Founding Mother. (cawban peuwaar).

Fannie & Ella

Leaders.

Black Woman Sufferment

No Attractive.

"There is absolutely nothing attractive about a Black President with imperial ambitions. Our struggle was never about getting a individual Black man in the White House-it was about justice for all Black people. We have lost our way.The ultimate insult to my integrity is we have a Black man bombing Africa."

Cynthia McKinney 

Black Women Are Killed at Disparaging Rates New Report Shows

Black women are being killed at disproportionate rates compared to white women. They often know their offender, are in an intimate relationship with them, and are of the same race.

The Violence Policy Center (VPC) released their annual report titled, “When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2011 Homicide Data,” which contains shocking figures that place the Black community under a much-needed microscope.

The study covers year 2011 (the most recent year for which data is available) and homicides between one female murder victim, and one male offender using information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

These findings boldly stand out in the report:

94% (415 of 443) of Black females killed in a single-victim, single- offender incident knew their killer 52% (216 of 415) of Black women who knew their offenders were wives, common-law wives, ex wives, or girlfriends of the offenders 93% (459 of 492) of the homicides of Black females were intra-racial Firearms, especially handguns, were the most common weapons used by males to murder Black females. In homicides where the age of the victim was reported, 12% of Black female victims were less than 18 years old (55 victims), and five percent were 65 years of age or older (22 victims). The average age of the female victims was 34 years of age. The vast majority of homicides of Black females murdered by males were unrelated to any other felony crime. Most often, Black females were killed during an argument.

This information brings a new perspective to cases like Marissa Alexander’s.

Alexander is the Black Florida woman who fired a warning shot during a fight with her estranged husband, Rico Gray, who had been previously arrested on charges of abusing her.

The shot, which rang out in the presence of Gray’s two children, did not harm anyone, but it did get Alexander an initial 20-year sentence after being convicted on three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon – and now with a July retrial pending, she could face up to 60 years.

Read: Marissa Alexander Could See Her Sentence Tripled to 60 Years

Alexander maintains the defense that she was standing her ground.

As evidenced by the VPC report, more often than not, Black women are not surviving to tell their stories in cases like this—inside or outside of courts.

Awareness of the lack of adequate protection for Black women is not enough. There needs to be policies and laws in place to anchor the much-needed change.

“Many elected officials and community leaders are working tirelessly to reduce the toll of domestic violence,” said Kristen Rand, Violence Policy Center Legislative Director. “Yet despite these efforts, the numbers remain unacceptably high. We need new policies in place from local communities to the federal government to protect women from harm.”

The post Black Women Are Killed at Disparaging Rates New Report Shows appeared first on Atlanta Black Star.

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There's A Ray

There’s A Ray

You perform

perform good song

(it is all we can do on this current planet)

Undim, your steady pre is old

but comes out watching, careful

your academy is told you

 by men

whom it is quiety and smally certain

you bear (you’ve born)

I guess I’ve just now to realize

  what an awe

  what a love

the unperformed womban [performance]

All y’alls.

~Livicated to all creatrix.

                                    March 20, 2010

Til Death OR DISTANCE Do You Part

"Lewis Hayden remained the property of the Warner family throughout the 1830s.  During this period he was allowed to marry Esther Harvey, a slave owned by a Lexington merchant, Joseph Harvey.  While Lewis and Esther considered themselves married, slave owners only recognized their relationship as a union of convenience.  If slave owners allowed a wedding ceremony, they often used the phrase "till death or distance do you part."  In other words, the couple were married until the owner decided to sell one or the other to a new owner who did not live in the area.  As with many slave couples, Esther and Lewis also had to overcome the barrier of being owned by separate masters.  Whether the slave husband and the slave wife lived together, or whether they even got to see one another, was entirely a decision of their owners."

…Lewis and Esther had a son who was added to Harvey's property.  When Harvey's business failed, his slaves and his other property were sold at auction to pay his creditors.  Esther and her child were purchased by Henry Clay.   …While Clay's slave, Esther gave birth to a second child, but the baby died soon thereafter.  About a month after this, Esther ran crying to her husband.  Clay had sold her and their surviving son to one of the hated slave traders.  Hayden was powerless to stop the sale and could only watch as his wife and child were dragged away, never to be seen again.

