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Jasmine Scott Professor Carol Boyce Davies Black Women and Political Leadership: in Their Own Words 31 October 2019

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Jasmine Scott Professor Carol Boyce Davies Black Women and Political Leadership: in Their Own Words 31 October 2019 Jasmine Scott Professor Carol Boyce Davies Black Women and Political Leadership: In Their Own Words 31 October 2019 Works with which I engage: Davis, Angela. Freedom is a Constant Struggle. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016 ​ ​ Mumia Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (Cambridge, MA: ​ ​ South End Press, 2004) (Chapter on Women in the Party) Women Who Lead: Black Panther Party There was a lot of interest in Angela Davis' book of speeches, Freedom in a Constant ​ Struggle. In “Political Activism and Protest from the 1960s to the Age of Obama" I expected to ​ find a critique of today's protest culture, but rather I learned about the way groups create narratives about the past. Davis really pushes the importance of black women – maids, cooks, and low-income women, especially – in the ever influential Civil Rights movement and the Women's Rights movement, to the extent to which she "continue to celebrate Black history during Women’s History Month" (124 ibook). I was floored by this idea, as someone who distances herself from the women's movement because I felt like it was built with me excluded (except when I'm needed for labor). Yet, here, I see what she is saying. In the text, she claims that our historical member fits the work of Civil Rights into a smaller frame like civil rights as opposed to the larger frame of freedom. Based on Davis' point that the movement was truly about "free education... free healthcare" for all, does the work of black women not encompass women's work? Abu-Jamal's chapter called "A Woman's Party" in We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black ​ Panther Party posits that although we critique the Black Panther Party, they actually gave more ​ space to women in leadership than other black radical movements did. I found a particular exaple of this really interesting. It involved Afeni Shakur: When Afeni did not want to take a leadership position in the Harlem branch, the men really pushed her to take it and appointed her. To Abu-Jamal, "Afeni, taught by teachers and others in the white power structure that she was not worthy of much, probably saw herself as they did. But to those around her, another Afeni was visible" (162). The men of the party worked to dismantle the ideas that society put in these women's heads. They also had party rules that banned sexual misconduct – although the piece does not include how well enforced those were. Abu-Jamal gave me enough to redeem my opinion of Black Panther Party men, but I defintely still wonder why despite being in these positions the women still do not recieve much credit. Also, this evidence does not sit completely right with me. I was left wondering why the party seemed to be designed so that the men "empowered" the women on their terms, and it was difficult for the women to build each other up. .
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