gloria Steinem
Steinem is an American feminist journalist and social-political activist who was amongst the great women pioneering and leading the second wave of the feminist movement. Throughout her life, she has led marches, toured America as an in-demand speaker, highlighted and defied stereotypes created against women, broke gender barriers, and fought for women’s equality.
Feminism was, and still is, often misunderstood and ridiculed. It can be misconstrued as women trying to overthrow men and gain superiority. It used to also be thought of as being only for lesbians. However, Steinem continuously highlighted the inclusivity of feminism, showing that feminism was indeed for EVERYONE. She taught that the movement was not to over-throw men but to fight for the equal rights of EVERYONE and to dispense the labels of gender, class, and race and embrace our unique individuality.
FUN FACT: Steinem’s paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, was the president of the OHIO Woman Suffrage Association.