Twitter thread for Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis.

Highly encourage you to buy the book and read it yourself, and maybe these little insights and summaries help encourage you to do so.

Context: If you don’t know who Angela Davis is, stop right now and go look her up. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis She’s a prominent civil rights activist still alive and protesting today! This particular book was published in 1983.

She begins by talking about the role of women in slavery. At the time, historians were desperately trying to force male supremacist structures on their stories of slavery, either saying women were weak & useless or men were emasculated. She examines history & concludes neither.

Women and men were for the most part expected to do the same work as slaves. Women were subject to far greater torture & rape based on sex.

Socially, men and women shared domestic tasks and were actually socially equals, very unlike white gender roles. They also resisted equally

“It was those women who passed on to their nominally free female descendants a legacy of hard work, perseverance and self reliance, a legacy of tenacity, resistance and insistence on sexual equality— in short, a legacy spelling out standards for a new womanhood.” - p 29

She then moves to the period of slavery abolition, and notes this happened a decade before the women’s rights movement.

She notes that Frederick Douglass was a big supporter of women’s rights, even when it meant being mocked for it.

At the time, industrialization was causing hardship on white women, both poor women in factories and middle class women being valued less in the home.

At the same time, slave revolts were becoming more and more common and known about.

A surprising number of white women became prominent activists in the abolition movement. She highlights examples like Prudence Crandall, who opened her school to Black students and continued to do so even as her community boycotted her and she was eventually arrested for it.

Angelina and Sarah Grimke, two white women, did a lot of speaking and writing on abolition, and notably linked women’s rights to slavery abolition, explicitly claiming that women could never achieve freedom independently of Black people.

She mentions that white women were able to fight for a cause that didn’t impact them directly, use that to draw parallels to their own oppression, and gain activism skills that they eventually used to push for the large women’s rights movement a decade later.

Three distinct struggles & activist movements were emerging: economic exploitation of Northern workers, social oppression of women, and slavery of Black people in the South, that Grimke tried to connect together as all one struggle. https://www.hervoiceechoes.com/2016/09/30/angelina-grimke-address-to-the-soldiers-of-our-second-revolution/

However, divisions and ironies deepened within activist movements. Frederick Douglass was a super avid supporter of women’s rights and when he took the cause to the Black Liberation movement they welcomed it eagerly as an important cause.

In fact they even invited white women to join their meetings, while Black voices were notably absent from prominent white womens movement spaces. Frederick Douglass’s own daughter was prohibited from attending classes with white girls— by an abolitionist white woman!

She highlights Sojourner Truth’s powerful impact on women’s rights. She was able to very easily counter arguments like “women are the weaker sex” because she was a slave, and that was so obviously untrue in her experience. “Ain’t I a woman?” she would say.

Efforts like the Underground Railroad were underway. Working women in the North were fighting hard for their rights and largely ignored by middle class women. Racism was also ignored. Davis highlights Grimke’s vision of better uniting all these movements, just saw glimpses.

She notes Northern working women were both less eager to compare their experience to slavery than middle class women & much more justified in doing so. Their conditions were one of fighting for basic survival, yet middle class abolitionist Northern women left them to fight alone.

Divides in the women’s rights movement got deeper after emancipation was passed and efforts to give Black men the ability to vote were prioritized over giving women the right to vote. Racism became more notable in middle class white women leaders like Cady Stanton.

Davis attributes this to a naivety on Stanton’s part— said it was almost like she expected a prize from the government for fighting for slavery abolition, and could not analyze that the Northern politicians didn’t advocate for human rights at all but for economic gain.

She also didn’t seem to understand that on one end you had relatively sheltered middle class white women like Stanton, and on the other Black people who were freed in name only and subject to horrible mobs and violence, with voting being a mere grasp at survival.

One notable thing Davis does is highlight white “radicals” that by modern standards would have socially acceptable morals, who died alongside Black people fighting for their safety. Highlights how Stanton’s stance did not have to be the way it was, she did not have to be racist.

As usual, working class Northerners seemed to not be in the conversation— maybe if they had better political understanding would happen. And Black women like Truth had years before expressed concern over a rise in male supremacy in the Black community that didn’t seem considered.

After emancipation, middle class white people found a way to continue slavery-- they present only abusive contracts to Black workers, and Black people could be arrested for the slightest wrongdoing and become prisoners, whose labor was then exploited similar to slave conditions.

Even for those able to stay out of prisons, conditions resembled slavery. Nearly all Black women worked as domestic servants, where nonstop work, poor conditions, and sexual abuse were norms. In fact, even in 1960 1/3 of all jobs Black women held were in domestic servitude roles.

Davis points out that white working class women, often poor European immigrants, were forced to face the same circumstances and also bear the result of slavery's practices, but the difference was they weren't stuck there and universally oppressed in the same way Black women were.

She moves on to the topic of education, in particular for Black people, noting that even during slavery, with all its oppressive systems, education was feared and those who could read and gain education also gained significant power.

"The history of women's struggle for education in the US reached a true peak when Black and white women together led the post-Civil War battle against illiteracy in the South. Their unity and solidarity preserved and confirmed one of our history's most fruitful promises." - p 109

She brought up Myrtilla Miner, a white woman who literally risked her life to open a school for Black women, even at the discouragement of Frederick Douglass. She managed to keep her school open in the face of riots and mobs for 8 years before racist white people burned it down.

Susan B Anthony, in private life, considered herself anti-racist. She was friends with Ida B Wells. In public, she was not anti-racist. Wells, whose own friends had been lynched, urged her to stop supporting white supremacists, but Anthony said she needed them for women's rights.

