Anna Julia Cooper
Loved running across this again (and seeing these faves!) when writing about Anna Julia Cooper earlier this week:
“In honor of DC’s Emancipation Day, I ventured on a #quirkyblackgirl field trip to Anna J. Cooper’s house. On the corner of the location of her Ledroit Park home, we read out her accomplishments. Afterwards, we discussed how we would continue her legacy. Jess Solomon mentioned that Anna embodied the saying, #blackgirlsarefromthefuture. (For those not familiar with the saying, or its creator, Renina Jarmon, educate yourselves.)
“Anna J. Cooper was born a slave and went on to become the fourth black woman to receive a PhD. It could be argued that she laid the groundwork for what we now call “intersectionality” in social justice/feminist/critical race theory. It is safe to say that there would be no bell hooks or Patricia Hill-Collins without Anna J. Cooper. Not even one generation removed from slavery, Anna had the foresight to identify and articulate her oppression in gendered and racial terms. Further, she began using the term “Black” in a time when using any term other than Negro or Colored, was grounds for a fight. Black women always have to be a few steps ahead of the game to survive what Melissa Harris-Perry coined as “the crooked-room”. Anna certainly found her footing in the crooked-room of post-slavey America and she had the courage to publish her controversial writings in time where physical retribution was not unlikely for outspoken black Americans.
“For all of those reasons, Anna Julia Cooper was a trailblazer - a black girl from the future - way ahead of her time.” — Diamond J. Sharp, “Anna Julia Cooper: The Original Black Girl from the Future” Shepherds Not Sheep https://shepherdsnotsheep.tumblr.com/post/98868963386/shepherdsnotsheep-anna-julia-cooper-the, reblogged on 2014 May 28.
Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson
It must burn, truly burn, to receive a rejection letter that includes a note to to tell your husband “we will kindly accept with pleasure his fine sonnet on Robert Gould Shaw.” It must rankle. (via University of Delaware, Special Collections)
Edward William Clay’s Caricatures of Blackness
The Life in Philadelphia Collection is a nauseating treasure trove. The collection is digitized and available at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Give thanks for archives who remind us where we were and how far we have to go. Give thanks for the record.
Care
“How do we sustain this intellectual and creative labor?
How do we figure, bear, and carry it?
How do we practice freedom inside the enclosure?
How do we hold and sustain each other?
How do we create a future in which it is possible to live unbounded lives?” - Tina Campt, “The Loophole of Retreat--An Invitation,” E-Flux 105 (2019), https://www.e-flux.com/journal/105/302556/the-loophole-of-retreat-an-invitation/
“Hispanic” Heritages
There was an underground railroad south into Mexico. Let’s discuss.
Alice L. Baumgartner, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War (Basic Books, 2020).
See also Larry E. Rivers, Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida (University of Illinois Press, 2012) and Gerald Horne, Race to Revolution: The United States and Cuba during Slavery and Jim Crow (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2014)
Spent some time with the Black Beyond Data team last week which gave me a chance to revisit the Black Press Research Collective materials. Which led me down a rabbit hole of the Baltimore Afro-American. Their archive is available on Proquest and Google, the image archive is on Getty Images. If you’re in Baltimore, Enoch-Pratt links here.