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April 26, 2024 (Live Performance, March 2023)

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Nadine Sierra and Pretty Yende, Flower Duet  (Paris Philharmonic) (YouTube)

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Nadine Sierra and Pretty Yende, Flower Duet  (Paris Philharmonic) (YouTube)

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Nadine Sierra & Pretty Yende - Delibes: Lakmé / Flower Duet

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"US park service deletes quote and image of abolitionist from webpage, instead emphasizing ‘Black/White cooperation’" (April 7, 2025)

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Harriet Tubman webpage targeted amid Trump-led anti-DEI efforts (The Guardian)

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Harriet Tubman webpage targeted amid Trump-led anti-DEI efforts (The Guardian)

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Harriet Tubman webpage targeted amid Trump-led anti-DEI efforts

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US park service deletes quote and image of abolitionist from webpage, instead emphasizing ‘Black/White cooperation’

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Amy Sherald in “Everyday Icons” - Season 11 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21 (April 12, 2023)

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Amy Sherald in “Everyday Icons” - Season 11 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21 (YouTube)

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Amy Sherald in “Everyday Icons” - Season 11 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21 (YouTube)

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Amy Sherald in “Everyday Icons” - Season 11 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

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"Tracy Chapman Wants to Speak for Herself" (NY Times)

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"Tracy Chapman Wants to Speak for Herself" (NY Times)

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Tracy Chapman Wants to Speak for Herself

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For years, the singer and songwriter has avoided the spotlight. But she is breaking her silence to look back on her self-titled debut and its powerful hit “Fast Car.”

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Sade, Is it a Crime? (Performed at Live Aid 1985) (YouTube)

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Sade, Is it a Crime? (Performed at Live Aid 1985) (YouTube)

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Pauli Murray’s Impact & Innovative Legal Spirit  (Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice)

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Pauli Murray’s Impact & Innovative Legal Spirit  (Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice)

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"Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg credited Murray in the amicus brief she wrote for Reed v. Reed (1971), which was the first time the nation’s highest court recognized sex discrimination as unconstitutional due to the Fourteenth Amendment. Murray was cited as an honorary co-author of the brief.

On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of LGBTQ+ employees and ruled that workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender is unconstitutional. The opinion hinged on the word “sex” in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. By advocating for gender equality, Murray laid the foundation for further legal protection of LGBTQ+ communities."

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Pauli Murray’s Innovative Legal Spirit — Pauli Murray Center

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Pauli Murray fundamentally shaped how we understand equality, the law, and American constitutional jurisprudence. Murray’s legal impact and scholarship defined and defended the rights of African Americans, women, and LGBTQ+ people. Through their fight for gender equality, the elimination of Jim Cr

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Bryan Stevenson Presents "My Name is Pauli Murray" with a Peabody Award (YouTube)

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Bryan Stevenson Presents "My Name is Pauli Murray" with a Peabody Award (YouTube)

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Bryan Stevenson Presents "My Name is Pauli Murray" with a Peabody Award

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Venus and Serena Williams, Sports Illustrated (2000)

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Venus and Serena Williams, Sports Illustrated (2000)

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williams sisters sports illustrated 2000

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Queen Latifah - Just Another Day... (Official Music Video) (1993)

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Queen Latifah, Just Another Day (Video) (YouTube)

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Queen Latifah, Just Another Day (Video) (YouTube)

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Queen Latifah - Just Another Day... (Official Music Video)

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Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies | Brooklyn Museum, 2025

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Brooklyn Museum: Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies (2025) (YouTube)

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Brooklyn Museum: Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies (2025) (YouTube)

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Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies

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"Six a.m. getting out of bed again/
Can't get back in /

'cause sleep ain't gonna pay the rent/
Ohh day to day /

they got you working like a slave/
Taking credit for the work you gave/
And stealing your raise but I.../

… I know you're down/

but when you gon get up/
I see you're down/

but when you gon get up"

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"I know you're down, but when you gon' get up?/ I see you're down, but when you gon' get up?"

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Amel Larrieux - Get Up (2000 Music Video)(lyrics in Description)(X)

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Me'shell Ndegeocello - Dred Loc (1993 HD music video) | Album: Plantation Lullabies (1993)

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Meshell Ndegeocello, Dred Loc (Video) (YouTube)

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Meshell Ndegeocello, Dred Loc (Video) (YouTube)

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Me'shell Ndegeocello - Dred Loc (1993 HD music video)

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AJIL Bookmarked, Adrien Wing on "Feminist Approaches to International Law" (Video)

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AJIL Bookmarked, Adrien Wing on "Feminist Approaches to International Law" (Video)

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(Nov. 12, 2021)

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AJIL Bookmarked - Adrien K. Wing on "Feminist Approaches to International Law"

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Come Smoke My Herb | Album: Comfort Woman (2003)

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Meshell Ndegeocello, Come Smoke My Herb (Audio) (YouTube)

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Meshell Ndegeocello, Come Smoke My Herb (Audio) (YouTube)

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Tracy Chapman - Talkin' About A Revolution (Official Music Video) | 1988

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Tracy Chapman: Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution (Audio) (YouTube)

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Tracy Chapman: Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution (Audio) (YouTube)

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Tracy Chapman - Talkin' Bout A Revolution (Official Music Video)

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Poetry Foundation | Source: African-American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology (University of Illinois Press, 1992)

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, A Double Standard (Poem)

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, A Double Standard (Poem)

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A Double Standard

By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Do you blame me that I loved him?

If when standing all alone

I cried for bread a careless world

Pressed to my lips a stone.

Do you blame me that I loved him,

That my heart beat glad and free,

When he told me in the sweetest tones

He loved but only me?

Can you blame me that I did not see

Beneath his burning kiss

The serpent’s wiles, nor even hear

The deadly adder hiss?

Can you blame me that my heart grew cold

That the tempted, tempter turned;

When he was feted and caressed

And I was coldly spurned?

Would you blame him, when you draw from me

Your dainty robes aside,

If he with gilded baits should claim

Your fairest as his bride?

Would you blame the world if it should press

On him a civic crown;

And see me struggling in the depth

Then harshly press me down?

Crime has no sex and yet to-day

I wear the brand of shame;

Whilst he amid the gay and proud

Still bears an honored name.

Can you blame me if I’ve learned to think

Your hate of vice a sham,

When you so coldly crushed me down

And then excused the man?

Would you blame me if to-morrow

The coroner should say,

A wretched girl, outcast, forlorn,

Has thrown her life away?

Yes, blame me for my downward course,

But oh! remember well,

Within your homes you press the hand

That led me down to hell.

I’m glad God’s ways are not our ways,

He does not see as man,

Within His love I know there’s room

For those whom others ban.

I think before His great white throne,

His throne of spotless light,

That whited sepulchres shall wear

The hue of endless night.

That I who fell, and he who sinned,

Shall reap as we have sown;

That each the burden of his loss

Must bear and bear alone.

No golden weights can turn the scale

Of justice in His sight;

And what is wrong in woman’s life

In man’s cannot be right.

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Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

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María Frías, "An Interview with Ama Ata Aidoo: 'I Learnt My First Feminist Lessons in Africa'" (2003)

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María Frías, "An Interview with Ama Ata Aidoo: 'I Learnt My First Feminist Lessons in Africa'" (2003)

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Poem about My Rights by June Jordan | Poetry Foundation| Source: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (2005)

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June Jordan, "Poem About My Rights" (2005)

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June Jordan, "Poem About My Rights" (2005)

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Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear

my head about this poem about why I can’t

go out without changing my clothes my shoes

my body posture my gender identity my age

my status as a woman alone in the evening/

alone on the streets/alone not being the point/

the point being that I can’t do what I want

to do with my own body because I am the wrong

sex the wrong age the wrong skin and

suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/

or far into the woods and I wanted to go

there by myself thinking about God/or thinking

about children or thinking about the world/all of it

disclosed by the stars and the silence:

I could not go and I could not think and I could not

stay there

alone

as I need to be

alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own

body and

who in the hell set things up

like this

and in France they say if the guy penetrates

but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me

and if after stabbing him if after screams if

after begging the bastard and if even after smashing

a hammer to his head if even after that if he

and his buddies fuck me after that

then I consented and there was

no rape because finally you understand finally

they fucked me over because I was wrong I was

wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong

to be who I am

which is exactly like South Africa

penetrating into Namibia penetrating into

Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if

Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the

proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland

and if

after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe

and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to

self-immolation of the villages and if after that

we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they

claim my consent:

Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of

the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what

in the hell is everybody being reasonable about

and according to the Times this week

back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem

and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they

killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba

and before that it was my father on the campus

of my Ivy League school and my father afraid

to walk into the cafeteria because he said he

was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong

gender identity and he was paying my tuition and

before that

it was my father saying I was wrong saying that

I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a

boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and

that I should have had straighter hair and that

I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should

just be one/a boy and before that

it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for

my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me

to let the books loose to let them loose in other

words

I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.

and the problems of South Africa and the problems

of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white

America in general and the problems of the teachers

and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social

workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very

familiar with the problems because the problems

turn out to be

me

I am the history of rape

I am the history of the rejection of who I am

I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of

myself

I am the history of battery assault and limitless

armies against whatever I want to do with my mind

and my body and my soul and

whether it’s about walking out at night

or whether it’s about the love that I feel or

whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or

the sanctity of my national boundaries

or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity

of each and every desire

that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic

and indisputably single and singular heart

I have been raped

be-

cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age

the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the

wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic

the wrong sartorial I

I have been the meaning of rape

I have been the problem everyone seeks to

eliminate by forced

penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/

but let this be unmistakable this poem

is not consent I do not consent

to my mother to my father to the teachers to

the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy

to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon

idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in

cars

I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own

and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination

may very well cost you your life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear

my head about this poem about why I can't

go out without changing my clothes my shoes

my body posture my gender identity my age

my status as a woman alone in the evening/

alone on the streets/alone not being the point/

the point being that I can't do what I want

to do with my own body because I am the wrong

sex the wrong age the wrong skin and

suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/

or far into the woods and I wanted to go

there by myself thinking about God/or thinking

about children or thinking about the world/all of it

disclosed by the stars and the silence:

I could not go and I could not think and I could not

alone because I can't do what I want to do with my own

who in the hell set things up

and in France they say if the guy penetrates

but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me

and if after stabbing him if after screams if

after begging the bastard and if even after smashing

a hammer to his head if even after that if he

and his buddies fuck me after that

then I consented and there was

no rape because finally you understand finally

they fucked me over because I was wrong I was

wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong

which is exactly like South Africa

penetrating into Namibia penetrating into

Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if

Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the

proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland

after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe

and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to

self-immolation of the villages and if after that

we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they

Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of

the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what

in the hell is everybody being reasonable about

and according to the Times this week

back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem

and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they

killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba

and before that it was my father on the campus

of my Ivy League school and my father afraid

to walk into the cafeteria because he said he

was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong

gender identity and he was paying my tuition and

it was my father saying I was wrong saying that

I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a

boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and

that I should have had straighter hair and that

I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should

just be one/a boy and before that

it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for

my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me

to let the books loose to let them loose in other

I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.

and the problems of South Africa and the problems

of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white

America in general and the problems of the teachers

and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social

workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very

familiar with the problems because the problems

I am the history of the rejection of who I am

I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of

I am the history of battery assault and limitless

armies against whatever I want to do with my mind

and my body and my soul and

whether it's about walking out at night

or whether it's about the love that I feel or

whether it's about the sanctity of my vagina or

the sanctity of my national boundaries

or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity

that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic

and indisputably single and singular heart

cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age

the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the

wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic

I have been the meaning of rape

I have been the problem everyone seeks to

penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/

but let this be unmistakable this poem

is not consent I do not consent

to my mother to my father to the teachers to

the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy

to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon

idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in

I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own

and I can't tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination

may very well cost you your life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Poem about My Rights by June Jordan | Poetry Foundation

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Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear

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Photograph by Mark Clennon, Brooklyn, N.Y. (2020)

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Photograph by Mark Clennon, Brooklyn, N.Y. (2020)

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"Hilena Tibebe, a protester in Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn, N.Y., on June 4."

