Words of Fire by Beverly Guy-Sheftall

the role of black women’s organizations, such as the Women’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention, in self-determination.
    7 As is frequently the case with women married to prominent men, Amy Jacques Garvey has been largely overlooked in the scholarship on the Garvey movement. Exceptions are Mark D. Matthews, “‘Our Women and What They Think’: Amy Jacques Garvey and The Negro World,” Black Scholar (May-June 1979): 2—13; “ ‘Always Leading Our Men in Service and Sacrifice’: Amy Jacques Garvey, Feminist Black and Nationalist,” Gender and Society 6 (September 1992): 346—375; and the work of Professor Ula Taylor. For discussions of women in the Garvey movement, see Garvey: His Work and Impact, eds. Rupert Lewis and Patrick Bryan (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1991), which contains an essay by Tony Martin and Honor Ford Smith.
    8 See Jessie M. Rodrique’s “The Black Community and the Birth Control Movement,” Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, eds. Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989) for a discussion of the decline in fertility among blacks from the late nineteenth century to World War II (1880-1945), and a comprehensive analysis of the black community’s considerable involvement with the issue of birth control from 1915 to 1945, though this has been overlooked in chronicles of the birth control movement in the United States.
    9 See Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Random House, 1981) for a thoughtful analysis and critique of Margaret Sanger’s racism.
    10 Mary King, Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (New York: William Morrow, 1987), 567—569.
    11 “Statement of Purpose,” in Feminism in Our Time, ed. Miriam Schneir (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 171—174.
    12 See Beverly Davis, “To Seize the Moment: A Retrospective on the National Black Feminist Organization,” SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women (Fall 1988): 43—46, for a detailed history of NBFO.
    13 See Black Scholar 24 (Winter 1994): 6.
    14 Portions of this introduction appear in my dissertation Daughters of Sorrow : Attitudes Toward Black Women, 1880-1920 (Carlson, 1990) and “Remembering Sojourner Truth: On Black Feminism,” Catalyst 1 (Fall 1986): 54—57.

CHAPTER ONE
    Beginnings: In Defense of Our Race and Sex, 1831-1900
    ... for the sake of our own dignity, the dignity of our race, and the future good name of our children, it is “mete, right, and our bounded duty” to stand forth and declare ourselves and our principles, to teach an ignorant and suspicious world that our aims and interests are identical with those of all good aspiring women. Too long have we been silent under unjust and unholy charges; we cannot expect to have them removed until we disprove them through ourselves.
    â€”JOSEPHINE ST. PIERRE RUFFIN, The Women’s Era
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The Negro woman “totes” more water; grows more corn; picks more cotton; washes more clothes; cooks more meals; nurses more babies; mammies more Nordics; supports more churches; does more race uplifting; serves as mudsills for more climbers; takes more punishment; does more forgiving; gets less protection and appreciation than do the women in any other civilized group in the world. She has been the economic and social slave of mankind.
    â€”NANNIE BURROUGHS
    INTRODUCTION
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    L ike most students who attended public schools and colleges during the 1950s and 1960s, I learned very little about the involvement of African American women in struggles for the emancipation of blacks and women —so I did not read the words of any of the women who appear in this chapter as our feminist foremothers. Literary critic Mary Helen Washigton, who initiated the movement to reclaim black women writers, asked a series of questions which Chapter 1, “Beginnings: In Defense of Our Race and