Black Herstory: Rosa Parks Did Much More than Sit on a Bus

As a Black feminist scholar, every February I find myself troubled by the ways that we simultaneously remember and forget women who look like me. Not that I’m satisfied with the memory of Black women every other month of the year but February–Black History Month–can be especially disappointing. I find myself wanting to rant to anyone within [...]

What Occupy Wall Street Owes to Feminist Consciousness-Raising

On the November 17th national day of action for the Occupy Wall Street movement, I was interviewed by a man from a Swedish newspaper who wanted to know why I was there. I smiled and said, “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Everyone wants to know, still, even after the two-month anniversary of a movement that’s [...]

Front of the Bus

Danielle L. McGuire’s At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power offers a vital retelling of the by-now familiar history of the civil rights movement: an often-triumphant tale of heroes who, through acts of bravery, forced [...]

Black History Month: The Myth of the Black Superwoman, Revisited

In January 1979, you might have walked past a newsstand in New York City and noticed the piercing brown eyes and free-flowing hair of Michele Wallace staring you down from the cover of Ms. “Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman … the book that will shape the 1980s” read the cover, in stark [...]

Is Single-Sex Education the New Separate-But-Equal?

Just when you thought we were over that whole separate-but-equal hullabaloo, Louisiana throws us another curve ball. One school district’s program to teach boys and girls in segregated classes has sparked an unprecedented constitutional battle. The culture war was set in motion last year when Vermilion Parish School District launched a new program to teach [...]

Better Muslim Than Gay

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about how much my people are under attack in America today. The thing is, though, as an American Muslim, I don’t really feel under attack. Annoyed? Sure. But attacked? No. Despite all the controversy surrounding the construction of the Park51 Center in downtown Manhattan, for example, the fact remains [...]

Breaking: Prop 8 Overturned!

History never moves at lightning speed, but some days seem even longer than others. The wait today, for the judge’s ruling in the federal trial challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8, was agonizing. We learned yesterday that a decision had been reached and after what seemed like an eternity, shortly before 2 p.m. Pacific time, [...]

How Gender Fits Into the Shirley Sherrod Affair

Regardless of our feelings on race, we hate unfairness and injustice. Most of the time. And that’s why there has been pretty universal acclaim for Shirley Sherrod, the Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the Department of Agriculture, who was forced to resign in the midst of a mean-spirited, race-baiting firestorm and then was [...]

Dr. Dorothy Height, A Sister Whose Shoulders We Stand On

I join the nation in mourning the passing of Dr. Dorothy Height, one of our iconic feminist leaders. She was one of a legion of women who did not get the fame and recognition of their more famous male counterparts, but whose impact on the struggle for human rights leaves footprints so large they may [...]

The Heart and Soul of JoAnn Evansgardner

JoAnn Evansgardner stood less than five feet tall, but she was a giant in women’s history and in my personal journey. I first met her when I was 22 and new to all this feminist stuff. I wandered into a board meeting of the newly created Pennsylvania NOW and stood at the door trying to [...]