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Photograph by Stephanie Mei-Ling, Los Angeles (2020)

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Photograph by Stephanie Mei-Ling, Los Angeles (2020)

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"Black women have historically played critical roles in protest movements because racism and police brutality directly affects us. Not only are we being killed, but we are losing our fathers, our brothers, our husbands and our sons."

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Black Women and the Burden of Strength | The Chanequa Walker-Barnes Interview

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Black Women and the Burden of Strength | The Chanequa Walker-Barnes Interview

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Black Women and the Burden of Strength | The Chanequa Walker-Barnes Interview

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Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Too Heavy A Yoke Ch. 3 Excerpt

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Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Too Heavy A Yoke Ch. 3 Excerpt

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The author discusses the origins of the StrongBlackWoman archetype of black womanhood.

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To Carry Your Burden in the Heat of the Day

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Cynthia Erivo on Bringing Her Black Queer Identity to ‘Wicked’: ‘It’s a Love Letter to Everyone Who Feels Different’

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Cynthia Erivo on Bringing Her Black Queer Identity to ‘Wicked’: ‘It’s a Love Letter to Everyone Who Feels Different’

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Last Friday night, " Wicked" star Cynthia Erivo surprised a theater full of moviegoers at the Odeon Leicester Square in her hometown of London. As the actor walked onto the small stage, the audience erupted into screams at a pitch that rivaled Elphaba's own high notes.

"This has been the most amazing tour, but this is probably the most amazing part of it," Erivo told the giddy crowd. "You're one of the first sets of people to come watch this film and I wanted to say thank you personally." Erivo kept her remarks short and sweet, closing with a wink to one of Elphaba's most famous lines from the hit Broadway musical-turned-Universal movie: "Pink and green goes well together."

Indeed, the signature colors of the film's protagonists have gone golden as "Wicked" shot to No. 1 at the global box office with $165 million - breaking records for the biggest opening for a film based on a Broadway adaptation and the best start for a non-sequel film this year, among others. Much of the success can be attributed to Erivo's onscreen chemistry with co-star Ariana Grande as they portrayed Oz's most famous witches Elphaba (later known as the Wicked Witch of the West) and Galinda (later Glinda the Good) - and the way they showed off that bond while promoting the film around the world.

But, if we're holding space for the lyrics of "Defying Gravity," there's a reason (aside from Erivo's generational vocal talent). The song hits differently when she belts it because underneath all that green is a Black queer woman.

It's the kind of distinction that shouldn't matter, but considering "Wicked" is an allegory for the arbitrary nature of racism and discrimination, there's something particularly impactful about the character being portrayed by a person of color who is intimately aware of Elphaba's oppression and her daily battle against it.

Erivo is the second Black woman to play Elphaba in a major production of "Wicked." Alexia Khadime was the first Black woman to portray the character full-time (Khadime starred in the West End production from 2008-2010 and returned to the role in 2023). But with "Wicked's" global theatrical release, Erivo's version will be the most widely-viewed Elphaba to date.

"I hope it's a bit of a love letter to everyone who feels different, who feels out of place, to all of the Black women who have walked into rooms and felt like they haven't been welcomed," Erivo told Variety. "To anyone who's walked into a room and felt like they haven't been welcomed. I am really glad to be the conduit through which this character has been brought to the world."

One of the most impactful additions to the movie version of "Wicked" is expanding Elphaba's backstory, so audiences bear witness to the bullying and rejection she faced as a young girl (played by 10-year-old Karis Musongole). Then, at the climax of "Defying Gravity," which serves as the epic finale to Part 1, Elphaba comes face-to-face with her younger self, as she embraces the superpower that's always been within her and learns to soar.

"I feel like I've been given this incredible gift of a character whose raison d'etre is to show that all of your difference is what makes you special," Erivo said. "That you can soar above anyone's expectations, that you can be everything you're meant to be, and that the search to finding that can be hard, but when it happens, it can be really freeing, really beautiful."

@varietymagazine
Cynthia Erivo on being one of only two Black women to play Elphaba in a major production: "I feel that I've been given this incredible gift of a character...I'm really glad to be the conduit to which this character has been brought to the world."
♬ original sound - Variety - Variety

Erivo's relationship to the character's plight cuts to the core themes of the musical.

"When we created 'Wicked' for the stage, we were aware that we created a world in Oz where you could be anything but green," Platt said of developing the musical with writer Winnie Holzman and composer Stephen Schwartz. "It's very arbitrary. You can be anything. You can look like anything. You can be anybody. You can wear anything. You just can't be green. We were aware that this is the notion of prejudice and otherness is a social construct. The metaphor being there's a green girl and there's a privileged beautiful blonde girl and how they meet is very much part of the power of the story."

That's part of what moved him and director Jon M. Chu when Erivo walked into the audition and shared her story about taking herself to see the musical on her 25th birthday before showing off her crystalline soprano.

"We looked at each other and we just knew: She claimed the role," Platt recalled. "An actor always brings pieces of his, her or their life to characters they create. So it's hard to separate out her journey as a queer Black woman where she has felt as an 'other,' as an outsider, as not being part of the center.. of being outside, looking in."

Platt witnessed on set the way that Erivo's personal journey influenced her acting. "Some of that authentic pain and emotion has come from having experienced it in her life. And the joy, when she thinks there's a possibility of being part of that - in this instance meeting the Wizard - she plays that so authentically."

Once she was cast in the role, Erivo had early conversations with Chu and Platt about what Elphaba would look like. Erivo wanted to ensure the character's greenness didn't hide her Blackness.

"I didn't want to remove myself from Elphaba," she said. "I wanted to connect the two." So, she added a couple points of emphasis for Black women to relate, including the character's long nails and a headful of microbraids.

Elphaba's nails were also inspired by Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch in 1939's "The Wizard of Oz." In researching the role, Erivo came across a photo of Hamilton with her face in profile and long nails dominating the frame.

"It's her face and there's a shadow and she's sort of talons out," Erivo said of the picture. "To be able to make that connection with what has been, what I have experienced and what I am was really wonderful. These little touch points that make Elphaba fully her just meant the world to me."

@varietymagazine
Cynthia Erivo on designing Elphaba's look for Wicked: "One of the first things I asked about was her hair. I didn't want to remove myself from Elphaba, I wanted to connect the two, and so the braids became a way to nod to what was underneath the green as well."
♬ original sound - Variety - Variety

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Cynthia Erivo on Bringing Her Black Queer Identity to 'Wicked': 'It's a Love Letter to Everyone Who Feels Different'

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'Wicked' star Cynthia Erivo reflects on the significance of Elphaba being played by a Black queer woman.

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Makayla I. Gathers, A Black Woman’s Analysis of ‘Wicked’ The Musical: Examining Elphaba’s Story 20 Years Later

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Makayla I. Gathers, A Black Woman’s Analysis of ‘Wicked’ The Musical: Examining Elphaba’s Story 20 Years Later

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On Oct. 30, Stephen Schwartz's thrilling take on the world of Oz celebrated the 20th anniversary of its Broadway premiere. Inspired by Gregory Maguire's novel "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," the musical "Wicked" is more than just another adaptation of the story of Dorothy - it takes root in the themes of friendship, romance, and power that surround Elphaba, The Wicked Witch of the West. While many people have personal connections to the production and its bright green protagonist, "Wicked" resonates particularly strongly with the experiences of Black women.

Upon first glance, the connections between "Wicked," Blackness, and womanhood seem obvious - as the premise of the show focuses on a woman who is judged because of the color of her skin, but Schwartz's world communicates a much deeper and more nuanced truth. In addition to the unwarranted judgment and fear the other characters give Elphaba, the development and realization of her own power and strength in spite of villainization define why this story will relate to many women of color. This interpretation becomes clear through a close breakdown and analysis of the plot.

The opening number kicks off the plot of the show and the central themes that can pertain to gender and race. "No One Mourns the Wicked," the opening number and Schwartz's take on "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" from the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" not only creates immediate empathy for Elphaba's character, but it also shows that the celebration of Elphaba's supposed demise is ironic and even sinister.

For those who have seen "Wicked," the opening number is chilling, as it begins the show at the end of the timeline, with a scene that would chronologically take place after the resolution of the plot. As The Good Witch Glinda's soft soprano voice contrasts the sharp shouts of the ensemble, she declares moral claims like "the truth we all believe'll by and by / outlive a lie," and "nothing grows for The Wicked / they reap only what they've sown." The audience doesn't yet know the events that took place to evoke these reflections, but by the end, the contradictions are apparent - as the lyrics describing the "The Wicked" clearly apply to Elphaba the least.

From the top of the show, when Elphaba enters the prestigious Shiz University, she is obviously outnumbered by non-green people. Although their reactions to her skin are dramatized and exaggerated, they parallel the experiences of Black women who have felt overly perceived, especially in predominantly non-Black spaces. In the song "The Wizard and I," the Shiz University headmistress, Madame Morrible, tokenizes Elphaba's magical abilities, as she tells her "if you work as you should / you'll be making good." This is painfully similar to an instruction many Black women receive: The only way to earn the love and respect from their peers, colleagues, and authority figures is through hard work because as a Black woman, existing is simply not enough.

As Elphaba reflects on the idea that she has to be great, she believes that this power will not come from her own talents but as a result of what The Wonderful Wizard of Oz can make her into, even fantasizing that he could "de-greenify" her to match her "good inside." She feels an urge for belonging, unaware that Morrible and The Wizard don't have her best interest at heart. The plot surrounding Morrible and The Wizard has strong parallels to real-life institutions and the way Black women are encouraged to assimilate by the way we talk and wear our hair, in exchange for accolades and respect that should already be rightfully ours.

This line of thought also leads to a discussion surrounding the disappointment in once trusted powers and systems. Elphaba, who idolizes The Wizard, soon sees his powerlessness and hopelessness. Additionally, she realizes that to realize her former dream of working with him, she would have to sacrifice her morals. Previously warned by mentor and professor Doctor Dillamond, a talking goat, in "Something Bad," Elphaba learns that The Wizard and other authority figures are plotting against the animals, attempting to take away their rights to speak, and teach, and preying on their vulnerability to advance their own greedy interests - a story many Black women know all too well.

From here, Elphaba makes a choice, refusing to accept these systems, and she is punished for it. It is the reason Galinda (Glinda's former name), her ditzy peer, is comically less qualified yet more celebrated - not for her talents, but for her willingness to exist in the mold created for her.

These events lead to the famous climax of the show, "Defying Gravity," where Elphaba quite literally rises above it all. After disagreeing with Galinda on whether to accept the situation or resist it, Elphaba fully realizes her self worth, singing that she is "through accepting limits / 'cause someone says they're so," and she also testifies that the love she will lose "comes at much too high a cost." The most powerful moment in the show is electrifying and overwhelming, as it depicts many Black women's desire in the face of adversity: unapologetically be ourselves while daring the world to stop us.

