Stepping Forward : Black Women in Africa and the Americas [1 ed.] 9780821440995, 9780821414552

Citation preview

Stepping Forward

Stepping Forward B l a ck Wo m e n i n A f r i c a a n d t h e A m e r i c a s

e d i t e d

Catherine Higgs

b y

B a r b a ra A . M o s s

E a r l i n e R a e Fe r g u s o n

ohio university press

at h e n s , o h i o

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701 © 2002 by Ohio University Press Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved

Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper ∞ ™

09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02

54321

Cover photograph of Anna Erskine at age eighty-five, around 1980, collection of Nemata Blyden. Cover photograph of Julia Jones with Girl Scout Junior Troop 157, Claiborne County, Mississippi, January 1980, courtesy of Patricia Crosby. Chapter 16: Brenda Marie Osbey’s poetry is reprinted by permission of the author. Selections from All Saints: New and Selected Poems appear courtesy of Louisiana State University Press. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Stepping forward : Black women in Africa and the Americas / edited by Catherine Higgs, Barbara A. Moss, and Earline Rae Ferguson. p. cm. Papers from a conference held at the University of Tennessee from September 15-18, 1999, and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the University of Tennessee. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8214-1455-0 – isbn 0-8214-1456-9 (pbk.) 1. Women, Black—Social conditions—Cross-cultural studies—Congresses. 2. Women, Black—Africa—History—Congresses. 3. Women, Black—Africa—Social conditions— Congresses. 4. African American women—History—Congresses. 5. African American women—Social conditions—Congresses. 6. Women, Black—Jamaica—History—Congresses. 7. Women, Black—Jamaica—Social conditions—Congresses. I. Higgs, Catherine. II. Moss, Barbara A. III. Ferguson, Earline Rae, 1946hq1161 .s74 2002 305.48'896096—dc21 2002027097

Contents

List of Maps ix List of Tables

xi

Introduction Catherine Higgs and Barbara A. Moss xiii

part one: gender, education, and segregation Chapter One: British Colonial Policy toward Education and the Roots of Gender Inequality in Sierra Leone, 1896–1961 Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley 3 Chapter Two: Agency and Constructions of Professional Identity: African American Women Educators in the Rural South Valinda W. Littlefield 17

part two: image and substance Chapter Three: The Search for Anna Erskine: African American Women in Nineteenth-Century Liberia Nemata Blyden 31 Chapter Four: Image and Representation: Black Women in Historical Accounts of Colonial Jamaica Verene A. Shepherd 44

part three: grassroots activism Chapter Five: Helping Ourselves: Black Women and Grassroots Activism in Segregated South Africa, 1922–1952 Catherine Higgs 59 Chapter Six: African American Clubwomen and the Indianapolis NAACP, 1912–1914 Earline Rae Ferguson 73

Contents

part four: systems of thought, modes of resistance Chapter Seven: Witchcraft, Women, and Taxes in the Transkei, South Africa, 1930–1963 Sean Redding 87 Chapter Eight: “Mwen na rien, Msieu”: Jamaica Kincaid and the Problem of a Creole Gnosis Rhonda Cobham 100

part five: migration Chapter Nine: No Place to Call Home: Refugee and Internally Displaced Women in Kenya Cassandra R. Veney 117 Chapter Ten: “The Sisters and Mothers Are Called to the City”: African American Women and an Even Greater Migration Leslie Brown 129

part six: religion and spirituality Chapter Eleven: Mai Chaza and the Politics of Motherhood in Colonial Zimbabwe Barbara A. Moss 143 Chapter Twelve: Standing Their Ground: Black Women’s Sacred Daily Life Fayth M. Parks 158

part seven: civil war and civil rights Chapter Thirteen: Gender and Political Struggle in Kenya, 1948–1998 Cora A. Presley 173 Chapter Fourteen: “The lady folk is a doer”: Women and the Civil Rights Movement in Claiborne County, Mississippi Emilye Crosby 189

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part eight: women’s voices Chapter Fifteen: Strategies for Survival by Luo Female Artists in the Rural Environment in Kenya Patricia Achieng Opondo 205 Chapter Sixteen: Wild and Holy Women in the Poetry of Brenda Marie Osbey Andrea Benton Rushing 227

part nine: decolonizing black women Chapter Seventeen: Owning What We Know: Racial Controversies in South African Feminism, 1991–1998 Teresa Barnes 245 Chapter Eighteen: Decolonizing Culture: The Media, Black Women, and Law Deseriee Kennedy 257 Notes

271

Contributors Index 317

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313

Maps

Africa xiv Eastern United States and Caribbean Area xv

ix

Tables

Table 1.1 Average Daily School Attendance for 1924 11 Table 1.2 Primary and Secondary Enrollment Nationally 14 Table 10.1 Population of Durham, North Carolina, by Race and Sex, 1890–1950 134 Table 10.2 Urban and Rural Sex Ratios in Southern Regions of the U.S., in North Carolina, and in Durham County, 1900–1940 135

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This volume presents the edited proceedings of a conference held at the University of Tennessee from September 15 to 18, 1999, and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the University of Tennessee. The meeting brought together scholars from South Africa, Jamaica, and the United States to examine the comparative experiences of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black women in African and African diaspora communities. The idea for the conference—and this volume—grew out of our common interests in black women, their lives, their actions, and their aspirations. As scholars, we had met at various conferences in the past and we were intrigued by the similarities in the assumptions black women made and the strategies they employed despite their cultural and geographic differences. We are using the term black because it more effectively describes the women on both sides of the Atlantic whose lives we explore. In the context of the Americas, we focus on the experience of black women in several regions of the United States and the Caribbean basin; in the African context, we will examine the white settler societies of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa and the black settler societies of Liberia and Sierra Leone. We recognize that the scope of our collection is ambitious. We have included selections from a broad geographic area, and we are proposing that conclusions may be drawn from paired essays that provide insights into many diverse societies. However, our primary purpose in compiling this collection is to provide a text for classroom use that will examine both the similarities and the differences of black women’s experiences in a wide variety of circumstances.1 This volume is not meant to be a definitive, indepth anthology. Rather, we are adding to the ongoing integration of African, African diaspora, and women’s studies and furthering the dialogue between scholars in Africa, Europe, and the Americas.2 In the Americas and Europe in particular, there is a rich literature about feminism that has been extensively criticized for its initially narrow focus on middle-class white women.3 Prominent among the critics, Darlene Clark Hine and Patricia Hill Collins have reshaped American historiography— Hine by incorporating the experiences of black women into the historical xiii

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Africa. Places referred to in the text. Map by Robert Gutchen.

narrative and Collins by exploring the distinctiveness of black feminist thought.4 These two scholars have been trailblazers in the development of an extensive literature about African American women since the early 1980s. The number of studies about African women has also significantly increased over the same period. In addition to the edited collections by Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay, Claire Robertson and Iris Berger, and Jane Parpart and Kathleen Staudt,5 there are an increasing number of studies about black women in the former white settler colonies of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.6 xiv

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Eastern United States and Caribbean Area. Places referred to in the text. Map by Robert Gutchen.

Since the early 1990s, a newer trend, inaugurated by Rosalyn TerborgPenn, Sharon Harley, and Andrea Benton Rushing, has combined African and African diaspora studies with an exploration of the commonalities of black women’s experiences worldwide.7 It is to this literature that we will contribute. Our study presents a comparative look at basic themes by pairing one essay on Africa with another on the diaspora. Each piece will shed further light on the broader similarities among and differences between the experiences of black women in Old and New World communities. This volume explores a variety of themes, foremost among them the impact and intersection of gender, race, and class on the lives of black xv

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women in varied locales and cultural settings. The chapters fit into five broad thematic categories that have shaped black women’s goals, options, and responses: religion, education, political activism, migration, and cultural transformation. The two chapters that examine education—Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley’s “British Colonial Policy toward Education and the Roots of Gender Inequality in Sierra Leone, 1896–1961” and Valinda W. Littlefield’s “Agency and Constructions of Professional Identity: African American Women Educators in the Rural South”—expand our ideas about education, class affiliation, and community organizing long before the civil rights era. Under colonialism, men and women experienced education differently, as Ojukutu-Macauley’s essay reveals. Britain’s educational policies in Sierra Leone were instituted to produce a class of Western-educated men who would be able to facilitate colonial administration. To that end, women’s education was overlooked, underfinanced, and limited. In the northern part of the colony, this gendered policy reinforced Islamic ideas that endorsed education for males but not necessarily for females. When girls were provided with educational opportunities in Sierra Leone, their curriculum focused on domestic duties, whereas boys received a technical or agricultural education that prepared them for employment in European enterprises and leadership positions in their home communities. Littlefield’s chapter examines the role of African American Jeanes Teachers in rural communities in North Carolina. Given responsibility for overseeing educational programs in their communities, many of these educators challenged discriminatory practices, raised money for their activities through gardening and canning, organized evening schools, and extended the school terms for black students. Hindered by Jim Crowism, Jeanes Teachers stepped gingerly through the minefield of racial etiquette to work as community organizers, raising expectations and living standards among the black population. Although their objectives were educational, they recognized the connectedness of larger issues and thus provided health-care information, funding for medical treatment, and assistance to doctors as well. These women, working inconspicuously, traveled alone in rural areas and pushed the boundaries of educational opportunity for blacks. In “The Search for Anna Erskine: African American Women in Nineteenth-Century Liberia,” Nemata Blyden raises the issues of class privilege, sexism, color prejudice, and cultural difference in nineteenth-century Liberian society. African American settlers arrived in Liberia with a sense

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of cultural superiority, believing that they needed to bring “Christianity and civilization” to indigenous Africans. Anna Erskine took advantage of her privileged black settler status by acquiring an education, but she also rejected her class affiliation by taking an interest in her indigenous neighbors and learning Arabic. In many ways, her endeavors typified the activities of organized settler women. Despite the strength of the patriarchy in their culture, settler women in Liberia formed self-help groups and promoted female education by opening their own schools and establishing literary societies. In Edward Wilmot Blyden, Anna found someone with whom she shared ideas on education, Islam, and the role of indigenous Africans in Liberia’s national development. She joined him in Sierra Leone, where she bore him five children and taught in Muslim schools from 1886 to 1926, earning the respect of the community. As an independent, unwed mother, Anna Erskine challenged the provincial role assigned to nineteenth-century Liberian women. While Erskine challenged conventional mores, Verene A. Shepherd argues in “Image and Representation: Black Women in Historical Accounts of Colonial Jamaica” that gendered roles not only stereotyped black women in colonial societies but also created images of them that outlived colonialism. Her chapter traces the representations of black women in Jamaica through colonial narratives, and it provides glimpses of the impact these representations have had on postcolonial women, who show evidence of “mental slavery” in the negative attitudes they hold concerning their own physical blackness. Catherine Higgs’s “Helping Ourselves: Black Women and Grassroots Activism in Segregated South Africa, 1922–1952” and Earline Rae Ferguson’s “African American Clubwomen and the Indianapolis NAACP, 1912– 1914” depict grassroots activism propelled by women’s issues. Zenzele (Help yourself) was the motto of the African Women’s Self-Improvement Association, and it could just as well have been the motto of the black clubwomen in the United States. Unable to depend upon their societies’ social service organizations, both African and African American women had to depend upon themselves. In South Africa, a number of improvement clubs, predominantly composed of mission-educated women, sought to teach farming, sewing and other household skills, basic child care, and health care to rural women living in a segregated environment that limited their access to both land and labor. There was much that members of these clubs did not see or chose not to see—including class and ethnic tensions, as well

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as the effects of labor migration and the attendant gender tensions. Still, in helping women to help themselves, Zenzele members gave a voice to others, and, in the process, they found a voice themselves. In contrast to their South African counterparts, African American clubwomen were able to institutionalize their work by using local networks and adopting a group-centered leadership pattern. As Ferguson details, the relative freedom they enjoyed provided a greater opportunity to help themselves and their people, yet they, too, faced segregation that excluded them from employment, public accommodations and facilities, and private hospitals. The clubwomen addressed these issues and laid the foundations for political activism as they worked within a culture that recognized women as legitimate activists. In the black community, beliefs concerning a woman’s place have long run counter to prevailing American views. Such beliefs have been fostered both by historical circumstances that left black women unprotected and overworked and by black women’s own sense of legitimacy and obligation. Clearly, while the black community has maintained American ideals, it has also held on to alternative beliefs that at times have conflicted with mainstream philosophies. In Sean Redding’s “Witchcraft, Women, and Taxes in the Transkei, South Africa, 1930–1963” and Rhonda Cobham’s “‘Mwen na rien, Msieu’: Jamaica Kincaid and the Problem of a Creole Gnosis,” precolonial beliefs or systems of thought are resurrected under different social and economic conditions. Redding shows us that in South Africa, long-held beliefs that targeted women as witches were both a cause and an effect of gender divisions. Women were vulnerable and at the same time potentially powerful in precolonial societies, making them prone to witchcraft accusations and the harsh punishments that the condemnations carried. The situation was only exacerbated in the 1930s when male labor migration increased and women became more pivotal in sustaining the rural economy, for many of them were no longer securely under the control of men. Old ways of thinking and speaking allowed men in the community to conceal their fears of such women, but those fears could be articulated in the idiom of witchcraft accusations. In Jamaica, by contrast, the power of old belief systems was minimized. In fact, African beliefs that endowed spirits with vitality and influence were and still are ignored completely; they have been consigned to the realm of exotic stories and thereby sanitized of their very real power. The seductive Mammywata—often portrayed as a female water spirit—appears in folk

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culture in Africa and the Americas and is a key figure in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother. Kincaid viewed the rejection of such icons as a form of cultural enslavement to victorious European colonizers. Using the novel as her vehicle, Cobham explores the complex, fraught, and often contradictory relationship between modern Caribbean folk culture and the African past. Voluntary and forced migrations have had a significant impact on the lives of black women, as Cassandra R. Veney’s “No Place to Call Home: Refugee and Internally Displaced Women in Kenya” and Leslie Brown’s “‘The Sisters and Mothers Are Called to the City’: African American Women and an Even Greater Migration” exemplify. Refugee and internally displaced populations are disproportionately composed of women. In Sudan and Somalia, civil wars have forced thousands of women and children to seek asylum in Kenya, where the structure of refugee camps has exposed many of them to the very abuses which they fled in their own countries: assault, rape, high rates of infant mortality, torture, and even death. Internally displaced women in Sudan and Kenya are at particular risk, since they have not crossed national boundaries and are thus outside the purview of international aid organizations. On the other side of the Atlantic, African American women in the United States during the twentieth century were the primary migrants from southern rural areas to urban centers in both the North and the South. Economic and social forces informed black families’ decisions to relocate, and many migrant women found that they faced some of the same dangers as their peers in Somalia and Sudan, including assault and rape in a society that hampered black men’s ability to protect black women. Economic opportunity in the form of seasonal and casual work for black women was greater than for black men in urban areas, resulting in more women migrants. However, black women in urban areas were often perceived as being outside of male control, and they frequently faced insinuations of immorality. Nevertheless, women’s friendship and kinship networks provided structure and organization as women kept contact with family members, provided information on housing and employment, and laid the bases for social and religious organizations. Religion and spirituality are underlying themes in many of the chapters that follow. Black women have relied on their faith to help them surmount social and economic barriers. Barbara A. Moss’s “Mai Chaza and the Politics of Motherhood in Colonial Zimbabwe” and Fayth M. Parks’s “Standing

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Their Ground: Black Women’s Sacred Daily Life” examine the integral nature of spirituality in black women’s lives. Many women have enjoyed a personal relationship with the divine, and there has often been little division between the sacred and the secular in their lives. In the precolonial Shona society that Moss describes, women’s productive and reproductive labor provided status, prestige, and a degree of economic security; when their fertility failed, they sought to regain their status by becoming spiritual specialists. Under colonialism, African women’s productivity decreased due to land alienation, and the spiritual specialists were threatened by Christianity. Using spirituality, in the form of Christianity, Shona women molded the Methodist women’s prayer union, Ruwadzano/Manyano, into a vehicle that enhanced motherhood, and one member of that union, Mai Chaza, established her own church in the 1950s, using fertility as a focal point of healing. For African American women, spirituality has long influenced their perspectives on life and informed their coping strategies. Just as precolonial African women were initiated into spiritual consciousness, African American women have sustained a form of spiritual awakening through religious rituals in their communities. Research on the folk-healing beliefs held by African American women reveals a strong spiritual base from which they develop solutions to their problems. For these women, spirituality serves as both an anchor and a compass as they cope with life’s challenges. Black women have found the faith and courage to overcome all types of major obstacles, including state power. Cora Presley’s “Gender and Political Struggle in Kenya, 1948–1998” and Emilye Crosby’s “‘The lady folk is a doer’: Women and the Civil Rights Movement in Claiborne County, Mississippi” investigate black women’s roles in liberation struggles. Kenyan women were at the forefront of their country’s anticolonial struggle, protesting oppressive policies that threatened their economic survival. For four months in 1951 and 1952, they organized and protested as women, demonstrating at colonial offices and burning cattle enclosures. The Mau Mau struggle in Kenya depended heavily on women to provide food, strategic information, and armaments and to transport supplies; these women were politically conscious of their oppression and the consequences of their actions. After Kenya attained independence from Britain, women continued to protest for the implementation of a real democracy in their homeland, and they have been prominent in the more recent resistance to the regime

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of President Daniel arap Moi. Like their counterparts in Kenya, African American women were the backbone of a great struggle as well, providing the strong hands, tired arms, and aching feet that kept the civil rights movement in motion. They participated in disproportionate numbers: canvassing neighborhoods, registering voters, taking part in demonstrations, and housing and feeding civil rights workers. They nurtured the movement into being and politicized existing networks of friendship and kinship. In Claiborne County, Mississippi, the area studied by Crosby, 80 percent of the first fifteen hundred blacks who registered to vote were women. Patricia Achieng Opondo’s “Strategies for Survival by Luo Female Artists in the Rural Environment in Kenya” examines how songs allow women’s concerns to be heard. The female artists of rural Kenya address their problems and speak for themselves through the medium of dodo performance. The term dodo means “something pleasant” and refers to the pleasantries that abound at male beer-drinking parties where songs are performed. Taking over a previously male space, Luo women adapt their performances to influence their audiences and shape images of the individuals portrayed in their musical compositions. Dodo songs also socialize women to their expected roles and allow them to express their resentment of and resistance to certain chores. Contemporary issues such as family planning, immunization, and AIDS education also surface in dodo performances. By developing symbiotic relationships with local and national leaders, dodo singers empower themselves and create a forum in which women can “talk back.” Through performance, they define social values and celebrate what is historically significant to them, thus creating memories for their communities. Andrea Benton Rushing’s “Wild and Holy Women in the Poetry of Brenda Marie Osbey” similarly demonstrates that memory is a crucial survival strategy. Osbey and the characters she creates have long memories that expand the traditional images of African American women to include the totality of their experiences. These women are quite unlike the earnest, self-sacrificial mothers who resonate in most poetry: some are driven to near insanity by oppressive working conditions that deny their maternal feelings, some are haunted by repressive relationships with men, others exhibit no familial love and callously kill, and many have an intimate relationship with voodoo. Osbey gives a voice to women who have been silenced by community embarrassment and neglect but who nevertheless are members of the communal family.

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How black women are portrayed by academia and the media is the subject of our last paired set, Teresa Barnes’s “Owning What We Know: Racial Controversies in South African Feminism, 1991–1998” and Deseriee Kennedy’s “Decolonizing Culture: The Media, Black Women, and Law.” In postapartheid South Africa, the appropriation of black women’s history by white women researchers working with black women “research assistants” has created controversy. As Barnes points out, the exploitation of black women’s lives for the benefit of white researchers’ academic credentials is analogous to the exploitation of black laborers under apartheid. While racial feminist research is debated, the “common experience of oppression” reveals a shared understanding of race, class, and gender. By claiming “what we know,” black women researchers can organize against the perpetuation of exploitative methodologies. A more difficult task is the transformation of media representations of black women, the subject of Kennedy’s chapter. Black women have consistently been portrayed as ingratiating, apolitical, happy domestic servants devoid of kinship or ambition and completely enmeshed in their white employers’ lives. Such images belie the reality of the working-class black women who worked to maintain their families, demanded dignity, took part in the civil rights struggle, and confronted discriminatory employment practices. The media’s ability to present “false truths” relies on the segregated nature of American society, which itself is reinforced by the stereotypes presented in films, television, and other forms of mass media. The images thus presented—which are designed to be palatable to the majority of viewers, as well as producers and sponsors—are shaped in part by the media’s structure, legislation, and legal institutions. It is obvious that many themes in the essays that follow are interrelated. For example, Christianity and missionary education transformed the lives of many women in African and African diaspora communities, but they also contributed to nuances and variations and to internal conflicts and contradictions of class and leadership in black communities. Religion and education highlight black women’s roles as agents of change and illuminate the sometimes uneasy negotiations between men and women, insiders and outsiders. An attendant theme is the nature of interactions between elite black women who were products of missionary education and women who were part of the masses. Elite women founded self-help organizations for less privileged women in rural and urban areas, who embraced the organizations. The less privileged women also developed their own strategies for

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personal and community survival and coping with change, all of which, in turn, helped shape elite agendas. Just as black women from every class have taken part in community activism, they have also been maligned by a common oppression and by media stereotypes that seek to rob them of their dignity, identity, and self-reliance. If any one theme runs throughout all these chapters, it is the significance of black women’s agency, self-reliance, and resiliency. Despite cultural differences and geographic variations, black women in Africa and the Americas have provided the foundations from which black communities have not only survived, but also thrived. Facing racial, gendered, and national oppressions, these women have claimed their right to act and to speak, often among themselves, in their own spaces and sometimes in very public places. They have understood that their best allies have always been themselves. Their activism appears normal, with women stepping forward when the need arises, leaving only the oppressors surprised that they are confronted by black women.

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Part One gender, education, and segregation

Chapter One

British Colonial Policy toward Education and the Roots of Gender Inequality in Sierra Leone, 1896–1961 Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley

In 1896, the British colonial government in Freetown, Sierra Leone, under the authority of a British Act of Parliament, and without the consent of the local ruling chiefs, declared a protectorate over the Sierra Leone hinterland. The British thereby formally extended their jurisdiction beyond the colony and over the entire area.1 By this undertaking, the government hoped to accomplish its dual and at times contradictory objectives of establishing effective control over the African population while accumulating capital through their economic exploitation. This chapter examines the impact of colonial education policies in Sierra Leone and argues that because the government considered women tertiary to their colonial project, it deliberately neglected educating them, thereby sowing the seeds of gender inequality in that country. The chapter also highlights the irony inherent in the British colonial government’s portrayal of Sierra Leone as the pioneer of education in West Africa. Over the last two decades, a lot has been done to “restore” women to

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history, not merely as victims of disadvantage and oppression but also as active agents with initiative. Unfortunately, rather than using an integrated approach that fully incorporates women into the mainstream historical experience, most of these studies have presented women as anomalies, prompting a call for engendering the study of Africa. A few scholars have made key contributions in response to such a need. Following that lead, this chapter will respond to that call by adopting a gendered approach to understanding colonial rule in Sierra Leone. Whereas some scholars see advantages for women under colonial rule, this chapter takes an opposing viewpoint, arguing that colonial education policy hindered rather than helped the advancement of women in Sierra Leone society. As Oyeronke Oyewumi has shown for the British colony of Nigeria, colonization affected males and females in similar and dissimilar ways; while both genders were subordinated and oppressed on racial grounds, the colonial process of gender inferiorization had a more harmful and lasting effect on African women. Using Sierra Leone as its focus, this chapter seeks to contribute to that historical discourse by providing a specific example of how gender affected the lives of women in this particular country. It contends that colonial educational policies, implemented according to Victorian notions of gender, destroyed precolonial traditions and disrupted existing gender relations, and that vestiges of this disruption are still apparent at the present time.2 Western education was one of the instruments colonial officials used in their drive to make “civilized” beings out of Africans and, by extension, to create an educated workforce, which they considered important for their strategy of economic exploitation and capital accumulation. By the turn of the twentieth century, the institution of compulsory schooling in England encouraged the idea of expanding education to the colonies.3 Whatever their motive might have been, the first priority for the colonial government in terms of educating the indigenous population in Sierra Leone was the colony area. Officials hoped that the educated group from the colony would act as a buffer between the colonial state and the rest of the population until the government had fully established its legitimacy and control over the entire country. Although Sierra Leone was widely referred to as the Athens of West Africa by the early twentieth century, the educational developments that earned it that title did not extend beyond the colony or Western Area. The subsequent expansion of education from the Sierra Leone Colony to the protectorate was a very slow process, because the

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B r i t i s h C o l o n i a l P o l i cy

colonial government had completely abrogated its responsibility to various missionary societies from Britain and the United States. Prior to the establishment of colonial rule in Sierra Leone, education took place in the home and in the secret societies.4 Through this combined approach, children gained practical lessons in such areas as hunting, farming, fishing, weaving, cooking, and general homemaking. They also received instruction in recreational subjects (including wrestling, dancing, and drumming), intellectual studies (including traditional law, local history, and folklore), and environmental studies (including local geography, plants, and animals). The aim of this practical and flexible curriculum was to provide youngsters with an unhurried induction into society and prepare them for adulthood. Boys and girls participated fully at this stage in the education process, having as tutors their mothers, fathers, or legal guardians and the secret society leaders.5 However, with the introduction of colonial rule, the emphasis shifted to Western education, and attention was focused on the Western Area and the education of men. As a result, women in the protectorate were doubly jeopardized, first because of their gender and then because of their geographic location. During the early decades of the twentieth century, the colonial government began intensifying its control over education, but this move resulted in neither equal representation for the provinces nor equality for women. Furthermore, by 1901 it was clear that the increasing numerical and commercial importance of the Muslim community both in the colony and in the protectorate was the reason for “imparting a sound secular education on Western lines to that section of the community.”6 The government’s position was that “education as we understand it is not so understood by the Mohammedans to whom in most cases a correct knowledge of [the] Koran is regarded as the summum bonum of all that is required.”7 This assumption motivated and shaped the colonial mission toward the Muslim community. Consequently, in 1902, the government passed “An Ordinance for the development and extension of education on Western lines among the Mohammedans of the Colony of Sierra Leone and its protectorate,” otherwise known as the “Mohammedan Education Ordinance, 1902.”8 This law provided for the appointment of a director of Mohammedan education, who also became a member of the board of education. In addition, it empowered the director, with the consent of the governor, to establish

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schools; provided for Mohammedan schools to receive grants-in-aid; and exempted those schools from the strict provisions of the Education Ordinance of 1895, which dictated the terms under which the colony (mission) schools received assistance from the colonial government.9 Ironically, these schools were run by Christian teachers. To combat this problem, the director of Mohammedan education established a separate class to train the more advanced pupils as teachers. The seven students in this class were boys, each of whom received a scholarship grant of £10 a year from the government.10 At that time, there were no government schools, and the majority (95 percent) of all the schools in existence were run by missions. Of the seventyseven primary schools in the colony, forty were run by the Church of England, twenty by the Wesleyans, nine by the United Methodists, and four each by the Countess of Huntingdon order and the Roman Catholics. All of these schools were regulated by the education ordinance. As a result, they received grants-in-aid from the colonial government that covered about one-third of their operational costs.11 In the secondary division, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the Wesleyans had four schools between them—one each for boys and girls; the Roman Catholics had one for girls; and there was another privately run school for boys. At the upper levels, there was a training college and a technical school. In addition, there were four Muslim schools.12 An inspection of protectorate schools over a decade later revealed that there were over eight hundred pupils attending forty-five schools run by eight different missionary societies. However, about one-quarter of the pupils were children of settlers from the colony area.13 Of the forty-five schools, only twelve (26.6 percent) were located in the north.14 By 1904, colonial officials had made it clear that “the cost of a system of universal education in the protectorate would be beyond the present financial resources of the Government.”15 In addition, when the first detailed proposal for a government school was put forward in 1905, it revealed the value colonial officials placed on female education. According to the proposal, enrollment was to be restricted to the sons and nominees of some of the chiefs and principal men in the protectorate. The school was to be organized in three stages—the constructive stage for ages seven and eight to ten and eleven, the intermediate stage for ages ten and eleven to thirteen and fourteen, and the technical stage for ages thirteen and fourteen to seventeen and eighteen—during which the boys were to be taught subjects

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such as English, mathematics (including trigonometry), history, geography, agriculture, carpentry, and chemistry.16 The school opened with sixteen pupils in March 1906 in the southern headquarter town of Bo. By June, the enrollment had increased to seventyeight boys. Classes were taught from 7 to 10 A.M. and from 3 to 4 P.M., and all the boys lived boarding-school fashion in the same compound.17 Nine months after the school’s opening, the enrollment reached eighty-three. The staff consisted of three Europeans (a principal and two education experts), six indigenous teachers and one indigenous interpreter (all males), and three matrons.18 For nearly forty years, this exclusively male institution was the only secondary school in the protectorate. In 1908, the United Brethren in Christ missionaries attempted to close the gender gap when they opened the Moyamba Girls School, which provided domestic and industrial training for girls. Among the subjects taught were cooking, laundering, and dressmaking. The curriculum also emphasized solving problems associated with home nursing and community life, as well as leisure activities such as singing.19 Mission education for girls tended to emphasize morality and Christian values, and it stressed the development of qualities that would make them good wives and mothers by colonial standards. Thus, girls received an education focused on the domestic sphere, whereas boys received a more technical and agriculturally focused education that would provide them with the skills necessary for employment in European enterprises and leadership positions in their homeland communities. The government was concerned that, upon graduation from the Bo School, the boys would still be “too young to take any important part or to exert any real influence in their chiefdoms.” Consequently, officials instituted five scholarships (more like paid internships) at the school, to be given to “the most promising boys” upon completion of their school course.20 Winners of these scholarships received internships at either the Agricultural or the Forestry Department for a five-year period of training. The expressed intent was to equip the boys “with [the] knowledge which would afterwards be of great value to them in the management of their chiefdoms.”21 This policy, which disadvantaged girls by excluding them, continued even after the colonial government became more involved in the provision of education. In 1921, the Moyamba Girls School was renamed the Lilian Harford School for Girls, but it was not developed to the secondary level until

