Being a black woman has been a struggle for many generations. You have consistent pressure to act a certain way and if you don’t act that way your acting black. It feels like carrying the weight for black history and all the black women that come after you. For African American women race, gender, and the stereotypes can carry a big burden. Yet the uniqueness of a black woman has caused long lasting experiences and trends that all black women have learned form.
Being a black woman hasn’t been easy. Black women were enslaved over 246 years from 1619 to 1865 when the thirteenth amendment was passed many black women were known as property and of the of less value than any other woman at this time. Feeling less than at this time crucial the African American woman, yet the white man loved to cheat on their wives with these slaves.
Harriet Tubman who was a slave is the first influential women many African American women call a hero of our history. She conducted and executed the Underground Railroad. Tubman was married to a free man named John. Tubman wasn’t a free woman until she left Maryland to Pennsylvania when she started the journey towards saving African Americans from slavery. She reportedly freed more than 300 enslaved people during her 19 journey including some of her own family members. The United States was an unsafe place for slaves to stay so Tubman used Canada as her residence while she was helping free slaves.
During the decade that Tubman managed the home, she lived next door, oversaw the property and the care of its residents, and continued to support it from her fanning operations. In other words, she was a housing manager in this capacity; she underwent many of the trials and felt many of the triumphs of her modem day counterparts. Harriet Tubman’s life is a portrait of courage and selfless dedication she laid down her life for all of African American humanity. Tubman’s story will forever hold significance in African American history and she will always be an example of a phenomenal woman.
Rosa Parks another influential to the generation of African American women. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man a Montgomery, AL (history.com). Parks was convicted of violating the segregation law, so she was sent to jail. Rosa Parks deliberately was omitted from the case in order to preempt any claim that the federal case represented a collateral attack on her state-court proceedings constructing the memory of the civil rights movement has been a major cultural focus among the southern states since the beginning of the 1990s. Yet the memorialization efforts have also entailed the commodification of the civil rights struggle into a narrative that does not fully grasp the complexity of the movement.
The Supreme Court, in November 1956, summarily affirmed a three-judge district court ruling that the ordinance was unconstitutional, a decision that vindicated the Montgomery bus boycott and helped to lead to the desegregation of the buses Parks have been designed an open document of history desegregation and to commemorate the civil rights to fight. Rosa Parks was an activist for us all she showed many whites in the south that African Americans wouldn’t take unfair treatment laying down and we will fight and did.
Rosa’s act caused uproar of major events to fall over the south like the February 1st, 1960, Greensboro NC. Four students from North Carolina A&T sit down at a ‘whites-only’ Woolworth’s lunch counter and ask to be served. The movement of civil rights was in full affect and African Americans wanted to be treated as equals to the white man. This cause an a lot of distress on African Americans many were killed at this time yet the ones after them stood up and continued to carry the torch. It was because of one man named Martin Luther King who visited Rosa while she was imprisoned that kept hope alive for the African American people and told Rosa we’d fight back even harder because of her act of courage.
Because of Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman many African American women could be the first to be successful for what they do in society and how they conducted their selves. These women were not the only ones who paved the way but they did make a lot of impact for the ones who came after them and because of these women like Maya Angelou who made it okay for African American women to talk about their hurt but in a beautiful poetic way.
Maya Angelou at a young age of eight was taken advantage of by her mother’s significant other. Maya lived out her live through her writings known for the most poetic way of describing who an African American woman is her poem Phenomenal Woman is the very essence African American women achieve to live by. Letting every woman know that she doesn’t have to be who others think she should Maya encouraged women to just be their unique selves. “Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size but when I start to tell them, they think I’m telling lies.” Maya’s ways of being an activist for African American women weren’t like the ways or Harriet Tubman or Rosa Parks yet her ways spoke volumes through her theatrics and the ways she executed her poems she demanded all to listen and realize African American women we have something to say and yes we can speak as intelligent as the white women can.
Angelou’s poetry addresses social political issues involving African Americans and the challenges the validity of traditional American values and myths. May refers to the problems of racism, and poverty which have affected the African American families. The ling history of the gold promises has never been minded, the promise of justice for all has not been kept. Another poem Maya wrote called Still I raise shows her determination to stand up against the unfair treatment she faces in life and the history of African Americans being treated like the bottom of the barrel.
Throughout her writings Maya discovered thoughts of personal uniqueness and flexibility through the multifaceted lens of race, sex, family, communication and the collective past. As a whole her work offered a clear examination of the ways in which the socially forces of racism and sexism played out at the level of the individual. She once said “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and do so with the passion, some compassion, some humor, and style.” This leads me to another phenomenal woman who is a present day hero to many around the world not just only to African American women but all women.
Dr. Angela Davis is an American political activist, academic, and author. Was false accused of charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping by an all-white jury in San Jose, California. She was accused do to her friendship with the man who had committed these crimes. Davis once released from prison went on to be a professor at The University of Santa Cruz, California.
She now teaches on The Pan-African approach to the discipline recognizes that although the Black American experience remains central to an understanding of Black people in the United States, teaching and research on the African continent and the African Diaspora must include the study of Black people from every continent, language group, and faith tradition, and especially continental Africans and Africans in the Americas.
Oprah Winfrey billionaire media giant and philanthropist is best known for hosting her own show for over 25 years from 1986 to 2011 she has been a part of many life-changing events. After retiring from her show in 2011 Oprah started up her own t.v. channel called the OWN network. The OWN network has given a platform for many African American actors and actress. She has continued to write and produce The has been known to give away to those in need and lead as one of the people who indorsed Barack Obama when he ran for President in 2009. She received some backlash from indorsing him yet because her name holds so much value with many individuals across the world the backlash didn’t continue.