"Wicked" comes with a bittersweet truth: Like Elphaba proclaims when she sings "and if I'm flying solo / at least I'm flying free," the journey of self-realization is difficult, lonely, and tiring, but it is worth it. The second act explores this sentiment, as Elphaba - who is now widely hated - navigates being villainized, hunted, and left in an awkward place with someone who was once her closest friend.

The finale resumes the action from the opening number, but with a more somber tone. Elphaba undergoes a metaphorical death, as she kills off the villain the Ozians revered and can freely exist outside of their gaze. The first reading of the resolution can seem depressing, as she experienced so much difficulty, only to narrowly escape without revealing the truth and repairing her reputation. However, as Elphaba is able to walk away, the audience sees Glinda, who represents the world's role as a bystander, left to reflect on the truth and mourn her friend.

Elphaba was never wicked, and this perspective reveals that the true wicked, who "no one mourns" and who are "lonely," are those who create and uphold the systemic and institutional harm that relies on the oppression of people of color.

In "Wicked"'s 20 years, the world has "changed for the better" and for worse. We've seen the rise of Black women in political, academic, and creative spaces, but we've also seen a rise in terror against Black women, especially in the form of misrepresentation, inequitable healthcare, and attacks on our education.

As a Black woman, "Wicked" is more than the beautiful score and mystical spectacle that are apparent on the surface level and excite audiences with every rewatch - the musical provides me with cathartic commentary that evokes self-reflection and motivation to continue defying gravity in my world.

-Staff writer Makayla I. Gathers can be reached at makayla.gathers@thecrimson.com.

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A Black Woman's Analysis of 'Wicked' The Musical: Examining Elphaba's Story 20 Years Later | Arts | The Harvard Crimson

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More than the beautiful score and mystical spectacle, "Wicked" tells a story that can resonate with many Black women - demonstrated through Elphaba's development and realization of her own power and strength in spite of villainization.

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Misty Copeland reflects on the ‘generational trauma’ felt by Black ballet dancers

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Misty Copeland reflects on the ‘generational trauma’ felt by Black ballet dancers

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Misty Copeland discusses her experiences as a Black primaballerina and the generational trauma certain roles reflect for black dancers.

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Misty Copeland reflects on the 'generational trauma' felt by Black ballet dancers | CNN

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Misty Copeland told CNN's Chris Wallace that, like many Black ballerinas, she's inherited generational trauma from decades of being told they aren't good enough to perform in certain roles.

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Intersectionality and Sociology - Professor Patricia Hill Collins, Nov. 21, 2018

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Cambridge University Department of Sociology, Intersectionality and Sociology - Professor Patricia Hill Collins (Video)

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Cambridge University Department of Sociology, Intersectionality and Sociology - Professor Patricia Hill Collins (Video)

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Intersectionality and Sociology - Professor Patricia Hill Collins

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Jen Chen (KCUR 89.3), Remembering Black Activist, Feminist And Kansas City Native Florynce 'Flo' Kennedy

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Jen Chen (KCUR 89.3), Remembering Black Activist, Feminist And Kansas City Native Florynce 'Flo' Kennedy

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Remembering Black Activist, Feminist And Kansas City Native Florynce ‘Flo’ Kennedy

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One day, about 20 years ago, Sherie Randolph was sitting on her couch, flipping through TV channels, when she saw something unusual.It was footage from…

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Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: Black Feminist Radical, Emory University, Mar. 22, 2018

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Sherie M. Randolph, Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: Black Feminist Radical (Video)

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Sherie M. Randolph, Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: Black Feminist Radical (Video)

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Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: Black Feminist Radical

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Columbia Law School, A Fighter For All Causes, Flo Kennedy, '51

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Columbia Law School, A Fighter For All Causes, Flo Kennedy, '51

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A Fighter For All Causes: Flo Kennedy ’51

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Long before intersectionality became a watchword, Florynce Kennedy ’51 identified the confluence of race and gender discrimination, bringing to second-wave feminism a Black voice that was impossible not to hear. But first, she took on Columbia Law School.

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Amy Sherald on the gaze and humanity of her portraits, Dec. 13, 2024

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PBS Newshour, Amy Sherald on the gaze and humanity of her portraits (TV interview)

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PBS Newshour, Amy Sherald on the gaze and humanity of her portraits (TV interview)

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Amy Sherald on the gaze and humanity of her portraits

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How Doechii’s Iconic Braids For ‘The Late Show’ Came Together | Essence, Dec. 6, 2024

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ESSENCE Magazine, How Doechii's Iconic Braids For "The Late Show" Came Together

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ESSENCE Magazine, How Doechii's Iconic Braids For "The Late Show" Came Together

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How Doechii’s Iconic Braids For ‘The Late Show’ Came Together | Essence

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The GRAMMY-nominated artist’s hair stylist, Malcolm Marquez, breaks down the inspiration behind her look and how he achieved it.

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Doechii: Tiny Desk Concert, NPR, Dec. 6, 2024

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"Denial is a River" / "Boiled Peanuts" - Doechii (LIVE on The Late Show), Dec. 5, 2024

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Doechii, "Denial is a River/Boiled Peanuts" (Video)

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Doechii, "Denial is a River/Boiled Peanuts" (Video)

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"Denial is a River" / "Boiled Peanuts" - Doechii (LIVE on The Late Show)

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Carliss Chatman, We Shouldn’t Need Roe, 29 UCLA J. Gender & L. 81 (2022)

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In the face of state-by-state attacks on the right to choose, which result in regular challenges to Roe v. Wade in the U.S. Supreme Court, this essay asks whether Roe is needed at all. Decades of state law encroachments have caused Roe to fail to properly protect the right to choose. Building on prior works that challenge the premise of fetal personhood and highlighting the status of Roe-based rights after decades of challenges, this essay proposes an alternative solution to Roe. Federal legislative and executive efforts, including the Women’s Health Protection Act, are necessary to ensure the right to choose remains accessible to all pregnant persons.

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Recorded October 27, 2022; Published November 21, 2022

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Wisconsin Law in Action, Episode 28: Nyamagaga Gondwe and the Tax-Invisible Labor Problem (Podcast)

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Wisconsin Law in Action, Episode 28: Nyamagaga Gondwe and the Tax-Invisible Labor Problem (Podcast)

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Nyamagaga Gondwe, The Tax-Invisible Labor Problem: Care Work, Kinship, and Income Security Programs in the Internal Revenue Code

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Nyamagaga Gondwe, The Tax-Invisible Labor Problem: Care Work, Kinship, and Income Security Programs in the Internal Revenue Code

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Nyamagaga Gondwe, 102 B. U. L. Rev. 2389 (2022)

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Angela Franklin on Instagram, Dec. 7, 2024

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Angela Carole Franklin, "Respecting Your Cause, While on the Road to Embrace Mine" (work in progress) (Video)

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Angela Carole Franklin, "Respecting Your Cause, While on the Road to Embrace Mine" (work in progress) (Video)

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19 likes, 1 comments - artist.angelacarolefranklin on December 7, 2024

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Lorraine O'Grady as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire

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Lorraine O'Grady as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire

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Lorraine O’Grady. Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire). 1980-83/2009 | MoMA

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Lorraine O’Grady. Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire). 1980-83/2009. Fourteen gelatin silver prints, printed 2014. Each, approx. 8 1/2 x 10″ (21.6 x 25.4 cm). Committee on Media and Performance Art Funds. 78.2014. © 2024 Lorraine O’Grady. Media and Performance

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Lorraine O'Grady: "Rivers, First Draft", Aug. 17, 2023

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Whitney Museum of American Art, Lorraine O'Grady: "Rivers, First Draft" (Video)

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Whitney Museum of American Art, Lorraine O'Grady: "Rivers, First Draft" (Video)

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Artist Lorraine O'Grady wins a Guggenheim at 90, GBH News, May 9, 2024

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GBH News, Artist Lorraine O'Grady Wins a Guggenheim at 90 (TV Profile)

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GBH News, Artist Lorraine O'Grady Wins a Guggenheim at 90 (TV Profile)

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Artist Lorraine O'Grady wins a Guggenheim at 90

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Lorraine O’Grady Has Always Been a Rebel, The New Yorker, Sept. 29, 2022

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Doreen St. Félix, Lorraine O'Grady Has Always Been a Rebel

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Doreen St. Félix, Lorraine O'Grady Has Always Been a Rebel

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Lorraine O’Grady Has Always Been a Rebel

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The eighty-eight-year-old artist and critic, whose profile has risen in the past decade, examines her role in the art world then and now.

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Bernadette Atuahene, We Want What’s Ours, Oxford University Press, 2014

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Bernadette Atuahene, We Want What's Ours: Learning from South Africa's Land Restitution Program

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Bernadette Atuahene, We Want What's Ours: Learning from South Africa's Land Restitution Program

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Millions of people all over the world have been displaced from their homes and property. Dispossessed individuals and communities often lose more than the physical structures they live in and their material belongings, they are also denied their dignity. These are dignity takings, and land dispossessions occurring in South Africa during colonialism and apartheid are quintessential examples. There have been numerous examples of dignity takings throughout the world, but South Africa stands apart because of its unique remedial efforts. The nation has attempted to move beyond the more common step of providing reparations (compensation for physical losses) to instead facilitating dignity restoration, which is a comprehensive remedy that seeks to restore property while also confronting the underlying dehumanization, infantilization, and political exclusion that enabled the injustice. Dignity restoration is the fusion of reparations with restorative justice. In We Want What’s Ours, Bernadette Atuahenes detailed research and interviews with over one hundred and fifty South Africans who participated in the nations land restitution program provide a snapshot of South Africas successes and failures in achieving dignity restoration. We Want What’s Ours is globally relevant because dignity takings have happened all around the world and throughout history: the Nazi confiscation of property from Jews during World War II; the Hutu taking of property from Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide; the widespread commandeering of native peoples property across the globe; and Saddam Husseins seizing of property from the Kurds and others in Iraq are but a few examples. When people are deprived of their property and dignity in years to come, the lessons learned in South Africa can help governments, policy makers, scholars, and international institutions make the transition from reparations to the more robust project of dignity restoration.

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Bernadette Atuahene's new book, We Want What's Ours, SABC News (Sept. 10, 2014)

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SABC News, Bernadette Atuahene's New Book, We Want What's Ours (TV Interview)

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SABC News, Bernadette Atuahene's New Book, We Want What's Ours (TV Interview)

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Bernadette Atuahene's new book, We Want What's Ours

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Eleanor M. Brown, 114 Mich. L. Rev. 1037 (2016) (reviewing Bernadette Atuahene's We Want What's Ours (2014)

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Eleanor M. Brown,  On Black South Africans, Black Americans, and Black West Indians: Some Thoughts on We Want What's Ours 

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Eleanor M. Brown,  On Black South Africans, Black Americans, and Black West Indians: Some Thoughts on We Want What's Ours 

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Adelle Blackett, 34(2) International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations (2018)

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Adelle Blackett, Regulatory Innovation on Decent Work for Domestic Workers in the Light of International Labour Organization Convention No. 189

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Adelle Blackett, Regulatory Innovation on Decent Work for Domestic Workers in the Light of International Labour Organization Convention No. 189

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Adelle Blackett, Guest Editor: Introduction: Regulating Decent Work for Domestic Workers, 23(1) Canadian Journal of Women and the Law/Revue femmes et droit (2011)

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Adelle Blackett, Introduction: Regulating Decent work for Domestic Workers

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Adelle Blackett, Introduction: Regulating Decent work for Domestic Workers

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Introduction: Regulating Decent Work for Domestic Workers

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This introductory article has two dimensions that are addressed simultaneously. First, it focuses on the international developments, to highlight and explore so

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Legal scholar fights to protect domestic workers from exploitative conditions | CBC Radio (Feb. 15, 2021)

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CBC Radio, Legal Scholar fights to protect domestic workers from exploitative conditions: We urgently need to reform the household workplace, argues Professor Adelle Blackett

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CBC Radio, Legal Scholar fights to protect domestic workers from exploitative conditions: We urgently need to reform the household workplace, argues Professor Adelle Blackett

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Legal scholar fights to protect domestic workers from exploitative conditions | CBC Radio

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Professor Adelle Blackett is the chief legal architect behind the International Labour Organization’s first comprehensive standards offering protections and rights to more than 60 million domestic workers. She addresses why we urgently need to bring equality to the household workplace.