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1944—an entire generation after its male counterpart was established.22 Both the Bo and the Moyamba Schools were located in the south, which left girls in the predominantly Muslim north in a particularly disadvantaged situation, since the few elementary schools in that region were exclusively for boys. The American Wesleyan Mission (AWM) had attempted to pioneer female education in the Northern Province when it opened its first coeducational elementary school in 1893.23 But with a total of only thirty-five pupils enrolled in its two schools in 1913, the missionaries hardly made an impact on closing the gender gap in protectorate education.24 The girls’ division moved to Kamabai, in the Bombali District, in 1934 and became known as the Clarke Memorial Girls School. By 1911, five madrasas (Islamic primary schools)—Sulaimania, Amaraia, Islamia, Harunia, and Umaria—had been founded in the colony and were attended by the children of Muslims living in that region.25 The number of pupils enrolled in 1911 was 778, with an average daily attendance of 456. The curriculum was the same as that in the Christian schools, with the addition of Arabic (taught daily between 7 and 9 A.M.).26 However, the establishment of these madrasas failed to attract Muslim children from the protectorate, and although the government acknowledged that Muslims beyond the colony area had strong objections to sending their children to the Christian schools already in existence in their districts,27 the colonials made no effort to establish similar madrasas in the north. When the Muslim community complained about the situation and asked for the establishment of proper Islamic schools in the protectorate, the government responded that “it was for the Mohammedans, who were a rich body, to establish schools throughout the protectorate for those boys who were unable to find admission into the Bo School; that they should have taught in their schools the subjects laid down by the Government, and that these schools would be inspected and afforded the opportunity of earning the grants in the same way as any other religious body.”28 Judging from this statement, it is clear that the colonial government was interested in the education of only an exclusive group of residents in the protectorate, and that this group did not include females. Ironically, the official declaration came at a time when even members of the Muslim community in the colony had started expressing the belief that their women should also be educated.29 In 1917, another government school opened at Baima in the Ronietta

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District, with the aim of eliminating the language barrier by focusing on instruction primarily in the vernacular. Once again, when the full complement of thirty pupils was enrolled, all the students were boys.30 The situation had been no different two years earlier when the colonial government began a second elementary school in the southern town of Bumpe.31 Concerned about the “inefficiency” of indigenous cultivation techniques as well as the need to develop agriculture beyond the cultivation of foodstuffs for local consumption, colonial officials proposed opening an agricultural training college to produce teachers who could then be sent to every large village in the protectorate. At this institution, literary instruction would be confined to three hours a day, with the rest of the time devoted to agriculture.32 Although colonial officials claimed to have no objection to girls being taught in village schools, they made no provision for female students in the proposed college, which was to enroll 150 boys.33 The training college opened in 1919 in the southern town of Njala, with thirty pupils in residence. Admission to the college was highly restrictive, as (male) candidates were to be nominated by the Tribal Authorities and selected by the principal.34 Bothered by the government’s policy of neglecting protectorate women in the realm of education, the Honorable A. J. Shorunkeh-Sawyerr, an African member of the Legislative Council, argued passionately before that body in 1920 that this de facto policy was a dangerous mistake. He pointed out that it was absolutely vital to extend to females the educational opportunities that protectorate males then enjoyed. The influence of women, he contended, was very real and not just limited to the private affairs of their families. He called the council’s attention to the fact that “in the Protectorate the women, though they appear to be drudges, are the masters. There is no Paramount Chief or husband who does not seek the advice of either his mother or his wife on any matter of importance.”35 He also criticized the unsatisfactory education policy in the protectorate, which he described as creating an “aristocracy” while the rest of the population remained in “the densest ignorance.”36 In responding to such charges, the governor defended the existing gender-biased education policy. He argued that, for economic reasons, it was not practical for the government to introduce universal education. However, the government’s true attitude toward female education was exposed in 1928 when it estimated the cost of running five boarding schools for girls at £4,650,37 an amount significantly lower than the £5,406 it had cost to run just the all-male Bo School in 1924.38 Rather than

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making provisions for females to attend the new agricultural college, the governor concluded that girls would have an opportunity to attend the village schools that graduates of the college would eventually open.39 By 1922, there were fifty-five primary schools, ten secondary schools (five for boys, five for girls), one seminary for boys, one teachers’ training institute, and one college in the colony and its immediate environs— an area that accounted for only one-third of the total population of the country.40 In comparison, the protectorate, which encompassed the remaining two-thirds of the population, had only forty-four primary and two secondary schools (one for boys, one for girls). Of these, both secondary schools were in the Southern Province, and only eight of the forty-four primary schools were in the Northern Province.41 In 1920, the Bo School had a total enrollment of 160 boys, the Njala Agricultural College had sixty boys, the Bumpe School had forty boys, and the Baima School had twenty boys.42 None of the government institutions in the protectorate enrolled girls. This regional and gender imbalance in education between the colony and the protectorate was highlighted in the Phelps-Stokes report of 1922, commissioned by the secretary of state for the colonies, which emphasized the need for a rapid expansion of the education system in the Sierra Leone Protectorate.43 The following year, the secretary of state for the colonies appointed a committee to advise him on any matters of African education in the British colonies and protectorates in tropical Africa that he might, from time to time, refer to them and to assist him in advancing the progress of education in those colonies and protectorates.44 Among other things, the committee recommended that more should be done at once regarding the education of “native” girls and women because (1) “clever boys, for whom higher education is expedient, must be able to look forward to educated mates”; (2) there was an urgent need for girls to be taught practical subjects such as hygiene, public health, child welfare, and domestic science by well-qualified women teachers; and (3) it was important to maintain the natural ties between the generations and thereby prevent the hardening of the old prejudices held by the elder women.45 Ironically, although these recommendations were meant to help women, they actually perpetuated female invisibility by assuming that nurturing and social welfare activities were the “specialties” of women. The publication of the committee’s reports did catch the attention of the colonial government, but in spite of subsequent policy statements and

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numerous proposed schemes, the colonial officials failed to make any significant changes in the educational system.46 It has been argued that this failure was due to the fact that protectorate education was still not a government priority because the colonial government considered the needs of the colony to be more important.47 As table 1.1 illustrates, official statistics for 1924 reveal that there were fifty-four elementary schools in the colony, with an average daily attendance of 4,566. Of the students attending, 1,916 were girls. In the protectorate, there were fifty-seven elementary schools, with an average daily attendance of 2,208, which included only 567 girls. Furthermore, only twelve of the fifty-seven protectorate schools were located in the north, and they had an average daily attendance of just 374, of which 117 were girls.48 Ta b l e 1 . 1

Average Daily School Attendance for 1924

Area (sq. mi.)

Total Pop.

No. of Schools

Avg. Attendance Boys

Girls

54 57 12

2,650 1,641 257

1,916 567 117

10 17 1

835 678 20

230 139 0

Elementary schools Colony Protect. N. Prov.

270 26,980 13,850

85,253 1,450,903 566,950

Secondary/industrial/government schools Colony Protect. N. Prov.

This table was compiled from CO (Colonial Office) 267/611, Annual Report of the Education Department for 1924, and CO 267/611, Annual General Report for 1924, enclosure in dispatch no. 451, October 19, 1925.

The figures for the higher-level schools were even bleaker for the north. Of the twenty-seven secondary/industrial/government schools in the country, ten were in the colony and seventeen were in the protectorate, but only one was in the Northern Province. The ten higher-level institutions in the colony had an average daily attendance of 1,065, with 230 of the students being girls, and the seventeen protectorate institutions had an average attendance of 817, with 139 being girls. The sole institution in the north reported an average attendance of just twenty, with no girls enrolled (see table 1.1).49 In 1925, in response to an inquiry from the colonial secretary as to the

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level of educational opportunities for girls vis-à-vis boys, Governor A. R. Slater—relying heavily on statistics for the colony—stated that there was “no lack of opportunity for the education of girls.”50 However, Slater did admit that “from time to time leading Africans in Freetown urge me to start a Government Girls School—or schools—on the pattern of the Bo School for boys,” hinting that the Protectorate might be a little behind in this regard. He blamed this state of affairs largely on the fact that the girls married very early, and he concluded that “the problem can only be satisfactorily tackled through the agency of the Missions assisted financially by Government.”51 This statement reveals the British assumptions about “native” females that guided most of the colonial policy toward women. A protectorate education reform proposal put forward by officials of the government in 1928 reiterated that the main purpose for educating girls was to prepare them for the “duties of life” and to train them as teachers and community workers.52 Not surprisingly, the government passed a law that placed men on a higher salary scale than women at all levels of the teaching field.53 By then, the effect of the government’s gendered education policy was becoming evident. Nine former pupils of the Bo School had become paramount chiefs, and over one hundred former students had been employed in government service.54 The educational policy was obviously beneficial to males. Colonial education policies also allowed men to excel in areas previously dominated by women. At the college at Njala, students were trained either as “native instructors” for the Agriculture Department or as elementary school teachers for the “native administration” schools. College officials recruited students, with scholarships, as soon as they left school or from the Agriculture or Forestry Departments. These students then studied subjects such as soil and plant ecology, crop husbandry, elementary zoology, surveying and building, elementary mathematics, and English. On successfully completing their courses, they received offers of either pensionable appointments in the Agriculture Department or teaching positions in rural schools, with top salaries. By 1945, the total enrollment at the college at Njala had increased to forty-five, but, in spite of the dominant role women traditionally played in agriculture, there were still no females in the student body.55 By 1948, there was still only one secondary (boys) school in the Northern Province. Furthermore, only 4 percent of school-age children were en-

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rolled in school in the entire protectorate that year, as compared to 55 percent for the colony.56 By that time, colonial officials had opted to blame parents and the community at large for the lack of interest in educating girls, arguing that “the slow development of girls’ education has been largely due to the reluctance of parents generally to send their girls to the primary schools and to keep them there until they have finished the course.”57 Up to 1948, the education budget accounted for less than 5 percent of the total colonial expenditure, and when the regional bias is taken into account, the education budget for the protectorate as a whole represented no more than 1 percent of the total figure.58 Given this fact, it would be wrong to accept the government’s charges at face value. Moreover, twenty years earlier, some chiefs—albeit from the south—had sought official assistance in order to open boarding schools for girls in their towns.59 The average daily school attendance in the Southern Province stood at 6,879 in 1948, as compared to 2,640 for the Northern Province.60 The gender differences were just as marked as the regional differences. As illustrated in table 1.2, the number of boys enrolled in primary and secondary schools in the country as a whole between 1955 and 1957 was almost two and a half times greater than that for girls.61 The American Wesleyan Mission’s Clarke Memorial Girls School and Masumbu Girls Primary School were the only institutions that specifically educated girls in the Northern Province until 1956, when the first government secondary school for girls was opened at Magburaka in the Tonkolili District. Clarke Memorial was later expanded into a secondary school, which opened in 1964 as the Kamabai Secondary School for Girls.62 Furthermore, advanced Islamic education for girls in the Northern Province was still not a major issue because in the Islamic culture, education for boys was deemed more important. When members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim sect arrived in Sierra Leone in the 1930s seeking to counter what they described as the “preponderance” of secular education, they were able to find a foothold in the north, and, by the 1950s and 1960s, they had built a number of primary and secondary schools catering primarily to the education of boys. In fact, by 1973, twelve years after independence, there was still no Ahmadiyya secondary school for girls.63 The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic organization which began to introduce a “purer” form of Islamic education, also failed to put female education high on its agenda.64

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Ta b l e 1 . 2

Primary and Secondary Enrollment Nationally 1955

1956 Girls

Boys

Girls

Boys

14,686 19,482 34,168

7,017 7,749 14,766

15,900 19,601 35,501

Secondary

3,611

1,636

Combined Totals

37,779

16,402

1957 Boys

Girls

8,259 7,898 16,157

16,712 22,282 38,994

9,182 9,024 18,206

3,865

1,911

3,953

1,971

39,366

18,068

32,947

20,177

Primary Infant Standard Totals

“Infant” refers to kindergarten, as distinct from elementary grade (standard) school.

Unlike other regions of the country, the colony area began to experience the growth of a new social class—an educated elite whose members started to discuss and encourage some type of female education. However, the Northern Province saw no such metamorphosis. At the same time, secular schools continued to teach African women what one author described as the “hidden curriculum” of Western ideologies about women and their proper role.65 On the whole, colonial educational patterns remained largely unchanged in the Northern Province up to the dawn of independence in 1961. Unfortunately, the colonial era’s gender inequality in education persisted into the postcolonial period. By 1970, the total number of primary schools had increased to 950, up from 497 in 1957.66 Nevertheless, although more schools were being opened, a larger number of children were dropping out of the system before reaching the secondary level, and, as always, the statistics were more alarming for girls in the north. By the end of the second decade of independence, some improvement had been made in the overall quality of primary school teachers, with the exception of those in the north—an area that continued to lag behind other regions. In the 1976–1977 school year, 42.6 percent of the teachers in the Western Area primary schools were qualified to teach, as were 49 percent in the south and 40 percent in the east, compared to only 29 percent in the north. Furthermore, of all the secondary school teachers in the Northern Province, only 16 percent were female, compared to 41.1 percent in the Western Area.67 This disparity probably was due to the fact that the only teacher-training college for the secondary level was located in the Western Area. 14

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The education policies from the 1970s continued into the 1980s with very little change. The eighties saw an increasing reliance on external assistance provided by bilateral and multilateral agencies for development projects in education. Even though primary education was available in all regions, access was still difficult in remote and underpopulated areas, and secondary schools were largely confined to the more “urban” areas.68 Moreover, although the number of primary schools in the Northern Province had risen to 410 by 1988–1989, 383 (93.4 percent) of those were only feeder schools,69 which meant that after about three or four years, the children in these institutions either had to end their schooling or commute between their home villages and larger towns in order to continue their elementary education. Of all the children enrolled in primary schools in the north between the 1988–1989 and 1990–1991 school years, only 37 percent were female, compared to 47 and 46 percent in the Southern Province and Western Area, respectively.70 In most of the villages in the north, children had to wait until they were older and strong enough to walk some one to five miles (one way) to the nearest town with a primary school before they could start their education. They also had to walk an equal distance—and sometimes farther—to be able to continue their education at the nearest secondary school.71 At the secondary level, the situation in the 1990s remained largely unchanged from that in 1964, with the additional secondary schools and teacher-training colleges still confined to the more urban areas.72 Of the 856 qualified secondary school teachers in the north in 1990–1991, only 81 (9.5 percent) were female, compared to 16.9 percent and 30.4 percent in the south and the west, respectively. In that same year, 2,201 females entered secondary school (representing 34.5 percent of the total enrollment), but by the fifth form (seventh grade), that number fell to 648 (27.6 percent).73 Thus, after three decades of independence, the policies of the postcolonial state largely have failed to shake off the legacy of colonialism—a situation that has taken a greater toll on the lives of women. In conclusion, the primary educational concern for colonial officials was initially to train a core of junior bureaucrats in the Western Area who could help them extend their authority into the protectorate and then to train a group of junior administrators from the protectorate to assist with aspects of protectorate administration. Since men were the agents chosen to carry out this policy, colonial education clearly catered only to males, who became more qualified and subsequently favored for high-paying jobs. 15

Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley

Just as men and women in Sierra Leone experienced colonialism differently, men and women in various regions within the country experienced colonial education policy differently. The Western Area had a disproportionately high number of schools compared to the other regions of the country, and even within the protectorate, the educational representation was not balanced. The southern region, where Christianity fared better and where a government school for boys was established as early as 1906, had a slight edge over the predominantly Islamic north. The first all-girls government secondary school in the north opened during the waning years of colonial rule, in 1956. Thus, the differential access to education deprived the vast majority of women in the protectorate of a quality education. Only a small percentage of females were able to use the education system to advance themselves and women as a whole through hard work, determination, and assistance from mostly nongovernmental organizations. It is not an exaggeration to say that women, particularly those in the north, have had to survive in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

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Chapter Two

Agency and Constructions of Professional Identity African American Women Educators in the Rural South Va l i n d a W. L i t t l e f i e l d

In the writings of the biblical prophet Ezekiel, there is a story about the Lord setting Ezekiel down in the midst of a valley full of bones and asking him if those bones could live. After Ezekiel followed the Lord’s commands, the bones connected together and became a “great army.” In many ways, Ezekiel’s entry into the Valley of Dry Bones parallels the story of African American women educators in the rural South—particularly the Jeanes Teachers. Their profession placed them in a working environment that appeared to offer few resources with which to achieve their goal of educating the masses. But like Ezekiel, most black women educators were on a mission, and they developed strategies and constructed professional identities that allowed them to create a great army. The stories of these women tell us much about one professional group’s impact on southern African American communities. Indeed, few groups are better suited for a study of the little-heard voices of black southern women than are African American women educators. Their definition of

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professional responsibility encompassed the physical, intellectual, social, and spiritual well-being of the entire black community. Jeanes Teachers were African American educational supervisors who worked in southern communities under the aegis of a program established by the Jeanes Fund. In the early years of the program, the teachers were paid primarily from a fund established in 1907 by Anna T. Jeanes, a white Quaker woman. The fund, which was set up with a donation of $1 million “for the furthering and fostering of the rudimentary education” of African Americans in rural schools, operated in the South from 1907 to 1968.1 The Jeanes Teachers made personal visits to schools and homes alike, providing instruction in planting, cultivating, food preservation, and sewing. They encouraged home sanitation and placed a special emphasis on the family garden. They also established Home-Makers’ Clubs, each consisting of ten to twenty members; a Jeanes Teacher would oversee a group of ten clubs, and one person in each club served as an assistant leader and helped in the absence of the supervisor. The teachers had administrative duties, as well; in North Carolina, for example, they were required to supply weekly written reports to the county school superintendent and to N. C. Newbold, the state agent for Negro education.2 The funding provided for the diverse activities of the teachers saved money for African American families and supported the state-neglected school systems that served black children. The work of the Jeanes Teachers, which included both manual labor and professional responsibilities, did not reflect the dichotomy that labor historians often see between the experiences of the working class and professionals. Challenging negative images and stereotypes of black women, these teachers responded to the dilemmas they faced as African Americans, as women, and as African American women laboring within and outside of black communities during periods of intense racial strife. Under the oppressive Jim Crowism of the South during their era, they created ways to contribute to their communities. Like nurses, social workers, ministers, and other professionals, they played key roles in improving the quality of life for the poor. Working as they did within the Jim Crow system, some of these women intentionally hid their activities in order to advance their goals of bettering the economic, educational, social, and political conditions in their communities. A note sent by one Jeanes Teacher, Annie Welthy Daughtry Holland, is illustrative. On December 31, 1920, she wrote to Charlotte Hawkins Brown in support of Brown’s campaign to raise funds for the con-

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struction of the Alice Freeman Palmer Building at the Palmer Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina. Presumably enclosing a financial contribution with her correspondence, Holland wrote: “I am sending you this little note not because I am not carrying burdens of my own, but to show my interest in the work you are endeavoring to do. Please do not mention to anyone that I may get any publicity from friend or foe.”3 Holland’s brief words show both her awareness of the burdens women such as Brown faced in trying to educate African Americans in the rural South and her desire for privacy concerning her own efforts. In 1921, N. C. Newbold, the North Carolina state agent for Negro education, nominated Holland for the position of state supervisor of Negro elementary education, responsible for visiting and assisting nineteen county training schools, ten city schools, and three state normal schools.4 The State Teachers’ Association also paid a portion of the salary and expenses for G. E. Davis, the assistant for the Rosenwald School Buildings.5 Holland’s responsibilities enabled her to recommend funding for schools, to hire and fire personnel, to develop and implement teacher-training procedures, and to serve as a liaison for personnel problems between such groups as black teachers and white administrators or black teachers and black community members. Holland’s leadership style was assertive yet nonconfrontational. Her correspondence with Newbold, a white man, reveals something of her natural personality as well as the methods she employed in working with whites. Regarding an upcoming conference, she wrote, “I want to arrange to attend it . . . I am willing to pay my travelling expenses rather than miss it. Shall I write them notifying them of my intentions to be present? I shall appreciate any effort upon your part in aiding us to take the advantage of this special course.”6 Here, we see that Holland assumed that permission was granted but chose wording that let Newbold maintain a feeling of control. By using “us” (probably in place of “the race”), rather than thanking him as an individual, she shrewdly played on Newbold’s paternalistic sense of obligation for improving North Carolina’s African American educational system.7 Also evident in their correspondence is Holland’s penchant for deflecting attention away from herself. Even when she initiated a project, she repeatedly gave credit to others. Thus, after Newbold congratulated her for a job well done in organizing the Home-Makers’ Clubs, Holland wrote to thank him and “others of his race” for enabling her to be of service to her people.8

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The production output of the Home-Makers’ Clubs was no ordinary feat. Harnessing adult as well as youth power, Jeanes Teachers organized students and adults in the community to grow and preserve foods such as peaches, apples, corn, beans, and tomatoes and to raise poultry and pork. Records in North Carolina from 1918 reveal that 833 such clubs were established and that those clubs produced 872,255 quarts of fruit and vegetables, with an estimated value of $277,264.9 Holland was usually one step ahead of her employer in deciding on agendas and how they should be executed. “I felt that you would be pleased if some of the girls would continue their gardens, so I had already begun to work up an interest,” she wrote to Newbold.10 In her next sentence in that letter, she asked his opinion about what she had done thus far, presenting him with work already under way, rather than asking his permission to proceed. Similar traits were evident in her organizational skills. Organizations formed by educators like Holland were social systems structured to facilitate collaboration and cooperation among and between African American community members, white community members, and local, state, and national agencies. On the one hand, it was extremely important for these educators to convince African American communities that they had to work for the distribution of education resources in order to effect social change. On the other hand, they had to impress upon white officials at both the state and local levels just how vital it was to improve the African American educational system. The National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers had been formed on May 7, 1926, in Atlanta, Georgia, and North Carolina was one of the earliest states to join it. In terms of working with the community as a whole, one of Holland’s main accomplishments as a supervisor was the organization of North Carolina’s statewide African American parent-teachers’ association, the North Carolina Colored Parent Teachers’ Association (NCCPTA), in 1927. Holland’s astuteness enabled her to use the racial and gender perceptions inherent in white southern etiquette to her advantage, as shown by her organizational skills in establishing the NCCPTA. In that effort, she requested the assistance of the (white) North Carolina Congress of Parents and Teachers, as well as Newbold and local ministers. A congress committee assisted Holland, but as usual, she was better organized than a group that potentially had the power to direct and shape her organization to its liking, as evidenced in the words of Mrs. Charles Doak, chair of the con-

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gress: “Since the organization of the state-wide Association was brought about largely through the efforts of Mrs. Holland, who had things so well in hand that there was little for the Committee to do, I requested the Executive Board to extend an invitation to Mrs. Holland to present in person a report for the Association of which she is now President. I will present no detailed report but leave it for her to do.”11 More than one hundred people attended the NCCPTA’s initial meeting on April 2, 1927. The program included white and black, male and female participants, as well as representatives of the (white) North Carolina Congress of Parents and Teachers and the North Carolina State Department of Public Instruction. Holland’s invitation to whites in prominent positions and her handling of every detail for this inaugural meeting demonstrated her awareness of the importance of pleasing multiple constituencies while maintaining control of the NCCPTA. Men were active in the organization and served on its executive committee, but for almost two decades—from 1927 to 1945—the group’s presidents were all women. Holland’s organization also consistently voted into office a different president every four years. Perhaps her vision of the organization played an important role in its leadership structure for decades. Within the first two years under Holland’s leadership, the North Carolina Parent–Teachers Association (with a membership of 17,597) raised over $116,000 for the betterment of African American schools, and it became a member of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers in 1928.12 The North Carolina superintendent of public instruction noted in his 1928 annual report that of all agencies responsible for working toward the improvement of the schools and their buildings, grounds, and equipment, for lengthening school terms, and for increasing attendance, the North Carolina Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) had been the most effective.13 Holland’s vision and ability to transform scattered efforts of local PTAs into a statewide entity contributed tremendously to promoting and sustaining the educational infrastructure for North Carolina’s African Americans. With the goal of improving the living standards and the education of African American children, the North Carolina Parent Teachers’ Association became a vehicle to effect social change. The group’s theme for 1927—“All for the Child”—and a flyer published during the organization’s formative years suggest what Holland perceived to be the most important

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focus of the association: potential members were encouraged to join because “the forces of evil that would ruin our children are organized and it is only by a large, powerful, organization that we can hope to combat these forces.”14 One of Holland’s first efforts with the North Carolina association was to establish preschool clinics in order to improve the health of rural children. Her group also raised money to purchase school buses, erect school buildings, supplement teachers’ salaries, provide free lunches for needy children, establish libraries, beautify school grounds, and purchase equipment not supplied by the school boards. The organization later sponsored a summer camp for children as well. Local PTA chapters carried out multiple and varied activities. In 1927, the Cumberland PTA built an additional classroom and equipped four classrooms with window shades, lamps, brooms, and so forth. The Nash PTA repaired school buildings, beautified grounds, and purchased two pianos, and the Pearson PTA gave Christmas presents to poor children. In 1928, the Perquimans PTA served lunches for countywide teacher meetings, built and equipped a new classroom, and provided part of an additional teacher’s salary. The Mecklenberg PTA purchased a stove and built sanitary toilets. The Martin PTA established three libraries with twentyfive volumes each, and the Vance PTA raised $115 for school improvements. Virginia and North Carolina consistently employed the highest numbers of Jeanes Teachers in the South and received the lion’s share of funding. Each teacher traveled from school to school and was responsible for all the African American schools in a particular county. Fund administrators directed the teachers to do anything that taught African Americans how to become industrious: they were to serve as instruments to promote middleclass values and “habits of industry, thrift, and morality” among the masses.15 Although they were perpetuating a racist ideology by working under such guiding principles, especially during the early years of the program, Jeanes Teachers were often able to exploit openings created by industrial education to improve conditions in African American communities. Achieving practical as well as political ends, they became social service agents, institution builders, organizers, and fund-raisers. Within the confines of neglect, prevailing attitudes, and the fluidity of job boundaries, they created a space for themselves to exert authority and influence the direction of rural black education. During the first twenty-six years of the Jeanes program, most of the

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teachers were rural-born females with years of teaching experience. The job required leadership skills (which were normally attributed to males) and both human relations skills and home economics training (which were normally attributed to women). James Hardy Dillard, president of the Anna T. Jeanes Fund from 1908 to 1931, felt that female workers should dominate an employee group that required intensive labor and superb interpersonal abilities. In a letter to N. C. Newbold, the state agent for Negro education who was mentioned earlier, Dillard wrote that, with few exceptions, he had not found “a man on the list that measured up to the work which the women accomplish.”16 By 1910, 129 Jeanes Teachers were working in 130 counties in 13 southern states; by 1931, their number rose to 329. The figure dropped to 303 in 1934 during the Depression, but by 1937, it had increased to 426. Of the figure for 1934, 177 were married or widowed females, and 109 were unmarried females; only 17 were men.17 Women accounted for approximately 98 percent of the Jeanes Teacher labor force throughout the program’s existence. Initially, the workloads and expectations of individual Jeanes Teachers differed, depending on specific community needs, number of schools, and attitudes of superintendents. Some teachers visited three to four schools once a week; others visited twenty to thirty on an average of once a month. For instance, Justine Washington, the Jeanes Teacher for Aiken County, South Carolina, from 1936 to 1959, was assigned 84 (mostly one-room) schools—on her first day. (She later noted that her superintendent offered no help in locating those schools.) Sometimes spending a week at a particular school, the teachers oversaw industrial-training projects such as sewing, cooking, basket making, chair caning, and mat making, and they assisted classroom teachers with reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic instruction; in addition, they promoted lessons in sanitation. They met with local residents to form improvement leagues or betterment associations in order to ameliorate “living conditions among the colored people” by painting or whitewashing schoolhouses, homes, and outhouses. Their responsibilities also included raising money to build better schoolhouses; lengthening school terms by securing funding from community members; encouraging and organizing home and school gardens; and generally promoting “higher standards of living, integrity of character, honesty, and thrift among all people.”18 Given the broad range of issues and projects they tackled throughout the program, the Jeanes Teachers operated with considerable freedom,

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flexibility, and creativity. They were both liberated and constrained by the political, economic, and social infrastructure of the Jim Crow system of their times. Hired to improve the educational and social conditions of African American communities, they encountered not only a highly charged chain-of-command structure but also a majority population that was largely apathetic about improving a minority population’s status. The disinterest and fear of the mainstream society worked to the Jeanes Teachers’ advantage by giving them autonomy of action and control of their work, for they relieved county school superintendents of most or all of their responsibilities for black school systems. During the early twentieth century, when southern school reform for whites was at a peak, many county superintendents paid little attention to the detailed work of the Jeanes Teachers unless whites in the community complained. As a superintendent from Catawaby County, North Carolina, wrote, “The superintendent finds his time all taken with administrative duties and therefore can give practically no time to the Negro schools in a supervisory capacity.”19 Similarly, a superintendent in Snow Hill, North Carolina, “practically and almost completely turned the outside colored school work” over to a Jeanes Teacher: “this gave me more time for administering and supervising the white schools of the county,” he noted, “and helped me in this way to make a greater success of them.”20 Relations of power and influence between the Jeanes Teachers and the county superintendents often alternated between confrontation and cooperation. When teacher Mary Battle attempted to get a county training school built in Greene County, North Carolina, in 1916, she encountered the racial, political, and etiquette problems typical of her time. After rallying the support of the African American community for the building, Battle was informed by her superintendent that, due to budget constraints, funding was unavailable. The situation was actually far more complex than that simple statement suggested, and Battle, an astute educator, recognized the unfairness of the circumstances and decided to confront her employers. During that confrontation, she grew frustrated and lost her temper, accusing the superintendent and board of education members of not providing African Americans with a fair share of the school funding in Greene County. Battle’s breach of the norms of southern racial etiquette and politeness revealed the “hidden transcripts” (perhaps not so hidden) of an oppressed group’s beliefs and simmering rage.21 The incident also illuminated the prevailing attitudes of the state agents for Negro education as

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well as the patterns of agreement concerning African Americans between southern white educators and northern philanthropists. It also highlighted the African American community’s expectations of Battle as a professional. On July 13, 1916, Battle wrote to N. C. Newbold from Columbia University Teachers College: Mr. Debham was with us—but when we went before the Board of Education to ask the $750 and deed the 10 acres of land over to the county, The Board of Education led by Mr. Debham turned us down. What the people took to fight us with was that they paid school taxes and however small they fought us with it. After the meeting Mr. Debham sent for me and spoke in strong language his disapproval of my ever bringing the subject up. I have explained to him that by mentioning what I did, was not to do him harm. I dare not mention taxes again.22 (emphasis original) In his correspondence with Newbold, Superintendent J. E. Debham wrote that the appropriation from county funds of about $650 for black schools would be considerably more than any rural white school had received. This statement reflected the racial and political tensions experienced by county administrators responsible for supporting dual school systems with limited funding under Jim Crowism. White administrators were concerned about African Americans benefiting by receiving more funding than whites, even though a large portion of the moneys would be contributed from sources other than taxes or state funds. Under Battle’s leadership, for instance, the black community raised over $1,400 in cash and obtained ten acres of land to be deeded to the county for use by black schools.23 In 1917, Newbold informed Thomas Jesse Jones of the Federal Bureau of Education that he felt a recent lynching in Greene County had raised white anxiety over black education and jeopardized the establishment of a county training school: since the county’s African Americans were “uppity” enough for a hanging to occur, providing a school might only encourage others who would violate the rules of racial etiquette in the South.24 The state agent, it should be noted, later dismissed that concern after receiving Newbold’s assurance that “the affair has had no effect whatever on the school condition in this county.”25 Newbold’s statement was perhaps an inaccurate assessment of attitudes in Greene County, considering its relatively good record in funding African

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American education, yet incidents in other southern states certainly confirmed the existence of such attitudes. A year earlier in Middle Tennessee County (which borders North Carolina’s western boundary), residents had found themselves in an almost identical situation. The county superintendent had applied for funding to build a new county training school to replace one destroyed by fire. In the meantime, a black man accused of killing the chief of police was lynched. Local school officials, hesitant about proceeding with the work, noted, “We fear that a continuation of the plan might cause further racial disturbance as the feeling is tense”; other white citizens stated, “You see what too much education will do for a Nigger.”26 Although the unequal distribution of educational resources within the system was a well-known fact, Mary Battle paid a heavy price for publicly criticizing these inequities. At the time, North Carolina’s funding for school buildings for whites was $1,643 annually, compared to $483 for African Americans, and Greene County was typical of most counties in North Carolina and every other southern state.27 Considered one of North Carolina’s most active and productive educators, Battle understood well the power of whites and certainly had experienced their hostility toward education for African Americans. Nonetheless, she generally managed to maintain a pleasant relationship with her superintendent and board members.28 Battle had also maintained a close relationship with Newbold—so close, in fact, that she felt secure enough to deride her superintendent and board members as a “class of ‘Jack-legs’” in a letter she wrote to the state agent. She also told Newbold that “if there is any way you can get at the bottom without letting Mr. Debham know that I told you all about it, I’ll thank you.”29 In the end, Newbold assured Battle that whites knew best what African Americans needed; he also reminded her of her proper place in the circumstances and forced her to apologize and withdraw the request.30 He wrote Debham that “perhaps she [Battle] might be pressing the matter a little too far. Certainly none of us, nor Dr. Dillard, has any desire to embarrass the local situation.”31 Newbold’s attempt to ensure harmony, even at the expense of Battle and the African American community, suggests that the incident threatened to disrupt the tenuous alliance between northern philanthropists and local leaders. It is clear that, after working diligently for the improvement of black education and building considerable trust with both the African

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American community and the white administrators, Battle had “breached the etiquette of power relations” and broken the “calm surface of silence and consent and carried the force of a symbolic declaration of war” when she spoke out in anger against her white superiors.32 Within two years of the county training school incident, she died “practically in the harness.”33 Like others in her field, Mary Battle had identified the needs of the community and developed strategies to solve problems, often working within the existing social order. County training schools offered the only access to education beyond elementary school for the majority of African Americans in the rural South, and she attempted to improve educational opportunities for Greene County residents by working with the system. She organized the community, secured land, and raised funding for the school—all typical strategies employed in black communities during that era. Female educators fully understood their limitations as well as their possibilities. They could not immediately change the 1806 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which held that segregation was not discriminatory, and they could not reverse the disfranchisement of African Americans. But they understood that poor people who were healthy and literate were more likely to survive and subvert oppression than their unhealthy and illiterate peers. Consequently, they worked, often quietly, within the confines of the system to improve the social, economic, and political conditions of their communities. Given their individual resourcefulness, a trait they valued, the women typically exhausted all other options before seeking help from white administrators. Thus, for example, only after Battle had tried other approaches without success did she directly confront her superintendent. While working within potentially explosive power relationships, Jeanes Teachers assisted superintendents in placing educators and maintaining school buildings. They encouraged the superintendents to visit schools, held meetings with community school committee members to acquaint them with rules and regulations governing schools, secured transportation for students to county training and city high schools, and provided superintendents and state officials with numerous statistical reports on African American schools, teachers, and students. It is not an exaggeration to say that, in the face of gross inequality and an obstructionist white establishment, they constructed, reconstructed, and maintained the educational and social service systems that lay at the very foundation of their communities.