What started out as "we'll use these people for now then get racial equity later" lost sight of that entirely late into Anthony's life, with the women's movement now being *very explicitly* a way to establish white supremacy as racism got worse, sometimes worse than slavery times

I was struck by the story of Lottie Jackson, a Black woman who attended a convention with Anthony, and asked if she could help her not be forced to sit in the smoking car of trains. Anthony dismissed her, said women are in too helpless a position to go against railroad companies.

At a time when much more brutal racism was happening, this felt like a symbol of what the "women's movement" really stood for.

Racism was also used to justify US imperialism brutalities, and also to try to manipulate the working classes into infighting instead of uprising.

Women's clubs were gaining popularity. Black women tried to be a part of white women's clubs, but as racism caused conflicts decided to start their own instead, notably beginning with a conflict with Josephine St Pierre Ruffin, a well respected Black woman who had been a member.

Women's clubs were typically run by well-off women with spare time, and Black women's clubs were no exception. However, Black women's clubs welcomed in many working class Black women and also devoted a lot of time to strong, impactful activism efforts to fighting racism.

Notable leaders of Black women's clubs were Ida B Wells & Mary Church Terrell, led different but equally powerful movements. Davis highlights that it was very unfortunate that the two were also engaged in a long feud with each other- their unity could've created powerful change.

Anthony & Stanton's classism made recruiting white working women to their cause difficult. Working women were fighting for survival this whole time, & working men who had the right to vote were still suffering in ways no one would want. Their experience of sexism was different.

As a contrast, Black working peoples' groups like the National Colored Labor Union welcomed in white working women to join them and found comradery there and in fact made great strides for women's rights, arguably more tangible wins than Anthony & Stanton were achieving.

However, as the workers' movement grew in numbers voting rights became an appealing goal to strive for and only then did they join.

Suddenly, everyone was finally onboard with wanting women's right to vote.

Notably, Black men were also very supportive and onboard of this cause. W E B DuBois became a prominent speaker and advocate of women's rights, much like Frederick Douglass was. Women noted that the ones who were primarily against this movement were white men, not Black men.

The great irony happened when it came to actually voting on a woman's right to vote. Those Southern states Anthony & Stanton had so sucked up to and abandoned their Black sisters for *for decades* turned out to be so vocal against their cause they almost defeated the amendment!

But, many women's rights white supporters seemed to not see that lesson. After the amendment was passed an outbreak of horrible race-based violence surged on Black women, and no big protests came after that.

It was haunting to see that Orange County was highlighted as an example

Davis then talks about women who stood up for the working class as part of US communist movements

For instance Lucy Parsons was a Black woman, "more to be feared than a 1000 rioters" (p 153) who advocated that classism is the root issue we should target in order to be truly free

Now, Davis goes in at length to talk about "the myth of the Black rapist"

Much like women's movements have been co-opted by white supremacy in the past, painting Black men as disproportionate rapists proved to be a tool to get white supporters afraid of joining Black movements.

She talks about how during the Civil War, while men were away fighting and white women were alone with slaves, not one public report of a rape from a Black slave surfaced. And in the first wave of lynchings, not an issue. Rape accusations came later, to justify further lynchings.

She also talks about how rape against Black women by white men has been ignored and victim-blamed and been extremely severe. And that the violence against Black women also surely affected white women as a culture of rape from white men became more accepted in general.

She talks about how this expanded into the culture of US imperialism, where US soldiers were encouraged to rape women (i.e. in the Vietnam war)

She said rape is an extremely serious & underreported issue, and warns against invalidating that by letting racism seep into discussion

And the reproductive rights movement is no different, involving racism and classism.

In the early-mid 1900's, eugenics campaigns targeted against Black people worked together with reproductive rights women's movements, the latter hoping the former would help their cause.

Notice a pattern?

It's not that reproductive rights is bad, absolutely not, but the way white women furthered that excluded and ignored Black, Native American, and Latinx women's needs while they were targeted for forced sterilization even in the 1970's at alarmingly high rates.

In addition, it ignored the pain of working class and Black women forced into abortions/sterilization because of their circumstances, when it was not a choice they wanted to make at all.

She emphasizes it's critical for the future of reproductive rights to remember this history.

"Carl Shultz, director of HEW's Population Affairs Office, estimated between 100-200k sterilizations had been funded that year [1972] by the federal goverment. During Hilter's Germany, incidentally, 250k sterilizations were carried out under Nazi's Hereditary Health Law." - p 218

On housework.

She says white middle class women were burdened by the sexist label of "just a housewife," but that is not Black and working class women's experience with sexism-- "Throughout the country's history, the majority of Black women worked outside their homes." - p 230

Which goes back to how social structures within slave community were equal. It gets more layered, as Black women went on to do the housework designated to these white housewives in addition to having to do their own. "Womanhood" isn't simple, race and class must be considered.

Angela Davis proposes some next steps for the women's movement. She suggests trying to eliminate the necessity of housework, pushing for subsidized childcare and pushing for equality in better paying jobs.

But overall, encourages us to question the entire economic system.

I'll share her closing statement

"Working women, therefore, have a special & vital interest in the struggle for socialism. Moreover, under capitalism, campaigns for jobs on an equal basis with men, combined with movements for institutions such as subsidized public child care ...

... contain an explosive revolutionary potential. This strategy calls into question the validity of monopoly capitalism and must ultimately point in the direction of socialism." - p 244

And that is the end of this enlightening book.

If you do not want to endlessly scroll this thread I do not blame you, I unrolled it for you here where you can read my live tweet book summary of Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis in a more blog post-like form: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1276016012953968640.html