For example Frederick Douglas’ wife did so much for his ungrateful ass. She helped him get on his feet, gave him her last name, and supported him financially and took care of house and home. And in return was does this nigga do? He lets white abolitionists tear her down and treat her like a slave in HER HOUSE. Moved two bitches into HER HOUSE over a span of 20 years. Belittles her for being illiterate while using HER MONEY. Not even in death does she get the respect she deserves. His last wife is more recognized as being apart of his life than she was. Just trash. And y'all still normalize that shit as if it’s a black woman’s job to struggle. Fuck that.
Fuck Frederick Douglas.
That negro was a massive hypocrite. How the fuck you wanna abolish slavery and support women’s rights, then treat your own wife like shit?????????????????
^^^^ history left her out of his story too. Claiming his parents have him money to start up when it was her.
Don’t forget MLK and Malcolm X
My heart broke a little but I’m not surprised. What did Malcolm do ?
I don’t know about Malcolm X, but I know that Martin Luther King was in love with a white caferteria lady name Betty that he was seeing while he was attending college. The only reason why he married Coretta and not the cafeteria worker is because his dad frowned upon it. Not only that but his best friend Ralph Abernathy and Jackie Onassis exposed him for being a sex craved phony that loved cheating on Coretta. I guarantee that if black women from the civil rights era could talk now, our heads would explode.
I mean if we’re gonna spill tea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UG7YCgkXTo
Our community has always treated us like shit no matter what. Not to mention Miss Claudette Colvin who was the actually pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. She was arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus 9 months before Rosa but she was a dark skinned single mother so she wasn’t good enough.
Let’s not forget Black Panther’s leader Eldridge Cleaver and his famous book “Soul On Ice” where he recounts how he practiced raping black women because he knew no one would care and when he “mastered his craft” he starting raping white women. Also let’s never forget that he said that there is no more love left between black women and men and that everytime he embraces a black woman, he embraces slavery. Y’all gon’ get this history lesson today!
Wow… and somehow I’m not even surprised.
I knew all of that. Martin was constantly cheating with white prostitutes even a German exchange student while protesting civil right. Cleaver was the worst. Preying on and raping young black girls in the hood as practice for raping white women. Claudette is still referenced as “the other rosa parks” when the light bright brigade “NAACP” weren’t gonna let her share her story to begin with.
Let this post never die. Black women were NEVER respected back in the day, and we’re STILL getting disrespected every minute.
Wow….
[reasons why I think most Black dudes r performative when it comes to being *proBlack* n only know how to mirror yt ally theater/chase yt validation. n nonBlack ppl better back the fuck off this post and start combatting the antiBlackness before they even think of comment.]
Just a reminder that Claudette Colvin didn’t get pregnant until 3 months after refusing her seat on the bus. She was a poor dark skinned girl. In her words “they wanted someone PEOPLE would sympathize with and I didn’t look like that.” Colorism AND Classism waaaay before Instagram 🙂
Bruh I learned all of this and more in my civil rights history class last semester. My professor actually got her doctorate in black women in the black power movement. Even though two black men from California started the radical group as we know it, black women did most of the work and kept the group afloat. By the 80s it was largely female led. Also, elderidge cleaver wrote an essay after getting out of prison where he recanted everything he said in soul on ice and this was largely due to the fact that women were running the bpp and told him he couldn’t join if he was to co tibie to perpetuate this rape nonsense.
Also also claudette Colvin wasn’t the only one who was forgotten during the Montgomery bus boycott. Do y'all know who Jo Ann Robinson is? Home girl was the backbone to the whole movement tbh. Yeah rosa (a trained activist btw) was the igniting flame and yes in her documents and Jo Ann’s Claudette was credited as the inspiration, but jo Ann really kept the movement running. She organized car pools for all the black folks in Montgomery. Y'all the Montgomery bus boycott lasted for a year! People still had to get to work and shit. Jo Ann was on it! Plus she had a whole committee that was pushing for regulation changes and the end of segregation in busing. And hell, Montgomery buses were damn near reliant on black commuters so they eventually had to give.
Plus my all time fave is the homie Ella baker. Home girl ensured the founding of sncc when fuckboy Mlk tried to make them the youth chapter of the sclc. SNCC is the group that made sit ins a popular form of protest during the early civil rights movement. They founding students had their first sit in in 1960. Ella baker was like these students need their own separate movement and the sclc ain’t it. Plus she was a true proponent of self determination which was clear in everything that sncc did.
Basically what I’m trying to say is black women been the backbone of society and they still are.