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Part Two image and substance

Chapter Three

The Search for Anna Erskine African American Women in Nineteenth-Century Liberia

Nemata Blyden

On the anniversary of the Ladies’ Monrovia Literary Institute in March 1853, Miss L. A. Smith spoke of the “importance of the mental and moral culture of females, in view of the great and powerful, though silent, influence which they exert upon society.”1 The Liberia Herald agreed with Smith, maintaining that “in every civilized community, females have a powerful influence, and just as civilization advances, does this influence obtain an important character. In proportion, as the women are enlightened and virtuous, will men be—they emphatically ‘rule the world,’ and ‘govern men.’”2 Yet, for all the support the newspaper purported to give to females seeking education and enlightenment, women in the colony during the nineteenth century were not encouraged in their endeavors to improve themselves. It was left to individual men and women, rather than the society at large, to take up the cause of promoting female education in Liberia. The story of Americo-Liberian women—individuals with African American roots who lived in the colony of Liberia—has been studied by several historians. This chapter attempts to reconstruct the life of one such woman, 31

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Anna Erskine, with specific emphasis on her work as an educator. It also explores the lives of African American women in the colony more generally, examining the kinds of opportunities available to them. Were women actively encouraged to participate in promoting education? Were they given the same opportunities that men were? Was the education women received different from that of men? In looking at Anna Erskine, a fairly privileged and educated Americo-Liberian woman, we see that opportunities for women in Liberia were limited during the nineteenth century.

Brief History of Liberia Liberia was settled by free blacks from the United States under the auspices of the American Colonization Society in 1822. That group, founded six years earlier with the express purpose of resettling free blacks in Africa, encouraged those individuals to take advantage of passage to Africa, and many blacks in the United States took up this offer.3 Liberia became an independent nation in 1847, and emigration continued into the late nineteenth century. With the establishment of this free haven, many African Americans returned to Africa. Some of these blacks were already free; others were slaves freed specifically for the purpose of emigration to Liberia. All returned to Africa to make a better life for themselves away from the discrimination and pain they had endured in the New World. During the period of colonization, many prominent men and women left the United States for the small colony on the west coast of Africa, as did many whose names we will never know. Their reasons for going were diverse, and the ways in which they created lives for themselves once they arrived in Liberia also varied. What nearly all of them had in common was their missionary zeal with respect to the continent of their ancestors. Most members of the African American community had been influenced by the Christian values of the West. Though Liberian society was stratified, with free blacks (usually of mixed race) in the upper levels of society and former slaves in the lower classes, all the African Americans had been exposed to Christianity, and many were contemptuous of indigenous Africans, wanting little to do with them. Others, such as teacher Josiah Sibley, believed Africans should be “civilized” through education and were pleased with the desire of African children to learn: as Sibley noted, “It is Strang but it is the truth, the africans children lern the book faster than the American children, and the better it will be for us the Sooner we get the Africans civilized, and to lern them book is the fastest 32

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way to do it.”4 Even African Americans with minimal education saw it as their duty to convert Africans. For example, William Burke, who had lived in the colony for four years, wrote: “I have some native children in my family which I am trying to Civilize and Christianize so if possible to do something for the heathen around us as it seems that this is the best method to take as this Way has been the must successfull [sic] way.”5 Thus, though African Americans interacted in various ways with indigenous Africans, one of the main goals was to bring civilization and Christianity to Africa. African American women were not immune to cultural prejudices. Like their male counterparts, they saw themselves as missionaries to indigenous Africans, particularly the women and children. In Liberia, African American women from all denominations attempted to bring the Christian tradition to African populations. Though their undertakings were marginal, especially when compared to the activity of white missionaries and black male missionaries, women did attempt to make an impact on the indigenous people.6 Meanwhile, the notion of African inferiority persisted. African American women were just as disdainful as the men regarding what they considered to be the heathen practices of the Africans. Thus, Diana Skipwith James, corresponding with the daughter of her former slave owner, wrote: In conversing with one of them [an African] I ask him how was it that the[y] could not read & write like white man (they call us all white man) & had not as much Sence as the white man & he said that it was thire own fault; that God give them the Choice either to learn book proper as they says or make Rice & they told god they had rather make rice. I labored with him & told him that it was a misstaken Idear altogether. I farther told him that God had bless them with as many Sences as the white man and if they ware to only put them in exersise that he would be the same as white man. After talking with him some time he said in answer you tell true too much. I think by theas means we will be able to get them out of their Supisticious Idears & at last they will become Siverlise for we have every reason to think so from two or three sercomstances which hapen in 1842, namely Marriages. They have pertition for lisons and have been Marrid in regular matrimonial form.7 Anna Erskine grew up in this society, where the mission of most AmericoLiberian settlers was to Christianize the indigenous population, and she, too, supported that goal. However, the influences of her background and her life circumstances ultimately led her to choose another path. 33

Nemata Blyden

Anna Erskine In trying to reconstruct the life of Anna Erskine, we encounter the difficulty faced by historians who study the lives of other African and African American women: her story, like that of most women during the nineteenth century, must be reconstructed from the voices of men. Thus, as happens with so many women connected to famous men, we learn about Anna primarily through the lives of her father, the Reverend H. W. Erskine, and the man she loved, Edward Blyden. Because Anna was literate, we are able to hear a little of her own voice and discover that, like many of her female contemporaries in Liberia at the time, she was a woman in her own right, active in missionary work and in promoting education among the indigenous population. Yet Anna was atypical of African American women in the nineteenth century in her desire to be independent and self-sufficient. She chose education as her path to independence and in the process flaunted many social norms of the day. Her life story surely reveals that she was a woman ahead of her times. Anna Espadon Erskine was born in the Liberian town of Clay-Ashland in October 1848 to the Reverend Hopkins W. Erskine and his wife, Eliza Payne Erskine, the first of three daughters. Hopkins Erskine had emigrated to Liberia at the age of ten. Born free or emancipated for the purpose of emigration, he traveled from Tennessee with most, if not all, of his immediate family.8 The family initially settled in Caldwell, where the men took up farming. Caldwell, founded in 1825, was the first agricultural settlement established along the banks of the St. Paul’s River.9 Hopkins was educated in the colony, possibly at the Alexander High School. It is unclear when he settled in Clay-Ashland, but it appears he had lived there for some time before his eldest daughter was born. Clay-Ashland was founded in 1847, one of several settlements along the St. Paul’s River by that time. Though smaller than Monrovia, it was by no means provincial. The town quickly thrived, and in 1854, Rosabella Burke, a newly arrived settler, eschewed Monrovia for Clay-Ashland, claiming that Monrovia’s people “were too gay and fashionable for me.”10 Burke noted her arrival in Clay-Ashland in a letter to an acquaintance and expressed pleasure with the small town, where “we have quite a good sort of people.”11 By the time Anna Erskine was six, there were four churches in the town.12 As William Burke observed in 1856, “Our Little Town is still improving. It is thought that it will soon go ahead of Monrovia.”13 The settlers in Clay-Ashland interacted more frequently with indigenous Africans 34

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because the town was located further in the interior, and several of them attempted to Christianize the Africans. This was also the goal of Anna’s father. In 1860, Erskine was ordained a Presbyterian minister, and he worked for the Presbyterian mission throughout his life, struggling to improve the educational system in the colony. His commitment to education and his dedication to influencing the indigenous populations set an example for his daughter. Not much is known of Anna Erskine’s early years, for we can glean what her childhood was like only from the life and activities of her father. Hopkins Erskine presumably supported his family on the salary he received from the Presbyterian mission, though he also engaged in farming. Clay-Ashland thrived economically, and many of its inhabitants prospered as farmers. By 1865, Erskine was living on the St. Paul’s River, where he cultivated a sugar farm and raised produce that his family consumed.14 One individual who traveled up the river in 1866 described the town as having “many fine brick houses, . . . extending back four or five miles, . . . we never lose sight again of cultivated fields, and comfortable brick houses.”15 Erskine would surely have been counted as one of Clay-Ashland’s more affluent citizens, and it is clear that Anna grew up in a rela-tively prosperous family and enjoyed some privilege. The reverend was a prominent member of Liberian society, particularly in Clay-Ashland, where he was well respected. In 1852, a letter in the Liberia Herald mentioned a town meeting in Clay-Ashland, calling for a national convention to choose candidates for the country’s elections. The letter described the proceedings of the meeting, which ended with the appointment of a committee to nominate delegates from Clay-Ashland. H. W. Erskine was one of four delegates nominated and elected.16 Erskine also held the position of attorney general of Liberia from 1864 to 1868 and was the superintendent of Montserrado County from 1870 to 1871.17 The privilege afforded to Anna and her sisters, whether through access to an education or through economic security, was rare for women in the colony at that time. Yet women made the best of their circumstances. African American women held onto their American values and attempted to maintain the institutions that they had brought with them. They tried to maintain family relations and community institutions, such as churches and benevolent societies.18 Other institutions gave the Liberian settlers the ability to create ties among themselves. Historian Tom Shick has argued that, for the Americo-Liberian, “the recognized common good was the establishment and maintenance of a distinctive settler life style. Christianity 35

Nemata Blyden

was but one element of a ‘civilized’ culture that the settlers struggled to preserve. The immediate influences of African society, many of which they considered negative, forced the settlers to maintain an exaggerated, often pompous alternative. The activities of community associations became the vehicle for displaying settler commitment to civilized life.”19 Many associations and institutions were set up for that purpose; whether it was the Ladies Benevolent Society of Monrovia (founded in 1836) or the Ladies Dorcas Society (founded in 1843), the goal of these organizations was to improve settler society. Though the benevolent organizations were important, the most critical institution for the African American settler population was the church, whose community activities were especially valued by women. Not only did the church furnish a community life for the settler women, it also gave many of them access to education for themselves and for their children. Illiteracy was high among the African American settler population, adults and children alike, and the women tried to organize schools to provide their children with basic literacy skills.20 Literacy associations were organized, and church missions began to operate in the colony in the 1830s, playing a significant role in the education of the black settlers. Throughout the nineteenth century, missionary organizations in Europe and the United States supported education in Liberia, but because that education was so limited, the churches established by various denominations were often the only means of learning for Liberian children in the country’s early years. Women in particular were interested in these schools. In an 1854 letter to her former slave owners, Rosabella Burke observed that four schools were operating in Clay-Ashland, though she lamented that they were “badly taught.”21 Her husband, William, wrote that their three children were attending one of the schools and noted with pride that “the oldest which is the girl Learns very fast.”22 In the letters of other African American settlers, we see the desire for more and higher-quality schools to be established. By the 1840s, secondary education was introduced, and missionaries continued to proselytize to the African American settlers and to the indigenous African populations as well.23 Women also organized their own educational institutions, helped by more-established bodies within and beyond the colony. In the 1830s, the Ladies Liberia School Association, an auxiliary of the American Colonization Society, took responsibility for educating girls in Liberia. Orphanages and boarding schools were established in the colony; these were mostly

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for African American settler children, but a number of indigenous African children also enrolled. In addition, some Americo-Liberian women opened their own schools in the colony, although they had difficulty getting students because many parents could not afford the tuition, particularly for their daughters.24 The Ladies Liberia School Association was also formed by women, with the aim of taking responsibility for the education of girls in the colony.25 During the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a degree of progress in the development of education in the colony in general, and more attention was paid to female education. But the Alexander High School, founded in 1849, was an all-male institution, and throughout the 1850s, there were no girls in high school.26 A lack of formal educational institutions, however, did not deter African American settler women from improving themselves. These women, intent on promoting education, established a variety of self-help groups. In December 1848, the Liberia Herald noted the formation of the Ladies’ Monrovia Literary Institute, a group whose stated object was the “improvement of the mind.” The ladies had held two meetings by that point, during which they discussed history and natural philosophy.27 Evidently, however, the group did not gain much support from the larger community and had difficulty retaining members. In 1852, an article in the Liberia Herald called attention to the Ladies Monrovia Literary Institute. The twenty-year-old author of the article celebrated the endeavors of the group, noting their weekly meetings and the subjects discussed. But the young writer lamented the lack of attention paid to this fledgling organization by the larger community and expressed the hope that the ladies would persevere, “for educated women are needed in Liberia as well as educated men.”28 He stressed the need to encourage reading across the colony as a whole and urged the women to “strive, not only to adorn yourselves outwardly with gay and beautiful apparel, but decorate your mind with the unfading laurels of wisdom.”29 The author of this editorial was Edward Wilmot Blyden. Edward Blyden was born in the Virgin Islands and had immigrated to Liberia in 1850.30 He had much to say, throughout his life, about the need for female education. He argued that educated settler women could serve as examples for the indigenous African populations and help in the missionary movement.31 For many years, as a professor at Liberia College, Blyden lobbied not only in Liberia but also in Europe and the United States for the improvement of female education in the colony. In 1859, the West

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African Presbytery, at his urging, passed a resolution on female education, and in 1861, Blyden traveled in Europe and the United States trying to raise funds for a female seminary.32 Finally, in 1868, he was successful in getting women admitted to Liberia College, where he subsequently hired a woman as principal of the female department.33 Generally, however, he was frustrated in his endeavor to promote education for women because that was not a top priority in the colony during the nineteenth century. Another prominent resident of Liberia who was vocal in expressing the need to educate women was Alexander Crummell.34 Crummell was an African American Episcopalian missionary who had arrived in Liberia in 1853. Like so many of his counterparts, he believed in the theory of providential design and was intent on “civilizing” Africans and regenerating the African continent. Like Blyden, Crummell felt that educating women would aid the missionary movement and contribute to national development. In a lecture in 1860, he stressed the importance of the English language in the proper training of the young people of the Liberian colony. He insisted in particular on “the great necessity of special care being bestowed upon the culture of the female mind in Liberia.” Crummell saw it as the duty and responsibility of women to train future generations, and he argued that the “influence of woman in this great work is deeper and more powerful than that of man.” However, he maintained, “No one who looks carefully at the state of things in this country, can suppose, for a moment, that . . . justice is done to the intellect of this sex.” Crummell criticized the women themselves for their “trifling, unthinking, lives” and for continuing to be slaves to fashion. Citing statistics on the increasing number of women in the colony, he noted the gravity of Liberia’s current situation with respect to female education, arguing that if something was not done, the heathen practices of indigenous Africans would soon predominate. To prevent that outcome, it was, he argued, imperative that Liberians “strive to raise our daughters and our sisters to become the true and equal companions of men, and not their victims.” Crummell made several recommendations for changing the status quo, suggesting that every household in the colony encourage its females to read. He also recommended the formation of clubs and societies for women. Most important in his view, however, was the need for a female seminary for the education of girls.35 Crummell saw the value of women in the missionary movement and advocated female agency: “Woman keeps Africa low and degraded; and hence only woman, under God, can raise Africa up. Native African girls, first of all, must be educated and evangel38

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ized; and so will break off polygamy. You may educate a thousand boys; but if woman is not enlightened, your mission will prove a failure.”36 He therefore recommended that two women missionaries be sent out for every man, to “teach the native schools, visit native women, and force respect for woman upon these native chiefs and kings, and train the boys to respect womanhood.”37 Despite the deep male chauvinism and prejudice against women inherent in his words, Crummell was one of a very small number of men in the colony who embraced women’s education and advocated for its improvement. By the late nineteenth century, women were attending both Alexander High School and Liberia College (though not in equal numbers to men), and in 1883, Jenny Davis, an African American woman, arrived in Liberia to become principal of the Female Department of the college.38 Thus, it was possible, from the mid-nineteenth century forward, for some women to access more than an elementary education in the colony. Anna Erskine was one of the privileged women who pursued an advanced education, though she did so largely through self-motivation and because of her family background rather than because of any changes in the colony’s educational system. She clearly subscribed to the views of Crummell and Blyden with respect to the role of women. As children, Anna and her sisters may have been taught at home by their parents. Their mother came from the prominent Payne family in Liberia. Many of the Paynes, who had emigrated from Virginia in the early nineteenth century, were freeborn and literate, and Eliza was probably an educated woman. The girls may have also attended the Presbyterian school in Clay-Ashland, which was teaching a variety of subjects, including Latin, by 1856. Clay-Ashlanders, however, wanted a more comprehensive curriculum,39 and a significant number of them lobbied to bring institutions of higher learning to their town. Edward Blyden, who taught in Clay-Ashland on and off for many years, even attempted to have the Alexander High School transferred to that town, arguing that its location in the interior would be attractive to the indigenous Africans and give them easier access to education. Blyden stressed that “we must make Clay Ashland the intellectual as well as the commercial capital of Montserrado County.”40 In this, he was supported by the Reverend H. W. Erskine. In their father, a man who advocated female education, Anna and her sisters had an exemplary role model. Hopkins Erskine, having been brought up in a family where female education was apparently valued, sought to pass this ethic on to his own daughters. All members of his family, including the 39

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women, were literate when they arrived in Liberia in 1830, thus giving Anna accomplished female role models as well. By 1867, Anna was already teaching. She wanted to go farther into the interior to teach indigenous African children, but her father prevented her from doing so. In that same year, Hopkins Erskine reported that Anna had been chosen as a teacher for Clay-Ashland; she had eighteen pupils and would be limited to twenty-five.41 A year later, Erskine noted Anna’s progress, remarking that she then had twenty-five students. We can speculate that Anna had a good, if often contentious, relationship with her father. She was obviously very bright and dedicated, and her father encouraged her to pursue her education, something that was unusual among her contemporaries. Yet Anna was still restricted in what she could achieve because of her gender. For his part, Erskine saw it as his responsibility to protect his daughter from the dangers of the interior by forbidding her to go there to teach and, no doubt, finding her a job in Clay-Ashland to appease her. Erskine also kept a keen eye on her in her teaching duties in their town. In an 1868 report to the presbytery, he maintained that “I am careful to see that she is regular in her attendance.”42 We can only guess at Anna’s reaction to her father’s paternalism, and it is obvious from the independent stance she took later in life that she railed against his authority. By the late 1860s, her father was aging and facing difficulties in the church. Erskine was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Clay-Ashland for more than thirty years. As he grew older and his health failed, he encountered increasing criticism from members of his congregation and other pastors in the church, including Blyden.43 It should be noted, however, that Blyden’s assessment of Erskine may have been influenced by personal feelings, since Anna’s relationship with her father could also have been strained by her friendship with Blyden. Blyden and Anna first met in January 1875. By the next year, their friendship had progressed, resulting in tension between Blyden and Hopkins Erskine.44 Blyden admired the young woman tremendously and was impressed by her intelligence, and in his first observations of her, we have the most lengthy description of Anna Erskine available. His words are worth quoting at length: Without the advantages of regular schooling she acquired knowledge enough by self-application to teach some years ago [at] a very successful government school in the settlement of Louisiana. She is a girl of first rate intellect—a close student and of remarkable energy

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and industry, in fact the leading female mind on the river—but black. These qualities attracted my attention to her as I saw her in the class which I had formed and of which she became a member. She was not prima inter pares, for she had no peer. I gave her therefore whenever I had an opportunity separate lessons in her parents’ house. I could not help feeling that had she been a mulatto girl with such talents she would long ago have occupied some prominent place at the capital. She has studied a little Latin and some French, and is now devoting herself to Arabic. She is anxious to leave her people and go out into the interior and live with the natives—but her parents will not consent to this. She has learned enough of Arabic to communicate with the Mohammedan natives who pass by her house for trading purposes. When she visited Vonswah some time ago, the Mohammedan settlement about six miles from her residence—she could follow the worshippers in all their prayers. A Mohammedan priest who visited her last year having heard her read some Arabic was so well pleased that he made her a present. Now such a person in an interior mission would have an easy and influential access to the wives and daughters of Mohammedans. At Vonswah the girls flocked around her and wanted her to teach them.45 (emphasis mine) In Blyden’s effervescent description of Anna Erskine, we have a portrait of a strong-willed, independent, self-motivated woman with a desire to improve herself through education. She was also a woman with an affinity for the indigenous African population with whom she had been in contact since childhood. Anna had gained respect for the culture and civilization of the Africans in the neighboring areas, learning their language and informing herself about their religion. Blyden must have seen in her a realization of all the things he had been urging for women in Liberia. More important for him was the fact that Anna was not of mixed race. Blyden’s reference to Anna being black is related to his long-standing views of the detrimental effects that mulattoes had on the colony. Throughout his life, Blyden believed that the existence of African Americans of mixed race in Liberia was a hindrance to national development. He argued that their presence and dominance in leadership served to create class distinctions and divisions in Liberian society. The color distinctions among African Americans that were prevalent in the United States at that time had been transported to Liberia, and many of the mixed-race settlers held prominent positions to the exclusion of darker-skinned settlers.

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But Blyden’s admiration of Anna went beyond the color of her skin. With Anna, he could carry on intelligent conversation, and he increasingly came to rely on her for both intellectual and emotional support. In her, Blyden also saw a woman who shared his basic philosophy about the role of indigenous Africans in the national development of Liberia. For many years, he had argued for the need to integrate Africans into the country’s national life and politics. Blyden also found a kindred spirit in Anna with respect to his views on Islam. Like her, he spoke Latin and Arabic and read widely. For her part, Anna admired Blyden’s strong advocacy of female education and his vast knowledge of many subjects. She later was a student of his, and their relationship became a source of scandal. When rumors of more than a friendly relationship between the two erupted in 1876, Blyden denied the allegations, arguing that they were an attempt to ruin the reputation of a young woman who was “calculated to be of great use as a teacher.”46 Despite his denial of the rumors, however, Blyden and Anna soon developed a more intimate relationship. At the time, he was married, and, at forty-three, he was twenty years older than Anna. Blyden argued that because she was not of mixed race or a mulatto, she was seen as a “legitimate object of persecution and slander—especially in connection with a name [as] odious to mulattoes as mine.”47 In 1876, the West African Presbytery offered Anna Erskine a teaching position. She accepted the offer but asked to be independent of that body. In August 1876, she requested that my labors in this endeavor . . . be left entirely to my own discretion, independent of the West African Presbytery and only subjected to the friends who are interested in it in America. You may perhaps think this rather strange but the fact is that such surveillance would greatly hinder the good I might do here. And since it is my earnest desire to do all I can with the help of God, I should prefer to be left alone. My object, as I wrote you before, is not for pecuniary benefit alone. But to work for my race, which spirit is not fully understood here and consequently very lightly appreciated.48 Anna Erskine never took the job. In 1877, she left her home, her family, and the life she had always known for neighboring Sierra Leone. Whether her decision to turn down the offer was related to her relationship with Blyden is unclear. It is possible that her desire to be independent of the presbytery was related to her association with him, but this seems

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unlikely, since she had always exhibited great independence and would continue to do so in the years ahead. In looking at the life of Anna Erskine against the backdrop of nineteenthcentury Americo-Liberian life, and in comparing her to many of her contemporaries, we see that Anna was, in many ways, a woman ahead of her times who exhibited great strength in the choices she made. In a society where women relied on men for economic support and social validation, Erskine early in life chose a career that gave her independence and selfsufficiency. In entering into a relationship with Blyden, she made a decision that resulted in social ostracism and alienation. The association also cost her the close relationship she had established with her father.49 She left everything she had ever known to create a new life for herself in Freetown, Sierra Leone, the neighboring British colony. Anna remained in Sierra Leone and maintained her relationship with Blyden, who lived there off and on between 1876 and 1901, when he permanently settled down with her. She bore him five children. She continued her work as an educator in Sierra Leone, teaching at Muslim schools in the colony from 1886 to 1926—schools that Blyden had encouraged the British colonial government to found.50 Not surprisingly, she exhibited great independence in raising her children as well as in her career. How much stigma was attached to her role as an unwed mother in Sierra Leone is unclear. The mores of settlers there during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were very similar to those of the Americo-Liberians, and Erskine might have encountered some of the same exclusion she had experienced in Liberia. Freetown society, however, would have been more open to an unmarried woman with children, for it was not an unusual occurrence in that society despite its Western-oriented, Christian values. It is clear that Anna Erskine rose above any stigma associated with being an unwed mother to become a well-respected member of the Freetown community. She was highly regarded by citizens of the colony, particularly in the Muslim community.51 She was also a longtime member of Freetown’s Zion Methodist Church. Her grandson remembers her as a strong disciplinarian and the epitome of propriety—a description that seems to contradict her actions as a young woman but that is, in many ways, in keeping with her upbringing and the values of the society in which she was raised. Perhaps her greatest strength lay in her ability to break away from that world. Perhaps Anna Erskine saw no contradiction in her actions at all.

