History of African American women and gender

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Black Women’s Manifesto; Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female: By Frances M. Beal, 1969. A pamphlet originally published in 1969, and later revised for publication in Sisterhood is Powerful (Random House).
Why is beauty on parade?: By De Clarke, 1983. Our ideas of personal beauty are political ideas. The notion of beauty is socially constructed. The materialist implications of ‘beauty.’
What Can the White Man Say to the Black Woman?: By Alice Walker, address in support of the National March for Women’s Equality and Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., 22 May 1989. Let us be clear. In the barracoons and along the slave shipping coasts of Africa, for more than twenty generations, it was he who dashed our babies brains out against the rocks. What can the white man say to the black woman?
Ntozake Shange: By Rebecca Dingo, 18 December 1995. The white patriarchy of the European culture model, and Shange’s challenge to it.
‘Real women have men;’ The new cultural offensive against Black career women: By Makeni Themba, in Colorlines, 12 October 1998. The ‘culture industry’ is working overtime to reach African American women to drive their message home: real women have husbands—and will do anything to get and keep them.
Womanist theology, epistemology, and a new anthropological paradigm: By Linda E. Thomas, in Cross Currents, Winter 1998-1999. Black women in America are calling into question their suppressed role in the African American church, the community, the family, and the larger society. But womanist religious reflection is more than mere deconstruction. It is, more importantly, the empowering assertion of the black woman’s voice.
Man, God, & the Okey-Doke: By Meg Henson Scales, 27 June 1999. We black women have become so blameworthy, we are such objects of disaffection, that slavery has even returned, passing for ‘welfare reform.’ Black degenerate spectacle now poses as entertainment, slinging politic without a dialectic, and in a word, defiles.
Ain’t She Still a Woman?: By Bell Hooks, in Shambhala Sun, January 1999. Increasingly, patriarchy is offered as the solution to the crisis black people face. Practically everyone wants Black Women to stay in their place.
For Better and Worse: By Martin C. Evans and Lauren Terrazzano, Newsday, [1999-2003]. Even while making dramatic gains in education and the ranks of skilled workers, professional and management jobs, black women are also the most likely group to show up in poverty and hunger statistics, and among single-parent households on public assistance.
The Struggle For Women’s Equality In Black America: By Ron Daniels, The Black World Today, 5 April 2000. Black women have had to confront and overcome double oppression—racism and sexism. Though there is some evidence that women enjoyed greater status and rights in ancient and traditional African civilizations and societies, in large measure the experience of African women in America has been conditioned by the patriarchal values of the system of male domination operative in Euro-American society.
The Color of Violence Against Women: By Angela Davis, keynote address at the Color of Violence Conference in Santa Cruz, Colorlines, Fall 2000. Ways of attending to the ubiquitous violence in the lives of women of color that also radically subvert the institutions and discourses within which we are compelled by necessity to think and work.
Hardest hit by the prison craze: By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Salon.com, 2 January 2001. The execution Wanda Jean Allen for the murder of her lesbian lover made news mostly because Allen was black and female, and Jesse Jackson got himself arrested in a protest outside the prison where she was scheduled to be put to death. But what has gotten almost no media attention is the stunning increase in the number of black women behind bars.
The Greatest Taboo: An Interview with Delroy Constantine-Simms: By Steven G. Fullwood <stevengfullwood@yahoo.com>, Africana.com, 11 June 2001. Delroy Constantine-Simms, editor of The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality in Black Communities is interviewed about.
Black lesbian wins UPS lawsuit: By Leslie Feinberg, Workers World, 30 March 2005. Hoskins, an African American lesbian, sued her former employer, United Parcel Service, for what she described as severe, widespread and ongoing work-place harassment that led to wrongful firing.