Let’s also talk about how Huey P Newton, the founder of the BPP ordered the severe beating of Regina Davis. Regina Davis was an administrator at a BP school and was literally jumped for reprimanding a male BP member. She was beaten so bad that she was in the hospital for a broken jaw and had to flee to LA for her own safety. Her attack was a deliberate message to all female BP because the men were getting upset with the increasing power black women had in the party and wanted to put them in their place.
In 1974 Huey P Newton also shot and killed a 17 year old sex worker in Oakland named Kathleen Smith in the face for calling him “baby” and because she didn’t give him the “respect” he wanted (x)
and who could forget good ol’ Harry Belafonte and how he treated Ertha Kitt way back when
Ellen Holly was a super light skin soap opera actress who claimed to have a similar experience with Harry Belafonte before he married a white woman and called him out in her autobiography about his behavior towards black women
THIS IS WHY WHEN PATRICIA ARQUETTE SAID WOMEN HAVE HAD TO TAKE A BACKSEAT TO OTHER GROUP´S PROGRESS SHE WAS RIGHT!
BUT Y’ALL WERE SO UPSET WITH HER
That white woman ain’t got nothing to do with this. We’re talking about black women’s treatment here.
How dare you bring Patricia Arquettes white feminist ass on a post about the treatment of Black Women
That was a much needed thread. Reminds me of the first time I discovered Tumblr and learned so much about feminism and women’s history. To add my 2 cents to this, I put the pictures of most of the ladies mentioned above (I couldn’t find a picture of Regina Davis, if you have one that’d be great), so that anyone discovering these wonderful women can put a face to their name.
unfortunately there are no known or publicly available pictures of Regina Davis or Kathleen Smith
Keep this thread going and share the stories of how Black women have been degraded by black mens sexism
Just to add some more, let’s not forget the importance of Shirley Chisholm. She was an unapologetic black feminist who fought for the rights of women and the poor in her community. She was a founding member of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Women’s Caucus.
She was the first black women ever elected to the US congress and was the first woman and black american to ever run for the president of the US. Her campaign to be the democratic nominee was treated like a joke, and although she had the support of her loyal husband she received NO SUPPORT from black male leaders. Her campaign went underfunded and the men of the black caucus rallied around white male candidates instead because they were pissed off that she was getting attention and wanted a black male candidate instead.
“They think I am trying to take power from them. The black man must step forward, but that doesn’t mean the black woman must step back.“(x)
Don’t let this thread die! Keep commenting and bringing to light the stories of black women. Just adding more about the black panthers, a lot of people don’t realize that black panther chapters spread across the world to unite black and dark skinned people.
In 1972 Dennis Walker, a black aboriginal Australian cofounded the Australian Black Panther Party (ABPP).
As always black women made up the back bone of the movement, organizing, protesting, and working in the ABPP schools/medical centers. Marlene Cummins, one of the first black women leaders in the movement recently spoke about about the abuse she and other women endured. Marlene and Dennis dated for some time and she has admitted that he was verbally abusive, violent, and cheated on her with white women. She once saw him smash a broken bottle onto a women’s face, which eventually led to their breakup.
She also revealed that she was raped by two indigenous leaders at the time (one aboriginal and the other torres strait islander) which was recorded on tape.
“There were men who are immortalized in history as heroes. Some of them are and some of them aren’t. [Some of them] are not heroes. They were rapists and perpetrators.”
“There were no support systems and women’s refuges weren’t as prevalent as they were today. Women’s rights were not voiced…[So can you imagine] what it was like for young girls with no support networks in those days, when those things – rapes by uncles – were not spoken of. How can you deal with that?
“…Even if you did report a crime, you were questioned whether it happened to you because you contributed to it: you asked for it!”
I’ve see a lot of people leaving comments asking for more information/resources to look into these women. A bit a googling will bring you plenty of reliable resources.
Marlene has a documentary out which can be seen here for free (x). I would also suggest reading this books by black panther women (x), (x), (x), (x) and this book that actually details the work some black men such as Fred Hampton did to address misogyny in the movement.
Thank God for Black women. As Black men, we need to do better. We must respect our women’s role in the resistance and revere them for everything they have and continue to do.
I second @blaquerenaissance
Wow! See I knew about the Claudette Colvin situation, as well as what Jo Ann Robinson and Ella Baker dealt with, but I had no idea about Eartha Kitt, Regina Davis, and other women who dealt with so much shit from black men back then smh. I didn’t know about the MLK and Frederick Douglas situations tho, wow! It’s a lot of new info to unpack and look into that I didn’t and wouldn’t have knew about had I not seen this post. It’s just fucked up how much shit black women had to go through back then and are still going through today!
I have learned so much here.
Never forget this.
Spread this!!!