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Chapter Four

Image and Representation Black Women in Historical Accounts of Colonial Jamaica

Ve re n e A . S h e p h e rd I want people to think I am more than a ghetto girl. . . . I want to walk into dance halls and feel like a movie star, a white one. —“Sheri” (The Washington Post, August 5, 1999, A15) The European cast of countenance is vastly superior to the African. —Cynric Williams, 1823

For several months during 1999, the Jamaican media were inundated with letters and articles on the issue of skin bleaching—a process used by countless black women, most of them young, in an effort to “lessen” their physical blackness and, in their view, make themselves more physically appealing to those who adhere to Caucasian standards of beauty.1 The phenomenon of skin bleaching, practiced in a country where over 90 percent of the population is made up of black people, outraged many. So, too, did Buju Banton’s 1990 song “Browning,” which lauded the attributes of light-skinned women.2 Among those who publicly opposed the craze were medical doctors, who warned of the harmful physical side effects, and academicians, who interpreted it as a legacy of slavery and warned of the psychological oppression of what Bob Marley termed “mental slavery.” While newspaper columnist Dawn Ritch questioned the phenomenon as a reflection of an identity crisis, her fellow columnist Morris Cargill regarded bleaching as a fad that would go away, as did women’s love of “pygidial protuberance,” “bustles,” and “corsets.”3 44

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Attorney-at-law Audley Foster pointed out that part of the explanation for the craze lay in the fact that many Jamaicans “have internalized the lie that being black is to be ugly,” and she lamented Jamaicans’ seeming inability to “correct 300 years of mental servitude” by getting rid of a social structure that elevates whiteness to a position of superiority.4 In another article, Barbara Ellington, pointing to the tendency in Jamaica to select Caucasian-featured women to represent the island at international beauty pageants, commented that “for too long we [black Jamaicans] have allowed standards of beauty to be dictated by white society.” She added that “the brainwashing that short hair, dark skin, thick lips and flat noses are ugly, has taken root and many people do not like what they see in the mirror,” using creams and other strategies to attain a more white European look.5 The Jamaican government, in response to the national outrage, decided to regulate the distribution of bleaching creams. That solution, however, was regarded as merely “cosmetic,” for the issue was perceived to be a larger one linked to the rewards that society always seemed to give to lightskinned individuals.6 Thus, many in the society called for a greater focus on the historical roots of the problem as a first step toward understanding and overcoming what some interpret to be a crisis of identity in postcolonial Jamaica. This chapter will engage the debate from a historical angle. It will show that the persistent negative attitude toward “blackness,” albeit by a minority in modern Jamaican society, has its roots in the early colonialist and imperialist discourse. Further, it will assert that this attitude must be understood within the larger project of colonization, domination, and “othering” that has characterized the history of Jamaica and the wider Caribbean since the fifteenth century, when Europeans targeted the region as a site for capital accumulation and empire building. Jamaica was captured from the indigenous Tainos and colonized by the Spanish from 1494 to 1655. The English, in turn, captured the island from the Spaniards and ruled it from 1655, losing their political dominance over the island when the decolonization movement ended in independence for Jamaica in 1962. During this long colonial era, large parts of the non-European world were produced for Europe through the accounts of those who either visited, lived in, heard about, or targeted the island for their writings. Indeed, each new arrival went through what Peter Hulme has referred to as a “gesture of discovery.” This gesture of discovery was repeated over a period of three centuries and gave rise to a series of narratives and histories, the first being focused on the encounter 45

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between the European and the “native.”7 The articulating principles of the Columbian discourse are those of conflict and accommodation with the indigenous people, as well as mild censure for their simple and “primitive” lives. The writings gave the impression of innocent transgressors of the rules of civilization. Writers were particularly fascinated with the indigenous woman, who was painted as “innocent” and “simple” and in need of “civilization” because of her nudity or sparse clothing. Such nudity, far from being accepted as cultural, was interpreted as deviant. Indigenous women were characterized as open to sex, a stigma that persisted through the slavery and postslavery periods, with the historical literature (particularly that of the slavery period) presenting black women as ugly, lacking in intelligence, and promiscuous.8 Jürgen Osterhammel and others have argued that the negative representation of indigenous and black women served the purpose of justifying the conquest and colonization of so-called “inferior, uncivilized” people by a so-called “superior, civilized” race.9 Since the Columbus dispensation, planters, settlers, missionaries, longand short-term visitors, and even some modern writers have continued the project of representation of the black woman. Not all of the early works were preoccupied with issues relating specifically to women, but some of those that focused on women give an insight into the historiography of the textual invention of women, in particular the black woman; for writers seemed less concerned with white and mixed-race women. The early narratives and histories revealed a certain racism and ethnocentrism toward people regarded as “other”; and those of male writers reflected prevailing ideas of patriarchy and male dominance. Many of these narratives were written without reference to the historical Caribbean and its inhabitants, and they fall into the realm of historical (even fictional) literature— a sure indication, according to Veronica Gregg, that the invention of the Caribbean as a European enterprise required little knowledge of the region and in fact depended upon “a willed ignorance.”10 The examples presented in the following section of this chapter are drawn from visitors’ firsthand accounts, planters’ histories and journals, and overseers’ letters. These narratives were all engaged in the ideological production of Jamaica and the Caribbean for Europe, and they provide a glimpse into the historical experience of black women in the colonized, non-European world.

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The Period of Slavery Black women entered the colonized Caribbean beginning in the sixteenth century, primarily as enslaved laborers for European wealth accumulators. By the eighteenth century, the enslavement of Africans was centered as critical to economic accumulation and the cultural imperatives of white supremacy. Estimates of the number of Africans captured in West Africa and sold into the transatlantic trade vary, but that figure is now generally accepted as about 15.4 million. The trade was characterized by a sexual disparity, with black women accounting for roughly a third of those exported.11 Despite this sexual disparity in the trade, women eventually formed the backbone of the agricultural labor force in the Americas. Several histories of Jamaica were written during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among the best known are those by Charles Leslie, Edward Long, William Beckford, Robert Renny, M. G. “Monk” Lewis, and Cynric Williams. In addition, the journals of Thomas Thistlewood are unparalleled in what they reveal about the violence perpetrated on the bodies of enslaved black women. Leslie’s A New and Exact Account of Jamaica was designed to be informative on historical events as well as the laws, geography, religion, government, trade, flora, fauna, and manners of Jamaica. Leslie embodied the proslavery attitudes of the society. Concerning African men and women, he wrote: “When they first arrive, ’tis observed they are simple and very innocent creatures; but they soon turn to be roguish enough.”12 Leslie made comparatively few references to women in Jamaica, but he differentiated between and hierarchized the different classes and ethnicities of women, reserving his positive comments for elite white women. Like later writers, he discussed enslaved black women separately; and also like other contemporary observers, he gave the impression that black women were shameless in their exposure of their bodies. He wrote: “The negro women go many of them quite naked; they do not know what shame is and are surprised at an European’s bashfulness who perhaps turns his head aside at the sight. Their masters give them a kind of Petticoat but they do not care to wear it. In the towns they are obliged to do it; but these are the favourites of young squires who keep them for a certain use.”13 Predictably, racial prejudice was mixed with class prejudice and had important consequences for the general character of the Caribbean settler planter ideology. A systematic racist ideology developed that identified the

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enslaved with nonhuman and antinatural attributes.14 This ideology was also reflected in the planters’ histories and travelers’ accounts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These were decidedly proslavery and justificatory in their orientation, particularly if they were written after the late 1770s in response to the emergence of the abolitionist campaign. Among the genre of proslavery accounts are those of Thomas Thistlewood, a visitor turned native. Thistlewood arrived in Jamaica in 1751 and kept a detailed journal of his activities on the island. It is clear that he accepted social stratification and white dominance in a slave society. He also accepted the use of force as a way to control slaves; indeed, he was not at all averse to using brutal measures on enslaved men and women alike. Furthermore, he was quick to understand the customs in Jamaica with respect to the sexual behavior of whites with enslaved black women. Unlike Edward Long, Thistlewood did not make many explicit statements about the physical characteristics and attributes of the women. He did, on occasion, comment on the fact that some enslaved women were liars, and he did observe that slave women were sensual.15 Nevertheless, his physical and sexual abuse of enslaved women leaves us in no doubt about his attitude toward them. He learned very soon after his arrival that living openly with enslaved or free-colored women brought no social condemnation and indeed was accepted behavior. Thistlewood, like most white men in the colonies during his time, seems to have believed that one advantage of coming to the island was the chance to sexually exploit many black and colored women. While working for Florentinus Vassell on Vineyard Pen in Westmoreland and John Cope on Egypt plantation, for example, he sexually abused practically every enslaved female on those properties. From five women in 1750 (identified as Marina, Juba, Betty, Hago, and Sylvia), his sexual contacts expanded to eleven enslaved women by 1751. When he established his own property, Breadnut Island Pen, in 1768, he continued with this habit. Like most overseers, Thistlewood kept in “faithful” concubinage a black woman, Phibbah, but showed no loyalty to her in terms of his sexual behavior, having had sexual relations with nine of the sixteen enslaved females on his property.16 He also evinced no interest in marriage. In fact, white men in the Caribbean tended not to marry. In response to his brother’s query about his marital status, Stephen Harmer, the overseer on Old Hope Pen, remarked: “Now the candid truth is that I have got no wife and have never been married. It is not the fashion for overseers to be married in this country except over the broomstick.”17 Harmer had four

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children by an enslaved woman. These black enslaved “partners” were euphemistically called “housekeepers” in the Caribbean. As Benjamin M’Mahon explained in Jamaica Plantership, “The overseers in Jamaica usually kept one particular mistress called by themselves housekeepers but by the laborers their wives.” He added that these “housekeepers were expected to yield to the sexual demands of these overseers.”18 The behavior of Thomas Thistlewood and Stephen Harmer was consistent with the slavery-era belief in white superiority and black inferiority, which was often demonstrated in the physical abuse of the black male and the physical and sexual abuse of the enslaved woman. The Jamaican contribution to the ideology of racism and sexism is essentially that made by Edward Long in his multivolume history of the island. Long wrote when the proslavery ideology had reached its zenith— that is, between the mid-eighteenth century and the latter part of the eighteenth century—and when the slave economy had entered its “golden age.” This period saw the emergence of the settler planter historians. Along with other sources such as the correspondence of governors and the vast literature of travelers, these planters’ histories allow for a glimpse of the selfimage of the plantocracy and the images that members of that class entertained of the people in the colonies.19 Edward Long, the son of a wealthy family, arrived in Jamaica in 1757 and lived among the plantocracy for twelve years.20 He was creole and colonial in his sympathies, but his remarks on women and Africa revealed his elitist, racist views. Obsessed with racial purity, he inveighed against the miscegenational habits of white males and decried the black woman in the most negative and racist terms. Constructing a hierarchy among women in Jamaica, he placed white women at the top of the social ladder and black women at the base; the faults he found with white women were attributed to their lack of education, their isolation from Europeans, or their close association with black women. But Long did not mince his remarks about black women. He opposed the Jamaican custom of black nannies suckling the babies of white women, on the basis that these nannies had “diseased milk” that they would then pass on to “the poor little victims of this pernicious custom.”21 He also accused enslaved domestics of having a bad influence on the language of the white children and generally blamed black women for certain social ills in the society, such as immorality and the creolization of the white population.

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Among the most influential nineteenth-century narratives on Jamaica are those of Lady Maria Nugent, Robert Renny, M. G. Lewis, and Cynric Williams. Two of these will be examined here. Maria Nugent, wife of the lieutenant governor and commander in chief of Jamaica, kept a detailed journal of her life on the island from 1801 to 1805. Recognized as one of the most interesting contemporary accounts of colonial Jamaica, her journal went through several editions from 1839 to 1966.22 As the lieutenant governor’s wife, Nugent led a busy social life that gave her contact with the planters and white society. She had firsthand experience with household domestic staff (mostly enslaved but also white), and because she accompanied her husband on a tour of the island, she also recorded valuable snippets of information about issues outside of her immediate social world.23 She was decidedly proslavery, though she displayed a certain benevolence toward the enslaved and was forever “teaching the blackies their catechisms.” On one occasion, at a fete, she took to the dance floor with one of the old enslaved men, to the indignation of all. In her own defense, she claimed, “I did exactly the same as I would have done at a servants’ hall birthday.”24 Like other whites, she believed the stereotype that the enslaved were savages and cannibal-like yet somehow contented with slavery. On one occasion, she wrote: “In returning home from our drive this morning, we met a gang of Eboe negroes, just landed and marching up the country. I ordered the postilions to stop, that I might observe their countenances . . . and see if they looked unhappy; but they appeared perfectly the reverse. . . . The women in particular seemed pleased.”25 This tendency to paint a picture of a contented enslaved population was typical of the writings of those who wanted to stem the tide of abolitionism. Like other writers, Maria Nugent went to great lengths to describe the physical features of black women. On Hope Estate in St. Andrew, she described the chère amie of a Scottish overseer as a tall black woman “wellmade, with a very flat nose, thick lips, a skin of ebony, highly polished and shining.”26 Writers like Nugent accused the slaves of being promiscuous and disinclined to marry, although the fact was that planters rarely allowed them to do so. Nugent also described the conditions of enslaved women, who had to work up to the last six weeks of pregnancy and return to work within two to three weeks of delivery. Like her contemporaries, she believed that “it was astonishing how fast black women bred, what healthy children they had and how soon they recovered after lying-in,” in contrast to mulatto women, who were “constantly liable to miscarry and subject to

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a thousand little complaints.”27 This view that black women could “breed and drop children at will” without needing great medical care or an extensive recovery period was widespread in the racist historiography. Robert Renny’s history of Jamaica was more concerned with the climate, scenery, trade, agriculture, European diseases, and the implications of the abolition of the slave trade than with the women of the island. Renny was clearly convinced that Africans were “untutored savages” destined to be enslaved on biological grounds, since they did not have the same ancestors as Europeans, and for climatic reasons, since “slavery is peculiarly congenial and seems to be natural, to the inhabitants of warm climates.” He said very little about enslaved black women, only implying that they were crucial, as first gang workers in the field, to the production process. Predictably, in the tradition of the dichotomous representation of black women as promiscuous and nonblack women as virtuous, Renny commented that the white women, though few in number, “are seldom seen gadding abroad.”28 Finally, Cynric Williams’s account of his 1823 tour of Jamaica revealed similar negative images of nonwhite women. He made distinctions of color among racially mixed groups, stating that “an Englishman considers all people of colour as mulattoes, until he has occasion to remark the different shades by which they are distinguished.”29 One of the first women he wrote about was the “mahogany tone” Polly Vidal, a lodging-house keeper in Falmouth, whom he characterized as rather a chatterbox and whose questions “crowded me faster than I could reply to them,” but whom he nevertheless found courteous and hospitable. He admired the “tawny” damsels who worked for Polly Vidal and who occasionally peeped out at him from behind the jalousies. He described them as having elegantly formed, graceful, and elastic bodies, though, like other European visitors, he felt compelled to comment on their color and manner of speech. He observed, “I was not as yet reconciled to their dingy hue, and there was something I thought rather too languid in the drawling tone of their speech.”30 Another woman of color he admired was a sixteen-year-old quadroon girl named Diana, whose complexion he described as “very little darker than the European.” Diana was the daughter of a wealthy white planter and an enslaved woman. Williams studiously avoided references to her African origin, extolling those aspects of her physique that reminded him of European, classical Greek and Roman women. In fact, though he regarded

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Diana as a beautiful colored woman, her features were only “near” perfect in his opinion, for “the features [of the quadroon] retain too often the inclination to the African lips, or cast of countenance that reminds one of their origin.” In his view, as in the view of many other visitors, “the European cast of countenance [was] vastly superior to the African.”31 Yet even as he lauded her beauty, Williams typically represented Diana as stupid—the stereotypical beauty without brains. He concluded that she was a “pretty, simple creature,” unable to learn European customs and beliefs no matter how hard she tried. This “revelation” came to him after he had asked her if she was a Christian and she said “no.” In response to his request for a reason for her failure to convert to Christianity, she replied (rather sensibly, I think), “Because me can’t believe what me can’t understand. Massa preaches to the ears but not to the heart.”32 By the time slavery ended, the negative representations of black women and the more favorable views of “colored” women were firmly fixed in the colonial mind. These kinds of representations have survived into the twenty-first century and are resurrected in such actions as Sheri’s desire to become light-skinned (expressed in the epigraph), black men’s alleged preference for “brownings,” and Jamaica’s consistent selection of light-skinned, long-haired women to represent the island in international beauty contests. The slavery-rooted images did not change drastically in the immediate postslavery period.

Emancipation and Accounts of the 1834–1900 Period The actions of humanitarians, industrialists, and free traders and the violent antislavery liberationist struggles of the enslaved themselves resulted in the passing of the Emancipation Act by Britain in 1833. Emancipation did not signal the end of systems of domination, for a transitional period of “apprenticeship” was instituted. Intended to last from 1834 to 1840, this form of neoslavery ended prematurely in 1838 because of the apprentices’ resistance. Apprenticed women in particular brought the system into such disrepute by their opposition that gender became a crucial site of struggle in the process and discourse of antiapprenticeship, as the writings of Thomas Holt, Diana Paton, and Swithin Wilmot have shown.33 After apprenticeship ended, freed people left the plantations in significant numbers. More women left than men, leading writers of this period to posit several explanations for the mobility of former slaves. Later historians would focus 52

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on the inequities of freedom to explain the movement from the estates, but the contemporary writers emphasized what they (mis)interpreted as the pathological “character” of black people. The writings of such nineteenth-century figures as Thomas Carlyle, Stephen Harmer, James Anthony Froude, William Sewell, and Anthony Trollope shaped the ideological grounds of the debate about the newly freed and their relationship to labor and capital. Carlyle, Harmer, Froude, and Trollope all supported a delayed freedom and paying compensation to former slave owners for the loss of their property. These writers were also united on the reasons freed laborers abandoned the plantations. Almost without exception, they attributed the new mobility of the freed people to “the laziness and idle disposition” of black people, ignoring their tremendous industry during the period of slavery when black women formed the bulk of the field labor force and contributed to the industrialization of the core and the personal enrichment of many English people. Harmer’s letter to his brother in England, written in 1840, typified the view: “I regret to say that this once fine country is going fast to destruction through the want of continuous labour. One half of the negroes have scarcely done anything since they were made free and them that do work demand very high wages from 4/- to 5/- [4 to 5 pence] per day and then they will not do even half a day’s work for that.”34 As women formed the majority of the field gangs, Harmer’s judgment that former apprentices were lazy and unreasonable applied equally to them. Thomas Carlyle and his later “reincarnation,” Anthony Trollope, echoed similar sentiments, suggesting that the blacks’ idea of emancipation was freedom from labor to eat pumpkin (or breadfruit, in Trollope’s view).35 James Anthony Froude, who revived Long’s philosophy that slavery had been beneficial, claimed that it was emancipation and, by implication, the emancipated that ruined the Caribbean.36 Only a few contemporary writers opposed the dominant representation of the newly freed pushed by Harmer and those of his ilk. One such writer was Nancy Gardner Prince, an African American woman who visited Jamaica in the immediate postslavery period. She admitted to a group of about two hundred freed people that “I heard in America that you are lazy and that emancipation has been of no benefit to you; I wish to inform myself of the truth respecting you, and give a true account on my return.” At the end of her visit, she had to conclude differently; for after observing the hustle and bustle of the market women in Kingston, she had to admit that “they are not the stupid set of beings that they have been called; here surely we see 53

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industry; they are enterprising and quick in their perceptions . . . and quite capable of taking care of themselves.”37 William Sewell also tried to be balanced in his 1860 account of the labor situation in Jamaica, blaming the planter class for the movement of the freed people from the estates. In a later work, Douglas Hall advanced the alternative view that “the movement of the ex-slaves from the estates . . . was a protest against the inequities of early freedom.”38 But even Sewell echoed some stereotypical views about black women’s sexuality, suggesting, like W. P. Livingston, that they were guilty of promiscuity and unstable family unions.39 This perspective was also pushed by black Jamaican sociologist Orlando Patterson, who claimed the enslaved “mated promiscuously and sometimes in outright prostitution.”40

The Modern Historical Works in the Postcolonial Period: Continuity or Change? The twentieth century was an era of burgeoning nationalism when nationalist histories written in what William Green has referred to (and opposed) as the “creole genre” were being written41 and perhaps were needed, as Patrick Bryan observed, “to plant the first seeds of a collective consciousness.”42 Not surprisingly, much of the scholarship of twentieth-century professional historians, some influenced by Marxist ideology, continued to intervene in the dominative system of knowledge, questioning and replacing the Eurocentric history and master narrative imposed on the Caribbean. The works of Afrocentric Caribbean historians especially opposed the hegemonic, imperial discourse and sought, in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s terms, to develop a strategy of reading that spoke to the historically muted subject.43 For the most part, with the exception of a few works (notably those by William Green and by Philip Sherlock and Hazel Bennett),44 the later-twentieth-century works represented a break with the (white) ethnocentric views of the preceding century. Since the late 1970s, in response to the feminist movement and the emergence of “women’s history,” a few authors have also focused specifically on women and gender issues. The twentieth-century writings on black women have focused more on work, economic autonomy, social mobility, family, motherhood, and political actions. These works attested to the fact that black women continued to struggle to actualize their freedom and to resist all efforts by the elite to marginalize them socially and economically. When the plantation owners sex-typed jobs into light and 54

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heavy categories and assigned the higher-paying “heavy” tasks to men, many women voted with their feet and sought more remunerative offestate jobs or did several “light” tasks to increase their wages. Unlike middle-class women, working-class black women refused to be confined within a Victorian gender order that dichotomized work and family, private and public. As Olive Senior has pointed out, black women have never surrendered responsibility for themselves and their children to men. Moreover, they have struggled against an ideological gender system that accords low status to women’s activities.45 Denied the vote on the basis of their gender, they used their influence on male voters and participated in violent and nonviolent protests for civil rights. They were part of the “notorious” Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 that ushered in far-reaching political changes in Jamaica. Armed with the radical ideology of Marcus Garvey, many participated in the decolonization movement from the 1920s forward. As Linnette Vassell has shown, middle-class women used their pens to voice their opinions on a variety of issues that affected colonial Jamaica.46 Working-class women sought to empower themselves and gain independence from agricultural labor through land acquisition. They sent their children to school so that they could use education to achieve upward social mobility and enter the professions. Unlike the eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early-twentieth-century writers, most of the modern writers have broken with the past and painted a more positive image of black women. Unfortunately, a few still mirror lingering Eurocentric ideologies, an indication that the project of re/presentation and re/education with respect to black history is not complete. Clearly, the latest history of Jamaica—The Story of the Jamaican People— failed to rescue black women from the stereotypical representations of a past age. The absence of a gender perspective in this work is most glaring in the sections on slavery and the immediate postslavery period, where the plantation slave was presented as male. The authors were very selective in their use of the Thistlewood journals, ignoring any reference to sexual exploitation and presenting a rather benevolent picture of this brutal slave owner. That women were a fundamental part of the resistance movement and political struggles from conquest to decolonization remained undeveloped. The authors ignored most of the recent scholarship on slave emancipation, particularly on the role of gender in the emancipation process; they also failed to critique missionary politics in the free villages to which enslaved peoples resorted as an alternative to estate residence, especially the promotion of a Victorian gender ideology that served to undermine 55

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black women’s independence. Furthermore, the decolonization movement was presented as a male enterprise. Once again, the black woman has been robbed of her rightful place in history. This is part of the explanation for what many see as the lingering ideologies of slavery.

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Part Three grassroots activism

Chapter Five

Helping Ourselves Black Women and Grassroots Activism in Segregated South Africa, 1922–1952

Catherine Higgs

One day in 1944, Florence Jabavu donned Xhosa dress and left the family farm in Rabula in the eastern Cape Province of South Africa to visit Lovedale College, a Presbyterian elementary and secondary school for Africans on the outskirts of the small town of Alice.1 Jabavu was the daughter of Elijah Makiwane, who, in the late nineteenth century, became one of the first African ministers of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. She was also the wife of D. D. T. Jabavu, a political activist and professor of African languages and Latin at the South African Native College (later the University of Fort Hare) in Alice, then the premier university for Africans in southern Africa. As she walked onto the grounds of Lovedale College, Florence Jabavu was heard singing, in Xhosa, “My husband is in love with Lucy Njikelana.” Njikelana, an unmarried teacher at Lovedale College, often accompanied D. D. T. Jabavu to social functions in Alice and was not infrequently mistaken for his wife. On that day in 1944, Florence Jabavu reached the end of her tolerance. She called Lucy Njikelana outside and

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beat her with a stick. Njikelana was subsequently asked to resign from Lovedale College, and D. D. T. Jabavu took early retirement from the South African Native College.2 At first glance, the significance of this sensational story is self-evident— a beleaguered wife took revenge on the rival for her husband’s affections. On closer inspection, however, several aspects of the story are worth examining. Why did a married woman—Jabavu—feel compelled to humiliate an unmarried woman—Njikelana—publicly, even though the latter woman enjoyed less social status? The nature of the gender relations within the Jabavus’ marriage is also an intriguing part of the puzzle, as is the question of why Florence Jabavu, a woman from a prominent Christian African family who had married into another prominent Westernized family, would don Xhosa dress as part of her protest. A key piece of the puzzle is not at all evident from the story of the beating that took place that day. Jabavu and Njikelana were senior members of rival women’s organizations, founded in the eastern Cape Province in the 1920s to serve the needs of rural African women—needs largely ignored by the white officials who ran the segregated South African state and who were more concerned with securing male industrial labor.3 The governing bodies of both organizations were dominated by Christian, missioneducated women; the women they served were generally also Christian but often less educated. The African Women’s Self-Improvement Association and the Bantu Women’s Home Improvement Association sought to teach rural women farming, cooking, sewing, and other household skills, as well as basic child care and health care. In 1938, the Self-Improvement Association had fifteen branches and an unspecified number of members; the Home Improvement Association had sixty-three branches, with a total of 1,911 members. By 1944, the latter group had expanded to ninety branches. Most of the clubs were located in the Cape Province.4 In Xhosa—the first language of most members—the motto of the African Women’s Self-Improvement Association was “Zenzele,” translated in English as “Help yourself” or “Do it yourself.”5 The membership and goals of the two organizations were very similar, and over time, as those distinctions that existed began to blur, the clubs came to be commonly referred to as Zenzele Clubs.6 From the early 1920s through the early 1950s, Zenzele women sought to create for themselves and for the women they tried to help a public space and a voice in a segregated, white-controlled society in which they could neither vote nor own land. How the women of

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Zenzele defined themselves, what they meant by “help yourself,” and what they sought to accomplish are the subjects of this chapter.

Susie Yergan, Lucy Njikelana, and Florence Jabavu In Zenzele History, a pamphlet issued in the early 1990s by Mary V. Noah and V. Boniwe Moleshe, the authors placed the first Zenzele Club in the small town of Alice and identified Susie Wiseman Yergan, the wife of the African American missionary Max Yergan, as its founder. The Yergans had arrived in South Africa in 1916 as representatives of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA); Max Yergan helped found a branch of the Students’ Christian Association at the South African Native College.7 When I interviewed Boniwe Moleshe in 1998, she did not know that Susie Yergan was a black woman, and had always assumed that she was a white American.8 Both the sociologist Thomas Nyquist and the historian Anne Kelk Mager have pointed to the “western cultural bias” of Zenzele members and their concern with “exchanging skills of baking, flower arranging and first aid,” but there is a further bit of irony in this instance of historical memory lapse concerning Susie Yergan.9 In her memoir A Life’s Mosaic, Phyllis Ntantala (who attended the South African Native College in the 1920s) offered a scathing analysis of the Yergans, noting that they did not socialize with the black staff and students at the college, that they tried unsuccessfully to enroll their own children in the segregated white school in Alice (Susie Yergan ultimately taught them at home), and, most damning of all from Ntantala’s perspective, that they never learned to speak Xhosa: “The Yergans stayed in South Africa for twenty-two years, eighteen of which were spent at Fort Hare. I wonder if by the time they left they could say ‘Good morning’ in Xhosa. Dr. Yergan was supposed to be working among the people, but he never learnt their language. Puzzled, we would ask each other: ‘Why did America send the Yergans here? For what purpose?’ In the end we concluded that it was to show us, blacks and whites in South Africa, that a black American can live as a white person.”10 Ntantala’s assessment suggests that for some, the Yergans’ status as outsiders was more significant than their blackness. Ironically, the Home Improvement Association might have enjoyed a larger membership in part because its meetings were conducted in English—with all its connotations of progress and status—rather than in Xhosa.11

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However Ntantala may have remembered the Yergans, Susie Yergan did, in fact, work with local African women. In Home Improvement, her 1936 pamphlet subtitled Suggestions for Promoting the Work of the Women’s Home Improvement Association, she stated that the first “Self-Improvement Club” was founded in Peddie (about sixty miles west of Alice) in 1922. Yergan may have helped establish the Unity Home Improvement Club in Alice in 1929. She did organize the Bantu Women’s Home Improvement Association—headquartered at the South African Native College—in 1935 “to promote the work through local associations wherever the work is needed.” Its secretary for many years (and perhaps Susie Yergan’s interpreter) was Lucy Njikelana.12 In Zenzele History, Noah and Moleshe also mentioned Florence Jabavu, and they indicated that she founded a self-improvement association in 1927 with “the same aims and objectives as Zenzele.”13 Whether Jabavu’s African Women’s Self-Improvement Association was connected to the 1922 Self-Improvement Club founded at Peddie is unclear, but here again we find a small lapse of historical memory. The motto “Zenzele” appears to have been Florence Jabavu’s from the outset.14 Critical of Susie Yergan, Ntantala praised Jabavu’s “depth and breadth of intellect: a woman in a man’s world!” Yet Ntantala also criticized Jabavu, who served as the warden for the few female students at the South African Native College in the early 1920s: “As a warden . . . she was a complete failure. She had no interest in us, her wards, nor in our welfare, and no faith in what she and her husband were doing at Fort Hare. Mrs. Jabavu told us many times that we should not imagine ourselves in the position she was in.”15 Florence Jabavu’s caution was reasonable; opportunities for African women were limited in the early to mid-twentieth century. Educated women found work as teachers, nurses, and social workers; less educated and uneducated women worked as agricultural and unskilled laborers and as domestic servants.16 Ntantala’s assessment of Florence Jabavu’s malaise was not inaccurate, as other informants have confirmed. Nevertheless, Jabavu directed her frustrations outward and reached out to the broader community with her African Women’s Self-Improvement Association.17 The competition between Yergan’s Bantu Women’s Home Improvement Association and Jabavu’s African Women’s Self-Improvement Association had an undeniably personal component to it. Yergan’s secretary, Lucy Njikelana, was the lover of Jabavu’s husband. As forceful and intelligent a woman as Ntantala painted her, Jabavu had first tried to divorce her hus-

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band in 1925 (before his affair with Njikelana) but was dissuaded from doing so by her father, who feared the social repercussions for both his daughter and his son-in-law.18 Though the couple reconciled, the Jabavu marriage remained a rocky one. Like the marriages of many African women (Christian and non-Christian), it was arranged. Unlike the marriages of Xhosa-speaking couples in the Ciskei and Transkei regions of the eastern Cape Province (which, as Mager and historian Sean Redding have documented, were characterized by unequal power relations), the Jabavus’ marriage and those of many educated, Christian African men at least in theory were committed to the idea that “an educated man must have an educated wife.”19 Florence Jabavu had graduated from Lovedale College, taught there briefly before her marriage, and studied music at Kingsmead College in Birmingham, England.20 Unmarried women, whether educated or uneducated, encountered considerable prejudice, both social and financial. “In the absence of an alternative discourse and solidarity,” they were, according to Mager, “independent women without a community.” Njikelana sought her community in the Home Improvement Association, where her role as secretary gave her a public voice, though she may have “remained the wayward little sister . . . of [the] respectable married women who controlled” the clubs. On those grounds, she should have presented little threat to Florence Jabavu, and perhaps she did not. It is conceivable that Jabavu was forcibly reminding Njikelana of her lesser status when she beat her, though it is difficult to reconcile the beating with the respectable demeanor favored by most Christian African women.21 That Florence Jabavu donned Xhosa dress to confront Lucy Njikelana makes more sense when one realizes that Jabavu considered Susie Yergan a foreign interloper and her secretary—by extension—a sellout. Yergan could not speak Xhosa and thus could not, in Florence Jabavu’s opinion, represent the concerns of African women.22 By adopting Xhosa dress for the African Women’s Self-Improvement Association on special occasions, Jabavu was drawing a fundamental distinction between the two organizations. In encouraging the wearing of what was then considered “traditional” dress—braided wraparound skirts, blankets, and turbans, as well as handmade beadwork—Jabavu was attempting to encourage pride in the history of the Xhosa-speaking peoples.23 By the early 1940s, after Susie Yergan had returned to the United States, members of the Bantu Women’s Home Improvement Association had also taken up the practice

