Madam Vice President-elect, our ancestors are smiling
Black folk across this great land rejoice. And again I say, rejoice! We celebrate a long, hard fought win that is President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
The DNC has Black communities, specifically Black female voters, to thank on a number of electoral fronts. So before President Biden settles back in at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., I’d like to hear him, in his inaugural speech, pay homage to the many Black women suffragists who refused to give up their quest to ensure Black women had the right to vote in this country. #SayHerName. Ida Barnett Wells. #SayHerName. Fannie Lou Hamer. #SayHerName. Mary Church Terrell. #SayHerName. Mary Ann Shadd Cary.
Additionally, say a name rarely heard. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. The Boston journalist and activist was the co-founder of the Woman’s Era Newspaper, one of the first publications written by and for Black women in the nineteenth century. The first issue published in March 1894. Woman’s Era articles published laid important groundwork necessary for Black suffragists to write against the disdain white anti- and pro-suffragists had for allowing Black women the right to vote.
For example, in March 1895, president of the Missouri Press Association and editor of the Montgomery [Missouri] Standard, John W. Jacks, sent a letter to Florence Balgarnie, secretary of the Anti-Lynching Society of England, in an attempt to discredit Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching campaign. In it, he referred to Black women as “prostitutes… all naturally liars and thieves.”[1] Ruffin refused to publish Jacks’ racist rant and instead penned two editorials in the June 1895 issue to her readership of mostly middle-class Black clubwomen.[2] She wrote:
“[T]his letter is too indecent for publication, but a copy of it is sent with this call to all the women’s bodies throughout the country. Read this document carefully and use discriminatingly and decide if it be not time for us to stand before the world and declare ourselves and our principles. The time is short, but everything is ripe; and remember, earnest women can do anything.”[3]
The lion’s share of women’s papers were published by white women and focused on their own race’s social and political interests.[4] The Woman’s Era filled a void by identifying the intersection of core issues Black women faced.
Ruffin sought to ignite Black women around the country to stand against racism and sexism. From her work as editor, Woman’s Era newspaper shifted from being a printed publication for the Boston-based Woman’s Era Club, which Ruffin co-founded [5], to a form of literary activism that helped to unite Black women’s clubs across the nation. Woman’s Era became the official publication of the National Federation of Afro-American Women of America in 1896 and was instrumental in the fight against disenfranchisement of Black women.
Today we have Stacey Abrams, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms, and a number of grassroots organizations across the country led by brilliant minds determined to preserve our democracy and see to it that every vote counts.
So President-elect Biden, as you craft your speech for Jan. 20, 2021, be sure to #SayHerName. Remember the Black women who fought for moments like this. Madam Vice-President elect Harris, thank you for inspiring young girls around the world. Thank you for inspiring my brown baby boy and other boys. Please know our ancestors are smiling.
*This piece was written in partnership with my co-author Lois Boynton, Ph.D., Associate Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
References:
[1] As quoted in Teresa Blue Holden, “Earnest Women Can Do Anything”: The Public Career of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, 1842–1904 (Saint Louis University, 2005), 1. See also Crystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 110–13; N. W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (N. W. Ayer & Son, Philadelphia, Penn., 1882), 670.
[2] Elizabeth McHenry, “Reading and Race Pride: The Literary Activism of Black Clubwomen,” in A History of the Book in America Book: Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880–1940, ed. Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 497–98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469625829_kaestle.34
[3] “Let us confer together,” Woman’s Era 2, no. 3 (June 1895).
[4] Mary M. Carver, “Everyday Women Find their Voice in the Public Sphere,” Journalism History 34, no. 1 (Spring 2008), 15–22.
[5] McHenry, p. 498. The first issue’s masthead identified The Woman’s Era as the Boston Woman’s Era Club’s publication; by the third issue, the journal was identified as the National Federation of Afro-American Women’s publication. “Publishers’ Announcement,” The Woman’s Era 1, no. 1 (March 24, 1894); “The Woman’s Era,” The Woman’s Era 1, no. 3 (June 1, 1894).