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Nikki Giovanni Has Made Peace With Her Hate, New York Times Magazine, Dec. 26, 2021

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David Marchese, Nikki Giovanni Has Made Peace With Her Hate

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David Marchese, Nikki Giovanni Has Made Peace With Her Hate

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"The door is open," Nikki Giovanni told me, "and if I'm saying something that you don't like, you can go out the door. Because I'm going to say what I think I should say." The poet and longtime Virginia Tech professor, who will soon release the "The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni," a musical collaboration with the saxophonist Javon Jackson, was talking about her approach to teaching difficult material. She could just as well have been talking about her approach to life. Beginning with her first book, "Black Feeling, Black Talk" in 1968, and on through to "Make Me Rain" in 2020, Giovanni's writing has expressed a great many forceful ideas - about love, race, politics, gender - but a large share of its power has always come from the sense that the poet is telling the truth as she sees it, to whoever happens to hear. "I cannot close my door," says Giovanni, who is 78. "I just can't let that happen."

A common perspective about academia right now is that there's a lot of dogmatic, rigid thinking going on among the younger generations. An opposing view might be that these students are just committed to what they see as positive change. How do you see it? Well, people don't like to ask me questions, because I give long answers.

You do you. OK, and I told you this was going to be a long answer:I am a space freak. As a little girl, I shared a bedroom with my sister. And I got to sleep on the side of the bed facingthe outside wall, so there was a window, and I would look out at the stars. I thought if I ran into a Martian and the Martian said, "Who are you?" what would my answer be? The only answer could be "I am an Earthling." I realized - and have continued to realize - that it would be illogical if I were to tell the Martian I'm a Black woman. That's because a Martian doesn't know what Black is, and they don't know what a woman is. So we know that race is illogical. It is a construct that is destructive. SoI'm watching, for example, the transgender kids now, and I think they're doing something wonderful, because they're saying about their gender what I had already recognized - and I'm not the only one; don't misunderstand - about race. They're saying they will not be blocked by what somebody else thinks they are. That's a hell of a step. And if I could start Earth all over again, I would always make sure that if you had to answer the question, "Who are you?" then you'd have to say, "I'm an Earthling." That way you don't get trapped in what somebody thinks is your gender and your race. If Earth survives - there's a good chance we'll blow ourselves up - gender and race are going to go.

Generally speaking, does group identification strike you as a limited way of thinking about what it means to be a person? I sincerely - and I mean no disrespect - think it's a stupid way. I know it must be difficult to let things go. But I am 78, and I've seen a lot. I've seen scared white men who shoot unarmed Black men because they say, "Oh, I was afraid for my life." Orwe just let that kid - what's his name? Kyle?

Rittenhouse? Yeah. I believe that it frightened him to think that he somehow might lose his life, and yet his life was no more important than anybody else's. Couldn't he realize that he was nodifferent from any caterpillar walking on the sidewalk? If you can avoid stepping on it, then it will be a butterfly. But he chose to step on the caterpillar. He chose to stop whatever beauty would be. Now all he will ever be remembered for is that he killed somebody. So we know what his life is going to be: nothing. And I'm glad. Somebody said to me: "Nikki, that's not right. You're supposed to be a Christian." I am, but I'm not that Christian.

Couldn't we feel anger at a culture that creates a situation where a 17-year-old is out on the street with an AR-15 and also hope for Kyle Rittenhouse to ultimately find some meaningful redemption after that awful situation? No. I don't think there's any hope for redemption for him. One of the reasons that I don't is that I as a Christian know that Jesus didn't love everybody. When he was on the cross, he turned to the man on the right to comfort him, and the man on the right said, "You say you're God, but you're up here with the rest of us." Jesus, he realized, That's a fool, and I'm not going to waste my time on a fool. He turned to the man on his left, and the man on his left said, "I do believe you are God." And Jesus said to him, "You will be with me today in heaven." You can't assume that every fool is going to be saved. Because they're not.

Who deserves empathy? Is showing empathy a burden? I don't think empathy isaburden, and I'm not trying to say who deserves it. I'm saying that I can't. If God says, "Nikki, I gotta write this check on you because you hate," I would say, "I understand, because I do hate." I hateDonald Trump. I hate what he's done to our nation. So I will pay for my hatred. I don't mind.

Just to return to what you were saying earlier about race being a negative construct: Do you think that your work has always suggested that?No, I don't. Go back to my first book. It was a different world. You're talking to me almost 60 years later, and there are things that I have learned and things that Earth has learned. It's very sad to me, David, that now we are standing a chance of the Supreme Court making slaves out of women. Because if they overthrow Roe v. Wade, what they've done is make women sexual slaves. We're saying that women cannot control their bodies and that men don't have to control theirs. That's very sad. And I saw that woman on the Supreme Court - the last Trump appointee?

Amy Coney Barrett? Yeah. She was like, Well, you can have the baby and leave it on the doorstep of the orphanage.What?I thought, That's 1,500 years old. I think it's terrible. If I do go back on the road - I haven't been traveling - that is going to be something that I'm going to point out: that women are becoming the new slaves, women are the new Blacks.

A cliché about older artists is that they find - and then can offer - a kind of equanimity or acceptance. What do you think people expect from you at your age? I think they expect me to continue being honest. There is one thing that I hear when I'm out or when I'm talking to people like you: People say, you know, "You're still honest." And I say: "I'm glad to hear that. I'm still trying to be."

A poem of yours that I've been thinking about in particular lately, especially given all the current contention over the country's history, is "The Past . . . The Present . . . The Future . . ." What's your hope today for how a new understanding of the past might change the present and future? That I don't know. I'm in theclassroom, and everybody's upset about discussing race. One of the first things I ask my students is"How many of you own slaves?" Of course, none of them do. "Then why are you afraid to talk about slavery? Why are you afraid of looking at the past? It's not what you did." There's no reason to be afraid of how we got to where we got. Some of it is sad, believe me. You look at Tulsa. Who incited that riot? We called it Black Wall Street. Were the rioters jealous? Jealousy is a bad idea. You have to be careful about what you think you want. You might say, "Nikki, what is the one thing you would really like to do?" I would like to beat Bobby Flay. But I'm not jealous of Bobby Flay. I just think that I'm a pretty good cook.

What would you make to outcook him? I would probably fry chicken. Because I've fried really great wings. You're looking like you don't know that!

You said your students are afraid to talk about race. Are you sympathetic to the idea of keeping certain words out of the classroom context? I think it's dangerous. And there is no word called "the n-word." For example, Countee Cullen: If we erase the actual word he used, we're erasing a poem called "Incident," which should be read because it's a beautiful poem. Whatever it is that was written, we need to be able to read it. To me, it's that simple. Andyou can call me whatever you want to call me. If I don't like what you're saying to me, I have a button here on the Zoom that says "off." So do you. You have to be free. That's what I hate about the vigilantism that's happening now. And what is worth killing somebody for? I live on a mountain, and someone could drive down the mountain too fast and hit a squirrel. That squirrel has to eat, and so it has to go looking for food. Squirrel can't go to Wendy's or McDonald's. So you should go down the mountain at five miles an hour. If you're late you're still going to be late. You're not going to be on time because you murdered a squirrel.

I have one last question for - I try to like people, by the way. I do. But then they make you mad. Sometimes there's a squirrel.

Squirrels happen. I read an interview with you where you said that you feel satisfaction because you know you've done your job. What do you think your job was? And what were the criteria for doing it well? My job was to be as truthful as I knew how. I am alsoa storyteller. We're the dreamers. I still dream. I mean, we're talking before Christmas, and I'm interested in how the Christmas story ended up with the three wise men following the star. The sky doesn't change. Everybody knows that. So I was saying to myself, What was in the sky that they could've been following? And I thought of Mary's umbilical cord and bats carrying it. Nobody will probably agree with me that that's what it was, but nonetheless we poets get to bring out what else the three wise men could've been following.You know, with Christmas,I said to my students, I hate the little drummer boy. This girl just had a baby, she's in a manger, she's got a bunch of animals, and he's coming in saying, "Can I play on my drum?"

He probably could've read the room better. If that had been the little drummer girl, she would have come to Mary, started to help clean out the manger - done something useful. Instead he's standing there bitching, I'm poor and all I have is this drum, and we're supposed to say, "Oh, ain't that sweet?" No, damn it. Do something worthwhile. [Laughs.] That's my job: I try my best to get people to think. That's what I do.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

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Nikki Giovanni Has Made Peace With Her Hate

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"The door is open," Nikki Giovanni told me, "and if I'm saying something that you don't like, you can go out the door. Because I'm going to say what I think I should say."

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Why Not the Right Thing the First Time | Nikki Giovanni | TEDxHerndon (June 13, 2017)

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Nikki Giovanni, Why Not The Right Thing the First Time (Video)

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Nikki Giovanni, Why Not The Right Thing the First Time (Video)

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Why Not the Right Thing the First Time | Nikki Giovanni | TEDxHerndon

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Lolita Buckner-Inniss, 41 Colum. J. Gender & L. 146 (2021)

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Lolita Buckner-Inniss, It's About Bloody Time and Space

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Lolita Buckner-Inniss, It's About Bloody Time and Space

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Taja-Nia Henderson and Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Race, Space and Surveillance: A Response to #LivingWhileBlack: Blackness as Nuisance, American University Law Review Forum 213 (2020)

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Taja-Nia Henderson and Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Race, Space and Surveillance: A Response to #LivingWhileBlack: Blackness as Nuisance, American University Law Review Forum 213 (2020)

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Taja-Nia Henderson and Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Race, Space and Surveillance: A Response to #LivingWhileBlack: Blackness as Nuisance, American University Law Review Forum 213 (2020)

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By Taja-Nia Y. Henderson and Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Published on 01/01/20

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Lolita Buckner-Inniss, (Un)Common Law and the Female Body, 61 Boston College Law Review Electronic Supplement (2020)

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Lolita Buckner-Inniss, (Un)Common Law and the Female Body, 61 Boston College Law Review Electronic Supplement (2020)

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Lolita Buckner-Inniss, (Un)Common Law and the Female Body, 61 Boston College Law Review Electronic Supplement (2020)

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(Un)Common Law and the Female Body | Boston College Law Review

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Founded in 1959, the Boston College Law Review is the oldest scholarly publication at Boston College Law School. BCLR, ranked in the top 25 law journals by the Washington & Lee law review rankings, publishes eight print issues and one electronic-only issue each year featuring articles and essays by prominent authors addressing legal issues of national interest. In addition to articles written by outside academics, BCLR prints the work of its student staff, many of whom publish notes during their third year. BCLR’s second-year staff members also prepare short comments on significant court decisions, which may be published in the BCLR Electronic Supplement.