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of wearing Xhosa dress, further blurring the line between the two organizations.24

Self-Improvement and Home Improvement The wearing of Xhosa dress by the Christian and Westernized members of the Self-Improvement and Home Improvement Associations raises the issue of how they were defining themselves in class and ethnic terms. The adoption of a standardized Xhosa dress was ideally intended to downplay both class and ethnic differences between members. Generally, rural members embroidered skirts, blankets, and purses and made beadwork for members living in towns, whose purchase of these goods provided a valuable source of income for the rural members. Members’ Xhosa dress followed a set pattern, with the further intent of minimizing ethnic distinctions among the Xhosa-speaking (Xhosa, Thembu, Mpondo, Mpondomise, Mfengu) members. Florence Jabavu was Mfengu, as was Lucy Njikelana; the Mfengu had once been clients of the Xhosa proper.25 Every effort was made to encourage sisterhood and to minimize differences in education, status, and ethnicity. The twenty-three women I interviewed in 1998 insisted that the policy was successful. Thirteen had been teachers, three had worked as nurses, four had worked as cooks or domestic servants, one had been a factory worker, one was still working as a secretary, and one was a businesswoman. Nine identified themselves as Mfengu. Whether they were interviewed individually or in a mixed group of professionals and nonprofessionals, all praised the lack of class and ethnic tension in the organization.26 While one must respect one’s informants’ interpretations, it seems likely that there was some class tension within the organizations. Though many of the women I interviewed had retired to rural areas, all had worked in towns or cities for extended periods. During a group interview with two teachers and a nurse, Alice Ngqase, who had worked as a cook in the small city of Queenstown, repeatedly said, “I thank you educated people”—an assertion that suggests class awareness, if not necessarily class tension.27 A Zenzele member interviewed by Nyquist in the 1970s observed of the domestic servants in the organization: “We are interested in learning how to do things in the most modern way possible, but we have almost no contact with Europeans. The servants work in European homes and can tell us

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what is being done.”28 Nevertheless, even domestic servants (whether in the 1940s or in the 1970s) enjoyed a better standard of living than did many women living in impoverished rural areas.29 That rural women made the Xhosa clothing for women living in towns was, in itself, a class statement. Indeed, a certain noblesse oblige pervades the archival record, especially for the Home Improvement Association, for which the documentary evidence is richer. Writing in a 1938 report, Lucy Njikelana observed: “Most of our branches are in rural areas. It is indeed very interesting to work among these people, as they show a great desire [to] learn and to improve.”30 In 1939, Senator C. H. Malcomess wrote to Secretary for Native Affairs D. L. Smit to support a grant application from the Home Improvement Association. Of members’ concerns, Malcomess observed: “The Government seems to be afraid of breaking [the] tribal system [and members feel] that the Government evidently does not realise that urbanized Natives with their small wages and rents to pay cannot help others. . . . Having adopted the Christian faith [they] have dropped tribal customs.” The Home Improvement Association was awarded a grant of £25, but of greater significance is the self-definition of the members as Christian and urban.31 The yearly meetings of the Home Improvement Association included a postchurch “beauty contest” for the best white Sunday dress. If members saw any contradiction between their self-identification as Christian and urban and wearing “tribal” Xhosa dress at the opening ceremonies of their annual meetings, it was not reflected in the archival record. Further acknowledgment of class awareness came from Cecilia Nduna, who worked as a teacher in Grahamstown from the 1940s through the 1970s. She referred to Linda Mahlasela, the longtime president of the Grahamstown Home Improvement Association, as a “snob.”32 A photograph of a well-dressed Mahlasela serving pastries off a silver tray to rather more humbly dressed inhabitants of Grahamstown’s African township would seem to support Nduna’s assertion.33 Writing to seek the support of Senator Margaret Ballinger in 1944, Mahlasela, whose husband was a principal at an African school in Grahamstown, seemed very aware of her status. She praised the efforts of “African women to help uplift their more backward people” and noted the “marked improvement in many African homes.” She added, “A lot more could be done to educate the backward masses who through ignorance continue to live that life which cannot help build a healthy progressive people.”34

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Class awareness extended to other organizations catering to African women—the prayer meetings commonly called “Manyanos” and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). Educated women tended to shy away from the Manyanos, where they were criticized for their lack of emotion at prayer. Nyquist has argued that the YWCA generally attracted younger women, but Esther Mqhayi, who had worked in a factory in Port Elizabeth, described it as an organization for elite women, whereas “Zenzele was for ordinary women”—again rejecting the idea of class tensions in that organization. Of more significance, though, is the fact that the YWCA opened its first branch for African women only in 1951. A YWCA branch opened in Grahamstown in 1959. Cecilia Nduna noted that while the multiracial YWCA did invite Zenzele members to its functions, it ironically criticized Zenzele as “not Christian enough” because it excluded white women from its functions.35 By the late 1950s, after the introduction of apartheid and its extreme segregationist legislation, Zenzele’s policy might be seen as a reflection of growing race consciousness on the part of members, though both associations had been exclusively African from the outset. Identifying ethnic tensions (as opposed to class tensions) in the SelfImprovement and Home Improvement Associations is a more difficult task. For the period before 1950, it is not possible to specify the ethnicity of most members from the archival record. In 1998, two old friends— Cecilia Nduna, an Mfengu, and Gladys Makhupula, a Xhosa—dismissed the issue as irrelevant. Before 1950, however, there was considerably more tension between the Xhosa and the Mfengu, and the issue would have been relevant to Florence Jabavu.36 What Jabavu was doing in the eastern Cape Province from the 1920s through the 1940s was attempting to construct a universal Xhosa identity (inclusive of all Xhosa-speakers), in much the same way that the black intelligentsia was trying to reconstruct a Zulu identity in Natal Province. Of this Christian Zulu elite, the historian Shula Marks has argued: “The ‘new’ African was too much a product of the mission station and western culture to give unreserved approval to an unconditional return to ‘tribal’ life.”37 Like her Zulu counterpart, John Dube, Florence Jabavu borrowed from Xhosa “tradition”—sisterhood, cooperation, and “traditional” clothing— and discarded that which conflicted with her status as an educated woman and the daughter of a Christian minister. The adoption of “traditional” clothing shows the malleability of the very concept of “tradition.” Much of

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precolonial Xhosa clothing was made of tanned cowhides; the Xhosa dress adopted by members of the Self-Improvement and Home Improvement Associations was generally made out of white cotton. Jabavu may also have been influenced by her estranged husband (also an Mfengu), who stressed ethnic unity and asserted that he was a “Xhosa proper . . . born in Xhosaland.”38 Unlike her husband, who sought white allies as he worked for increased political rights for Africans, Florence Jabavu’s Self-Improvement Association was for African women only. More radical than her husband, she despised white assumptions of superiority and strove to help African women help themselves.39 In this sense, she was a nationalist, albeit one without a vote or a recognized political voice. If members of the SelfImprovement Association agreed with Florence Jabavu’s position, however, they were cautious in how they expressed it. According to a 1938 Daily Dispatch article, they acknowledged that while “they had much to learn from the European and they were grateful for any white hand that was stretched out to help them . . . they were beginning to realize that the real effort must, of necessity, come from themselves.”40 What, then, did the motto “Help yourself” mean, and what did the SelfImprovement and Home Improvement Associations seek to accomplish? Were the two associations essentially cultural organizations full of educated African women—ladies bountiful—dedicated to “preserving indigenous cultural traditions,” as well as to the “European” art of flower arranging, or were they something more?41 Both the African Women’s Self-Improvement Association and the Bantu Women’s Home Improvement Association sought to teach rural women how to improve their subsistence farming and cooking skills and educate them about household cleanliness, basic child care, and health care. They gave practical advice—not to wean children on coffee and tea (in an attempt to reduce the infant mortality rate)—and taught practical skills, such as how to make soap out of ox fat and how to cook pumpkin (a staple) in a variety of palatable ways.42 In a concession to the real poverty that many women faced, association members also tried to teach women “to find ways of making valuable use of what, under ordinary circumstances, is regarded as the waste products of the home, e.g. the making of covers from old sacks and bits of material, etc.”43 In effect, the members of the Self-Improvement and Home Improvement Associations tried to redress the negative aspects of “Western civilization”—the reliance on false necessities (coffee and tea) and the obsession with cleanliness, for instance—with homegrown solutions.

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Projects for which the associations sought government funding included teaching women how to raise poultry and pigs for sale, how to use cow manure to fertilize maize fields, and how to grow nutritious vegetables, which the women were encouraged to keep for home consumption. Beginning in the late 1930s, the associations cooperated in mounting a joint vegetable and stock exhibit at the yearly Fort Hare agricultural show. The Zenzele gardens were praised in a 1939 letter to the secretary for native affairs from the chief native commissioner of King William’s Town, and in an article in the East London Daily Dispatch.44 It is interesting to note that many of the women interviewed in 1998 still kept vegetable gardens and considered the gardens among the finest accomplishments of the associations. Yet one must also acknowledge that the associations’ activities fell firmly into the missionary-constructed cult of domesticity examined in the work of Jacklyn Cock.45 Balancing the associations’ self-help agendas were aims stamped even more explicitly with the missionary concern for “moralizing leisure time.”46 The constitution of the Self-Improvement Association, for example, proclaimed that clubs should “encourage sports and games to occupy the leisure time of the community, especially the youth of the village” and in addition make available “facilities for general improvement, e.g. reading, development of flower gardens, decorative tree planting, visiting progressive places [and] attending shows and meetings.”47 Just how rural African women who labored as subsistence farmers might find time for these last activities was a question left unanswered. It may seem at first glance that the associations had swallowed the missionary model of African womanhood whole and sought in addition to have all African women aspire to the middle class. In a 1928 article titled “Bantu Home Life,” Florence Jabavu did indeed condemn many of the social practices of the peoples of the eastern Cape Province—including witchcraft, polygamy, lobola (or bridewealth), and male and female initiation rites— and she praised the positive effects of Christian missionaries in introducing idealism, morality, and progress.48 The Home Improvement Association also addressed similar concerns in its annual reports and funding applications,49 but Jabavu’s praise for the impact of European settlers on Africans was not without its limits. She noted, for instance, that for African women before the intrusion of European settlers, the “saving grace” of the existing social institutions was that there was “no subjection in economic life. . . . The system of polygamy was such that each woman had to be the executive manager of her household” and had to be completely self-accountable. In addition, she observed, women worked together 68

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on large projects, such as thatching houses and gathering water and wood.50 By advocating progress at the same time that she romanticized the African past, Florence Jabavu found herself trapped in the classic ambiguity of the black intelligensia, which, as Marks has argued, struggled constantly with the “tensions between what was seen as valuable in African culture, recently discovered by the new science of anthropology, and their own selfdefinition as a respectable Christian bourgeoisie.”51 What the self-improvement clubs were designed to do was to restore a degree of economic independence to African women, especially in rural areas. That the restoration could not be total in a state that in 1928 allotted only 7 percent of its land to 85 percent of its people was acknowledged by Florence Jabavu: “Government legislation on land questions together with the natural increase of population with its concomitant of congestion has resulted in landlessness which has in turn resulted in the homelessness of many people and the degradation of the ideals of home life.”52 Lack of access to land represented the real obstacle to independence—not just for women but for all Africans. As Redding and Mager have documented, lack of access to land was a major factor prompting the migration of both men and women from rural areas beginning as early as the 1910s.53 The 1913 Natives Land Act had segregated Africans on 7 percent of South Africa’s land and effectively blocked them from renting or purchasing additional land in the Transvaal, Orange Free State, and Natal Provinces. The act was, however, declared invalid in the Cape Province in 1917, when a successful legal challenge established that denying African men access to land jeopardized their franchise rights. Yet what the law could not achieve for white farmers, easier access to capital could. In 1916, African men owned less than 0.5 percent of the Cape Province’s land, and they occupied another 8.5 percent in the form of reserves.54 By the mid-1920s, in certain areas of the Transkei region of the eastern Cape Province, newly married couples were unable to secure arable land because none was available.55 By the mid-1940s, in the Ciskei region of the eastern Cape Province, “30 percent of inhabitants were landless and stockless, and 60 percent had five or fewer cattle.”56 Florence Jabavu’s assessment of the impact of labor migration was curiously naive: “Men, owing to their migration to industrial centers, obtain a broadened view of life . . . women, being tied down, tend to become narrow in vision and interest.” Yet a limited worldview was the least of the problems faced by African men and women who became labor migrants.57 African men migrated to white-owned farms and mines and to urban 69

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centers in increasing numbers to earn cash wages to supplement family incomes and to pay taxes. As a result, women left in rural areas found themselves paying taxes and rents for land and buildings that they did not legally own and for which they were not legally liable.58 Existing marriages were strained by the absence of men and the lack of money, and rates of divorce and desertion increased. By the late 1940s, few men could afford the cattle necessary to meet the lobola payments made to a woman’s natal family before marriage. The institution of marriage was increasingly undermined by the dearth of land and the inability of men to acquire cattle as markers of status and wealth. In the absence of these incentives to marriage, men and women entered into informal relationships. The rate of illegitimate births increased, and the status of women decreased. Faced with limited options in rural areas, many women also became migrant laborers, further destabilizing rural African families.59 Both the Self-Improvement and Home Improvement Associations tended to focus on the effects of landlessness and labor migration, rather than addressing their causes. Members did not petition the government for more land or for tax relief. On the gender tensions that were a by-product of landlessness and labor migration, the associations were silent. Men were excluded from both organizations, and the associations’ desire to give women a voice left open the question of to whom and in what circumstances they would be speaking. Part of the reason for this silence may lie in what Marks has observed of the small African middle class in Natal Province in the 1920s and 1930s: “For all their preoccupation with the ‘traditional,’ a call to the past was intended to bolster more mundane preoccupations. As small landowners and petty entrepreneurs, [they] had a concern with rural ‘development.’”60 While women could not own land, many of their husbands and male relatives did—Florence Jabavu ran the family farm at Rabula for many years.61 As Redding has argued, small-scale commercial agriculture allowed many women to acquire capital for reinvestment or for new ventures such as “eating houses or coffee shops.”62 Jabavu’s concern to halt the “degradation of home life” may have been influenced by her own need for agricultural laborers. Her activities and those of both associations were thus by their very nature fraught, as Marks has contended, with contradiction and ambiguity. By the early 1950s, the paper trail on the African Women’s SelfImprovement Association largely disappeared. Florence Jabavu’s health

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was poor, and she died in 1951. Lucy Njikelana retired to East London in 1944, where she would die five years later.63 There is no indication that the breach between the two women was ever healed, though Jabavu did reconcile with her husband. Between the two associations, however, there was evidence of cooperation and interaction—in the joint vegetable exhibitions beginning in 1939 and in the Home Improvement Association’s decision to adopt Xhosa dress at its meetings in the early 1940s. Nevertheless, the Bantu Women’s Home Improvement Association— which had close to two thousand members in the mid-1940s—fell on hard times, the result of overexpansion and a lack of funds. In addition, its focus may have shifted from development to cultural concerns: when Linda Mahlasela applied for a grant from the Department of Social Welfare in 1948, she was turned down on the grounds that “no rehabilitation work [for] needy people is being done” and “the club is functioning as a cultural society.”64 An association conference planned for 1951 was canceled, and when delegates met again in 1952, representatives of only twenty-two branches attended. In 1959, the apartheid government created the Ciskei Bantustan, in theory an independent homeland for the Xhosa-speaking peoples of the Ciskei region of the eastern Cape Province. The remaining self-improvement and home improvement clubs in the area amalgamated as the Ciskei Zenzele Women’s Association in 1961, marking a period of revival for the organizations, albeit under dramatically changed circumstances. After 1968, when the white state granted political independence to the Ciskei (which nevertheless remained financially dependent on the apartheid regime), Zenzele members found themselves increasingly subject to the homeland government’s control. In 1985, members living in towns broke with the main organization to found the Cape Zenzele Women’s Association. Neither organization flourished, though both limped along. In 1998, Cecilia Nduna and Tandi Sondlo declared, “Zenzele ufile—Zenzele is dead.”65 From the early 1920s through the early 1950s, however, Zenzele had been very much alive. There was much that members did not see, or chose not to see: class and ethnic tensions, as well as the effects of labor migration and the attendant gender tensions. Nor did members directly confront the legislative limits imposed by the segregated white state. Their agenda, to preserve “traditional” culture on the one hand and teach flower arranging on the other, could seem contradictory, and was undeniably conservative.

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Their efforts to improve the health and diet of rural women and children were clearly laudatory. In helping women to help themselves, members of Zenzele gave a voice to the women they sought to help and, ultimately, to themselves.

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Chapter Six

African American Clubwomen and the Indianapolis NAACP, 1912–1914 E a rl i n e R a e Fe r g u s o n We have not been sufficiently aroused to forget trivial differences that exist so we are in small groups struggling against a division of opinion. . . . It will take a torrent that will almost sweep us from our feet before we will band as one power. —Sallie B. Henderson, Indianapolis Branch secretary, NAACP, 1914

The decades around the turn of the twentieth century witnessed a flurry of activism as Americans of all classes struggled to come to terms with the myriad ways in which urbanization and industrialization changed their lives. Across the nation, progressive reformers organized in groups that reflected the diversity of the American experience. Between 1880 and the mid-1920s, women throughout the United States created single-sex organizations aimed at social change, causing this period to become known as the “women’s era.” An estimated two million women from differing backgrounds came together in organizations aimed initially at social benevolence and self-improvement and ultimately at political change. By the end of the woman’s era, approximately fifty thousand of those two million were African American clubwomen.1 African American clubwomen were found everywhere—in urban centers, small towns, and rural areas. This chapter will examine the work of the black clubwomen in Indianapolis—particularly their struggle as organizers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 73

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(NAACP), mobilizing the black community to deal with the “torrent of abuses” that Sallie Henderson noted in her 1914 annual report to the national officers in New York.2 Their story is, in many ways, representative of the experiences of sister clubwomen in the larger urban communities of the Northeast and the South, as well as in the small towns of the Midwest. In the clubs and institutions that they created, in their goals, and in their interactions with other black community groups, these women shared a commonality of mission and leadership style. The discrimination that Henderson reported in Indianapolis was part of the declining political, economic, legal, and social condition of African Americans between 1880 and 1920. At that time, Jim Crowism and lynching were on the rise, accompanied by race riots in communities throughout the United States. Racial ideologies found renewed popular, scientific, and political support, and blacks found themselves locked into earning a living in tenant farming or sharecropping or in domestic or personal service. Black children attended school less frequently than their white counterparts, and when they did, it was in inferior facilities. These conditions prompted black leaders to espouse the values of racial solidarity and self-help and to form national organizations aimed at improving the declining social conditions and protesting the waning political rights of African Americans. The internal divisions Henderson reported—divisions of class and gender—existed in African American communities nationwide. In the debate that gripped their communities over how to bring about progressive change, black clubwomen offered an alternative to the accommodationist and protest strategies of black leaders Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Black women leaders used both approaches, depending upon the circumstances. Their flexibility of approach was related to the multiple and compounded identities of black women as African Americans, Americans, women, mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and more. Historian Darlene Clark Hine has challenged Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness as being male-inspired and has asserted that it does not explain black women’s experiences and identity: “One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn assunder.”3 Unlike Du Bois, for whom double consciousness was a weakness and a dilemma to be solved, Hine sees the multiplicity of black women’s consciousness as a strength that fostered perseverance. I would propose that same multiplicity enabled other potencies for black women—

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flexibility and the ability to adapt solutions to problems and organizational missions when necessary. Drawing on a tradition of communal self-help that long predated the so-called woman’s era, African American clubwomen created institutions to ensure community survival—hospitals, business training programs, neighborhood cooperatives, homes for the aged, young women’s protective homes, libraries, and kindergartens. The institutions they established were commonly called “benevolent” or “charity” groups. Yet the very process of creating those institutions thrust black clubwomen into the political arena. Members of local clubs in communities across the country joined the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) to petition legislators and actively oppose Jim Crowism, lynching, and economic and legal discrimination. They also worked to influence the black male vote and on behalf of women’s suffrage.4 When we examine local NAACP branch records across the nation, we find that the ranks of organizing memberships were replete with black women. Clearly, these women were the backbone of the organizing impulse for local NAACP branches throughout the country. What was remarkable about the political activism of black Hoosier clubwomen in Indianapolis is found in the story of that town’s branch of the NAACP—which functioned for fourteen months (from 1912 through 1914) as a woman’s club, after which men were invited to join. In Indianapolis, local branch organizers had been well trained for their task through work in church associations and secular clubs. Between 1880 and 1917, more than three thousand African American women in Indianapolis worked together in roughly five hundred organizations that crisscrossed the socioeconomic categories commonly used in class identification.5 Those associations suggest that class status was not so easily identified, nor did it play a major role in community interactions. Before 1920, the work of black women’s clubs embraced five distinct categories: literary study, social welfare, leisure activity, religious fellowship, and political activism. Alliances in several large federations at the city and state levels consolidated the women’s assets in coalitions that enabled accomplishments that each club might not have achieved through solitary action. The experience of black Hoosier women coming together to develop strategies for survival and political action through club activism was not extraordinary. Nationwide, black clubwomen joined hands in work to meet community needs. In 1912, the Woman’s Civic Club (WCC) provided the organizing impe-

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tus for a local NAACP branch. The WCC had an organizational history that dated back to 1894, when it began as the Idle Hands Needle Club (IHNC). Minnie Scott, Mary Cable, and Ada Harris guided its founding. Members of the IHNC used varied strategies to collect from the general public the means to provide fuel in winter and food and clothes for their poorer neighbors. The club also helped to furnish and maintain a room in the basement of Flower Mission Hospital to care for tubercular black patients. In 1907, the IHNC changed its name to the Woman’s Civic Club.6 By 1912, Scott, Cable, and Harris were established community leaders able to tap into and use an existing web of networks with other women’s organizations in the community. Cable commanded respect through her position as a primary school teacher, principal, and trainer for other black educators in the Indianapolis public school system. Ada Harris brought to club work an intimate knowledge of the city’s black community due to her own experiences as a public school teacher, an officer in one of Corinthian Baptist’s church clubs, and a reporter and compositor for two of the city’s black newspapers (the Indianapolis World and the Indianapolis Freeman). During the branch’s first fourteen months of operation, the WCC, a group of women with a proven track record of eighteen years as community leaders, initially limited NAACP membership to women. Nationwide, black women were instrumental in the founding of local branches of the NAACP. In most of those branches, however, African American women were typically limited to fund-raising activities. Seldom were they officers, as was the case in Indianapolis.7 The organizing body of the Indianapolis NAACP elected Mary Cable as its first president. All of the other officers and executive board members were also women and included Lucinda Hayden, Beulah Porter, Ella Clay, Caroline Barnes, Cora C. Willis, Clara Perry, Mary Anderson, Louise Royall, Etta Simms, Sallie Henderson, Fannie Brown, Emma Floyd, and Sadie Douglass Hill.8 Their presence on the board gave the local branch access to a network of black organizations, which would prove beneficial to the branch’s membership drives, data collection, and fund-raising. For instance, through only three women leaders (Porter, Clay, and Hill), the local NAACP could access the resources and expertise of men and women in the Anti-Lynching League, the Epworth League, the Browning Literary Society, the Lincoln Hospital Club, the Bethel’s Ladies Alliance, the Flanner Guild, the Universal Club, the Woman’s Improvement Club, the Bethel Literary Society, the YMCA Auxiliary, the Elizabeth Carter Council, the Phyllis Wheatley Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Topaz Cluster,

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the Douglass Literary Society, the Alpha Home Association, the Shakespearean Society, the Apple Blossom Club, and the Mary Campbell Missionary Mite Society, and the Industrial School for Boys & Girls.9 At the beginning, the goals set forth in the constitution of the newly organized local branch followed the model of the philanthropic work commonly undertaken by African American women’s clubs. Woman’s Civic Club members solicited contributions from the black community to open and support a day nursery. They collected books to start a library in “a certain rural district” and set up an educational fund. To promote the NAACP’s integrationist agenda, WCC women also campaigned weekly for new branch members and subscribers to Crisis magazine, and they urged newcomers to join them in action to “remove prejudice and discrimination.”10 Few whites, however, joined them in that cause. The black community became the clubwomen’s primary base of support. NAACP women reported to the black community in a column published weekly in the Indianapolis Recorder. In “Woman’s Civic Club Notes” (“WCC Notes”), they resolutely reported local and national instances of discrimination in hopes of arousing Indianapolis’s black community to action—to foster a “spirit of unrest” and activism akin to that in black communities in other cities.11 Between 1913 and 1914, “WCC Notes” directed local citizens’ attention to the issues of segregation, consumer power, the role of leisure activities, interracial marriages, gender, and civil rights. In addition, WCC women proudly announced the names of new branch members each week. By the time men assumed leadership in the group in 1914, the local branch had more than three hundred women members.12 The pursuit of justice and equal rights dominated local branch activism. Social discrimination was common in Indianapolis long before the turn of the twentieth century.13 An 1885 Indiana civil rights statute denied service in public accommodations and recognized race-based discrimination, but it had never been consistently enforced. Prior to 1920, unlike the case in border cities such as Louisville and St. Louis, there was no movement in Indianapolis to establish large segregated public institutions for African Americans. Elementary schools in Indianapolis were segregated, but, until 1927, qualified African American students attended any high school of their choosing in the city.14 The first two decades of the twentieth century, however, saw the city increasingly exclude its black citizens from employment, parks, stores, private hospitals, and restaurants and confine them to segregated galleries in theaters.15

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In “WCC Notes,” local NAACP women routinely pointed out the relationship between the social character and the political character of their integrationist thrust. In January 1913, Louise Butcher, a clubwoman who lived just outside Indianapolis, spoke to the social character of the local struggle for civil rights in a letter to the Indianapolis Recorder. A week earlier, another local resident—a “gentlemen . . . whom [she had] reasons to believe [was] white”—had written a letter to the Recorder in response to a notice in “WCC Notes” about discrimination at the American Five and Ten Cent Store. The store refused to sell sodas to African Americans because they would have to drink from the same glasses as white customers. Struggling against the “division of opinion” and insufficient arousal of her community (problems that Henderson would report the following year), Butcher questioned why some blacks continued to buy other items from that same store. She concluded that it was because “some of us like to be kicked.”16 Then Butcher turned her attention to the white correspondent, who had stated in his letter that “whenever the Negro [became] an independent, peaceful, law abiding race, it [would then] be better for him.” Noting that this was the typical response to black demands for the rights of citizenship, she observed that whites thought “‘the colored people are always going where they have no business.’ Is it true, that they should not purchase what they want at the 5 and 10 cent store or enjoy a picture advertised to the public?” Butcher herself did not care to drink at public soda fountains because she was as “equally afraid of contracting disease as the whites. Simply because their skin is white and lips pink, does not prevent germs from resting on them, just the same as if they were crowded out of every chance to make an honest living [which is] given to any kind of foreigner and he sends his money to the old country. We do not want social equality for we love our race too well, but we do want fair play.”17 Louise Butcher’s letter to the editor tapped a powerful force in black women’s activism—their rejection of ideological justifications underlying race, gender, and class oppression. At the end of the “WCC Notes” column that contained Butcher’s letter, local NAACP women commended her for her “protesting spirit” and suggested she continue the good fight by organizing an NAACP branch in her hometown of Marion.18 Woman’s Civic Club women saw their struggle as part of the wider effort to secure human dignity, and they identified political action as a means to human empowerment. Their understanding resonated with the

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humanist vision expressed by black educator Anna Julia Cooper in an 1893 speech on the status of black women, presented at the World’s Congress of Representative Women: We take our stand on the solidarity of humanity, the oneness of life, and the unnaturalness and injustice of all special favoritisms, whether of sex, race, country, or condition. . . . The colored woman feels that woman’s cause is one and universal; and that . . . not till race, color, sex, and condition are seen as accidents, and not the substance of life; not till the universal title of humanity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is conceded to be inalienable to all; not till then is woman’s lesson taught and woman’s cause won—not the white woman’s nor the black woman’s, not the red woman’s but the cause of every man and of every woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrong.19 NAACP work attracted activists from the WCC and other clubs not only because the organization was a national vehicle through which they might “fight for human rights, regardless of race and color” but also because the NAACP “called for real democracy, social and economic justice, and a respect for women which [was] not confined to women of one privileged class.”20 The struggle for civil rights was a primary goal of WCC women as branch members, and the issue of respect for black women struck very close to home. Local branch president Mary Cable and WCC women also tried to influence the black male vote by surveying various candidates’ stands on different issues and then informing the black community of the results of their polling. They also publicized the NAACP’s position on candidates for city and court offices. Just before local elections in 1913, “WCC Notes” promoted the practicality of racial solidarity and urged black Indianapolitans to vote as a block so “they could make the balance of power in the coming city election [and] elect city officials who would pledge themselves to see that the Negro [would] receive justice in the courts and that discrimination [would] cease in public places.”21 Hoping to sway voters away from two of the candidates they had polled, WCC women condemned a local judge and the city parks commissioner as “enemies of the Negro”: the judge had penalized a black woman in a domestic abuse case that came before his court, and the parks commissioner had refused to let black children into public playgrounds.22 The decision to bar African American

