PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas— Explaining the dual role of Black women as feminists and civil rights activists throughout American history was at the core of a symposium held on Friday that focused on the intersectionality of Women’s Studies and African American Studies at Prairie View A&M University.
“What is our history as Black women? Do we have a history of our own,” author and historian Paula Giddings recalls asking herself more than 35 years ago upon writing her groundbreaking book When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. “If we have one, let me find it. That was the beginning of my intellectual journey,” Giddings told a crowd at PVAMU’s student center for the symposium honoring her work.
The event also featured iconic feminist Gloria Steinem, and Drs. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Elsa Barkley Brown, Renita Weems, and Cheryl Wall, who are all pioneering Black feminist scholars.
Weems, a biblical scholar and feminist teacher, said Giddings’s book was a much needed resource for her as she embarked on her research.
“Judeo Christian text has shaped American politics and civilization. I became a scholar without knowing the ways Black women used it to shape and expand their reality,” said Weems who has held teaching and administrative posts at Spelman College, Vanderbilt University and American Baptist College. “I was a church girl on Sundays and a feminist during the week,” Weems said of her activism.
At the symposium, scholars said that there is a need to provide an accurate history of the women’s movement.
“We need to get rid of some of the myths that the movement was White and focused on gender issues,” said Guy-Sheftall, who is the founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center and the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College. “Secondly, we need to figure out why the movement got to be considered White.”