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Lolita Buckner-Inniss, While the Water is Stirring: Sojourner Truth as Proto-agonist in the Fight for (Black) Women's Rights, 100 Boston University Law Review 1637 (2020)

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Lolita Buckner-Inniss, While the Water is Stirring: Sojourner Truth as Proto-agonist in the Fight for (Black) Women's Rights, 100 Boston University Law Review 1637 (2020)

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Lolita Buckner-Inniss, While the Water is Stirring: Sojourner Truth as Proto-agonist in the Fight for (Black) Women's Rights, 100 Boston University Law Review 1637 (2020)

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Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation on 'SOUL!' (PART 2) | ALL ARTS Vault (1971)

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WNET "SOUL!", Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in Conversation, 1971, Part 2

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WNET "SOUL!", Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in Conversation, 1971, Part 2

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Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation on 'SOUL!' (PART 2) | ALL ARTS Vault

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Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation on 'SOUL!' (PART 1) | ALL ARTS Vault (1971)

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WNET "SOUL!", Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in Conversation, 1971, Part 1

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WNET "SOUL!", Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in Conversation, 1971, Part 1

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Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation on 'SOUL!' (PART 1) | ALL ARTS Vault

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Abolition Is a Collective Vision: An Interview With Mariame Kaba (March 29, 2021)

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Elias Rodriques, Abolition is a Collective Vision: An Interview with Mariame Kaba

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Elias Rodriques, Abolition is a Collective Vision: An Interview with Mariame Kaba

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Abolition Is a Collective Vision: An Interview With Mariame Kaba

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A conversation about how the pandemic has raised the stakes for the abolition movement, collective care, and a world without prisons.

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Rabiat Akande, Centering the Black Muslimah: Interrogating Gendered, Anti-Black Islamophobia (2023). Forthcoming in Systemic Islamophobia in Canada : a Research Agenda. Edited by Anver M. Emon, University of Toronto Press, 2023.

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Rabiat Akande, Centering the Black Muslimah: Interrogating Gendered, Anti-Black Islamophobia

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Rabiat Akande, Centering the Black Muslimah: Interrogating Gendered, Anti-Black Islamophobia

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Centering the Black Muslimah: Interrogating Gendered, Anti-Black Islamophobia

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Islamophobia is an everyday Muslim reality. It takes spectacular acts of violence, such as the brutal 2021 slaying of a London, Ontario Muslim family, to bring

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Black Women’s Suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Duality of a Movement, 13.1 Ala. C.R. & C.L. L. Rev. 1 (2021)

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Danielle M. Conway, Black Women's Suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Duality of a Movement

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Danielle M. Conway, Black Women's Suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Duality of a Movement

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Black Women’s Suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Duality of a Movement

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America is at an unprecedented time with self-determination for Black women, and this phase of the movement is reverberating throughout this nation and around t

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Credit: Carrie Mae Weems, “May Flowers,” 2002. © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

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Carrie Mae Weems, Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment (Video)

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Carrie Mae Weems, Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment (Video)

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"In a brilliant video that examines our constant quest toward human rights, Carrie Mae Weems reflects on the various ways that historical transgressions against humanity have produced our contemporary circumstances. Created in 2008, Constructing History continues to resonate with current events, requiring us to not only question the results of our history and the ways in which it is taught, it more significantly necessitates that we reckon with both our collective and individual behaviors." - e pluribus: Out of Many, National Academy of Design

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Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment, 2008 - e pluribus: Out of Many

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An exhibition organized by the National Academy of Design

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Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman with daughter)

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Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman with daughter)

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Untitled (Woman with daughter), from the series Kitchen Table, 1990, gelatin silver prints, Gift of the Contemporary Art Council, © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York (via Portland Art Museum)

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Twenty-First-Century Loving: Nationality, Gender, and Religion in the Muslim World (Symposium: Forty Years of Loving: Confronting Issues of Race, Sexuality, and the Family in the Twenty-First Century), 76 Fordham Law Review 2895 (2008)

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Adrien K. Wing, Twenty-First-Century Loving: Nationality, Gender, and Religion in the Muslim World

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Adrien K. Wing, Twenty-First-Century Loving: Nationality, Gender, and Religion in the Muslim World

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Twenty-First-Century Loving: Nationality, Gender, and Religion in the Muslim World

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This essay highlights the intersection of three identities; nationality, gender, and religion, to show how a twenty-first-century Loving v. Virginia issue still

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An Agenda for the Obama Administration on Gender Equality: Lessons from Abroad, 107 Michigan Law Review First Impressions 124 (2009)

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Adrien K. Wing and Samuel Patrick Nielson, An Agenda for the Obama Administration on Gender Equality: Lessons from Abroad

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Adrien K. Wing and Samuel Patrick Nielson, An Agenda for the Obama Administration on Gender Equality: Lessons from Abroad

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An Agenda for the Obama Administration on Gender Equality: Lessons from Abroad

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This article focuses on one question, how should President Obama and his new administration affect social justice for women? There are four main overlapping pos

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Adrien Wing and Samuel Patrick Nielson, Gaza, Gender, and the Age of Obama, 36 Rutgers Law Record 150 (2009)

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Adrien K. Wing and Samuel Patrick Nielson, Gaza, Gender, and the Age of Obama 

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Adrien K. Wing and Samuel Patrick Nielson, Gaza, Gender, and the Age of Obama 

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President Obama stated during his presidential campaign: “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.” The situation for all Gazans remains dire. Adr

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The “Welfare Queen” Goes to the Polls: Race-Based Fractures in Gender Politics and Opportunities for Intersectional Coalitions, 108 Geo L. J. 105 (2020)

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Catherine Powell and Camille Gear Rich, The "Welfare Queen" Goes to the Polls: Race-Based Fractures in Gender Politics and Opportunities for Intersectional Coalitions

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Catherine Powell and Camille Gear Rich, The "Welfare Queen" Goes to the Polls: Race-Based Fractures in Gender Politics and Opportunities for Intersectional Coalitions

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The “Welfare Queen” Goes to the Polls: Race-Based Fractures in Gender Politics and Opportunities for Intersectional Coalitions

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As Americans celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment’s ratification, our celebration would be premature if we failed to reflect on the wa

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Rethinking Race, Redemption & Reparations, Keynote Lecture by Prof. Teri McMurtry-Chubb | UIC John Marshall Law (Mar. 12, 2020)

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Teri McMurtry-Chubb, Rethinking Race, Redemption & Reparations (Video)

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Teri McMurtry-Chubb, Rethinking Race, Redemption & Reparations (Video)

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Rethinking Race, Redemption & Reparations w/ Prof. Teri McMurtry-Chubb | UIC John Marshall Law

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Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni | Poetry Foundation (1971) 

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Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni | Poetry Foundation

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childhood remembrances are always a drag

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Black Women's Resistance in Slave Rebellions, AAIHS: Black Perspectives, May 11, 2023

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Asia Thomas Uzomba, Black Women's Resistance in Slave Rebellions

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Asia Thomas Uzomba, Black Women's Resistance in Slave Rebellions

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Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner's Community by Vanessa M. Holden, an associate professor of history, narrates the 1831 Southampton Rebellion and maps out the resistive geography of Black communities in Southampton County, Virginia. Historical accounts on the Southampton Rebellion often focus on leader Nat Turner and other men and boys who were involved in what is considered one of the most famous rebellions against slavery. Holden illuminates specific acts of evasion and survival in the daily life of free and enslaved women and children that lived in Southampton County and positions the Southampton Rebellion as the product of an interconnected community.

Surviving Southampton joins the recent shift in historical scholarship from male-centered slave rebellion narratives by offering an interpretation of enslaved people's resistance. Holden explicitly calls out the gendered binary in historical research on slave rebellions: "enslaved men rebel while enslaved women resist" (6). This gendered binary casts women as inactive during slave rebellions. Holden argues that African American women's daily resistance and survival strategies were significant in their participation in slave rebellions and particularly the success of the Southampton Rebellion. Specifically, Holden asserts that "enslaved women's labor afforded them greater mobility and an important role in building and defining geographies of evasion and resistance" (8).

Holden relies on published transcriptions of primary materials, original archival sources, and edited source collections, including images of minute books and Southampton County court records. The voices of the Southampton community are illuminated through Holden's consultation with editions of Weevils in the Wheat from the Slave Narrative Project of the 1930s Works Progress Administration. Holden's use of court records, maps, and other forms of primary documents with the narratives provides a richer understanding of the community as "the genesis of resistive action" before, during, and after the rebellion (7).

The book is organized in five chapters that map out the resistive geography of the Southampton County, Virginia community. This structure helps the reader understand the individual and collective actions of enslaved African American women, free people of color, and African American youth, including how they endured and survived in the aftermath of the rebellion. The conclusion of each chapter reiterates Holden's overall argument and assists the reader in making connections across community members.

The first chapter outlines the history and geographies of surveillance and control in Southampton County that prompted local African American communities to craft and execute evasive techniques for daily survival. In chapter two, Holden explores the participation of enslaved woman Ester, Charlotte, Lucy, Cynthia, and Venus along the route of the rebellion. Though these women were rooted their respective farms, they contributed to the rebellion at various levels. The third chapter examines the community of free women of color in Southampton, including their role in the local labor economy, their access to geographies of evasion and resistance in the broader African American community, and their participation in rebellion events and its aftermath. The fourth chapter sheds light on the place and role of children, such as Moses, in the Southampton labor market and how the youth learned and navigated spaces of surveillance and control. The fifth chapter details the geographies of survival in the rebellion's aftermath, including court proceedings that illustrate the white community's demand for mastery and preserving social hierarchy. Surviving Southampton concludes with a short chapter that briefly illustrates how descendants of Nat Turner and the free and enslaved African Americans of Southampton County remember and continue the stories and resistive legacies of the historical rebellion.

The content of Surviving Southampton illuminates the 1831 Southampton Rebellion as a product of community-constituted practices of resistance and survival. Holden extensively outlines the roles of enslaved African American women, free women of color, and African American youth in the labor economy of antebellum Southampton County. Holden provides labor contexts in these chapters to build her argument that each held a specific significance to the labor market. For example, Holden states that "enslaved women's labor afforded them greater mobility and an important role in building and defining geographies of evasion and resistance" (8). In the second chapter, Holden uses accounts of human geography to illustrate how African American women's roles as "gendered laborers allowed them mobility and access within farms that perfectly positioned them" to refashion white enslavers' sites of control and surveillance into strategic geographies of resistance and survival that were valuable in moments of the rebellion (36).

Throughout Surviving Southampton, Holden supports a compelling argument and critical interpretation of enslaved Black women and their actions as "embedded in [the rebellion's path and its planning action" before, during, and after the rebellion. (37) Holden critically analyzes primary material sources such as court trial records and minute books during the rebellion trials to further support her argument that Black women were active agents in the Southampton Rebellion. She argues that the appearance of Black women in court documents give voice to their lived experiences during moments of the rebellion, their participation in rebellion events, and their survival strategies before, during, and after the rebellion (97). Holden's description of primary sources surrounding African American women's involvement in the rebellion and the court trials that followed shed light on interpretations of silence in archival research. She advises that it is "important to acknowledge what the available sources cannot reveal" (84). Her statement both highlights the issue of lack of perseveration and representation of African Americans in primary material sources and the use of silence as strategies for agency, protection, and resistance. Holden's interpretation of enslaved African American women during the Southampton Rebellion provides a deeper understanding of the Southampton Rebellion dismisses traditional accounts that cast Black women as bystanders during violent rebellions against slavery.

