WUNRN
USA - EVOLUTION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN
WOMEN'S LEGACY OF POLITICAL POWER
By Cindy Hooper -
WeNews Guest Author - September 2, 2012
African American women have become an increasingly important voting block, says Cindy Hooper in her book "Conflict." In this excerpt, she examines how black women started to gain this importance in politics.
(WOMENSENEWS)--Today,
African American women can stand proudly on the legacy of millions of
humanists: men, women and even children of various races and ethnicities who
laid the groundwork for the world that many have the opportunity to thrive in
today. Grateful for the sacrifices and the trailblazing that would have
prevented any of us in this current day from living the exuberant lives that
are led in this new millennium, we pay homage to the indebtedness of so many
throughout our history.
The new
millennium black woman has vast amounts of opportunity that her forbearers
could only imagine. Black women are the chief executive officers of Fortune 500
companies, mayors of major cities, Nobel Prize winners, Olympic gold medalists
and now a black woman stands tall as the first lady of the
When Forbes announced the 25 power women of the 2010 midterm elections,
Michelle Obama was the only African American woman on the list. She campaigned
for numerous Democratic Party candidates during the midterm election season
including in key battleground states. In some cases, she became a bigger draw
on the campaign trail than the president, hosting events that outsold other
events hosted by her president husband.
The new
millennium black woman has definitely arrived to embrace a new diaspora. Being
socialized in a patriarchal society, the selfless humanity of the African
American woman has her routinely putting everyone else's priorities above hers.
It is difficult to decipher the fact that the African American woman--an
African and American cultural treasure--is the least partnered group in the
nation.
Black
women have had to maneuver between both their racial and gender identities for
centuries within the legal and political landscape, since the American legal
system both perpetuated and sanctioned racism and sexism. The tumultuous
journey began as early as 1641 when
In 1668,
NAACP Leadership
In 1919,
the first chair of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) was Mary White Ovington, a white woman. Ovington incidentally
was also a suffragist. Fifty-six years later, Mary Bush Wilson became the first
black female board chair of the NAACP in 1975.
Even
though women in the
There were
numerous instances where white women supported the fight for the dignity and
inherent rights of black women. One of the most noted was the resignation of
first lady Eleanor Roosevelt from the Daughters of the American Revolution
(DAR) when Marian Anderson was denied the opportunity to perform at DAR's
Constitution Hall in 1939 because of her race.
In 1968,
black women took their first monumental step into elective office on the
federal level when the Honorable Shirley Chisholm was elected to the U.S. House
of Representatives. Since that time, 31 African American women have served in
the U.S. Congress.
"Conflict: African American Women and the New
Dilemma of Race and Gender Politics" by Cindy Hooper. Copyright ©
2012 by Cindy Hooper. Reproduced with permission of ABC-CLIO, LLC.