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children from the public parks also led the local WCC branch to challenge the enforcement of an 1885 civil rights statute in one of the first suits the branch pursued in the courts. Discrimination in shops, parks, playgrounds, and schools directly affected the daily activities of black women, who often initiated challenges to that discrimination.23 In 1913, the Indianapolis NAACP helped local clubwoman Ella Croker (also a Browning Literary Society and Woman’s Improvement Club member) file two complaints of discrimination.24 The first complaint was against the Murat Theater; the second was against a local amusement company that owned Fairview Park, where she had been denied entrance as a member of a nature-study class while attempting to fulfill one of the requirements for her work as a public school teacher. The national NAACP counsel advised Croker that each act was indeed in violation of Indiana civil rights laws and helped her obtain legal counsel in Indianapolis. Beyond this, the exact disposition of the Fairview Park suit is unknown. Croker’s case against the Murat Theater was withdrawn on a technicality because the theater’s management had registered under a “fictitious name.”25 In the fourteen months that the Woman’s Civic Club was at its helm, the local NAACP routinely sent women to local theaters, parks, and stores to investigate rumored discriminatory practices. As long as the NAACP had tenure as a women’s club, local newspapers invariably reported on its activities—and membership grew. The local branch supported its campaigns and activities through a combination of dues paid by members, fund-raising campaigns, and entertainments presented to the community. By tapping into a coalition of networks created by black women’s organizations, they enabled individual clubs to undertake projects beyond the means of their existing budgets as single groups. Clubwomen were experts at raising funds internally—that is, within the black community. The most successful groups used their own intimate knowledge of the community in a way that outsiders could not. The local NAACP’s annual report for 1913 indicated that the women had collected $260.50 for expenses and a legal fund, had sponsored seven public and two parlor meetings, and had sold “in other parts of the city” subscriptions to the magazine Crisis.26 Earlier that year, Lillian Thomas Fox, founder of the Indiana State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs and an organizing NAACP member, had written, directed, and produced The Temple of Progress, an allegorical parody of race advancement. That production raised $22.05, which the WCC women shared with Fox’s group,

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the Woman’s Improvement Club.27 No admission was charged at public meetings; but the local branch accepted “a free silver offering.”28 As a way to promote black culture, WCC women also invited African American artists—such as W. E. Scott, who was trained at the Herron Art Museum in Indianapolis—to public meetings, where the artists often donated their work for exhibition and sale. Funds raised from the sale of the art not only supported the women’s efforts but also gained a wider audience for the artists’ work.29 African American clubwomen were very creative in the kinds of leisure activities they offered the black community in their fund-raising campaigns: silk-stocking socials; flower fetes; campaign entertainments in election years; trolley rides; moving-picture shows; lemon, strawberry, and ice cream socials; guessing and quilting contests; Abe Martin weddings; and shadow-picture shows.30 These events expanded the range of the black community’s leisure activities and helped cement the ties that bound people together in a communal base that would support concerted political activism. In January 1913, Mary Cable articulated the importance of leisure in the black community: The Negro does his share of the world’s work. He may only be allowed the play. It is a fallacy to say that because the white man owns everything, he can, or should, treat us as he pleases. Who helps him to own everything? Who digs the foundations for his theaters? Who helps to lay the street car tracks? Who keeps his streets in repair? Who carries the brick and mortar for his buildings? The Negro does most of this rough work, and his small wages goes back into food and clothing to enable him to do more work. The Negro, perhaps more than any other race, need[s] play or recreation.31 Fund-raising events fulfilled an important leisure and recreational need, and they contributed to and reinforced the sense of community. In a sense, through leisure activities, black clubwomen created the community that was the NAACP’s foundation. In 1914, after building a solid base of membership and community support, Woman’s Civic Club women opened the local NAACP’s doors to admit men to their ranks. In January of that year, Cable had written to May Childs Nerny, secretary at the national NAACP office, that branch work was very tiring. In fact, she was that day “sitting [in her] office worn almost to a whisper.” WCC women, she said, had “worked so hard for the success

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and we are delighted with the outcome but it is too much for me with my school work and while I shall never cease struggling I do hope we can get a male president soon . . . for they have ever so much more leisure time than we.”32 Although Cable wrote to Nerny of her hope that men would soon assume leadership of the local branch because she was overworked and tired, she looked for men’s participation as much because she believed in the necessity for the community to “band as one” as for any other reason. That is why WCC women were willing to relinquish their autonomy and open the branch to responsible male membership. Cable, however, was probably “worn to a whisper” for a variety of reasons. Her branch work and her duties as a school principal and teacher/trainer were taxing enough, but her energies were also sapped by the splintered community and the fact that men in that community tried to suborn her authority in the local branch. As she told Nerny, some of these men “might not have good influence on the branch.” Nerny confided to Cable that several men had gone over her head and communicated directly with Joel Spingarn, the national NAACP chairman, about the branch. Nerny suggested to Cable that “this would be a good time to decide future plans for the branch, particularly as to just what way the men and women can pull together.”33 Perhaps Cable was concerned that NAACP work was making her less effective in her positions as principal of P.S. 24 and director of education for new black teachers.34 Her reason for inviting men to assume NAACP leadership positions was probably something more complex than being overwhelmed by all the different responsibilities that she and her organization undertook. For WCC women, NAACP work meant entering the formal political sphere of activism, an arena that was increasingly reserved to men. In the early twentieth century, there was an increased masculinization of the notion of race, which played out in the search for solutions to the problems faced by black communities. Clubwomen were community leaders, but their leadership was limited by community and social norms—limitations that they themselves accepted. Perhaps on some level they felt pressure to seek male leaders in this important work. As a rule, black women were excluded from formal positions of organizational power in mixed-sex groups, and they were relegated to positions that required their community networking skills. Black women were commonly appointed to welfare and membership committees—the two areas of work in which women’s club networks were invaluable. In both women’s and mixed-sex groups, black women were the key actors in the formation and maintenance of a

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network of community alliances. WCC women were fully cognizant of the value of leadership located within the ranks. Perhaps they had intended to relinquish their own leadership to men from the beginning but wanted to situate the local branch solidly on its feet before doing so. The WCC did not disband when it organized the local NAACP branch: the women simply added NAACP responsibilities to their other community obligations. Male leaders might also have been reluctant to join the local NAACP initially because women had taken the initiative to organize it. Coming out of the nineteenth century, the philosophy of racial and gender cooperation, although not always easy to put into practice, had provided the foundation for most of the work undertaken by Indianapolis women’s clubs. In that work, black clubwomen had reached across the barriers of gender, race, and class to attain their goals. But divisions remained. There are few extant records of the local branch’s work between 1914 and 1921, but in the years after the Woman’s Civic Club relinquished leadership of the local branch of the NAACP to the men, membership dramatically declined. Some of the original WCC women remained—but not in positions of organizational responsibility. Members of the predominantly male executive board became selective about who they deemed worthy of NAACP membership, and they ceased the practice of holding public meetings on a regular basis. And just at that time, the honesty of branch officials came under question. In 1918, Robert Brokenburr, a local attorney and NAACP executive board member himself, described the local branch as a “shadow of an organization.”35 The predominantly male executive board redefined branch activism and turned the focus from direct challenges of institutionalized racism to campaigns for the establishment of separate, segregated public institutions. Results of this new approach were noted by one local newspaper editor, who observed that “we have our own theatres, churches, schools, hotels and restaurants and the like, and shall have to keep them and improve them so that after a while they will be just as good in every way as those the whites reserve for themselves.”36 The suggestion that African Americans should create their own institutions and improve them so that they would be equal to those used by whites embodied the problems the new leadership would have to face by the end of the 1920s. The pursuit of separate institutions was inconsistent with NAACP philosophy and would eventually set the local branch at odds with the national office.37 By 1920, the talents exhibited by an earlier generation of black clubwomen would be sorely needed to fight against the earnest campaign for

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legalized segregation that was mounted by white supremacist groups. A second generation of clubwomen would become more active in the NAACP, assisted by some veterans of the pre-1920s club activism. However, they would not be as successful as their predecessors. In the mid-1920s, OliviaTaylor, an original member, spearheaded a branch membership drive and rallied the community around the issue of opening a segregated high school—Chrispus Attucks High School. The campaign to block the opening of a separate school for blacks was largely unsuccessful for a variety of reasons—reasons that also contributed to increased divisions in the black community and made attempts at political mobilization even more difficult. First, the demographics of the black community had changed dramatically with the influx of African Americans from the rural areas of the Deep South. Second, the club networks of an earlier age disappeared as a new generation of educated professional women assumed leadership positions in the clubs. Third, the segregationist forces aligned against the black community were too concertedly powerful. Historians Deborah Gray White and Elsa Barkley Brown have written about the masculinization of race consciousness in the United States. Brown has contended that after Reconstruction, African American communities created “more gendered and class spaces” as they became less egalitarian. The creation by black women of their own institutions and organizations at the end of the nineteenth century was, in part, a response to the masculinization of the struggle for race advancement and an attempt to “restore their voices to the community.”38 Black women also created clubs in a move to achieve and prove a racial progress that was measured by the progress and status of African American women. They believed that the condition of their race could only improve as did the condition of its women. The Woman’s Civic Club began as a needle club—an opportunity for women to improve their sewing skills—and adopted charity as part of its mission. Over the years, WCC women shaped and shifted the club mission according to community needs. In the Indianapolis NAACP, black women leaders continued to work with flexibility to forge an organization that would challenge economic, gender, and racial discrimination. The NAACP’s ability to continue that work in the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan’s influence increased in the city, was seriously impaired shortly after the baton of racial progress was passed to men in 1914.

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Part Four systems of thought, modes of resistance

Chapter Seven

Witchcraft, Women, and Taxes in the Transkei, South Africa, 1930–1963 Sean Redding

African societies in South Africa have historically contained deep divisions between men and women. A number of sociological and historical studies have suggested that current gender divisions are the result of the many decades of male labor migration that forced men and women to lead largely separate lives.1 Although these studies have explored the nuances of the gender divisions within African societies, they have left open the question of the cultural dimensions of subordination that, at least in part, legitimated the relegation of women to a subservient station. Few studies have looked at how rural African belief systems might have combined with state policies (including land allocation and tax laws) to exacerbate the effects of labor migration. Two aspects of rural life in the Transkeian region of South Africa that may have contributed to gender divisions stand out: one is the fact that, historically, women have been more likely to be accused of witchcraft in the rural areas; the second is that, post-1930, women increasingly bore the responsibility for farming the land and for paying the taxes owed to the 87

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state because their husbands, who were legally liable, were so frequently away as labor migrants. The Transkei region was absorbed into the Cape Colony at a relatively late date; the colony annexed the region in parts between 1878 and 1894. Although precolonial political independence did not always mean cultural or economic independence, it did mean that Africans in this region have retained strong memories of precolonial life and carried elements of the rural culture into the present time. The period between 1930 and 1963 is critical because it spans a time when a growing number of African men worked as labor migrants. Yet many of these individuals still wished to retain their rural roots (in terms both of having access to land and of holding on to rural culture) and thought it possible to do so. This optimism began to erode with the land shortages of the 1940s and 1950s, and it largely evaporated with the rural revolt between 1958 and 1963. Although the connections among witchcraft accusations, the payment of taxes, and conflicts between men and women are not straightforward, analyzing them together will indicate some of the hazards that awaited women who shouldered greater economic and social responsibilities in the rural areas. Given the rural roots of African culture and the continued salience of rural life even for many lifelong labor migrants, it seems reasonable to suppose that some of the hazards of gender subordination evolved out of the precolonial culture, even if it had undergone change in a new social and economic context. Conflict between the sexes had existed in the precolonial period and was worsened and altered by the stresses of labor migration. Through the twentieth century, the conflicts that took place in the rural areas continued to have rural ingredients and to be expressed in a rural vocabulary. One way in which, historically, rural Africans had exposed and resolved conflicts was through witchcraft accusations, and in the 1930–1963 period, these accusations were both a cause and an effect of gender-based conflicts. Beliefs in witchcraft and the methods for punishing those who employed it dated back to the precolonial period. In 1807, Ludwig Alberti detailed several punishments inflicted upon named witches (both male and female) among the still uncolonized Xhosa in the eastern Cape region of South Africa. He finished his description by noting, “Both this and the previously-mentioned punishment often result in death. When this is not the case, the supposed witch is expelled from the tribe. . . . In every case, the hut of such an unfortunate is burnt down.”2 Many alleged witches were women who were accused by diviners of

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bringing illness or death to their neighbors or relatives, either through the use of a mythical beast known as a tikoloshe or through the magical lightning bird.3 (The tikoloshe was believed to sleep with women and cause them to become malevolent, while the lightning bird could either set a hut on fire by a lightning strike or make someone ill.) A hundred years after Alberti’s observation, shortly after the region was taken over by the Cape Colony, the Bizana District magistrate (in Pondoland, Transkei) noted that “witchcraft continues [but] the natives now take to burning out [that is, burning down the huts of] the accused persons instead of killing.”4 Hut burning was a serious punishment that in itself often caused the death of the alleged witch, particularly since the burning was usually done late at night while most people slept. Huts had substantial roofs made from dry thatching grass sewn to frames constructed of bent tree saplings. The roofs were thus highly flammable, and the huts commonly only had one small door: a hut could burn so fast that its inhabitants might never make it to the door. If the arsonists were determined to kill the alleged witch, they simply stationed themselves outside the door and prevented the inhabitants from leaving. One example of a witchcraft allegation against a woman in the early colonial period is a case from the Bizana District in 1904. A married couple appeared in court, accused of having burned down the hut of a widow because of their belief that she was harboring a tikoloshe. The widow testified: There has been great talk lately of prisoners’ children seeing tikolosh and being frightened by it. About 2 months ago Mabontshi [the accused woman] met me in the gardens where we were working and told me that if I did not keep my tikolosh [sic] from mischief, my hut would be burnt on the return of her husband (i.e., male prisoner) who was away at work. . . . Soon after this conversation the male prisoner came home. About a week ago I woke up in the night and found my hut was on fire. . . . There were some children in the hut but they escaped. After that, the male prisoner told me he had been consulting witch doctors [that is, diviners] about tikolosh.5 The colonial magistrate found the prisoners guilty of arson and fined each one £1 plus £3 10s. for compensation for the hut and its contents. The magistrate’s findings exhibited the colonial state’s official policy toward witchcraft allegations and the burning out of witches. As far as the

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state was concerned, there was no such thing as witchcraft. Therefore, the imputation of witchcraft to someone else was, under colonial law, itself a crime, and any actions taken to punish the alleged witch (including hut burning and beating) were punishable as crimes. Given that most colonial magistrates did not believe in witchcraft, the reasoning behind the colonial laws was impeccable. However, simply making witchcraft allegations illegal did not make people’s suspicions go away; instead, the state’s actions tended to make state officials themselves look suspiciously like people who collaborated with witches.6 Hut burning persisted between 1904 and 1963 as a means by which local people dealt with alleged witches.7 But beginning in the 1930s, a larger number of accused witches were women who lived without men, either as widows or as wives whose husbands were labor migrants. By the late 1950s, a new dimension had emerged in witchcraft allegations: in the midst of widespread political resistance, aimed primarily at the white-controlled, apartheid state, some women (mostly widows) were accused of witchcraft for failing to contribute money to rebel organizations. Women so accused, many of whom had borne the heavy responsibility of maintaining rural homesteads on their own, were effectively cut off from the larger community and often feared for their lives. To understand the social and political context of these types of allegations, which were at least in part politically motivated, we must first understand what made women vulnerable to suspicions about their use of supernatural powers. Anthropologists writing about witchcraft have typically formulated two complementary interpretations. One is that African witchcraft beliefs have tended to express and resolve social tensions by presuming that certain bad and otherwise inexplicable events (such as untimely death or illness) result from the supernatural manipulations of despised, feared people. This functionalist interpretation suggests that people would most likely impute witchcraft to the weakest, most vulnerable members of society—people who do not fit into the mainstream. The second interpretation is that the language of witchcraft is the language of power. People attribute supernatural abilities to those who have political or social power; the belief in supernatural abilities thus helps explain why a small number of people acquire worldly wealth and authority. As a result, ironically, both the most powerless and the most powerful members of society may find themselves widely suspected of having supernatural abilities or access to witchcraft. As presented here, these are somewhat static and one-dimensional interpreta-

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tions of very complex beliefs, but they may be useful in understanding the changing nature of witchcraft allegations made against women. In the precolonial and early colonial periods, African women in the rural areas often found themselves in socially ambiguous positions. As a daughter and sister, a woman usually commanded respect in her parents’ homestead. The anthropologist Monica Wilson worked among the Xhosaspeaking Mpondo people in the Transkei in the late 1920s and 1930s, and she documented the power that sisters and daughters had: “Wives of her younger brother must treat a woman with great respect, calling her ndodakazi (lit. female husband) or nina ka ——— (mother of ———). When she comes to visit her brother they must wait upon her, and make no complaint. . . . When visiting an umzi (homestead) it is always possible to pick out sisters or daughters of the head of the umzi by their bearing. They speak to visitors more readily than do wives.”8 Once she married, a woman moved to the homestead of her in-laws, where, especially in the first year of marriage or until her first child was born, she became the lowest-status person in the group. Strict customs and complicated avoidance rituals reinforced her position as a stranger within the family, making it more likely that she would be blamed for unfortunate events. The outsider status of the wife partly resulted from her ancestral connections and the belief that her ancestors might do harm to the husband’s relations. Wilson wrote that “the belief that the wife is a stranger and dangerous is expressed in the accusations of witchcraft and of bringing into the umzi an ithinzi, an emanation of her ancestral spirits which harms the umzi . . . and such accusations are lodged even against wives who have long been married.” Wilson depicted the position of a wife as “very different from that of a daughter or sister. The first virtue demanded of a bride is that she should be khuthele (diligent, eager).” The wife had to defer to everyone in her in-laws’ household, until and unless her husband became the head of the household and she became the inkosikazi (female head). At the same time, a woman who never married or who left her marriage and returned to her father’s homestead, a dikazi, was also a potential threat, albeit less to her own family than to her neighbors. This threat was especially obvious if the reason for her becoming a dikazi was that she had been accused of witchcraft by her husband or his people and forced to leave his homestead.9 Yet despite this social stigma, women also exercised a great deal of social power, even in their husbands’ households. Wives were necessary for the

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inception and maintenance of homesteads, and the bridewealth that was paid for sisters and daughters facilitated the building of their brothers’ homesteads for the next generation. As a mother, a woman exercised some control over her sons and their wives (as well as over her daughters) and thus, by extension, over her own husband and her grandchildren. Consequently, it was not just the weak, outsider status of women but also their profound power within the family that made men (and even the female in-laws) occasionally suspect them of using witchcraft. This somewhat precarious social position of women seems to have been widely true in the precolonial and early colonial periods and may explain many of the early witchcraft allegations made against women in the colonial era. By the 1930s in the Transkei, rural women often found both their social vulnerability and their power heightened by their historical circumstances. Extensive male labor migration had become a fact of life. The long absences of male family members meant that women were in daily control of rural homesteads, but it also meant that women frequently shouldered the blame when something went wrong. Well-documented economic distress in the rural areas developed and worsened in the 1930–1963 period, which placed even more stress on the social system in general and on gender relations in particular. In some cases, husbands returning from jobs elsewhere blamed their wives (or daughters-in-law or sisters-in-law) by using the language of witchcraft: the men declared that the failure of crops, the death of children or other relatives, or the dissolution of the homestead was the product of witchcraft wielded by wives and daughters-in-law.10 In addition, persistent quarreling between a wife and her in-laws sometimes fueled witchcraft allegations, as might a wife’s sexual infidelity during her husband’s absence.11 In 1937, for example, an African man of the Engcobo District was accused in court of alleging that a particular woman was a witch who had caused the children of one of her in-laws to fall ill. The woman, a wife in the family, testified that she had attended a ceremony at which a diviner (referred to as “the Accused” in her statement) danced into a trance to name the cause of the children’s illness. She explained that this individual was “the witchdoctor who was doing the smelling out,” by which she meant that he was trying to determine which person was responsible for the illness. She continued, “At the ceremony the Accused smelt only me out. In naming me the accused said ‘Nomayiti [the woman’s name] you have a dwarf, a Mpandulu amongst this family.’”12 In other words, the diviner indicated that

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the woman kept either a tikoloshe (the “dwarf”) or a lightning bird (the “Mpandulu”). The diviner’s charges did not stop there, according to Nomayiti: “‘You have finished this family you are the source of this sickness of Hawati’s children.’ By this accused meant I was the cause of the illness of these children by non-natural [that is, supernatural] means. On account of this I was assaulted. . . . By being smelt out by the Accused I was in great danger of my life.”13 The court found the accused diviner guilty and sentenced him to three months of imprisonment and eight strokes with a cane. Since imputing witchcraft to another person was an illegal act in the Transkei and therefore largely occurred out of sight of a magistrate, there is no reliable, quantitative evidence on the number of allegations made per year. It is clear, however, that male labor migration exacerbated many of the tensions already present in rural life, and it seems plausible to suggest that these tensions then fueled witchcraft allegations. Thus, much of this trouble between the sexes might easily be explained as the direct product of male labor migration. But labor migration was not the only external influence on rural culture. Other state policies had a significant effect on families and how they lived in the rural areas. As of 1930, the widespread state intervention in agriculture (in the form of betterment schemes, enforced cattle culling, fencing programs, and the like) was still more than ten years in the future. The main symbol of the white state in the rural areas was the local magistrate, and the main form of contact that most people had with the state was through the tax laws and the system of land allocation. Prior to the 1930s, the residents of two or three districts in the Transkei had begun to feel the pinch of land shortages; but beginning in that decade, the percentage of Africans without access to the standard allotment of ten acres or more rose much higher.14 This landlessness resulted from population increases and the fixed amount of land set aside for African occupation. Landlessness was aggravated by the practice of surveying allotments and issuing the usufructuary title for each lot to one man. Upon this man’s death, title passed to his eldest son, leaving other sons and unmarried daughters without any claim to land. The heir, however, could easily lose the title if he (or his wife or extended family) did not occupy and farm the land or if he did not pay the taxes owed every year. Thus, state practices of allocating land fostered insecurity of tenure, and they sharpened social distinctions between those who had access to land and those who did not.15 Throughout the 1930s, an increasing number of men became migrant

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laborers, often staying away from their families and their land for years at a time. Consequently, by the 1950s, some of the most visible adult occupants of the land were the women who were farming it while their husbands worked as migrant laborers elsewhere. By increasing the visibility of these women in the community and making them objects of envy, the land tenure system may have also increased their vulnerability to witchcraft allegations. Women thus bore continually increasing rural responsibilities in the years between 1930 and 1963. As Dunbar Moodie noted in his study of labor migrants, many men who came of age in that period recognized that rural women often acted with the authority of men, as women made most of the crucial decisions about management of their homesteads.16 This recognition stood in direct opposition to the state’s definition of women as perpetual legal minors who could not legally own property. It also ran contrary to the opinions of both older and younger men interviewed by Moodie, who denied that women could have ubudoda (male attributes). Apparently, only the middle-aged men understood that women held the homestead together on a social level by maintaining their families’ ties to rural culture, on an economic level by farming the land, and on a legal level by paying the taxes and thus retaining title to the land. And just as women were subject to witchcraft allegations if they failed to keep their homesteads intact either socially or economically, so, too, did their payment of taxes leave them open to being accused as witches. As noted earlier, people had to pay taxes to retain title to the land. These payments were an important yearly ritual that placed each African taxpayer in direct contact with the state. The state (in the person of either the magistrate or one of his clerks) acknowledged the existence and legal status of the taxpayer through the formal issuance of a receipt that the individual kept as legal proof of payment and of right of occupancy on the land. The collection of taxes was a ritual of power enacted by the state. When African men participated in the ritual, they carried a piece of that power home with them in the form of the receipt. Thus, their participation reinforced their social position as family heads and patriarchs. When African women took part in the ritual, as they did with increasing frequency in the late 1940s and 1950s, they, too, partook of state power, but this could be either a boon or a liability for the men of their families. It was a boon in that it was essential to the family’s survival strategy, with women simply doing what was necessary to hold the family together and retain access to

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land; but it was a liability in that it elevated women’s position vis-à-vis the state at the expense of men’s position. In short, the fact that women frequently paid the taxes due, even though they were not, as individuals, legally liable for them, both heightened their power within the family and rendered that power even more potentially disruptive. Some court cases involving witchcraft brought before Transkeian magistrates in the 1950s illustrate the vulnerability of women and the ambiguity of their social status in the rural areas. In one case in Lusikisiki District in 1951, a widow’s huts were burned down because two of her late husband’s nephews accused her of witchcraft. At the trial that ensued, the widow recounted that she was away from home, went to Mgcineni’s for beer, leaving Masilangi at home with small children but no men. That evening I received a report by one Nomaatcu to say my hut was burning. I went home at once to see, it is not far. When I got there I found my store hut [used for grain storage] still burning. I tried to put it out but we could not do so and the hut was completely destroyed. No. 2 [one of the accused individuals] has said his wife is hysterical and I am responsible for that by witchcraft, he told me [he] had been to consult a witchdoctor [a diviner] about the matter. He has not made threats apart from that except to say he would kill me.17 The complainant described herself as a widow who was still farming her deceased husband’s land. Thus, she was free of male control but also without male protection and obviously an object of deep suspicion. The accused arsonist denied burning the widow’s hut, though he admitted to having consulted a diviner about a relative’s illness. The magistrate did not believe his denial, found him guilty, and sentenced him to four months in jail for arson. In a 1953 case in Libode District, a woman who lived alone with her two young children was burned out of her home because a female relative suspected her of using witchcraft. This female arsonist, related by marriage, set the victim’s hut afire. Previously, the victim had visited the arsonist when the latter was ill. She stated: “While at her kraal [homestead] the accd [sic] said I was practising witchcraft and that I was killing her by using a lightning bird (impundulu). She . . . said I was a witch and must leave her kraal.”18 She continued, explaining that as she was preparing to sleep a few days later, “I saw a light through window of my hut. I got up quickly and

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went to window and saw the accd going away from my kraal. The accd was walking away. I saw her in light of fire. I shouted to accd and she ran. I went to door of my hut and saw that the thatch of my two huts was alight. The light was coming from flames of both burning huts. I did not chase accd. I went in and took my two children out of the hut.”19 The magistrate convicted the accused woman both of arson and of the imputation of witchcraft and sentenced her to six weeks of imprisonment on each count. This Libode case is complex in that both the victim and the arsonist were women apparently living without men, which points to the indirect nature of witchcraft allegations. There usually was no direct correspondence between a material grievance (such as a dispute over land) and an imputation of witchcraft. An imputation frequently resulted from the illness of a family member; hoping to identify the cause of the illness, the family traveled to a diviner who, for a fee, would name or describe the person whose witchcraft was causing the illness. In many court cases, witnesses suggested that the alleged witch and the victims had gotten along well enough as neighbors or relatives until the diviner made his or her allegation. Thus, when allegations of witchcraft were made against widows and women living on their own, they were less a result of individual strategies for appropriating another person’s property and more a product of a deep-seated prejudice against or fear of women living outside the control of men. As a category, independent women were suspect and therefore more likely to be accused when something went wrong. Suspicions about independent women reached a peak during the widespread revolt that took place throughout the Transkei in the 1955–1963 period. During this unrest, widows and women living on their own continued to find themselves in a uniquely vulnerable position. As the people occupying the homesteads, they controlled their farms in a practical sense. But in a legal sense, they had only derivative claims to the land, since the titles were usually in their husbands’ or eldest sons’ names. (Occasionally, a woman might farm an allotment registered in her brother’s or father’s name.) A woman’s dependent status meant that a magistrate could more easily deprive her of the land and reassign it to someone else, a fact that made it all the more imperative that she pay the taxes (so that she would not lose the land by defaulting on them). However, in paying taxes, the woman not only derived power from the state but also acknowledged the state’s power, and it was this power that the rebels were trying to subvert. By the mid- to late 1950s, rebel groups began to demand that rural Afri-

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cans stop paying their taxes and instead give the money to the rebels themselves. Faced with this demand, women could either stop paying taxes and risk having the state strip them of access to the land or continue to pay the taxes and risk having the rebels accuse them of witchcraft. Few women were wealthy enough to pay both the state and the rebels. In 1958, the rebel organization Makhulu Span in Tsolo District was requiring payments from all residents as a way of strengthening its organization and subverting the state. Some widows complained (anonymously) to the magistrate about these levies: “Makhulu Span is demanding this money by night. . . . They demand £1–2–6 [one pound, two shillings, and sixpence] each kraal. . . . A person who does not intend to issue this money is killed and [they] burn the huts. No one has not issued this money because we are afraid of being killed.”20 The fears of the Tsolo widows who petitioned the magistrate were substantiated by the high number of hut burnings that occurred in that district alone in 1958, with at least 191 huts destroyed. Hut burning, experienced throughout the Transkei in this period, was one of the preeminent tools used by the rebels, who thus replicated the punishments meted out to suspected witches in the precolonial and early colonial periods.21 The similarity in the punishments suggests that the rebels drew a correlation between the position of witches in society and the position of people who collaborated with the state. Yet the Tsolo widows who wrote the magistrate were clearly not collaborators in any conventional sense: their letter’s penultimate sentence reads, “Please sir take it to your hands this matter, we are in a bad stage, and the Tribal Authority had raised up bad thing to Africa’s”22—an indication that they were against the legislation that provided the major motivation for the rebellion.23 It was clear from Makhulu Span’s methods that payment of taxes was equated with collaboration, which in turn was equated with witchcraft. Here, it is important to note that it was not only women who were accused as witches during the revolt. Male Africans who worked for the state, who engaged in antisocial behavior such as the theft of livestock, or who were not wholehearted supporters of the revolt often found themselves accused of witchcraft as well.24 But men, as a category, did not suffer from social suspicion to the same degree as women, and, as individuals, they were in a less tenuous position with regard to land tenure and tax payments. Since women, especially unmarried women and widows, historically found themselves more likely to be suspected of practicing witchcraft, the Tsolo widows may

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have felt all the more vulnerable to the threats leveled at them by Makhulu Span. A report issued by a magistrate in Tsolo in 1961 supports the idea that rebels saw a connection between collaboration with the state and witchcraft. In that report, the magistrate predicted more unrest: “The trouble . . . is still caused by the Makulu span, they openly declared war on all alleged stock thieves, witches and informers. The members of the Makulu Span maintain that thieves, witches and informers must be exterminated to the last man or woman.”25 Some rebels even turned to diviners to assist them against the supernatural powers of alleged collaborators. The diviners would “smell out” the witches who (supposedly) informed on the rebels to the state or who continued to pay their taxes.26 Thus, one of the great ironies of the revolt was that while it attempted to reclaim an African political power base in the rural areas, it sometimes victimized those African women who had already borne the greatest burden imposed by the system of labor migration and economic exploitation. The victimization resulted from the revolt’s harnessing together of a new belief in the necessity of undermining state power in the rural areas and an old belief regarding the suspect natures of women living without men. As mentioned, by the late 1950s, many women lived without men in the rural areas, either as widows, as dikazi, or as labor migrants’ wives. Widows and dikazi in particular were in vulnerable positions with regard to the state’s acknowledgment of their rights to land; the wives of labor migrants also undoubtedly felt that their tenure of the land was insecure. This legal insecurity may have made them more averse to risk and therefore more reluctant to participate in the revolt. But rebel leaders seem to have construed this reluctance as willful collaboration with the oppressive state, and they and their followers also often discussed state power and the power of collaborators in the vernacular of witchcraft. Women who lived alone were already more susceptible to being charged with witchcraft whenever a relative or neighbor became ill; once the revolt began, they became doubly vulnerable to allegations of antisocial behavior—either as witches or collaborators or both. These women truly found themselves caught in the cross fire between two political opponents. They were condemned by the rebels as collaborators with the government, yet they received no refuge from the state. As the state’s paramilitary units moved in to crush the revolt in the 1960–1963 period, women once again often suffered the greatest harm. Many para-

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military troops were accused of rape, and the troops also used arson and looting as methods for stemming the revolt. The continuation of gender divisions in African societies in South Africa has certainly been one result of the system of labor migration. But labor migration was not the only cause, and migration does not adequately explain the social mechanisms through which the divisions continued in the 1930–1963 period. In the precolonial and early colonial years, women had an ambiguous but powerful position within the family. It was this ambiguous power that caused even married women to be suspected of using witchcraft, with unmarried women or widows held in even greater suspicion. As the 1930–1963 period unfolded, women’s power within the family increased, for men were spending greater amounts of time away as labor migrants, the land shortage was worsening, and the general economic conditions of the rural areas were declining. But the power of women remained precarious, and even as that power worked to strengthen the family economically, it also posed a threat to the superior position of men in the family. It is important to understand how people saw the conflicts between men and women through the lens of their own culture. As women took on more economic and social responsibilities in the rural areas, they also frequently took the blame for problems—and blame often meant being accused of witchcraft. With the development of the revolt in the mid- to late 1950s, women found themselves in an even more difficult position, as they had to choose between losing title to the land or being accused of collaboration, witchcraft, or both. The political divisions along gender lines that can be observed in the period of the 1955–1963 revolt resulted from a tangled history of older and deeply rooted suspicions about independent women, the system of male labor migration that depended upon women exercising more familial authority, extreme economic deprivation, and the insecurities fostered by the state’s tax and land allocation policies.