Surviving Southampton is an engaging interpretation that illuminates the roles, voices, and lived experiences of African American women throughout the Southampton Rebellion. Holden has written a catalyst text that can prompt historical scholars to examine further interpretations of women and youth participation in resistances and rebellion against slavery.

Holden has shifted away from presenting a singular narration of one of the most famous slave rebellions in American history. Instead, the inhabitants of Southampton Rebellion are illuminated as intergenerational agents of resistance. Holden attends to gendered issues, such as absence and silence, related to archival research and representation of African American women while she elevates their significance to the rebellion and their community. Surviving Southampton is a strong example of how historical accounts of slave rebellions can mobilize human geographies to rediscover new interpretations of the sustained resistance and survival of African American women. This book sheds light on the multifaceted ways that African American women passed down resistive legacies through their stories surrounding the Southampton Rebellion.

Copyright © AAIHS. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Black Women's Resistance in Slave Rebellions

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Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner's Community by Vanessa M. Holden, an associate professor of history, narrates the 1831 Southampton Rebellion and maps out the resistive geography of Black communities in Southampton County, Virginia. Historical accounts on th

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Color of Covid and Gender of Covid: Essential Workers, Not Disposable People , 33 YALE J.L. & Feminism

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Catherine Powell, Color of COVID and Gender of COVID: Essential Workers, Not Disposable People 

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Catherine Powell, Color of COVID and Gender of COVID: Essential Workers, Not Disposable People 

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Color of COVID and Gender of COVID: Essential Workers, Not Disposable People

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We live in a moment of interconnected pandemics. The COVID-19 crisis provides a window into the underlying pandemics of inequality, economic insecurity, and inj

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Catherine Powell and Adrien Wing, 116 AJIL Unbound 259 (2022)

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Catherine Powell and Adrien K. Wing, Introduction to the Symposium on Feminist Approaches to International Law Thirty Years On: Still Alienating Oscar?

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Catherine Powell and Adrien K. Wing, Introduction to the Symposium on Feminist Approaches to International Law Thirty Years On: Still Alienating Oscar?

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Nikki Giovanni Delivers a Poetry Reading | Black History, Continued (NYTimes Events, Apr. 27, 2021)

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Nikki Giovanni, Quilting the Black Eyed Pea (We're Going to Mars) (Video)

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Nikki Giovanni, Quilting the Black Eyed Pea (We're Going to Mars) (Video)

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Nikki Giovanni Delivers a Poetry Reading | Black History, Continued

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Audrey Gadzekpo, Battling Old Ghosts in gender and African media research

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Audrey Gadzekpo, Battling Old Ghosts in gender and African media research

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Audrey Gadzekpo, 4(3) African Communication Research 389 (2011)

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‪Battling old ghosts in gender and African media research‬

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‪A Gadzekpo‬, ‪African Communication Research, 2011‬ - ‪Cited by 34‬

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Women, Law and Human Rights (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005)

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Fareda Banda, Women, Law and Human Rights: An African Perspective 

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Fareda Banda, Women, Law and Human Rights: An African Perspective 

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Africa, with its mix of statute, custom and religion is at the centre of the debate about law and its impact on gender relations. This is because of the centrality of the gender question and its impact on the cultural relativism debate within human rights. It is therefore important to examine critically the role of law, broadly constructed, in African societies. The book focuses on women’s experiences in the family. This is because the lives of women continue to be lived out largely in the private domain, where the right to privacy is used to conceal unequal treatment of women which is justified by invoking ‘custom’ and ‘tradition’. The book shows how law and its interpretation is used to disenfranchise women, resulting in their being deprived of land and other property which they may have helped to accumulate. It also considers issues of violence within the home, reproductive rights and examines the issue of female genital cutting. The role of women in development is explored as is their participation in politics and the NGO sector. A major theme of the book is a consideration of the linkages of constitutional and international human rights norms with local values. This is done using feminist tools of analysis. The book considers the provisions of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women which was adopted by the African Union in July 2003.

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Critical Race Feminism: A Reader (2d. Edition) (2003)

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Adrien K. Wing, ed., Critical Race Feminism: A Reader (2nd Edition)

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Adrien K. Wing, ed., Critical Race Feminism: A Reader (2nd Edition)

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Anita Hill, Angela Harris, Lani Guinier, and others address a range of subjects on the legal status of women of colorIn Critical Race Feminism, Anita Hill, Lani Guinier, Regina Austin, Patricia Williams, Emma Coleman Jordan (Anita Hill’s lawyer) and over three dozen other women seek to ensure that their perspectives on race, power, law, and politics in America will never again be distorted or ignored. Revealing how the historical experiences and contemporary realities of women of color are profoundly influenced by a legacy of racism and sexism that is neither linear nor logical, the book offers a panoramic perspective on American women’s lives, illustrating how women of color derive strength from oppression. Both a forceful statement and a platform, the volume addresses an ambitious range of subjects from life in the workplace, motherhood, and parenting to sexual harassment, the O.J. Simpson trial, and criminal justice. Extending beyond national borders, it also takes on such global issues as female genital mutilation with sensitivity and eloquence. In a foreword that discusses relations between black women and men in the wake of the Million Man March, Derrick Bell argues that there is a singular focus, and thus a unique power, in Critical Race Feminism that makes this anthology relevant for women and men of all colors.

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Adrien K. Wing, The Sage Encyclopedia of Higher Education: Critical Race Feminism 

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Adrien K. Wing, The Sage Encyclopedia of Higher Education: Critical Race Feminism 

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Leadership Is Autobiography: An Ode to Black Feminism (Jan. 31, 2024)

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American Society on Aging, Leadership is Autobiography: An Ode to Black Feminism

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American Society on Aging, Leadership is Autobiography: An Ode to Black Feminism

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Leadership Is Autobiography: An Ode to Black Feminism

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A lifetime spent seeking to be recognized as ‘levelly human.’

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Doubly Bound: The Impact of Gender and Race on the Politics of Black Women, 19(1) Political Psychology 169 (1998)

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Claudine Gay and Katherine Tate, Doubly Bound: The Impact of Gender and Race on the Politics of Black Women

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Claudine Gay and Katherine Tate, Doubly Bound: The Impact of Gender and Race on the Politics of Black Women

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Doubly Bound: The Impact of Gender and Race on the Politics of Black Women on JSTOR

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Claudine Gay, Katherine Tate, Doubly Bound: The Impact of Gender and Race on the Politics of Black Women, Political Psychology, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 169-184

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Opinion | Anita Hill: Kamala Harris and the Power of Dignity (Oct. 28, 2024)

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Anita Hill, The Smearing of Kamala Harris (Op-Ed)

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Anita Hill, The Smearing of Kamala Harris (Op-Ed)

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Opinion | Anita Hill: Kamala Harris and the Power of Dignity

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The insults hurled at Ms. Harris are a reminder of how Republican senators tried to shame me when I challenged Clarence Thomas’s fitness.

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Chapter 16: Revisioning Algorithms as a Black Feminist Project, Feminist Cyberlaw 200 (Meg Leta Jones and Amanda Levendowski ed., 2024).

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Ngozi Okidegbe, Revisioning Algorithms as a Black Feminist Project

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Ngozi Okidegbe, Revisioning Algorithms as a Black Feminist Project

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Scholarly Commons at Boston University School of Law

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Author granted license

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Document Type

Book Chapter

Editor(s)

Meg Leta Jones and Amanda Levendowski

Publisher

University of California Press

Abstract

We live in an age of predictive algorithms. ¹ Jurisdictions across the country are utilizing algorithms to make or influence life-altering decisions in a host of governmental decision-making processes-criminal justice, education, and social assistance to name a few. ² One justification given for this algorithmic turn concerns redressing historical and current inequalities within governmental decision-making. ³ The hope is that the predictions produced by these predictive systems can correct this problem by providing decision-makers with the information needed to make fairer, more accurate, and consistent decisions. ⁴ For instance, jurisdictions claim that their turn to risk assessment algorithms in bail, sentencing, and parole is in order to de-bias decisions made in these areas. However, this hope has not borne out in practice. Rather than de-biasing decision-making, algorithms have tended to operate to reinforce it. ⁵ A primary reason is that these systems tend to produce disparate predictions that track existing social inequities and facilitate harmful outcomes for marginalized communities, particularly racially and otherwise politically oppressed communities. ⁶ To compound the issue, since these systems tend to be applied to an entire sector, the predictions produced operate to maintain existing inequities, social hierarchies, and the resulting political, economic, and social oppression of our current moment. ⁷ Professor Safiya Umoja Noble's work has provided us with a language and a framework to understand this state of affairs. She employs the term "algorithmic oppression," which she uses to refer to how algorithms "serv[e] up deleterious information about people" and resultingly "reinforce oppressive social and economic relations." ⁸ By cementing existing political, social, and economic hierarchies, these algorithmic systems-as Professor Dorothy Roberts explains-exacerbate marginalized communities' vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence, resource deprivation, and other precarious outcomes that hamper their ability to exercise full citizenship in this country. 9 When viewed in tandem, the multifaceted effects of algorithmic oppression threaten to "lock in" our unequal status quo into the future. ¹⁰

Recommended Citation

Ngozi Okidegbe, Chapter 16: Revisioning Algorithms as a Black Feminist Project , in Feminist Cyberlaw 200 (Meg Leta Jones and Amanda Levendowski ed., 2024).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3576

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Chapter 16: Revisioning Algorithms as a Black Feminist Project

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We live in an age of predictive algorithms.1 Jurisdictions across the country are utilizing algorithms to make or influence life-altering decisions in a host of governmental decision-making processes-criminal justice, education, and social assistance to name a few.2 One justification given for this algorithmic turn concerns redressing historical and current inequalities

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'This Head, These Limbs' | Patricia J. Williams, The New York Review, June 25, 2024

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Patricia J. Williams, This Head, These Limbs

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Patricia J. Williams, This Head, These Limbs

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Some years ago, a student brought me an image of a painting in the style of the Italian Renaissance. He had no knowledge of its provenance, but thought it would intrigue me, given my work on the history of racial representations. It depicts two men with halos-saints? holy men? priests?-presiding over the amputation of a leg apparently removed from an apparently dead Black man and attached to the body of an apparently white figure, whom one may surmise is still living, as one of the pontiffs seems to be taking a pulse. It is a religious depiction of some sort, obviously Christian. Having been raised within a loose version of that tradition, I ascribed a theological significance to the picture: pain as God's chastening, suffering as atonement, agony as deliverance.

It was a vision of surgery so painful that it has haunted me since; it was not obvious why the suffering of either the Black or the white man was being sacralized. Furthermore, the composition is vertically striped with bright red, blood red; to my eye, a river of blood seemed to extend from the top of the frame down the back wall, grow torrential in the flow of folds of the blanket on the bed, and coagulate in a pool at the bottom, in the cloak of the dead man. Ordinarily I do not flinch at the most graphic depictions of martyrdom or crucifixion-even John the Baptist's head on a pike. Yet something about this picture made my heart batter about with distress. I was surprised, too, to find myself reading it with such unusual literalism. This was well before reliable painkillers or anesthesia; my mind raced with thoughts of saws and knives. I dreamed of the painting and woke frequently, always worrying that "a leap of faith" was, with only one leg, surely a tumble to death.

