Part I
African American Womenâs Political Voices
Chapter One
Barbara Smith
A Home Girl with a Mission
Patricia Bell-Scott
Introduction
Writer-activist Barbara Smith was born in 1946 and reared with her twin sister, Beverly, by a grandmother and aunt after the death of their mother. From womanfolk Barbara inherited a love of African American cultural traditions, as well as a commitment to social change. This commitment is reflected in her politics and in a lifetime of advocacy on behalf of people of color, womenâs, and lesbian/gay issues.
Although known primarily for her activism, Barbara is first of all a writer. She has written numerous essays, poems, and short stories. She is also editor of several major works including All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Womenâs Studies (with Akasha Hull and Patricia Bell-Scott), Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, and The Readerâs Companion to U.S. Womenâs History (with Wilma Mankiller; Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, and Gloria Steinem) and is cofounder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. Her current project is the first history of African American lesbians and gays in the United States.
In this conversation, she describes the origins, rewards, and consequences of an activist life, as well as the marginalization of African American lesbians and gays by conventional Black, women, and lesbian and gay organizations. She also reflects on her personal journey toward self-acceptance.
Letters from Home
There has been a tragic occurrence! Iâve lost my favorite watermelon pin. It was enamel, beautifully done in red and glazed like pottery. Small, very nice, no more than an inch. And it looked just like a slice of watermelon. You know, I could tell a lot about people by how they reacted to my watermelon pin. Those who were obviously down with me would laugh and say, âOh, thatâs so wonderful.â Then there were other people who couldnât laugh and theyâd ask, âWhat is that for? What does it represent?â So Iâd think of little answers like I belong to an organization where we eat watermelon once every month, even when itâs out of season. Occasionally some Black person would say, âWell, donât you think thatâs racist?â Iâd say, âNo, itâs not racist; watermelon is a fruit! Now if I had a White person up here on my lapel, then we could say that that was an embodiment or a depiction of someone or something that could be potentially racist.â
I have many watermelon things in my home. To me, they are the perfect food. Many of my friends know that I love them, so I am constantly acquiring representations. When I went to visit the Black woman filmmaker Michelle Parkerson and she too had a house full of watermelons, I thought, Great minds run together. I also have an article by Vertamae Grosvenor titled âA Watermelon Fan Comes Out of the Closet,â which I send to people on occasion. In this piece, Vertamae writes about her love of watermelons as an evocation of Black culture. I also see them as a symbol of Black culture generally and perhaps even Black female culture. My aunt who raised me and my sister in Cleveland, Ohio, told us that they called watermelons letters from home. They were precious.
Family Legacies
The people I was raised by worked really, really hard, mostly as domestics. We were one of those respectable Black families, where people did what they were supposed to doâwent to work, took care of their children, stayed clear of illegal activities, and refrained from becoming a public nuisance. We were the kind of ordinary Black family that many White folks do not believe existed. And we were like everyone else we knew.
Even though there wasnât a huge amount open to them, people in our family valued education highly. A couple of great-aunts, my grandmotherâs sisters, went to Spelman in the early l900s. Once while I was looking through the college archives, I found a penny postcard from my aunt Rosa, whom I grew up with. She had taken normal school courses there. Another great-aunt who died before I was born spoke on the emancipation of Turkish women at her graduation from the Spelman high school division. Now that explains to me in part why Iâm such a staunch feminist. I come by it honestly from family.
My twin sister, Beverly, and I were raised by our grandmother and aunts. Our mother, who was a single parent and worked outside the home, died in l956, when we were only nine. Our grandmother was like the Black women generals Alice Walker describes in some of her writings. Rules were strictly enforced, and there was none of this positive reinforcement so popular today. There was no raving or pay for grades. Are you kidding? When we brought home straight-A report cards, our family would say, âThatâs nice.â Excellence was simply expected. At this point in my life, I think that I have put my grandmotherâs ways into perspective and have come to appreciate many of the things she taught me. Besides usable skills like sewing, she taught me self-discipline, which is very important. There was never any sense of day-to-day uncertainty in our lives. Whatever grown people said, whatever the plan was, whatever was supposed to happen, happened.
My mother, Hilda, was the youngest of my grandmotherâs three children and the only one to finish college. She tried to get certified to teach in the Cleveland public school system, but because the conditions in the ghetto schools were so demoralizing, she returned to her job as head cashier at a local supermarket. Before that, she had been a nurseâs aide. I will never forget telling a White woman therapist about my mother being a college graduate and the kinds of jobs she had and having this therapist tell me that my mother obviously had a self-image problem. The diagnosis was that I had a similar problemâno self-confidence. What this White woman did not understand was that there had been generations of Black college-educated people, men and women, who were denied jobs that their education had prepared them for. And maybe my mother did have a self-image problemâafter all, she was a Black single mother in the 1940s with two little children and she had to take any damn job she could find! In her day, there were Black folks with Ph.D.âs working in the U.S. postal service because they couldnât get jobs elsewhere. Thatâs just the way that was.
