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                  Black Women's Sacred Sexual Integrity

"...she had nothing to fall back on; not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything.  And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may well have invented herself."

Toni Morrison

Brilliant multiple prize-winning author

In addition to her courageous and enlightening work on lynching, the great Ida B. Wells, and many other prominent Black women, like Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Mary Church Terrell, worked to restore and reclaim the image and reputation of Black women.  These women worked to confront racial and sexual atrocities.

Intent on sexually ravaging Black women, white men manufactured and propagated vicious and appalling lies about Black women that still resonate in the culture to this day. 

They even created the false narrative that Black women couldn’t be raped because supposedly any sexual encounter with a Black woman was welcomed—no matter how brutal.  The more she fought and struggled, the more she must have wanted it, so the lie went.

In fact, white men blamed Black women for the supposed "bestial" nature of Black men; there were just so many vile, destructive lies spewed out about the sexuality of Black women and men to justify unconscionable white male behavior.

Moving forward, before she ever refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, Rosa Parks, on behalf of the NAACP, investigated the outrageous case of Recy Taylor, a beautiful, 24-year-old, Black, married mom who was abducted, at gunpoint, outside of her church as she and some friends left a night service in Abbeville, Alabama in 1944.  Recy was driven to some woods, savagely raped by at least six of the thugs, and left on the side of the road naked.  A newspaper account at the time said the cretins who raped her were from "prominent" white families.

While this conversation is taking place in the culture about sexual misconduct and assault, make sure you recognize, honor, and say a prayer for the countless Black women all over this country who were and are traumatize and devastated by unimaginable and incomprehensible sexual violence.  Stay awake.

NOTES 

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin

** Edited the Women's Era, the first American newspaper published by and for African American women

** Abolistionist who also worked hard as a suffragist

** Husband was the first Black graduate of Harvard Law School, George Lewis Ruffin, who served on the Boston City Council, as a state

     legislator, and as the first Black municipal judge in Boston

** Mother of four

** Was one of the founders of the Women's Era Club

** One of the founding members of the Boston NAACP

** Born in 1842; Died in 1924

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

** A teacher, poet, activist, fiction writer, and essayist -- considered the mother of African American journalism for her anti-slavery writings

** Helped financially support the Underground Railroad with earnings from her writings

** Raised by her uncle and aunt; her uncle founded and taught at the the Watkins Academy School

** Lectured on the anti-slavery and temperance circuits

** A co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women, a member of the American Women's Suffrage

     Association, and director of the American Association of Colored Youth

** Published the novel, Iola Leroy, and this was a watershed event in Black fiction publishing in 1892

Mary Church Terrell

**Born in 1863, she was the daughter of Robert Church, a brilliant, former enslaved man, who became one of the wealthiest Black men in the

    country (some sources say he was a millionaire) by purchasing land in Memphis when many people moved away during the yellow fever

    epidemic in the 1800s.

**A writer, activist, orator, and educator, Mary earned both her bachelor of arts and master's degrees from Oberlin College (now university)

     and became one of the founders of the NAACP

**Taught at Oberlin and, later, at the M Street Colored High School, which became the famed Dunbar High School in Washington D.C.

**Her husband, Robert Terrell, was the chariman of the language department at M Street.

**Lobbied President Harrison to condemn public lynching without success, so formed the Colored Women's League to address racial social ills 

**Co-founder, and first president of, the National Association of Colored Women

** Served on the Washington, D.C. board of education

**Published her autobiography -- A Colored Woman in a White World.

**Died in 1954, the year of Brown v. Board of Education