Words of Fire (17 page)

She wrote numerous short essays for her columns “From a Woman's Point of View” for the Pittsburgh
Courier
in 1926 and “As In a Looking Glass” for the Washington Eagle (1926—30). “The Negro Woman and the Ballot” appeared in
The Messenger
in 1927. See Gloria Hull's
Color, Sex and
Poetry for extensive discussions of three Harlem Renaissance writers—Dunbar-Nelson, Angelina Weld Grimke (1880—1956), and Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966).

I
t has been six years since the franchise as a national measure has been granted women. The Negro woman has had the ballot in conjunction with her white sister, and friend and foe alike are asking the question, What has she done with it?

Six years is a very short time in which to ask for results from any measure or condition, no matter how simple. In six years a human being is barely able to make itself intelligible to listeners; is a feeble, puny thing at best, with undeveloped understanding, no power of reasoning, with a slight contributory value to the human race, except in a sentimental fashion. Nations in six years are but the beginnings of an idea. It is barely possible to erect a structure of any permanent value in six years, and only the most ephemeral trees have reached any size in six years.

So perhaps it is hardly fair to ask with a cynic's sneer, What has the Negro woman done with the ballot since she has had it? But, since the question continues to be hurled at the woman, she must needs be nettled into reply.

To those colored women who worked, fought, spoke, sacrificed, traveled, pleaded, wept, cajoled, all but died for the right of suffrage for themselves and their peers, it seemed as if the ballot would be the great objective of life. That with its granting, all the economic, political, and social problems to which the race had been subject would be solved. They did not hesitate to say—those militantly gentle workers for the vote—that with the granting of the ballot the women would step into the dominant place, politically, of the race. That all the mistakes which the men had made would be rectified. The men have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage, said the women. Cheap political office and little political preferment had dazzled their eyes so that they could not see the great issues affecting the race. They had been fooled by specious lies, fair promises and large-sounding works. Pre-election promises had inflated their chests, so that they could not see the post-election failures at their feet.

And thus on and on during all the bitter campaign of votes for women.

One of the strange phases of the situation was the rather violent objection of the Negro man to the Negro woman's having the vote. Just what his objection racially was, he did not say, preferring to hide behind the grandiloquent platitude of his white political boss. He had probably not thought the matter through; if he had, remembering how precious the ballot was to the race, he would have hesitated at withholding its privilege from another one of his own people.

But all that is neither here nor there. The Negro woman got the vote along with some tens of million other women in the country. And has it made any appreciable difference in the status of the race? ... The Negro woman was going to be independent, she had averred. She came into the political game with a clean slate. No Civil War memories for her, and no deadening sense of gratitude to influence her vote. She would vote men and measures, not parties. She could scan each candidate's record and give him her support according to how he had stood in the past on the question of race. She owed no party allegiance. The name of Abraham Lincoln was not synonymous with her for blind G.O.P. allegiance. She would show the Negro man how to make his vote a power, and not a joke. She would break up the tradition that one could tell a black man's politics by the color of his skin.

And when she got the ballot she slipped quietly, safely, easily, and conservatively into the political party of her male relatives.

Which is to say, that with the exception of New York City, and a sporadic break here and there, she became a Republican. Not a conservative one, however. She was virulent and zealous. Prone to stop speaking to her friends who might disagree with her findings on the political issue, and vituperative in campaigns.

In other words the Negro woman has by and large been a disappointment in her handling of the ballot. She has added to the overhead charges of the political machinery, without solving racial problems.

One of two bright lights in the story hearten the reader. In the congressional campaign of 1922 the Negro woman cut adrift from party allegiance and took up the cudgel (if one may mix metaphors) for the cause of the Dyer Bill. The Anti-Lynching Crusaders, led by Mrs. Mary B. Talbot, found in several states—New Jersey, Delaware, and Michigan particularly —that its cause was involved in the congressional election. Sundry gentlemen had voted against the Dyer Bill in the House and had come up for reelection. They were properly castigated by being kept at home. The women's votes unquestionably had the deciding influence in the three states mentioned, and the campaign conducted by them was of a most commendable kind.

School bond issues here and there have been decided by the colored
woman's votes—but so slight is the ripple on the smooth surface of conservatism that it has attracted no attention from the deadly monotony of the blind faith in the “Party of Massa Linkun.”

As the younger generation becomes of age it is apt to be independent in thought and in act. But it is soon whipped into line by the elders, and by the promise of plums of preferment or of an amicable position in the community or of easy social relations—for we still persecute socially those who disagree with us politically. What is true of the men is true of the women. The very young is apt to let father, sweetheart, brother, or uncle decide her vote....

Whether women have been influenced and corrupted by their male relatives and friends is a moot question. Were I to judge by my personal experience I would say unquestionably so. I mean a personal experience with some hundreds of women in the North Atlantic, Middle Atlantic, and Middle Western States. High ideals are laughed at, and women confess with drooping wings how they have been scoffed at for working for nothing, for voting for nothing, for supporting a candidate before having first been “seen.” In the face of this sinister influence it is difficult to see how the Negro woman could have been anything else but “just another vote.”