A Natural Calling
Iâm kind of a natural activist. Itâs a tendency or capacity that probably would have found an outlet eventuallyâbut because I came of age in the civil rights era, I had a vehicle for channeling my justifiable anger at the circumstances under which I saw my community living. By the time I was eight I noticed that things were not fairâthat mostly Brown people lived in tenements and only White people lived in mansions. I also had an endless list of questions like, Why were there Black people and why were there White people? Why didnât any White people live in our neighborhood? Why were there only White people on television? Why were all of our teachers White but all of the children Black? Why, when a White person knocked on our doorâthough this almost never happened and then it was an insurance salesman or someone like thatâwas there anxiety in the air that my sister and I could grasp? Why was the tension so strong when my aunt went to a department store to buy stockings? And why did the clerks ignore her? I wanted to know why about all of this.
The first demonstration I ever went to was in the early 1960s, when I was in high school. Bruce Klunder, a White minister, was killed protesting the building of a new elementary school that would be segregated. He lay down in a ditch in front of some construction equipment, and by accident or design, the workers rolled over him. I remember going to protest rallies after that. My sister and I also stayed home on the Monday of the school boycott, going instead to a Freedom School that had been set up in a neighborhood church. I think my family was basically supportive of our participation in these demonstrations because they were race women. They supported the NAACP and my grandmother always worked at the polls. They also had migrated from the South, so they knew even better than I did the horrors of U.S. apartheid that the movement was working to change.
I began my activism early, and eventually I came to identify as a Black feminist, a lesbian, and a Socialist. I also believe that the Combahee Collectiveâof which I was a cofounder and which functioned from 1974 to 1981 in Bostonâwas one of the most significant groups to come out of any movement. The collective had a series of retreats that brought together Black women artists and activists who were committed to feminism and political organizing. We made a conscious effort to look at how systems of oppression were connected to each other. We understood that dealing with sexual politics didnât mean that you werenât a race woman, and that speaking out about homophobia didnât mean that you didnât want to end poverty.
A lifetime of activism has had several major consequences for me. It has meant being outside of the academy, but despite my love of teaching I never really envisioned a traditional academic career. Needless to say, it has meant working hard for long hours and for little, if any, pay. It has also meant sometimes putting my writing on hold, particularly the fiction. However, I wasnât raised to think that everything was about me. Black feminism meant to me that I had a responsibility to help build and provide resources for other women of color, and a commitment to struggle requires certain sacrifices. Now, Iâm not saying that you have to take a vow of poverty, but I do not think that you can vacation on the Riviera every summer and still be about struggle.
There are tangible rewards to the activist life. Iâve seen a lot of change in my lifetime. When I was born into segregation in 1946, most Black people in this country could not vote; those who did or tried to vote did so on pain of death. And the women in my family could not try on a hat in a southern department storeâand that included Washington, D.C. I never bend over a public water fountain without realizing that once this would have been a revolutionary act. I know these things seem small, particularly to young people who have never lived the other way. We still have a long way to go, but I know that it took revolutionary commitment to get to this point.
An Invisible Sister
Despite all my years of activism on behalf of Black, womenâs, and lesbian and gay issues, there are times when I really feel like a stranger. At the twenty-fifth anniversary of Stonewall, the underrepresentation of people of color was demoralizing. It reminded me of Ralph Ellisonâs brilliant book The Invisible Man, which captures an experience that almost every person of color can identify with. Very few lesbian and gay men of color, including myself, are ever invited to the leadership summits called by White gay leaders. Being omitted from a meeting or invitation list might seem at first thought like a small thing; the larger issue is about the disenfranchisement of women and men of color within the movement.
Iâm convinced that our disempowerment at this moment in history is directly related to a push to mainstream the lesbian and gay movement in the United States. Bruce Bawerâs book, A Place at the Table, comes out of this mainstreaming effort, which is problematic for me because I really have no interest in reinforcing or dealing with the establishment. As a radical, I want to see it destroyed. I want a nonhierarchical, nonexploitative society in which profit is not the sole motivation for every single decision made by the government or individuals. And if the lesbian and gay movementâs motto becomes âA place at the tableâ in the present system, I have to ask, what am I as a Black woman going to be doing at this tableâcarrying a tray? Handing someone a dish? A place at the table? Not likely. It really doesnât work for me.
Black womenâs organizations should be at the forefront of the fight against homophobia in the Black community. They need to indicate their support of all Black women, regardless of sexual orientation. Unfortunately, many of them are afraid to stand publicly in support of gay and lesbian issues. They fear the inevitable charge that they are just a bunch of lesbians, which has been said about all womenâs groups.