   When Hayden asked Clay for a reason for selling Esther and the boy, Clay replied haughtily that "he had bought them and had sold them."  Hayden was devastated.  Slave sales had separated him from his mother, his brothers and sisters, and now from his wife and child.  Years later he wrote, "I have one child who is buried in Kentucky and that grave is pleasant to think of.  I've got another that is sold nobody knows where, and that I can never bear to think of."

~Joel Strangis, Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery

Kindly Disagree.

http://archive.org/details/ClassicAuntJemimaCommercial1967

"Aunt Jemima's Syrup...
...is like the spring without the fall
there's only one thing worse,
in this universe,
that's no Aunt Jemima[s] at all."

Tina Said Until...

Unspoken Resistance & Drum Texts

"In addition to being a space for African spirituality and ritual, the African Burial Ground was also a space for slave resistance on a number of levels.  ...it was the principal location for the execution of slaves involved in the 1712 and 1741 disturbances.  Furthermore, Burial #25 excavated on October 16, 1991, provides some insight into the end result of rebellious activities in eighteenth-century New York City.  The twenty-two-year-old woman interred in this grave was found with a musket ball in her rib cage, significant blunt force trauma to her lower skull and a diagonal fracture along her right forearm.  Based on a forensic examination of her skeletal remains, it appears that she was shot in the back, severely beaten, and then restrained by someone who twisted her arm-thus causing the fracture.  Since the fractures on her lower skull and arm had not healed, she likely suffered these injuries in the last hours or minutes of her life.  Whether she was one of the slaves killed during the 1712 revolt will probably never be known.  It is plausible, however, that she died during some act of resistance to white authority.  Physical anthropologists studying the remains at the site have found distinct signs indicating that in at least two cases individuals were burned to death-a capital punishment associated with enslaved Africans found guilty of arson, rebellion, or murder."

~Walter C. Rucker, Fires of Discontent, Echoes of Africa: Slave Resistance in Colonial. New York City 

Mo nyinaa mma yenkaw kwan no

(you all should allow us to go on the path)

Mo nyinaa mma yenkaw kwan no

(you all should allow us to go on the path)

Nnipa dodo a yekawee, yemmae

(the multitude of people that went, they did not come)

Mo nyinaa mma yenkaw kwan no

(you all should allow us to go on the path)

~Akan drum text, Kwasi Konadu, The Akan Diaspora in the Americas

"... i grieve for our gone."

When one cannot influence a situation it is an act of wisdom to withdraw*
   Every Black woman in america has survived several lifetimes of hatred, where even in the candy store cases of our childhood, little brown niggerbaby candies testified against us.  We survived the wind-driven spittle on our child's shoe and pink flesh-colored bandaids, attempted rapes on rooftops and the prodding fingers of the super's boy, seeing our girlfriends blown to bits in Sunday School, and we absorbed that loathing as a natural state.  We had to metabolize such hatred that our cells have learned to live upon it because we had to, or die of it.  Old King Mithridates learned to eat arsenic bit by bit and so outwitted his poisoners, but I'd have hated to kiss him upon his lips!  Now we deny such hatred ever existed because we have learned to neutralize it through ourselves, and the catabolic process throws of waste products of fury even when we love.
         I see hatred 
         I am bathed in it, drowning in it
         since almost the beginning of my life
         it has been the air I breathe
         the food i eat, the content of my perceptions;
         the single most constant fact of my existence
         is their hatred . . . 
         I am too young for my history**
   It is not that Black Women shed each other's psychic blood so easily, but that we have ourselves bled so often, the pain of bloodshed becomes almost commonplace.  If i have learned to eat my own flesh in the forest - starving, keening, learning the lesson of the she-wolf who chews off her own paw to leave the trap behind - if i must drink my own blood, thirsting, why should I stop at yours until your dear dead arms hang like withered garlands upon my breast and i weep for your going, oh, my sister, I greive for our gone.
~From Eye to Eye: Black women, Hatred, and Anger by Audre Lorde

*From The I Ching.
**From "Nigger" by Judy Dothard Simmons in Decent Intentions

The Coming of Kali

the coming of Kali
it is the black God, kali,
a woman God and terrible
with her skulls and breasts.
i am one side of your skin,
she sings, softness is the other,
you know you know me well, she sings,
you know you know me well.