All this is rather a gloomy presentment of a well-known situation. But it is not altogether hopeless. The fact that the Negro woman CAN be roused when something near and dear to her is touched and threatened is cheering. Then she throws off the influence of her male companion and strikes out for herself. Whatever the Negro may hope to gain for himself must be won at the ballot box, and quiet “going along” will never gain his end. When the Negro woman finds that the future of her children lies in her own hands—if she can be made to see this—she will strike off the political shackles she has allowed to be hung upon her, and win the economic freedom of her race.

Perhaps some Joan of Arc will lead the way.

A
my Jacques Garvey, the second wife of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the charismatic leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), participated directly in the struggle to achieve the organization's goat—self-determination for black people around the world based on the doctrines of Pan-Africanism.

As a political activist, Amy Garvey is well-known for assisting and promoting her husband. However, equally important was Amy's call for black women to participate in the “race first” movement. Amy Garvey's woman's page, “Our Women and What They Think,” published in the
Negro World,
the UNIA's weekly propaganda newspaper, promoted the notion that it was essential for black women to develop a political consciousness to “uplift” the race and ultimately “redeem” Africa.

Amy Garvey's editorials remind readers that she was not divorced from the historical legacy of the 1890s black club women. In fact, Amy helped to renew their feminist philosophies in the 1920s, adding to this body of thought the concept of black nationalism.

As had her predecessors, Amy Garvey advocated that black women be given every opportunity to develop intellectually. The educated woman was better equipped to raise productive children and negotiate her domestic environment and the public arena. Amy Garvey differed from the Progressive Era activists, however, because she urged black women to cultivate their womanhood not for integration into the mainstream but for a nationalist platform focused on the needs of the race.

Amy Garvey understood that a nationalist agenda required a general understanding of world affairs, particularly the activities of women whose statuses varied tremendously. Her writings covered a range of issues, reflecting her belief that it was essential for black women to place their activism in a global context. While Amy's editorials were diverse, her efforts to advance a feminist agenda were relentless. Her editorials challenged patriarchal privilege and the notion that women are intellectually inferior to men. She advocated that black women work in partnership with men in the worldwide liberation struggle. But, when it appeared that black men's political stance, or lack thereof, stifled the advancement of the race, she urged women to assume leadership roles.

In all of her editorials, Amy Garvey demonstrated not only her commitment to the Garvey philosophy, but also her belief that there were many ways that one could and should be active within one's communities. Her editorials are undeniably feminist in their emphasis on empowering women and expanding their roles and options in the world.

T
he worldwide movement for the enlargement of woman's sphere of usefulness is one of the most remarkable of the ages. In all countries and in all ages, men have arrogated to themselves the prerogative of regulating not only the domestic, but also the civic and economic life of women. In many countries, women were subject entirely to the whims and legislation of men. It is that way now in most Asiatic countries and among some of the tribes in Africa.

The recent upheaval in Turkey has carried with it condemnation of harem relations and the sanction of the family life as it has developed in Christian countries. Madam Kemal is the leader of the Turkish women for larger freedom in the ordering of their lives, but the innovation, which is bound to work for the betterment of men as well as women as the harem life is a blight on womanhood which degrades manhood as well, could only have been accomplished by the separation of Church and State, the Sultanate and the Caliphate, which amounts to negating the hitherto predominating influence of the Mohammedan religion in the affairs of State as of Church. However far the innovation will extend to other Moslem countries, and what influence, if any, it will have on the domestic life of the people of Asia and Africa, where the Mohammedan religion is strong, remains to be seen.

In Europe, average womanhood has been held at a very low valuation until it got into the recently developed currents of modern innovation, and the average still remains low, peasant life for the man and the woman and their children being of the lowest and hardest. Only in Great Britain has the movement for the larger and better life for women, by allowing them reasonable voice in making and enforcing the laws, made any appreciable headway.

The United States has gone further than any other nation in giving woman a share in making and enforcing the laws and in regulating her economic life to her advantage and not entirely to the advantage of man.
She is now given an equal part in political matters, and she is allowed a freedom in earning and controlling her earnings, which is a great improvement upon the former of old things. In social and personal matters, the American woman has attained to an independence and freedom which it will take centuries for the women of other nations to attain to.

Negro women of the United States share equally in the larger life which has come to women of other race groups, and she has met every test in the home, in bread winning, in church and social upbuilding, in charitable uplift work, and in the school room which could have been expected of her reasonably. She has yet to develop as active an interest in political affairs as the women of other race groups, but she is bound to grow in this as in other matters in which her interests are involved.

The women of the Universal Negro Improvement Association have shown an interest and a helpfulness so far-flung as to make it doubtful if the organization could have reached the high point of strength and effectiveness it has without them. To take woman and her sympathies and work out of the association would be like taking the wife out of the home of the husband. The women of the association are a tower of strength. They know it and glory in the fact, and their men are proud of them, and justly. The success of the Negro race thus far has been largely due to the sympathy and support which our women have given to the cause.

Our women are getting into the larger life, which has the womanhood of the world in its sweep. We are sure they will be equal to all of the demands made upon them in the future as in the past, and the demands are going to increase in volume and importance as we go along. It stands to reason.

T
he exigencies of this present age require that women take their places beside their men. White women are rallying all their forces and uniting regardless of national boundaries to save their race from destruction, and preserve its ideals for posterity.... White men have begun to realize that as women are the backbone of the home, so can they, by their economic experience and their aptitude for details, participate effectively in guiding the destiny of nation and race.