One painful experience that I have over and over again is when prominent Black women leaders who are closeted pull me aside at a conference or some gathering to say, âBarbara, Iâm so glad youâre doing what youâre doing. Youâre doing wonderful work, girl, and you just go on and do it! Go on, sister, Iâm right behind you.â Yet they are not about to say on the stage or anywhere publicly, âAs a lesbian Iâm so proud that Barbaraâs a lesbian, too. She has helped me be proud as a lesbian.â Theyâre not able or willing to do that. These encounters always remind me of the title of Audre Lordeâs book Sister Outsider. Itâs an oxymoron because a sister is obviously someone inside the family, close, a home girl. But the sister with the lesbian feminist politics like Audreâs or mine is also an outsider.
Writing as Empowerment
I wanted to be a writer as soon as I found out that you could be one. James Baldwin was key in that. I was first introduced to him through Go Tell It on the Mountain, thanks to Aunt LaRue, who worked at the Cleveland Public Library as a clerk-typist. She would bring home shopping bags full of books, and my sister and I would devour them. When I read Go Tell It on the Mountain, I was thunderstruck. Here was a book that described a little guy, a main character, who was so much like me. He was shy; he liked to write; he was not happy; and he saw so many things. Until I read Baldwin I never knew that one could write about being Black and poor and get published. I assumed that the only way you could write a book or be a novelist was to write about well-off White people. I thought to myself, This is incredible writing. Maybe I could do that, too. After I read Baldwin, that was it.
Of all my writings, the essay âToward a Black Feminist Literary Criticismâ (1978) continues to hold a special place for me. I think that there are probably moments in every artistâs life where you feel that you didnât necessarily create what was there but were instead the vehicle for it to be manifested. Looking back, I feel that way about this essay. It defined a moment, a feeling, a new field, and possibilities. It was a piece after which other things could be written on the topic. And it is still the subject of debate and dialogue. It also fascinates me when men and women who are not of African origin tell me what this essay has meant to them. That says something to me, not because I seek validation from people who are unlike me but because that piece is very Black, very female, and very lesbian.
With the increased acceptance of research and writing about Black women, I sometimes reflect on the introduction to our book All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Womenâs Studies. In that piece we said that the goal of Black womenâs studies is to save Black womenâs lives. We didnât say it was to get tenure, a book contract, or a certain salary. We said it was about saving lives, and we meant every Black womanânot just those lucky enough to get higher education and do college or university teaching or research. We meant the Black woman whoâs never going to read any of our damn books.
I am writing the first book on the history of African American lesbians and gays. I hope, with this project, to give us back to ourselves and to empower people. Almost all of my writing has been about empowerment and about trying to say to people of color, to women, and to lesbians and gay men that you are really worth something, you are important, you have a history to be proud of. There is no reason to be ashamed.
Coming Home
For me, moving into midlife has had advantages. One of these is a more balanced perspective on lifeâor maybe even sometimes wisdom. This new perspective has given me a clear vision of what my limits and priorities are, as well as the relative unimportance of what most people think of me. The older I get and the longer Iâm here, the more adjusted I become to being a human being on this planet.
I have developed an appreciation for simple acts of self-careâlike a daytime nap, eating on time, and sitting quietly after a bout of running around. Self-acceptance is another thing that has come to me. Iâm having the time of my life doing the work I love. Iâm not saying that my life has been perfect or that I have no regrets, because there have been mistakes and disappointments. But midlife teaches that I donât have to repeat those experiences again, and that is a comforting thought. After all these years of hard work, Iâm coming home to me. And the feeling is good. Really good.
NOTE
Reprinted by permission of Ms. Magazine, © 1995.
Chapter Two
To Be Young, Female, and Black
Angela Ards
Fifteen students and one teacher, we met Monday through Thursday, 12:30 to 2:00, the fall of 1994, in a closet of a space with one skinny window overlooking 83d Street and West End Avenue on Manhattanâs Upper West Side. The class, which Iâd designed, was âPassport to Independence,â a work-skills/self-esteem course for teenage mothers living with their children at the West End Intergenerational Residence (WIRâpart homeless shelter, part adult-education center, part job-training program).
Recently out of grad school and, at 25, only about six years their senior, I felt my students had more real-world smarts than I might ever have, that they knew a side of Black womanhood that I would never get reading bell hooks or Michele Wallace or Alice Walker. And yet, all semester, in room 507, around four card tables laid head-to-head, I led them in desultory conversations about âthe myths and realities of independenceâ: of going from welfare to work, from dropouts to graduates, from living in a shelter to making a living in society. When there were no sick babies, WIC appointments, clinic visits, or unexcused absences, and the class was full...