I mulled cluelessly on this painting for almost a year. In my ignorance, my mind composed its own narratives and wandering explanations. The body on the ground was the black sheep, the sacrificial lamb, Epimetheus the Afterthought. The body on the bed was a zombie chimera pieced together from the perceived spare parts of another. I imagined that the open book in the hand of the figure in the black cap was an alchemical text with secrets about some early type of galvanism: how to transmit electrical sparks of life into used body parts. Surely, I told myself, the open box in the hands of the figure on the right was filled with the balm of oblivion.

Upon more recent reflection, I think part of the distress I was feeling was rooted in my vague association between the painting and a passage from one of Frederick Douglass's 1842 speeches. Douglass famously compared slavery's violence to a kind of amputation. He described his escape from his owner-master in vividly literal economic terms, as stealing the property of his own body, a wrenching theft of "this head, these limbs." As "chattel" he was legally disassembled by a system of property in which he had no hand, yet within which he was intimately subsumed. Enslaved bodies were amputated from generative categories like family, citizen, human being.

The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy was prompted by a very different experience-receiving a heart transplant-to reflect on the sense of his body as owned. It was the incorporation of a vital part extracted from another that underwrote his meditation on ownership, an essay called "The Intruder." Nancy feels discombobulated because an "alien" heart has taken up residence in his body. Of those moments when his first heart made its infirmity known through persistent "arrhythmia and palpitations," he asks, "If my heart was giving up and going to drop me, to what degree was it an organ of 'mine,' my 'own'?"

Douglass's and Nancy's essays have uncanny force in part because they push the language of property past its normative limits. Both posit unusually painful encounters with notions of possession and autonomy; both are unsettled by what it means to enunciate "I" and "me" and "mine." Similar matters have preoccupied me in my career as a professor of contract law. I spend a great deal of time thinking about the body as property, wondering to what extent any of us are truly autonomous rather than just interconnected pieces of a larger puzzle. Do we have anything like a considered ethic of care for how we borrow, attach, lean on, fit together, or abandon parts of one another? Where does a single body end and the complex social webbing of prosthesis begin?

One of the weirder legal cases that raises this question involved a South Carolinian named John Wood, whose leg was amputated after an airplane crash in 2004. (The subsequent saga is recorded in a sad-funny little film, Finders Keepers.) Desiring to be eventually buried as a bipedal entity, Wood had the leg embalmed and placed it in a storage unit with other belongings. But when he fell behind on the rental fees, the contents of the unit were sold at auction to one Shannon Whisnant, who found the leg carefully wrapped and nestled inside a barbecue smoker. Whisnant called the police, who traced it back to Wood, who in turn insisted the leg be returned. Detached or not, it was "his," because it had once been part of him. Whisnant disagreed, noting that the law recognized him to be the "good faith purchaser-for-value": he hoped to put the leg on display in a homemade House of Horrors, charging a hefty price for the viewing. "Halloween's just around the corner," he explained.

The case of Wood v. Whisnant suggests how the language habits of rigid contractarianism can clash with the ethics of care and broader public interest. John Wood's lost leg is a nearly irresistible subject for allegorizing, uniting, as it does, dilemmas over everything that makes communion, community, and cohesion possible-family, market, language itself. Shannon Whisnant may have been legally right but affectively wrong when he referred to Wood's leg as his embodied property: "my extra foot." Like any good businessman, he was careful to point out that, by purchasing the smoker and its contents with legal tender, he had incorporated them into his estate, status, profile, and profit. To top it off, he advertised himself as "the foot man."

To Wood, however, the leg was part of "me"-not separable as "a" leg but indivisible from "himself," or his body. It lay beyond commercial exchange, in sacred terrain; its amputation was a symbolic as well as a physical loss. The bony relic was a palpable memorial to the moment he lost it-in the plane crash that killed his father. The leg, removed from the body of which it was formerly an integral part, was a remainder of the day, the marker of a grave.

The ghoulishness of this situation should not obscure the legal issues at stake: should a commodity interest in the contents of the storage unit override the sacrosanctity of corporeal integrity? Are discarded body parts "alienable" in contract? Or do they fall within the realm of what we deem "inalienable" under the Constitution?

It depends on the kind of legal discourse you subscribe to. In Anglo-American jurisprudence, contract law concerns itself almost exclusively with the interests of private parties who assign value to the object of their contract according to their own subjective sense of worth. Thus made property, that leg as "object" has no value other than the agreed price of transfer. One definition of property is that it confers a right to exclude. In other words, the value that an owner of an object places upon it excludes or supersedes whatever value it might have had to prior owners or to those not party to the contract. The object is "objectified" precisely because it has no stable or inherent value.

In contrast, constitutional law governs the realm of polity, civic life, and civil rights. The Declaration of Independence celebrates "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" by establishing an inherency of civic worth. This is enshrined in the notion of legal personhood as an "unalienable right" that can't be bargained away on an auction block.

Within the meaning-making system of contract law, John Wood's leg becomes an inanimate thing, its status affixed by the storage company and the buyer. Within the semantic realm of constitutional law, however, the leg may be seen as an extension of Wood's dignitarian interest in the integrity of his body, autonomy of mind, and general civic regard. This latter is the ethic that is supposed to protect us, if imperfectly, from the commercial marketing of body parts, and legally shield us from the predations of grave robbery. This is also the constitutive promise of egalitarian community: that none of "us" is worth more than another. The core value of constitutional citizenship is that "we" do not eye each other for profit.

This foundational jurisprudential distinction between constitution and contract-between the vivacity of humanity and the civil death of objectification-is at the heart of slavery's discursive legacy. Modern concepts of contract have allowed efficiencies of transfer and speculative credit markets to flourish, but contract law works best when applied to fungible inanimate things, for which there is an easily determined market price. This is because with inanimate things the basic remedial scheme for broken contract expectations is usually narrow: value promised minus value received. If I paid you ten dollars for magic beans but received only two dollars' worth, you owe me ten minus two, or eight dollars. It does not deal with punitive damages or with beyond-price matters such as life and liberty, or pain and suffering, or executions or imprisonment or humanitarian issues.

The 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford is an excellent example of the shift in diction from constitutional vivacity to object-of-contract status. For several years, Scott, born a slave, had resided in the free territories of Wisconsin and Illinois where he had been taken by his owner, John Sandford; by virtue of his location Scott resisted Sandford's efforts to return him and retain him as property in the slave state of Missouri. Asserting his desired status as a fully agentic human, Scott described Sandford as "assaulting" him: he used the language of a citizen's claim of criminal and constitutional violation. Sandford, on the other hand, asserted that Scott and his family had been "gently...restrained" and returned to Missouri in good condition: he used the language of bailment, describing Scott like a well-delivered UPS package.

A similar tension is at work in Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), based on the case of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who escaped from Archibald Gaines, her rapist and owner, fleeing from Kentucky to Cincinnati, in the free state of Ohio. As bounty hunters encircled her, she killed one of her daughters and attempted to kill her three other young children to spare them a future under Gaines. When her case came to trial in 1856, abolitionists in Ohio attempted to have her tried for murder, which would, ironically, have affirmed her status as an agentic being with the human capacity for willful killing; she would have thus been better able to assert her status as a free woman and to claim slavery's cruelty as mitigation. Instead the court ruled her to be chattel-Gaines's "rightful" property. Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, she was returned to Kentucky as "contraband."

The use of contract to decorporealize human beings has structural parallels to this day. Consider a society in which there is no governance but the currency of contract: this is, in effect, the society described by Jordan Belfort in his hideous memoir The Wolf of Wall Street (2007). Recounting an office plan to wrap human beings in Velcro suits and throw them at a dartboard to see if they stick, he ponders the trade-off:

In essence, what it really boiled down to was that the right to pick up a midget and toss him around was just another currency due any mighty warrior, a spoil of war, so to speak. How else was a man to measure his success if not by playing out every one of his adolescent fantasies, regardless of how bizarre it might be?... If precocious success brought about questionable forms of behavior, then the prudent young man should enter each unseemly act into the debit column on his own moral balance sheet and then offset it at some future point with an act of kindness or generosity (a moral credit, so to speak), when he became older and wiser and more sedate.

The instrumentalization of fellow humans becomes entirely rationalized by the logic of cost. If the price is right, anything goes. It is perhaps more common to cast this critique as one of the neoliberal economy. But I also think that the objectification of human beings is the residue of contractarian syntax: a body acted upon, owned by legally assigned agents, one's fate negotiated by others.

Nor is this just a matter for speculation. In the summer of 2022, Florida governor Ron DeSantis fraudulently lured nearly fifty Venezuelans away from the Texas border, where they had been seeking asylum, and put them onto a plane that deposited them without notice on the island of Martha's Vineyard. This was done without their consent; it was a political maneuver to make Democrats in Congress embrace harsher forms of border control. It used migrant bodies as bargaining chips, pawns in a game between North and South, liberals and conservatives, sanctuary cities and walled spaces.

That the human plight of asylum seekers was irrelevant in the political chess of immigration policy became even clearer that December, when Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, rounded up about 120 people from the border, bused them to Washington, D.C., and deposited them on the street in front of Vice President Kamala Harris's residence on the coldest Christmas Eve in the region's history. The temperature hovered at 18 degrees Fahrenheit. The group, including very young children, were abandoned in the road with no winter clothing, some wearing only T-shirts and sandals. Still, political points had been scored.

But back to the painting with which I began: one day I woke up from my spell, finally stopped guessing, and showed the picture to an art historian friend who unpacked it for me in less than a minute. She informed me that it depicted the Miracle of the Black Leg, as performed by the "twin saints, holy martyrs, and silverless (or unmercenary) physicians Cosmas and Damian." Cosmas and Damian, who lived in the third century, were reputed to have performed a series of remarkable healings before they were beheaded by the emperor Diocletian; they are the patron saints of surgery, medicine and pharmacy. There are many competing stories about their origins, for they are variously tied to the churches of Rome, Asia Minor, and Arabia.

It turns out that hundreds of stories exist about the twin doctors performing this particular trick of transplantation, more commonly referred to as the "miracle of the black leg." The white (or "healed") body is alternately said to be that of Emperor Justinian, or a bishop, or a burgher. And there is much contestation about the source of the leg, the power of that dark appendage pointing to different theologies and moral valances: Was it taken from a living or a dead man? An Ethiope or a Moor? A Christian or a Muslim? Was it sacrifice or redemption, resurrection or grave robbery? Was the image meant to signify transfiguration from death to life, or was it a mark of some impossibly liminal space, a half and half, the stitching together of like and unlike-an eternally embodied transgression of one self?

I am glad for the time I allowed my mind to wander over the painting. I pulled odd strands and random associations together as I looked and looked. I invented stories that defied history, time, and place. In the process I learned a great deal about myself-about how I prioritized the pieces of a puzzle I had no reasonable chance of putting together. Ultimately I had to step outside of my own assumptions, expectations, and fictions and open myself to the documentation of the painting's history. I did not have to abandon my creative musings, but I had to put them in perspective-to set them alongside the symbolic universe of this religious narrative.

I still do not know the painting's exact provenance. But it seems to signify a transformation that preserves one body deemed valuable and exploits another deemed expendable. Even across centuries, it invokes a hierarchy of living subjects, incapacitated beings, nonpersons, and things. Its figuration of amputation and potential revival is offered as a veneration of saints, but it is tempting to analogize its peculiar emotional force to present-day spiritual attachments, prostheses, and rhetorical miracles: the cryopreserved blastocysts that have recently leapt from the status of "medical product" to that of "extra-uterine children," for example, or the human beings consigned to civil death with the too-easy capture of labels like "enemy," or "illegal," or "useless eater." I can't help worrying about whose bodies are uplifted as whole and whose pieces and parts get abandoned on the cutting-room floor. We must deal with that question even as we aspire to a respectfully collaged, gently sutured, vibrantly interdependent human endowment. "Every utopia faces the same problem," Margaret Atwood told an interviewer in 2013. "What do you do with the people who don't fit in?"

