For Black History month, some of the most common names to be remembered and commended are Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Barack Obama, etc… Not to imply that they haven’t accomplished plenty (because they most certainly have), but it’s also very important to talk about the black women who have made historical impacts.
There are plenty of black women that don’t typically get as much recognition as black men, let alone the recognition that they deserve for their efforts.
In particular, I’d like to talk about black women who made history in literature: Bell Hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Patricia Hill Collins. Each of these women have made outstanding contributions to the African American community through essays, books, and other forms of writing (black feminism in particular) and it’s important to talk about them especially because much of what they wrote about 20-30 years ago is still relevant today.
1. Gloria Jean Watkins, (pen name Bell Hooks)
In 1981, Bell Hooks became a foundation for feminist and racist debate by publishing her book “Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism.” The book caused a discussion about feminism from women’s suffrage in America up to the 1970’s; she pointed out how most feminists of the day were strictly feminist for white, middle- and upper-class women, but not poor or non-white women. Hooks argues that this reinforced sexism, racism, and classism, leaving African American women at the bottom in America. Hooks helped push to third wave feminism, which included ideas like intersectionality.
2. Kimberlé Crenshaw
What is intersectionality? Well, the next woman is Kimberlé Crenshaw, the person who coined the term “intersectionality.” The idea of intersectionality was not necessarily new when Crenshaw began writing about it, but it was not recognized as an official theory until Crenshaw introduced it in a paper she wrote in the 1980’s for The University of Chicago Legal Forum. According to dictionary.com, intersectionality can be defined as “the theory that the overlap of various social identities, as race, gender, sexuality, and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual,” which is essentially a very maturely developed version of Crenshaw’s theory.
Crenshaw had noticed in attending college that many courses were divided by gender, like poetry and literature vs. politics and economics. Poetry and literature discussed only women, while politics and economics was only men, paying less attention to race than gender at this point. She realized that certain cross-sections of identity played into how oppressed you were and brought a light to an issue that made life very frustrating for her and other black women.
3. Patricia Hill Collins
The last influential black female writer is Patricia Hill Collins, author of Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, published in 1990. Key concepts from this book include intellectual activism, matrix of domination, controlling images, and self-definition.
Each of these concepts relates to how African American women have been oppressed throughout the history of America, how they continue to be oppressed, and how they can go about fighting this oppression. This book also explores the concept of “intersectionality” by discussing how black men are treated differently from black women, as well as other marginalized groups of African Americans, i.e. LGBT or able/disabled African Americans.
The contributions these women made to the African American community are huge, and I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for them, given their platform.
That being said, I don’t think these women get the recognition they deserve. Personally, I didn’t know of these amazing women until I got to college and took classes specific to race. These women were very influential and it’s as if they were covered up in every United States history class I ever had growing up.
If any group of people shown they deserve a month dedicated to their history, it would have to be black women. These are only a few of the many great African Americans our country was lucky to have, some of the best people our country was lucky to have, and at the same time, some of the least credited.
– Breanna Rife