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Chapter Eight

“Mwen na rien, Msieu” Jamaica Kincaid and the Problem of a Creole Gnosis

Rhonda Cobham She didn’t hear anything—me nevva hear nothing—me na hear nuttn—mwen na rien, msieu. –Kamau Braithwaite, Barabajan Poems

The passage in Barabajan Poems from which the epigraph for this chapter is taken comes just after Kamau Braithwaite has described the evasiveness of the Garifuna people he met in Belize, who tell outsiders they know of no African survivals in their culture while hiding/hoarding their drums.1 The passage documents the stubborn insistence with which the maid at his sister’s home in St. Vincent denies her connection to the drums from her village, which everyone can hear at night. When asked about the drum’s message, the maid responds, “Mwen na rien,” which, depending on how it is read, means either “I have nothing to do with it” or “I am nothing” in Creole. Jamaica Kincaid offers us a commentary on a similar paradox in The Autobiography of My Mother when her narrator tells a story about a group of schoolchildren who witness how a female water spirit, laden with riches, seduces one of their playmates, enticing him into a river, where he drowns. Although the encounter invokes a familiar presence that takes 100

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many forms in Caribbean folklore, no one in the children’s world will acknowledge their story. Finally, the children themselves discredit the event, even though they all claim to have witnessed it. The narrator, who was one of those children, comments: It was almost as if the reality of this terror was so overwhelming that it became a myth, as if it had happened a very long time ago and to other people, not us. I know of friends who witnessed this event with me and, forgetting that I was present, would tell it to me in a certain way, daring me to believe them; but it is only because they do not themselves believe what they are saying; they no longer believe what they saw with their own eyes, or in their own reality. This is no longer without an explanation to me. Everything about us is held in doubt and we the defeated define all that is unreal, all that is not human, all that is without love, all that is without mercy. Our experience cannot be interpreted by us; we do not know the truth of it. Our God was not the correct one, our understanding of heaven and hell was not a respectable one. Belief in that apparition of a naked woman with outstretched arms beckoning a small boy to his death was the belief of the illegitimate, the poor, the low.2 Kincaid’s narrator, Xuela, ends this outburst by declaring, “I believed in that apparition then and I believe in it now.”3 But by her own admission, Xuela is a solitary figure, marked as deviant by her community because of her passionate narcissism, which inoculates her from self-hate but makes it impossible for her to embrace the posture of the defeated, the price she imagines she would have to pay to become one with her people—or part of a nation. At first glance, Xuela’s sweeping accusations may seem dated. Kincaid’s novel, after all, is set in the early twentieth century, at the height of the colonial civilizing mission in the Caribbean. More recently, as West Indian territories have achieved political independence from Britain, academic researchers and nationalist politicians have devoted a great deal of energy to celebrating and documenting the survival of African-derived systems of belief in the Caribbean. However, in everyday life in the region, such systems coexist uneasily with more privileged cultural forms such as Christianity, “high modernity,” and American mass culture. Caribbean people, whose lived experience is framed by African-derived ways of seeing the world, often disavow their own praxes to outsiders and to themselves.

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Alternatively, they may modify or reframe their behavior in ways that make it, paradoxically, seem by turns more exotic or less primitive, more respectable or less legitimate by Western standards than it actually is considered within Caribbean communities. Such stories are about silence, and, depending on their ideological positions, the storytellers ascribe this silence to different causes. The version presented in The Autobiography of My Mother focuses on silence at a different level, however. As she explores the community’s denial of the children’s story, Kincaid forces us to think about why a community would persist in apprehending reality through codes that it cannot articulate or that it refuses to acknowledge. The novel dramatizes the process whereby a society refuses to speak itself. It takes on the literary challenge of finding a language that simultaneously represents and resists that travesty of speech. Kincaid raises questions about the ways in which one culture’s metaphors for understanding experience come to be valued as “theory” while another culture’s metaphors are disallowed altogether because they do not conform to the symbolic order through which the dominant culture codifies systems of belief and knowledge. Kincaid’s story about the beautiful river goddess who lures children to their deaths is a particularly rich site for investigating how people imagine and interpret the connection between Africa and the Caribbean. The figure her narrator describes is immediately recognizable as a version of the West African Mammywata, known in Jamaica as “River Mumma” and connected loosely with such traditional African goddesses as Uhamiri/Idemili of the Ibo people and Osun of the Yoruba. In African Wo/man Palava, Chikwenye Ogunyemi traces the origin of Mammywata worship in Nigeria to the colonial period. Combining the characteristics of males and females, colonizer and colonized, the Mammywata is, she writes, “recognized as a unifying deity wherever Pidgin English is spoken in Nigeria, especially in riverine areas, where European influence permeated.”4 She notes that Mammywata was endowed with European qualities while still retaining some of the attributes associated with local water deities such as Idemili, whose praise names included “the great lady,” “female king,” “Idemili with huge baskets of riches,” and “woman who sits on a special stool for ozo titled men!” Ogunyemi also notes the similarities between Mammywata and the South African Mamlambo, a river woman “whose dangerous beauty drew people into the depth of her magnetic eyes [and] sucked them into the world deep under the river.”5

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Here, Ogunyemi conflates two somewhat different versions of what Mammywata represents. In the appropriations from Idemili, Mammywata occupies a conventionally efficacious space within the traditional belief system. Although she seems to transgress gender norms by claiming the symbolic status associated with titled men, she does so within the context of assuming the privileges of an old woman—one who has passed childbearing age and is entitled to masculine status. The emphasis in the Ibo and Yoruba versions is on Mammywata’s wealth, her power, her role within the received hierarchies, and her ability to reward her devotees. By contrast, in the South African version, as in the Kincaid story, the emphasis is on Mamlambo’s sexual attractiveness—conventionally associated with younger women—and on her powers of destruction. The key to that distinction may lie in the next set of qualities Ogunyemi ascribes to Mammywata: According to Nwapa (1991), Mammywata worship evolved with the birth of the colonial representative’s daughter of color. Biracial children started appearing on the colonial scene as a result of liaisons between Europeans and local women. Besides the spiritual approach for dealing with the enemy, fathers saw the additional advantage of giving their daughters in marriage to colonial officials, many of whom were single or came without their wives. Typical in-law politics meant that the children from these liaisons, as blood ties, could mediate between Nigerians and the ruling colonial world, going so far as to establish some intimacy. Many women, supported by their kinsmen, did make use of such advantageous connections, which were validated through custom or modification of custom. . . . Rather than being ostracized for her difference, the magic mulatto was much admired for her golden beauty, which modified distinctive European features, thereby making them more acceptable to the Nigerian eye. The emerging figure of the Mammywata encapsulated the perception of the biracial girl as the epitome of beauty and the bringer of the good things of life. Mammywata gradually became synonymous with beauty, biracial or not. The original qualities associated with [the Yoruba goddess] Osun, especially beauty and wealth, had now become linked with the mulatto and, in easy extension, Mammywata. Devotees extended her portfolio by appealing to her for health, well-being, peace, and fertility.6

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Ogunyemi goes on to point out how Osun, “a career hair plaiter” known for her ability to braid her own and other people’s hair beautifully, came to coexist in the folk imagination with the self-involved Mammywata, perpetually combing her flowing European-style tresses, so that the emphasis moves from a communal concept of beauty to an individual one—and one that is ultimately unattainable by most of Mammywata’s African devotees.7 Similarly, the wealth that Mammywata dispenses accrues to individuals rather than a family or community, since, as Ogunyemi also notes, Mammywata’s devotees are associated with childlessness, although they often pray to the goddess for children. In her discussion, Ogunyemi finesses this contradiction by suggesting that in the Nigerian context, “Mammywata epitomizes the childless woman who mothers the community at large, since she has the resources for such a purpose.”8 Ogunyemi is quoted at some length here because she positions Mammywata on a crucial threshold between Africa and Europe. However, she does not extend her consideration to the implications of this figure for the relationship between Africa and the New World. Her speculations conflate the origins of Mammywata with the origins of creole culture on the west coast of Africa. Although she dates this confluence to the colonial period, the ubiquity of sexual intimacy and familial contracts between Europeans and Africans that she describes seems more characteristic of the conditions that prevailed in precolonial Africa at the height of the Atlantic slave trade, when social interaction between Europeans and Africans on the West African coast was relatively fluid and when both Africans and Europeans saw lucrative possibilities for mutual enrichment in the trade. A less sympathetic reading of the rise of this cult might see within it a community’s way of acknowledging and negotiating the paradox whereby African coastal and riverine traders were able to amass considerable personal wealth by sacrificing their society’s “children” in exchange for the opportunity to accumulate capital on a scale not formerly common in African societies. The symbolic association of such accommodations with powerful forces connected with water and new forms of racial hybridity is selfevident. There is some literary support for the claim that women, especially women who were barren and therefore unimpeded by the biological constraints of childbirth, were among the traders who had the most success in entering the European market, trading slaves and raw materials for cloth and other manufactured goods. Childless women or women without sons

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who amass great wealth through their business acumen—which, it then transpires, is connected indirectly with the traffic in humans—surface in a variety of versions in such works as Ama Ata Aidoo’s play Anowa, Buchi Emecheta’s The Slave Girl, and Flora Nwapa’s Efuru. In none of these works is a condemnation of the Atlantic slave trade per se central to the plot. However, the nexus childlessness/trading wealth/slavery is a recurrent motif, suggesting that these themes may have been perceived as connected in the social worlds from which the writers draw their stories. In general, however, modern African writing, like modern African society, tends to be very indirect in its acknowledgment of the European slave trade or of African participation in it.9 This digression into African literature and history suggests how differently a figure such as Mammywata might have functioned in the West African context as opposed to the Caribbean context. Although she may have been connected with practices that, from a New World black perspective, signify destruction and betrayal, there would have been no reason for her African worshipers, who profited from her material largesse, to perceive her in this light. She may have been a new goddess or a new version of an older idea, but there were many well-established cults surrounding the worship of specific deities with whom Africans negotiated and cut deals. Moreover, there is little evidence in modern African literature for a hierarchical relationship between Christian beliefs or modern prophylactics and traditional forms of spirit worship. When tensions occur between these belief systems, they are represented as a face-off between two equally powerful systems of belief and knowledge. In Caribbean literature, by contrast, the relationship between the folk culture (which is never referred to as “traditional” culture) and modernity is more asymmetric. The absence of established institutions through which to articulate the significance of commonly held beliefs and widely dispersed practices has the effect of relegating what in the African context is readily identifiable as the symbolic to a level of consciousness closer to what psychoanalysis would describe as the imaginary or the unconscious— a prelinguistic realm where meaning is communicated without necessarily being acknowledged as such. Writers who invoke the folk culture seldom present it as embedded in an established order or exhibiting the full range of constraints and privileges, both positive and negative, in relation to which people order their lives. Consequently, they tend to represent that culture as purely good or purely evil: the repository of all truth or the

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source of all damnation. In effect, anglophone Caribbean writers define the folk culture in constant comparison to something beyond itself. Kincaid perceives this subterranean relationship to cultural praxis as typical of the posture of the defeated, and, in the context of her work, that posture seems to epitomize the cultural capitulation of the formerly enslaved to their colonial status. But Kincaid’s choice of Mammywata as the symbol for the things that everyone recognizes, though no one will valorize, helps explain why the solution to this problem in Caribbean terms could never be an uncomplicated reclamation of the African past. If Ogunyemi is right and if the speculation offered here about the origins of Mammywata worship in African accommodations of the slave trade can be supported by more concrete evidence, then consider the implications of this figure for those whom Kincaid describes as the defeated. Not only are their cultural practices trivialized in relation to Western cultural practices such as Christianity or psychoanalysis—both of which make extensive use of premodern myths specific to European cultures to structure human relationships within the modern world—but the Caribbean folk culture also exists in an unequal relationship to its African precursors. For the African devotee of Mammywata, the bargain struck with the goddess may indeed pay off in terms of material wealth even as it continues to deprive the community of its children, but the wealth promised by the Mammywata remains, by definition, beyond the reach of the descendants of the enslaved, whose social existence has been sacrificed to her. Within this Faustian bargain, the sacrificial object has no substitute for itself in the exchange with the gods. The boy who swims toward the Mammywata in pursuit of the riches with which she surrounds herself pays for his avarice with his own life, not with the lives of his children. Mammywata as a symbol of Africa may signify the lost homeland, a source of cultural resistance and material well-being, or a way of having one’s self-worth affirmed. But Africa, like Mammywata, also forgot to protect its own; it devoured its children for the promise of gold. From this perspective, the return to Africa in the Caribbean imagination is always already a return both to the safety and nurture of the womb and to an originary moment of betrayal. When Caribbean people refuse to acknowledge their African heritage or when they choose to enunciate Christian beliefs while suppressing unspoken loyalties to older traditions felt in the bone, they may be expressing much more than an unsophisticated embrace of the values of the oppressor. The African cultural symbols

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that have best survived the crossing or have been reconfigured in the New World tend to be those that enunciate hybridity, duplicity, and eclecticism in relation to Europe and Africa. Rather than being maintained by explicit teaching, institutionalization, or incorporation into the dominant discourse, such practices reproduce themselves at the level of the semiotic— through the body, through dreams, through practices that the practicants disallow even to themselves, and through objects that remain unnamed. That negation of culture—that negation of the self—is both a subterfuge against Europe and a defense against those aspects of Africa that colluded in the betrayal of the New World black. For, like the edifices on which European culture erects itself, many of the West African institutions we still revere today—proud warrior traditions, well-established power lineages, sacrificial practices for the restoration of the symbolic order, ritu-als of exclusion and inclusion associated with the taking of titles—developed in response to or came to underwrite the imperative to create a steady supply of dispensable bodies that could be siphoned off for the Atlantic slave trade.10 To reproduce the customs of Africa as practiced in Africa might well have meant for New World blacks a reproduction of the systems that colluded in their enslavement. Thus, the selective forgetting and remembering of African cultural practices in the New World may have been driven by material circumstances related to Africa that were as traumatic from the perspective of the enslaved as the loss of cultural memory mandated by European domination. Kincaid gives aesthetic expression to this notion of cultural survival as the negation of a negation in The Autobiography of My Mother by creating for her narrator—who is neither the mother of the title nor the mother of the author—a language that approximates this active refusal of all social allegiances. There is no dialogue in Kincaid’s novel. The entire narrative comes to us from inside Xuela’s head, and the author makes no attempt to insert a fictional frame, such as a diary, a letter, or some other confessional device that would create the illusion that the text situates itself in relation to an external order. Instead, Xuela’s self-directed monologue utilizes a language of negation that gives her a perverse strength in relation to all the forces seeking to dominate her through language or action. Two examples of this phenomenon will have to suffice: Xuela’s description of her rape and the way in which Kincaid’s protagonist comes to assume the characteristics of Mammywata as the novel progresses. Xuela’s first sexual experience is a classic case of domination and betrayal

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perpetrated by those who should be her protectors. Sent to live as servantcum-companion to brown, middle-class business associates of her father, Xuela soon realizes that her mistress is preparing to deliver her sexually to her husband so that Xuela can bear him a child. The inevitable moment of seduction arrives, and the master does indeed take Xuela. But the language in which Xuela describes the encounter manipulates negatives in a way that manages to create the illusion of agency for the raped schoolgirl: The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable. I was sitting, late one day, in a small shaded area behind the house, where some flowers were planted, though this place could not be called a garden, for not much care was applied to it. The sun had not yet set completely; it was just at that moment when the creatures of the day are quiet but the creatures of the night have not quite found their voice. It was that time of day when all you have lost is heaviest in your mind: your mother, if you have lost her; your home, if you have lost it; the voices of people who might have loved you or who you only wish had loved you; the places in which something good, something you cannot forget, happened to you. Such feelings of longing and loss are heaviest just in that light. Day is almost over, night has almost begun. I did not wear undergarments any more, I found them uncomfortable, and as I sat there I touched various parts of my body, sometimes absentmindedly, sometimes with a purpose in mind. I was running the fingers of my left hand through the small thick patch of hair between my legs and thinking of my life as I had lived it so far, fifteen years of it now, and I saw that Monsieur LaBatte was standing not far off from me, looking at me. He did not move away in embarrassment and I, too, did not run away in embarrassment. We held each other’s gaze.11 Each of Xuela’s sentences is framed by a negation that dismantles a set of established images and assumptions we normally bring to the reading of such a moment. Xuela’s acknowledgment that the master’s intrusion is a form of trauma is simultaneously foregrounded and repressed by the effect of the double negative created by enclosing the phrase “no less of a shock” between the reiterated word “inevitable.” Like the opacity of the hired help’s “mwen na rien” in the epigraph to this chapter, the structure of the sentence leaves us uncertain as to where to place the emphasis in our reading. The narrator may be downplaying the intensity of the shock by

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enclosing it in the repeated “inevitable.” Or she may be making us register the continuous dull echo of violation through the reverberations of the word “inevitable,” forcing us to acknowledge this specific act as the repetition of an age-old betrayal. The next sentences produce a similar set of palimpsestic negations. The Edenic associations of inviolate intimacy, precipitated by the phrase “a small shaded area behind the house, where some flowers were planted,” are dissolved forthwith by the stern disclaimer that “this place could not be called a garden, for not much care was applied to it (emphasis added).” There is no Eden, then, no prelapsarian idyll of natural beauty and order, and no attempt to suggest that there was (or ever has been) a time or space before violation. And yet, that second negative, the “not much care,” immediately begs the question: How much more care would have been enough to have made this a real garden—a safe space of cultivated freedom and pleasure? How might this “small shaded area” with its few straggling plants have become a safe haven for the fifteen-year-old Xuela to blossom into maturity—to remember herself—had it not been violated by Monsieur LaBatte’s intrusion? The time at which the serpent enters the not-quite garden is also a double negation—not quite day and not yet night; it is a time that the narrator associates with remembered kindnesses and the ultimate losses of mother and country. There is further irony here in the circumstance that the mother Xuela claims to have lost is one she never had, since her mother died at her birth, and she has never really had a home. Just as the Christian Eden is the concept invoked but not represented in the opening images of the paragraph, historical and cultural sites Xuela has never known but always longed for (Africa? Europe? the no-longer-extant world of her Carib mother?) become the nonsources for the voices not represented—“the voices of people who might have loved you or who you only wish had loved you.” This section of the passage cited conveys a sense of irretrievable loss, but it is a loss related to objects and images whose prior existence the speaker seems to disavow even as she allows us to long for their return. Just as the reader is about to be overwhelmed by the absolute emptiness of this negation of the possibility of ever being found, the negatives shift, attaching themselves to the person of Xuela and enabling a perverse agency. The phrase “I did not wear undergarments anymore” creates an image not of not-worn undergarments but of a naked body. We feel this

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body through Xuela’s masturbatory touch rather than through the gaze of the Other. The emphasis on physical sensation forces the reader to imagine the moment by reference to her own body—through the female touch rather than the male gaze—so that when the sentence that started so uncompromisingly with “I did not wear undergarments” modulates in closing into “and I saw Monsieur LaBatte standing not far off from me, looking at me,” we have first to look out from inside Xuela’s body and see Monsieur LaBatte “not far off” before we can see Xuela, from his perspective, as vulnerable prey. But “not far off” is also not near. Like Mammywata, who refracts and commands the gaze of her devotees, Xuela controls that distance in her narrative by matching his “he did not move away” with her “I did not run away.” The stasis achieved by this double negation is that between equally matched forces, not the sliding asymmetry of continuous comparison. It produces a quality of rapprochement in the text—a sense that something as yet undefined is being given and taken away in both directions. As the passage continues past the point where the citation ends, the double negations are repeated with variation: Xuela does not stop masturbating. Monsieur LaBatte does not approach her until the sun goes down. Xuela does not succumb to his advances in the garden in the dark but follows him instead to his money-counting room where she can see his body in the light. She does not find his naked body attractive, but she does not deny the arousal and anticipation she feels at the idea of being physically stimulated by a hand other than her own—an anticipation that she articulates by the repeated use of the phrase “not yet” as she describes his “unbeautiful” body. By the end of the encounter, it is no longer clear who has seduced whom—or who has used whom to assuage whose passion. It is hard to know what to make of Xuela’s negations. At times, it seems that we are witnessing an extreme of emotional dissociation so intense that we must read her account as we do descriptions of torture, in which the victim of the torture speaks of his or her own body as though it belonged to someone else. Yet such dissociation is essential for anyone who manages to survive torture with psyche intact. The aim of torture is to make its victim accept dehumanization and become an instrument of the torturer’s will. Xuela’s negations constitute a powerful refusal to accede to the conditions that life has meted out to her. She refuses to naturalize her oppression by acquiescing in the role of object. To negate this role, she distances herself from all conventional representations of the vulnerable and the

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oppressed, whose capacity to absorb abuse we have come to expect in narratives of this kind and to valorize with our outpourings of pity and outrage and our complacent sense of inevitability. Xuela will have none of it. She twists agency out of oppression, even at the price of forgoing the approval and compassion of the readers whose presence her text barely acknowledges. As the novel progresses, Xuela’s subject position drifts from being one with the schoolchildren, confronted by the apparition of the Mammywata and susceptible to its destructive charm, to becoming the Mammywata herself. She aborts her pregnancy by Monsieur LaBatte and repels all subsequent conceptions. Her control of her reproductive capacity confounds her lovers, who seek to discipline her energies by subordinating them to the expectations of maternity. But Xuela refuses to sacrifice her own life for that of a child who has been imposed upon her. She will not be manipulated into jeopardizing her personhood in order to underwrite the illusion that she can ensure the survival of the race. By believing in the apparition of Mammywata, Xuela is able to recognize the unequal bargain with the goddess for what it is—a cruel ruse that places fulfillment and satisfaction perpetually beyond the reach of her devotees and that leads inevitably to both individual death and social extermination. Rather than aspiring to gain Mammywata’s favor, she displaces the goddess’s image with her own. She gains power over others and control of her destiny because she does not abdicate the responsibility for providing herself with nurture, love, or self-esteem to others. Like Mammywata, she attracts to herself those who allow themselves to be seduced by the illusion of the vicarious success they imagine her self-affirmation represents. Like Mammywata, she looks on implacably as they drown in their own misplaced desire. What, then, is Kincaid’s position on the presence and repression of African tradition within the New World and its consequences for language and desire? Kincaid herself has declared that she has no personal stake in this debate. Such beliefs, from her perspective, are part and parcel of a Caribbean experience to which she acknowledges no allegiance. Indeed, in her later memoir, My Brother, into which she inserts a representation of herself as the narrator, she maintains that such beliefs underwrite the oppressive social forces that helped destroy her brother and that she is determined will never destroy her. Nevertheless, from an aesthetic perspective, she sees the persistence of African-derived systems of belief and knowledge as an integral part of Caribbean consciousness, and she understands

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how their repression or appropriation may be used as powerful forces of domination in colonial and neocolonial contexts. In The Autobiography of My Mother, she allows her narrator, Xuela, to speculate about the desires and loyalties of enslaved peoples as she admires their handiwork in the proportions of an island church that is an exact replica of a similar structure “in a tiny village in some dark corner of England”: But this church, typical of its time and place in every way, was built, inch by inch, by enslaved people, and many of the people who were slaves died while building this church, and their masters then had them buried in such a way that when the Day of Judgment came and all the dead were risen, the enslaved faces would not be turned toward the eternal light of heaven but toward the eternal darkness of hell. They, the slaves, were buried with their faces turned away from the east. But did the slaves have an interest in seeing eternal light in the first place, and what if the slaves preferred eternal darkness? The pitiful thing is, an answer to these questions is no longer of use to anybody.12 Everything about Xuela’s comportment, her language, and her attitude belies this conclusion. Obviously, it does matter a great deal to her what the enslaved person felt or wanted—at least to the extent that she, as the descendant of both enslaved Africans and exterminated Caribs, still maintains the right to an existence beyond the posture of the defeated. Perhaps what Kincaid means to dramatize here is that the idea of Africa or the desires of earlier Africans cannot be used to mandate the conditions of existence in the Caribbean today. Like Xuela, each member of the community must work out his or her relationship to the past and to the future. Any easy reliance on historical sources of social order or future aspirations to material security, like the boy’s pursuit of Mammywata, will result only in mimicry and cravenness and openness to violation. For Xuela, resisting such apparitions means rejecting everything that would tame her spirit, even those legacies that seem to be part of her racial or family heritage. It also means claiming and speaking all those things that remain unspoken by her community, even when, for complicated reasons, those things are part of an African inheritance that is shameful or unacknowledged. What makes African systems of belief and knowledge vital in the Caribbean now is the extent of their usefulness in the present, not their presumed sanctity in the past or their importance in other cultural contexts.

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Xuela refuses to be counted among the defeated, and she has no illusions about leading or nurturing a community, so she feels free to dispense with the political accommodations that would have us revere all things African as a way of cementing group loyalties or maintaining blind allegiances. We applaud such independence when writers invoke it in response to the European legacy in the Caribbean. It is harder to embrace it in relation to Africa, where it seems that negating a heritage that has previously been denied us (“Mwen na rien, Msieu”) may constitute a negation of self. But Xuela is willing to risk annihilation in order to claim the right to an existence in the landscape that has produced her and in which she has learned to survive and understand the human condition. It is this claiming of place as an extension and reflection of self that Xuela invokes in order to survive her rape and abortion: “I walked through my inheritance, an island of villages and rivers and mountains and people who began and ended with murder and theft and not very much love. I claimed it in a dream. Exhausted from the agony of expelling from my body a child I could not love and so did not want, I dreamed of all the things that were mine.”13 Like the “not much care” of the not-quite garden discussed earlier, Xuela’s birthright is a world of “not very much love.” It has real limits and no originary innocence. It is not the sanitized, imaginary symbol of plenitude desired by those who pursue the illusory Mammywata of a reified Africa. But it is also not a world of silence and fear dictated by the insecurities of those who would merely deny their attraction to this reified object. Through her negations and refusals, Xuela dreams instead of all the things that are hers, both the positive and the negative, thereby laying the foundation of a Caribbean gnosis. The apparatus around which she constructs her creole system of belief and knowledge recognizes the ubiquity of murder and theft, while at the same time leaving open the possibility of love (a little? much? how much, after all, is “not very much”?). For Kincaid’s Xuela, belief in Mammywata is not the same as acquiescence in the order of which the river goddess is a symbol. Rather, the narcissism of the Mammywata, as opposed to the cravenness of her devotees, provides a useful model for Xuela’s behavior. By displacing the Mammywata’s elusive image with her own material body, Xuela provides herself with a vantage point from which to speak her world into being, to move beyond the dream and claim that world as hers.

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Part Five migration

Chapter Nine

No Place to Call Home Refugee and Internally Displaced Women in Kenya

C a s s a n d ra R . Ve n e y

Whether from Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, or Somalia, refugee populations are disproportionately represented by women. In Africa, women refugees are often forced to flee to surrounding countries where internally displaced populations are evident, and again, the internally displaced population is overwhelmingly represented by women; Kenya is not the exception in this regard. Numerous factors cause women to become refugees or internally displaced. Many are forced from their homes as the result of human rights violations carried out by the state, rebel groups, and civilians. Kenyan women who find themselves internally displaced are often the victims of ethnic land clashes in the state-sponsored violence that has gripped their country since the early 1990s. This chapter examines the political factors that force Somali and Sudanese women to seek sanctuary in Kenya. In addition, it provides an analysis of the state-sponsored violence in Kenya that has generated an internally displaced population, and it reveals how the international community and

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the Kenyan government have responded to the problems of refugees and the internally displaced. Kenya was a beacon of hope in East Africa following its independence from Great Britain in 1963. Compared to its neighbors, the country had a relatively stable political system in which ethnic conflict was kept at a minimum. For these reasons, Kenya drew refugees from surrounding countries. The Kenyan government is a signatory to both the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention on the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. In addition, it is a signatory to other human rights treaties that have a mandate to protect refugees, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.1 However, when civil wars and human rights violations occurred in Sudan and Somalia, the Kenyan government began to reverse its generous policy of granting asylum to refugees. Prior to 1989, those who fled to Kenya were integrated into their host communities, thereby eliminating the need to construct refugee camps. As civil strife began to engulf Somalia, Kenya was faced with an unprecedented refugee crisis.