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'This Head, These Limbs' | Patricia J. Williams

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Some years ago, a student brought me an image of a painting in the style of the Italian Renaissance. He had no knowledge of its provenance, but thought it

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Kara Walker: Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) (July 19, 2024)

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San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kara Walker: Fortuna and the Immortality Garden 

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San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kara Walker: Fortuna and the Immortality Garden 

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"Experience Kara Walker’s new commission, Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine), which considers the memorialization of trauma, the objectives of technology, and the possibilities of transforming the negative energies that plague contemporary society. Watch the processes and experiments that drive Walker’s newest public work and discover its connections to the cultural history of the Bay Area."

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Kara Walker: Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)

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Left of Black | Dr. Jennifer Nash on Motherhood and Black Feminism (Jul. 12, 2024)

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Left of Black, Dr. Jennifer Nash on Motherhood and Black Feminism (Video)(Interview)

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Left of Black, Dr. Jennifer Nash on Motherhood and Black Feminism (Video)(Interview)

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John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U.

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Left of Black | Dr. Jennifer Nash on Motherhood and Black Feminism

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Ella Baker: Making the Struggle Every Day (1974)

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Peaceable Power, Ella Baker, Puerto Rico (Video)

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Peaceable Power, Ella Baker, Puerto Rico (Video)

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"Friends, brothers, and sisters in the struggle for human dignity and freedom. I am here to represent the struggle that has gone on for three-hundred or more years -- a struggle to be recognized as citizens in a country in which we were born. I have had about forty or fifty years of struggle, ever since a little boy on the streets of Norfolk called me a nigger. I struck him back. And then I had to learn that hitting back with my fists one individual was not enough. It takes organization. It takes dedication. It takes the willingness to stand by and do what has to be done, when it has to be done. A nice gathering like today is not enough. You have to go back and reach out to your neighbors who don't speak to you. And you have to reach out to your friends who think they are making it good. And get them to understand that they--as well as you and I--cannot be free in America or anywhere else where there is capitalism and imperialism. Until we can get people to recognize that they themselves have to make the struggle and have to make the fight for freedom every day in the year, every year until they win it."

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Ella Baker: Making the Struggle Every Day

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PBS "American Experience", Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964 Democratic National  Convention (Video)

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PBS "American Experience", Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964 Democratic National  Convention (Video)

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Fannie Lou Hamer's Powerful Testimony | Freedom Summer

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Conversation with Shirley A. Chisholm (Talking Leadership series) (May 22, 2002)

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Center for American Women and Politics, Conversation with Shirley A. Chisholm (Video) 

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Center for American Women and Politics, Conversation with Shirley A. Chisholm (Video) 

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Conversation with Shirley A. Chisholm (Talking Leadership series)

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Barbara Jordan, 1992 Democratic National Convention Address (Video)

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Barbara Jordan, 1992 Democratic National Convention Address (Video)

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Barbara Jordan speaks at the 1992 Democratic Convention

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Barbara Jordan, 1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech (Video)

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Barbara Jordan, 1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech (Video)

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Barbara Jordan, Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech, 1976, part 1

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The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)

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The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)

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The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)

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CAUGHT: Calculating the Moves of Power in Our Midst | Blanche Cook | TEDxWayneStateU (Jan. 26, 2017)

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Blanche Bong Cook, TEDxWayneStateU, CAUGHT: Calculating the Moves of Power in Our Midst (Video)

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Blanche Bong Cook, TEDxWayneStateU, CAUGHT: Calculating the Moves of Power in Our Midst (Video)

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Blanche Bong Cook on the collusion of law and power and how it relates to physical and sexual violence

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CAUGHT: Calculating the Moves of Power in Our Midst | Blanche Cook | TEDxWayneStateU

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Reflections on the Confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson from the Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership and Female Leaders Around Campus (Apr. 11, 2022)

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The Dig, Reflections on the Confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson from the Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership and Female Leaders Around Campus (Howard University)

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The Dig, Reflections on the Confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson from the Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership and Female Leaders Around Campus (Howard University)

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Reflections on the Confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson from the Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership and Female Leaders Around Campus

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The founding director of the Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership and members of the center’s Global Council of Leaders as well as other Howard female leaders respond to the historic confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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Oregon Humanities Center, UO Today with Cheryl Harris (Video)

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Oregon Humanities Center, UO Today with Cheryl Harris (Video)

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Black Women Public Intellectuals in U.S. History and Culture, Hettie V. Williams and Melissa Ziobro, eds. (University Press of Mississippi, 2023)

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Robert Greene, Black Women Public Intellectuals in U.S. History and Culture, Hettie V. Williams and Melissa Ziobro, eds. (Book Review)

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Robert Greene, Black Women Public Intellectuals in U.S. History and Culture, Hettie V. Williams and Melissa Ziobro, eds. (Book Review)

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"One of the strengths of A Seat at the Table is how the volume deftly deals with different eras of Black intellectual history, situating them both within traditional epochs of American history while also dealing with the subjects of analysis on their own ideological and temporal terms. Section II, titled “Politics and Black Women’s Public Intellectualism” is a prime example of taking Black women leaders who may be well-known to historians (or to the general public, in the case of a Mary McLeod Bethune or a Shirley Chisholm), and treating them as intellectuals. This makes a significant difference in how we see them. For example, Marissa Jackson Sow’s chapter on Shirley Chisholm makes clear that scholars and lay people alike underestimate Shirley Chisholm if they see her only as a politician, and not also as a careful thinker and intellectual on the American left. As Sow writes, she went “beyond popular iconography and mythology about Chisholm and to Chisholm’s intellectual labor—her word-work—to provide dimension to her legacy.”

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The field of Black women's intellectual history has experienced a renaissance in recent years. Works such as Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women and Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History have showcased the considerable interest among historians in the field of Black women's intellectual history. A Seat at the Table: Black Women Public Intellectuals in U.S. History and Culture shows us the way forward in further deepening not only our understanding of Black women's intellectual history, but of thinking about greater ideas of what, precisely, counts as "intellectual history."

The editors of this volume, Hettie V. Williams and Melissa Ziobro, make clear that their edited collection is an attempt to move forward the growing interest in Black women as intellectual subjects in their own right in American intellectual history. As Hettie V. Williams argues in the introduction to the volume, thinking through who is an intellectual in American society is a continuing debate that needs to be more inclusive of Black women. "Terms such as ' organic intellectual,' 'activist intellectual,' and sometimes 'public intellectual' tend to be more applicable when considering Black women intellectuals in the context of US history," argues Williams.

The book itself also makes a cogent argument about who is an intellectual in American history by either inserting Black women into intellectual history conversations they were previously left out of, or re-evaluating Black women intellectuals through new and interesting frameworks. Certainly, Part I of the book sets the tone for the rest of the volume, by putting the rhetoric and intellectual practice of Black women in Early Republic and antebellum America in a fresh context. For example, Lacey Hunter re-interprets the speeches and writings of Maria Stewart through the lens of what Hunter calls the "Black women's jeremiad." She defines this as "a discourse marked by its use of American revolutionary ideals to centralize the experiences of free and enslaved women in the larger national debates about democracy and citizenship." The follow-up chapter by Hettie V. Williams further deepens our understanding of Black women as intellectuals, looking at Black women as preachers and thinking about their preaching style and substance through an intellectual history lens.

One of the strengths of A Seat at the Table is how the volume deftly deals with different eras of Black intellectual history, situating them both within traditional epochs of American history while also dealing with the subjects of analysis on their own ideological and temporal terms. Section II, titled "Politics and Black Women's Public Intellectualism" is a prime example of taking Black women leaders who may be well-known to historians (or to the general public, in the case of a Mary McLeod Bethune or a Shirley Chisholm), and treating them as intellectuals. This makes a significant difference in how we see them. For example, Marissa Jackson Sow's chapter on Shirley Chisholm makes clear that scholars and lay people alike underestimate Shirley Chisholm if they see her only as a politician, and not also as a careful thinker and intellectual on the American left. As Sow writes, she went "beyond popular iconography and mythology about Chisholm and to Chisholm's intellectual labor-her word-work -to provide dimension to her legacy."

To return to one of the themes of the book, re-thinking who qualifies as an intellectual is an important aspect of A Seat at the Table. Lauren T. Rorie's "She Did it for the Culture" centers Black women visual artists as public intellectuals during the 1920s, again showcasing how important it is to look at historical figures through every lens possible. Hettie V. Williams' second chapter in the book, on Mildred Fay Jefferson and her role in the pro-life movement, is an example of looking at an often-obscured figure and putting the scholarly spotlight on her. As Williams shifts the traditional scholarly focus from either pro-choice advocates or traditional pro-life subjects such as Phyllis Schlafly to a Black woman arguing against abortion, we see the culture wars through a different-and, admittedly, fresh-lens.

Every chapter and section of A Seat at the Table is fascinating, but section IV, about Black women in the armed forces, might be the most ground-breaking. The chapters themselves make clear that, traditionally, intellectual history tends to leave out members of the armed forces as worthy of study in that realm. But it is clear that the military has played a major role in Black American life-and definitely so in intellectual history. The book, as a whole, is worth reading and sitting with. The field of American intellectual history has never been more vibrant as it is now. The continuing study of Black women intellectuals will keep the field fresh and healthy for years to come. A Seat at the Table is a reminder of that.

Copyright © AAIHS. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Black Women Public Intellectuals in U.S. History and Culture

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The field of Black women's intellectual history has experienced a renaissance in recent years. Works such as Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women and Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History have showcased the considerable interest among historians in t

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Maladaptive Ways of Being: Rastafari Women on Rewriting Scripts of Oppression — The Caribbean Philosophical Association (Aug. 2023)

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Shamara Wylie Alhassan, Maladaptive Ways of Being: Rastafari Women on Rewriting Scripts of Oppression

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Shamara Wylie Alhassan, Maladaptive Ways of Being: Rastafari Women on Rewriting Scripts of Oppression

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Maladaptive Ways of Being: Rastafari Women on Rewriting Scripts of Oppression — The Caribbean Philosophical Association

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Intersectionality at 30: Mapping the Margins of Anti-Essentialism, 132 Harv. L. Rev. 2193 (2019)

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Devon Carbado and Cheryl I. Harris, Intersectionality at 30: Mapping the Margins of Anti-Essentialism, Intersectionality, and Dominance Theory

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Devon Carbado and Cheryl I. Harris, Intersectionality at 30: Mapping the Margins of Anti-Essentialism, Intersectionality, and Dominance Theory

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Intersectionality at 30: Mapping the Margins of Anti-Essentialism,

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2019 marks thirty years since the publication of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s groundbreaking article, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Do

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Kimberle W. Crenshaw, Close Encounters of Three Kinds: On Teaching Dominance Feminism and Intersectionality, 46 Tulsa L. Rev. 151 (2013)

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Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Close Encounters of Three Kinds: On Teaching Dominance, Feminism, and Intersectionality

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Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Close Encounters of Three Kinds: On Teaching Dominance, Feminism, and Intersectionality

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Close Encounters of Three Kinds: On Teaching Dominance Feminism and Intersectionality

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By Kimberle W. Crenshaw, Published on 09/01/10