running kali off is hard.
she is persistent with her
black terrible self.  she
knows places in my bones
i never sing about but
she knows i know them well.
she knows.
she knows.
~Lucille Clifton

Robbed From Innerstand

"When I see you bending over something rare
Like music, or a painting, or a book,
And see within your eyes that vacant stare
And halfway understand that pleading look;
I cannot help but bitterly detest
The age and men who made you what you are,
Who robbed you of your all -- your ample best --
And left you seeking life across a hateful bar,
And left you vainly searching for a star
Your soul appreciates but cannot understand."
~Margaret Walker Alexander, "Ex-Slave"

42-Five

"...and every day I would come into the chamber, and he would say [Southern Accent]

"Ms. Chisolm how you doin'?"

I said. "Oh I'm feelin' pretty well."

"My! Imagine, making 42-fiiive like me."

I said, "What did you say?"

"Ms. Chisholm, you makin' 42-fiiiive like me."

This is what i kept hearing. - "42-fiiive!"

So finally, one day, it was just too much. I said two things. "First of all since you can't stand the idea of my making 42 five like you, when you see me coming into this chamber, each day vanish. Vanish until I take my seat, so you won't have to confront me with this 42-five." I said, "Secondly, you must remember I'm paving the road for a lot of other people lookin' like me to make "42-fiiive"!"

~Shirley Chisolm, Chisolm 72': Unbought & Unbossed

Livicated to Diane Nash fm Mission Main Kwaanza

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my one hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.
~Lucille Clifton

They Tried to Put Death to People Like Me - Queen GodIs

"Before the beginning there was darkness, but god was sad with his happiness, so he called me morning cause he wante me to raise his son."

"My biological clock is a metronome that tick tocks to the tune of my passion and my son shall be born with a record contract just so he can record my contractions."

"Hail, sister, may you live in God".

Archaeologists have revealed the remains of what they say was a "high status" woman of African origin who lived in York during Roman times. ...Her grave dates back to the second half of the 4th Century. She was buried with items including jet and elephant ivory bracelets, earrings, beads and a blue glass jug. She also had a rectangular piece of bone, which is thought to have originally been mounted in a wooden box, which was carved to read, "Hail, sister, may you live in God'. (more).

_

Idren have been to 'old' York, a city in northern England. Actually really beautiful countryside; a little younger than London (1ad), it was a roman provincial capital (slave-based civiliesashun) with lots of church history too (humpty-dumpty-style). Sisters carried the Word despite bby back then too.

_

Fistbump Sis. Sokori blacklooks

Poetess Coco

Black Man (my naked truth)

I

am

woman

Strong

due

to circumstances.

vigorously

I

awake

each day

taking life on

with courage

knowing some will try to

discourage

me

periodically

I

grow weary

despite others

theory

I

am

woman

strong

due to

circumstances

I’m

draped

with a smile so

bright at times

no one

observes it

covers my frown

thunderously…

I

laugh

to muffle the

echoing cry of my sometimes

Hollow

spirit

won't you

(black man)

try to understand

why I am the way that I am…

I

don't

believe

I’m superior

though society tries to give

you that impression

maybe

my strength

camouflage my desire to be

received and loved

by you

(black man).

with

faith I believe

one day you will fondly caress my cheek

to remove my war paint (tough skin) applied to survive

this world's obstacles placed

before

us

FINALLY…

then

you'll see

my naked truth…

I NEED YOU!

MaddSistahlyLove!

Coco

©2002

fist bump destee

It was common for black men to run away

A study of runaway slaves in the antebellum South found that slaveholders’ advertisements often described a slave as “proud, artful, cunning . . . shrewd” or “very smart.” Historians Loren Schweninger and John Hope Franklin conclude that the typical runaway exhibited “self-confidence, self-assurance, self-possession . . . self-reliance.” It was rare for women to run away, especially those with small children. In the database produced by Schweninger and Franklin, based on extant runaway advertisements in five Southern states, 81 percent of all runaways were male. Of the 195 Virginia runaways* from 1838 to 1860, of which Sarah would be one, only seventeen (9 percent) were female.

*note: s/b advertised runaways

Originaal.

Cawbaan. Peuwah.