As I See It / February 2006
Fade to Black
For the first 150 years in America, democracy included only half the population. Women finally cast their ballot because of a courageous, persistent political campaign that lasted 72 years.
The women who challenged the ingrained social attitudes and institutions of the time were subject to ridicule and harassment. Their ultimate success reflects an enormous accomplishment. But their fight, long and arduous as it was, involved not one single life lost or a single shot fired. In their marches for the right to vote, women were scorned, spit upon, jailed and sometimes injured. But none of them died.
Victims of equally ingrained social attitudes and institutions, African Americans endured the same political exclusion. But, the consequences of protest were far beyond harassment. The day after a woman tried to vote, she was a joke, an anecdote shared in pompous outrage at the club or the pub. The day after an African American tried to vote, he was sometimes a corpse.
For reasons which seem incomprehensible, there was a time in our country, a very long time, when an American could be robbed, beaten, burned or hanged, without retribution.
There were places in our country, many places, where Americans lived in fear and dread, in the sure knowledge that their lives, their families and their possessions could be taken at anytime.
There were people, an unforgivably large number of people, who from some wellspring of belligerence and bigotry, denied their humanity with unconscionable actions.
Americans celebrate Black History this month. But there are not enough balloons, not enough ice cream, not enough speeches to ever make black history in America something to celebrate without pain.
The sheer magnitude of past personal suffering-the daily indignities of being forbidden to drink from a public fountain, use a public restroom, have a cup of coffee in a restaurant, or watch a football game inside the stadium, the indefensibly poor access to education, housing and employment, the murders and physical attacks-simply cannot be forgotten.
Ninety-five percent of West Virginians are white. In some counties, like Clay, Jackson and Ritchie, African Americans make up not one per cent , but .1 percent of the population. In Cabell County, it is .6 per cent. Even Wood and Kanawha counties, with 3.2 and 7 per cent respectively, do not have a lot of black families rounding out their population.
It makes it too easy to start thinking in one color. It makes it too easy to slide into outdated notions and irresponsible naiveté. It makes it too easy to lose sight of the enormity of what has been achieved.
Civil rights for black Americans were won by ordinary citizens forced to fight for their own rights against tremendous odds and embedded social inequities. In the victory are stories of incredible courage and outrageous injustice, ingenious strategies and nonexistent resources. The sacrifices were no exercise in idle gallantry. Every step forward was bitterly opposed. The risks were terrifyingly real; the reward, simple human dignity and the opportunity to live a normal, American life.
The names of many intrepid women suffragists are forgotten or unlearned, along with the names of women scientists, artists, writers, and thinkers born before women were recognized as something other than decoration. Few Americans know of Ida Wells Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Hallie Quinn Brown, African American women who were active in the woman’s suffrage movement. But, no one knows the names of the black women who, for decades, battled intolerable conditions and inexcusable inequality, fought to keep their families together, prayed to keep their spirits alive and cradled dead husbands and dead sons with no hope of justice. They are the ghost writers of Black History.
Because so much is undocumented and irretrievable, Back History must be presented with great and small gaps, and profoundly troubling questions. What kind of people could have acted as some Americans did in 1850? In 1960? Am I that kind of people? Could I ever become that kind of people?
African Americans have many reasons to celebrate Black History. One of them is to remind white Americans to look into their hearts. PL
Copyright © 2005-2006 A Woman's View. All rights reserved.
Femme Fair 2006
Top • Home • Subscribe • Advertise • Submit • Distribution • Contact
Support Our Advertisers • Organization Resources • Women Owned Business
Designed by Livewire Studio