Background of the Somali Refugee Crisis The magnitude of the ethnic violence witnessed in Somalia was unexpected and difficult to explain for some. Unlike Uganda, Sudan, Nigeria, and Tanzania, Somalia was ethnically homogeneous, with the bulk of the population sharing the same language, culture, religion, and history. Nonetheless, it can be argued that, although Somalis constituted what could be called a nation, differences based on clan, region, and class were manifested long before the outbreak of civil war in 1988.2 The escalation of the war further highlighted regional and ethnic differences in the country. Somalia played a strategic role in the competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union in their jockeying for power in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia and Somalia’s contentious relationship over borders drawn by colonial powers resulted in the Ogaden War in 1977 and 1978. At the conclusion of the war, Somalia became a client of the United States, and Ethiopia became a client of the Soviet Union.3 Somalia’s patronclient relationship with the United States resulted in an infusion of mili-

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tary and economic aid that allowed its former president, Mohammed Siad Barre, to maintain a firm grip on the country. In his efforts to remain in power, Barre manipulated ethnic identity to reward certain groups and to punish others. This divide-and-rule strategy fueled the emergence of ethnic conflict. All of these factors had implications for the human rights abuses that eventually led to the civil war that forced Somali women into Kenya. The first signs of civil war began in 1988 as different clans in the northern part of the country pushed for the ouster of Barre, who had become increasingly tyrannical in his efforts to remain in power. Government forces and the Somali National Movement (SNM) began to compete for power in the northern part of the country. Soon after, two other insurgent groups emerged in the central and southern parts of the country—the United Somali Congress (USC) and the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM). As the civil war spread to the south, refugees began to cross the border into Kenya. The insurgent groups were able to oust Barre in January 1991 after the USC seized the capital, Mogadishu. However, the end of Barre’s harsh rule did not bring peace as anticipated; instead, more bloodshed and fighting ensued. The rebel armies began to fight each other for power and control over the government, largely because they were organized along clan lines. The result was a breakdown in civil authority in the country. This development, coupled with drought and failing crops, prompted thousands to flee Somalia. Many more became internally displaced. Somali women were affected by the civil war in various ways. First, they were often left alone in their homes as their male relatives joined the rebel groups to fight against the government. Living alone, they became vulnerable to human rights abuses in the form of sexual and physical violence. Several Somali refugee women in Kenya reported that they were forced to flee after being raped due to their membership in a particular clan or subclan. Second, when they were forced to flee their homes, they were again in danger of becoming victims of human rights abuses by other refugees, border officials, and military and government personnel.

Background of Sudanese Refugee Women in Kenya Like their peers in Somalia, women from Sudan who have been forced to

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flee to Kenya have also been the victims of human rights abuses as the result of ethnic strife and civil unrest. The government of Sudan has been engaged in a protracted civil war with factions based in the southern part of the country that resist the government’s efforts to impose Islamic law on the population. Between 30 and 40 percent of all Sudanese, especially in the south, are not Muslims; the southern population is largely composed of Christians or practitioners of traditional religious beliefs.4 The imposition of Islamic law has profound implications for women. The current military regime is attempting to reduce the status of women in society by denying them access to higher education or professional employment and prohibiting them from engaging in trade. In addition, every woman’s access to public space is restricted by Islamic law because she must be accompanied by a male when appearing in public.5 These actions on the part of the government and its supporters have resulted in the emergence of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and its military wing, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). The current phase of the civil war has witnessed government troops making periodic incursions into the south against the SPLA and other rebel factions. Moreover, the civilian population, particularly in the south, has been victimized by the violence between government troops and rebel factions and among the rebel factions. The result is that thousands of civilians have been forced to flee to Kenya; others have become internally displaced within the country.

The Internally Displaced in Sudan Although Sudanese women who are internally displaced cannot technically be classified as refugees because they have not crossed an international border, they exhibit all the characteristics of refugees. The political factors that have led thousands of Sudanese to flee to Kenya are the same factors that produce Sudan’s internally displaced population, which is estimated to be 4.5 million people. The country’s internally displaced population is similar to most refugee populations in that it has a disproportionate share of women and children.6 According to Amnesty International, thousands of women and children were abducted between 1989 and 1992. Moreover, the conflict in the southern part of the country has caused thousands of deaths from starvation. The government and its ally, the National

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Islamic Front (NIF)—and the SPLA as well—use food as a weapon against the civilian population residing in the south. All of the major actors in the civil war attempt to control people’s access to food by expelling relief workers, bombing relief sites, hijacking relief trucks, and hoarding food supplies for their own use or for resale.7 It is important to distinguish the plight of women who are internally displaced in the north from that of those who are displaced in the south. The women in the southern portion of the country are on the move as they attempt to escape the fighting between government and rebel troops. Women also come under separate attack by government-linked militias and armed opposition groups in the south. When fighting occurs between these factions, women are often raped and abducted. In addition to such human rights violations, women have been extrajudicially executed, leaving children homeless and orphaned.8 The number of internally displaced individuals in the northern areas of the country is exaggerated when the many people who have gravitated to cities and towns are classified as displaced. Southern Sudan faced an internal displacement problem before the SPLA and its factions began fighting government troops and each other. Many rural people tried to escape the poverty that struck them during droughts and crop failures in the early 1980s by moving to cities, a pattern that continues today. (The exact number of internally displaced in the urban areas is hard to gauge because these people do not have to register with a government or an international agency.) Internally displaced women who arrive in the capital of Khartoum (and other cities) are usually not met with welcoming arms, primarily due to the short supply of housing and medical facilities. In addition, urban areas in Sudan have high rates of infant mortality, and many adults and children alike suffer from malnutrition.9 Some women have been forced into prostitution; others brew and sell beer as a means of survival. And because both of these activities are strictly prohibited under Sudanese law, these women are often harassed by police, detained, jailed, and beaten. The internally displaced must also endure hardships imposed by the government in Khartoum and political authorities in other northern towns. Due to the housing shortage, for example, people have erected temporary homes and created shantytowns, but the government bulldozes these houses in an attempt to relocate people outside the cities. Women and their children in northern towns have a particularly difficult

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life. Among other things, they can be subjected to arbitrary arrest and held in detention. And as human rights violations in Sudan propel women to become internally displaced or to seek asylum in Kenya, they often are the targets of some of the same human rights abuses that have caused women to become internally displaced within Kenya.

The Internally Displaced in Kenya Prior to 1989, Kenya had virtually no internally displaced individuals. Rather, the problem of internal displacement arose in tandem with a number of crucial political events. Kenya’s constitution was changed in 1982 to make the country a one-party state under the control of the Kenya African National Union (KANU). As a consequence, opposition parties were prohibited from participating in the political process—a move that served as a catalyst for opponents of the government to agitate for political change. Another important political event was the attempted coup by the air force in August 1982.10 These political factors, coupled with increasing pressure from Western donor countries that wanted Kenya to create a multiparty state and improve its human rights record, led to the beginning of the campaign for democratization. The government officially agreed to allow opposition parties to participate in the 1992 elections, but its response to nonviolent political activities could only be characterized as harsh. For example, beatings, detentions, torture, and general abuse by the police and security personnel became common occurrences. Then, as the country was preparing to hold multiparty elections, ethnic violence began to erupt in the western part of the country. Between 1991 and 1993, approximately 300,000 Kenyans were forced from their homes as the result of ethnic clashes over disputed land, and 1,500 people lost their lives.11 Although the number of internally displaced was greatly reduced later on, dipping to approximately 185,000 in 1998, and approximately 100,000 in 2000, the lives, homes, and businesses of some of the internally displaced can never be salvaged. The most serious incidents of ethnic violence have occurred in the Rift Valley, Western Kenya, and Nyanza Province. However, other areas, including Elgeyo-Marakwet District, Turkana Districts, and Coast Province, have also been sites of ethnic clashes. Various ethnic groups, such as the Kikuyu, Luhya, and Luo, have resided in these areas for years since Kenya’s

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independence, when they migrated to take advantage of land vacated by departing European settlers. Officials of Kenya’s ruling party blame the unrest and violence on the country’s new multiparty system and the long-standing competition for land. However, human rights and church groups blame the violence on the government. They contend that it is the government’s goal to ethnically cleanse the Rift Valley of non-Kalenjins and to place the political power in this region into the hands of the Kalenjins—the ethnic group of President Daniel arap Moi. The violence has not been limited to the Rift Valley: victims of clashes over land can be found in the Coast Province as well. Various ethnic groups have migrated to this region over the years for economic opportunities, but because land is scarce, the indigenous ethnic groups of the coastal region have begun to kill, burn, and loot to force out people they claim do not belong there. Moreover, even when land is purchased through legal channels, the legitimacy of ownership may come into question, as evidenced by recent clashes. Clearly, as ethnic violence has sent both genuine landowners and squatters fleeing, many have become internally displaced in the land of their birth. Human rights violations against the internally displaced include killings, rapes, abductions, camp attacks, evictions from the camps, and the confiscation of food and money. Many women have sought shelter and safety in church compounds or displaced persons’ camps. However, the camps do not have adequate medical, sanitary, food, or water facilities. Some women have tried to maintain their farms by staying in the camps overnight and returning to their farms during the day. But because there is little or no police protection for them in either the camps or the local communities, some have been raped and beaten. The physical layout of the camps also puts the women in danger. For example, Maela Camp, which housed eight thousand people in western Kenya, was divided into three sites, but relief supplies were distributed only from one of them, and the distribution often did not begin until late evening. This situation forced the women to walk back to their sites in the dark, becoming perfect targets for rape and other forms of violence perpetrated by local residents, internally displaced men, and security personnel.12 Yet male and female internally displaced persons have been reluctant to report such abuses to the police. Either they fear reprisals from the police in the form of more abuse or they believe that the abuse will continue with impunity.

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Women have been adversely affected by the land clashes because these conflicts occur in rural areas where they are often the heads of households, since economic conditions have forced men to seek employment in urban centers. As more and more men are killed, the number of households headed by women has only risen. Women have also lost property, livestock, seeds, agriculture tools, and food; moreover, they have lost their access to their only means of production—land. As a result, women who were once able to take care of themselves and their children have become destitute. Given the human rights violations carried out by the government and its supporters against Kenyan citizens, the plight of women refugees is certain to be precarious for the foreseeable future.

The Continuation of Human Rights Abuses Women refugees, especially those from Somalia, face many hardships in Kenya, ranging from rape and other forms of sexual violence to beatings, malnutrition, and forced deportations. The government of Kenya tries to force all refugees to reside in camps, and most of these camps are located in the North Eastern Province, which has had a long history of shifta (bandit) activity. Girls as young as five reportedly have been raped in Kenya’s northeast refugee camps by these bandits, who are of both Kenyan and Somali origin, and by other refugees. A heinous and brutal crime for any female, rape is compounded in the case of Somali women and girls because most of them are circumcised—in fact, more than 90 percent undergo some form of circumcision.13 Many of the rape victims also suffer from preexisting medical conditions as a result of their circumcisions. The types of medical problems experienced by Somali rape victims often depend on the severity of their circumcisions: the more severe forms of circumcision, excision and infibulation, frequently lead to chronic infections, extensive bleeding, damage to internal organs, and infertility. These medical conditions are obviously exacerbated if a woman or girl is raped and has no access to adequate health care, as is often the case.14 The potential of contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as a result of rape is a problem for many female refugees in Kenya. Most refugee women, not to mention adolescents and girls, do not have access to contraceptives, and when rape occurs, the chance of becoming pregnant or contracting an STD is high. In addition, due to the location and design of the

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refugee camps, women and girls run the risk of rape when they walk to collect firewood and water—duties that are specifically assigned to females. They are also at risk when they graze their animals and use the latrines. These activities are performed outside or on the outskirts of camps, where there is little protection against violent assaults. Refugee women in urban areas may have better access to social services, but their situation is also precarious, due to various government policies. For example, the government requires all refugees to live in designated camps unless they need medical care that is unavailable there. In an effort to enforce this policy, officials conduct roundups, during which many refugees are apprehended and then fined or detained. Other individuals who have registered for refugee status have had their documents destroyed by police and security forces and been charged with illegal residence. The government periodically conducts sweeps in urban areas to round up refugees and those who may be residing in the country illegally. In July 1993, for instance, sweeps were conducted in Nairobi and Mombasa—two of Kenya’s largest cities, where Kenyans, Somali refugees, and other nationals go in search of employment, better housing, education, and social services. Refugees who are caught up in such sweeps are held in detention facilities that are overcrowded, lack basic sanitary facilities, and contain adult, convicted criminals. Due to their visibility, refugee women working in bars, restaurants, hotels, and lodges become easy targets during the sweeps. Many are caught off guard and are forced to leave their children, families, businesses, and property. Even if they avoid being harassed, rounded up, or detained, women are nonetheless affected when such actions are taken against their spouses, children, and other family members. The government-sponsored roundups also serve as opportunities for the police and security personnel to extort money from the refugees. It has become customary for the police to arrive in the middle of the night, collect bribes from some refugees, and detain others until they are able to pay. Again, Somali refugees become the targets of such human rights violations because they are visible in urban areas and are perceived to be wealthy.15 The International Community’s Response to Refugee Women The principal international agency that has the mandate to protect and

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assist refugees is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This body has come under harsh attack for ignoring the special needs of refugee women. In response to the criticism, the UNHCR in 1989 hired a coordinator for refugee women to examine how the agency could better assist women. In addition, the agency established a general policy on refugee women, issued guidelines on their protection and on preventing and responding to sexual violence committed against refugees; it has also instituted training programs for its staff. These training programs are designed to make field workers aware of the various needs of women refugees and their children. In addition, the programs provide staff in the field with information on the medical, psychological, and legal ramifications of sexual violence perpetrated against women. The international community’s social services are an important aspect of refugee relief, and they assist women in a number of ways. Some of the programs target vulnerable groups, including rape victims, the elderly, the handicapped, unaccompanied minors, and families headed by a single parent. These programs train and employ refugee women to conduct home visits, collect data, and identify needs in the camps. In addition, there are social service campaigns to educate women about sexually transmitted diseases, female circumcision, reproductive health and family planning, rape, and sexual violence. In 1993, Somali refugee women began to report the incidents of rape in the camps, and several camps were redesigned to give them better protection. For example, thornbushes were planted around the camps to serve as fences, latrines were moved to safer areas, and lights were installed. Because the internally displaced have not crossed an international border, they cannot present themselves to the UNHCR for protection and assistance. Moreover, the international community cannot assist a population that it cannot access. The issue of state sovereignty cannot be ignored, and in the past, some states, including Kenya, used their rights to sovereignty to prevent outsiders from gaining access to internally displaced populations. When access was eventually granted to relief agencies, their primary assistance was in the form of food aid, blankets, and utensils, and in some areas, maize and bean seeds were distributed. Clearly, though, the internally displaced population will need a good deal more if they are to return to their normal lives. Among other things, they will need assistance to rebuild their farms, such as agricultural inputs, loans, tools, and fertilizers.

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Women refugees and internally displaced women in Kenya face similar problems in matters of protection and assistance. For those refugee relief agencies working in Kenya, it would be hard to ignore the plight of Kenyan citizens while attempting to assist others, as a backlash may develop. In many ways, the plight of women who are refugees or internally displaced in Kenya can be characterized as abysmal and bleak. At the same time, however, there are manifestations of life and hope. Many women have escaped almost certain death, and their wounds are beginning to heal. However, unless fundamental issues are resolved in their countries of origin, women will remain refugees, and many more like them will join the anticipated exodus. In order to halt the flow of women and children migrating to Kenya, conflict-resolution strategies must be developed by various segments of civil society that are committed to ending the internal and international migrations in East Africa. Many refugee women in East Africa have been the victims of human rights abuses or have witnessed abuses being committed against family members and friends. The issue of human rights is critical, and it must be articulated to all members in society, with the understanding that fundamental freedoms and rights extend to women. Governments and opposition groups should be pressured to respect the human rights of all individuals in society. The issue of internal displacement must be made a priority in Kenya and the international community as well. The latter should work hard to ensure that relief agencies have access to displaced populations, and states should not be allowed to claim that displacement is an internal issue protected by state sovereignty. International guidelines and mandates, similar to those developed for refugees, should be developed to address the needs of the internally displaced populations. As long as women are refugees or internally displaced, they must have programs tailored to their particular needs. They should be offered counseling to help them deal with the scars they bear from their experiences in flight and in camps. As soon as possible, they should also begin or continue their education to empower them and prepare them to return home. Internally displaced women should also have access to educational opportunities. Finally, the international community’s conventions, protocols, and guidelines must be backed by an enforcement mechanism, and governments,

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opposition groups, rebel movements, and civilians must be shown that they cannot violate anyone’s human rights with impunity. Until this is accomplished, the rights of refugee and internally displaced people will be dependent on the goodwill—or lack thereof—of their adversaries.

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Chapter Ten

“The Sisters and Mothers Are Called to the City” African American Women and an Even Greater Migration

Leslie Brown

Reflecting on the reason his family moved to Durham, North Carolina, in the late 1910s, Reginald Mitchner recalled, “It was a place that you could make money.” One of the biggest drawing cards for Durham was Liggett and Myers and American Tobacco Company—what used to be called the Bull Durham Factory. That was the biggest incentive to come to Durham. . . . You know, when a person is used to living and trying to raise a family on sporadic work, you know, where sometimes you got it and sometimes you ain’t—well at least you come to these places and get these jobs. Whatever they’re paying you was usually the average or sometimes better than the average, but you could look forward to it every week.1 The Mitchners had lived in several places before they arrived in Durham. The family had sharecropped in Franklinton County, North

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Carolina, where Reginald was born. When his father died in 1916, his mother finished out the crop. But as he explained in an interview, “She decided that she just couldn’t operate the farm and get the children the schooling they should have. . . . So we moved to Raleigh.” In the city, his oldest sister worked as a household laborer, while the younger children went to school. Several months later, the family moved to Greensboro, where his two older sisters worked in a cigar factory. When the Mitchners heard that the tobacco factories in Durham “paid better than average,” they moved again. Reginald’s sisters went to work at Liggett and Myers. In later years, well into the 1940s, his mother traveled between Durham and New York City, where she worked in the garment industry.2 Like many African American families in the twentieth century, the Mitchners followed a transient pattern of migration, moving from place to place before settling down. Whereas postemancipation migrations generated centrifugal forces that pulled and held families together as they journeyed from one place to another, the whirlwinds of the twentieth century spun out individual family members in different directions, shaping a movement configured by the forces of urbanization and industrialization, the shifting nature of the family farm–based economy, specific personal circumstances, and gender. Distinguishing among the narrow range of alternatives available to them, African Americans employed multiple, gender- and class-based migration strategies, most choosing their paths according to their needs. And women—like Reginald Mitchner’s mother and sisters—were at the center of twentieth-century migration. The Great Migration, the epic population shift northward during the twentieth century, provided little more than background for the intricate demographic changes that occurred among African Americans during these years. Fueled by a range of factors that affected rural folk directly, the Great Migration was shaped by wartime forces of urbanization, industrialization, and opportunity, on the one hand, and southern segregation, discrimination, and economic insecurity, on the other. But as women’s perspectives elucidate, these factors played only one part in families’ decisions about migration. Seen more broadly, the process of migration delivered African Americans from rural to urban districts in both regions from the 1890s through the 1950s, and most African Americans did not leave the South at all. Indeed, an even greater migration transpired within the South, eclipsed, perhaps, by the drama of movement across great distances and the rapid growth of black populations in northern urban centers.3

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Women, especially those among the working class, emerged as the primary African American migrants in the first half of the twentieth century. With economic and social forces merging to inform black families’ choices and decisions, African American women increased their proportion in urban populations at a faster rate than African American men. Black women engaged in two simultaneous geographic shifts: from southern rural areas to southern cities and from the South to the North.4 Given their proportional dominance in black urban populations, these transitions bear investigation. Using one southern city—Durham, North Carolina—as an example of a cross-migration site (where people moved into and out of the city) and employing oral history interviews to illuminate and interpret census data, this chapter examines the gender dimension of African American migration. This focus on women challenges much of the scholarship about the most critical demographic shift among African Americans in the twentieth century. Because many examinations considered wartime developments in the North—labor, unionization, and industrial race relations—such studies draw attention to men. Ephemeral and transient, African American women’s migrations are difficult to track. Women were often employed in stagnant, low-level positions (frequently in household service), and their migratory lives have been subsumed to more compelling stories of change that characterized the more visible work lives, leadership, and public presence of men. Even though they faced more limited job opportunities than either white women or black men, African American women were the principal migrants from southern rural areas to urban areas in both the North and the South because cities provided women “public work”—employment outside of the home to supplement the family income.5 Accounts of female migration, which were rare, suggested uncertainties and ambiguities: disruption of the family and home, for instance, or the dangers posed by city life for women alone. Still, women’s rural-to-urban movements did not go wholly unnoticed by contemporary African American scholars in their critiques of migration. Lillian Brant, a social worker, asserted that migration from the country to the city mostly involved women; in 1905, she wrote, “The steady demand for domestic servants makes this influence especially active in Negro migration.” In a 1906 essay entitled “Surplus Negro Women,” Dean Kelly Miller of Howard University noted, “The preponderance of the female element is perhaps the most striking phenomenon of the urban Negro population.” Miller contended

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that women moved because “compensation for rural workers is so meager that the man alone cannot earn a reasonable livelihood for the whole family.” Similarly, W. E. B. Du Bois observed in 1920: “The Negroes are put in a peculiarly difficult position, because the wage of the male breadwinner is below the standard, while openings for colored women in certain lines of domestic work, and now in industries, are many. Thus while toil holds the father and brother in the country and town at low wages, the sisters and mothers are called to the city.”6 More recently, women’s historians have explained that African American women moved for other reasons: to pursue educational opportunities for themselves or their children, for example, or to distance themselves and their female children from the dangers of physical abuse and sexual harassment at the hands of black and white men.7 The case of Durham, North Carolina, magnifies women’s migration, a process that occurred in other southern cities, from Atlanta to Jackson to Memphis to Norfolk. A small city located on the Piedmont of the upper South, Durham evidenced the effective links between people and products of agriculture and industry that characterized New South successes and that facilitated women’s migration. Because tobacco grew in the sandy soil of the surrounding area, its production reinforced the industrial expansion that created the city of Durham. Urban manufacturers did not have to look far for raw materials and workers. Black and white farmers— owners, tenants, and sharecroppers—utilized local markets to sell their goods. When economic need demanded, the country yielded its most vulnerable agricultural workers—especially black tenants and sharecroppers—to the city. African American women began to migrate to southern cities at the end of the Civil War in search of work, information, family members, and distance from plantation life. Durham grew as African Americans, especially women, acquired work in white homes and at light manual labor. Historically, the tobacco industry—for which Durham was known internationally—hired black women. Seeking such jobs, women outnumbered men in the town by the 1880s. In the case of Durham, the seasonal and casual work of tobacco fit with the transformations that simultaneously occurred on family farms, transitions that favored women’s rather than men’s movement into public work. Employing temporary or transitory migration patterns, women alternated between the country and the city with the rhythms of the agricultural and industrial calendars. These modulating patterns intensified with the industrial booms of the twentieth

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century as women continued to move from field to factory. Finally, they relocated permanently to urban areas, where women-centered kinship and friendship networks facilitated the search for employment, education, safety, and the aspects of city life that enhanced women’s material and spiritual circumstances.8 Women predominated in the cities for two reasons. Economic circumstances warranted their migration off the farms, and, as flexible laborers willing to accept casual work, women found ways to supplement the family income more easily than men. Urban household and industrial labor in places like Durham augmented the rural farm family wage. One of the significant aspects of a prospering Durham, therefore, was its transient African American population, especially working women.9 Scrutiny of Durham’s black demographics, taken decade by decade and broken down by sex, reveals that from 1890 to 1950 African American women accounted for the most dramatic fluctuations in the city’s population. Their numbers outpaced population changes among white males and females and black males. When Durham’s population rose significantly, the African American female segment exhibited the greatest increase. Conversely, when the population grew only slightly, it had the least growth. Except during the apex of the Great Migration—in the 1910s and the 1940s—black women increased their proportion in the Durham population at a faster rate than men, indicating that in-migration was occurring. During those two critical decades, uniquely, the black female population growth failed to keep pace with that of other residents, reversing previous trends toward growth. Natural increase alone should have resulted in a greater growth in the African American female population than actually occurred. Given such anomalies and with the Great Migration as background, it is evident that more women than men migrated out of Durham as the northern economy heated up during wartime and European immigration declined, presenting black women with expanded employment possibilities in the urban North (see table 10.1).10 The sex ratio among African Americans, a demographic statistic referring to the number of males per 100 females, offers another way to gauge the gendered transformations of a population. A ratio of 85, for example, represents 85 men for every 100 women; thus, females outnumber males. Conversely, a ratio of 105 denotes that males outnumber females, 105:100. Among African Americans, the sex ratio generally increased rather than decreased in rural areas over time, while remaining well below 100 in the

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Ta b l e 1 0 . 1 Population of Durham, North Carolina, by Race and Sex, 1890–1950 Year 1890 1900 (1890s) 1910 (1900s) 1920 (1910s) 1930 (1920s) 1940 (1930s) 1950 (1940s) 18901950

Total

White Males

5,485 6,679 +21.8% 1,8241 +173.1% 21,719 +19.1% 52,037 +139.6% 60,195 +15.7% 71,311 +18.5%

1,786 2,184 +22.3% 5,456 +149.8% 6,611 +21.2% 16,014 +142.2% 17,504 +9.3% 22,065 +26.1%

White Females 1,840 2,254 +22.5% 5,016 +162.5% 7,454 +26.0% 17,307 +132.2% 19,974 +15.4% 23,125 +15.8%

+1,200% +1,149.4% +1,156.8%

Black Males 860 1,024 +19.9% 3,106 +203.3% 3,637 +17.1% 8,616 +136.9% 10,401 +20.7% 11,967 +15.1%

Black Percent Females Black 999 1,217 +21.8% 3,763 +209.2% 4,017 +6.8% 10,101 +151.4% 12,946 +28.2% 14,154 +9.3%

+1,291.6% +1,316.8%

33.9 33.5 37.7 42.6 35.4 38.8 36.6

36.9

cities after 1890. Scholars have given several reasons for the skewed sex ratio among urban blacks: transience among males due to migration, the higher mortality rate among black male infants and elderly, and the loss of servicemen during war. The imbalance might also exist, for example, if males were undercounted. Yet migrating women led equally transitory lives, making their population similarly difficult to enumerate. That is, due to migration, the census was as likely to undercount women as to undercount men. Nor do differential mortality rates matter significantly. According to demographers, male infants suffered a slightly higher mortality rate, but black women bore more male than female children. While black men historically demonstrate higher mortality rates among adolescent and elderly adults, black women of childbearing age exhibit higher mortality rates than men, particularly in urban areas. The strengths and weaknesses of demographic evidence, therefore, balance out as the standard sex ratio takes all of these factors into account (among African Americans, the national sex ratio ranged below 100, falling from 98.9 in 1910 to 97.0 in 1930). Any remaining differentials are due to migration. The generalization that men left both the farm and the women proves to be simply untrue. Rather, men generally predominated in the rural black population, and women held the majority among black urban populations (see table 10.2).11 Rural economic factors necessitated transformations in farmwork that

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Table 10.2

Urban and Rural Sex Ratios in Southern Regions of the U.S., in North Carolina, and in Durham County, 1900–1940 South Atlantic Region

Urban

1900 1910 1920 1930

East South Central Region

West South Central Region

North Carolina

Rural

Urban

Rural

Urban

Rural

Urban

Rural

n/a n/a n/a n/a 90.4 100.0 85.7 100.3

n/a n/a 89.2 86.0

n/a n/a 99.7 100.2

n/a n/a n/a n/a 92.4 102.2 87.4 102.5

80.4 83.6 89.2 85.3

96.8 97.2 97.8 98.1

Durham County

Urban

Rural

84.1 96.4 82.5 90.8 90.5 100.1 85.3 108.3

encouraged female migration. Confronting persistent poverty, the entire farm family operated as an economic unit to sustain self-sufficiency, but as a gender-segregated enterprise, farming also assigned men and women to separate work. In the tobacco cultivation featured in Durham’s environs, men plowed and harvested, whereas women and children performed the lighter tasks of making seedbeds, planting, transplanting, weeding and tending, and carrying harvested leaves to the barn. Men cured tobacco leaf, graded for market, and sold the crop at auction houses in the city, although women could do any of this work when necessary. When her husband lost his eyesight, for example, Patty Cameron oversaw the work of grading and tying leaves to be cured in the barn but assigned the work of plowing and cutting to her sons.12 Binding family members to specific roles as well as to the calendar of growing seasons, farm labor also accommodated other tasks. Families could adjust work assignments so that men and boys performed the tasks that occurred between plowing, planting, and harvesting, traditionally female labor. When the cost of seed, fertilizer, and equipment exceeded the value of female labor, gender roles shifted so that the families’ most expendable laborers, women and girls, could seek supplemental income. Farm mothers and daughters might “work out” as household laborers for nearby white families or travel between the country and the city, from the field to the factory. Young female children often stayed at the family’s rural home, assuming the role of housekeeper as well as farmer, or accompany a parent to city work. Those families whose adult women could find permanent employment might establish one home in town, often shared, while maintaining another in the country, at least temporarily, until all members of the family could move.13

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Because farming was a male-centered endeavor, female-headed households and families with mostly girls, like the Mitchners, were especially likely to migrate off the farm. Family disasters—death, disablement, divorce, or desertion by a male spouse or adult member—left women with little economic recourse on the land. Few rural landlords would rent to single women or to families that lacked adult male kin. Widowhood presented particularly difficult economic circumstances, and in cities, black women consistently demonstrated higher rates of widowhood than black men or white women. Even extended families of women struggled. Theresa Cameron Lyons explained that when the sheriff arrested her uncles, “the landlord made us move because we didn’t have anyone to help us plow [with] the mules.” Her remaining family, consisting of all women—her grandmother, her mother, her aunts, and her female cousins—moved to another farm.14 Not only families, widows, and single women with children, but also girls needed work. The household tasks they learned on the farm prepared girls to “work out” at an early age. Described as “near trained” by the age of seven, girls assisted not only in farming, but also in cleaning, laundering, caring for children, canning and drying food for the winter, and other household chores. Lyons’s mother, Janie Cameron, helped her own mother, Patty Cameron, with farmwork and with the laundry they took in from Orange Factory, a section of Durham. Blanche Scott recalled that, at age eight, she worked in a white household, watching children. Other girls worked alongside their mothers, performing light tasks. At age fourteen, they could go to work in the factory, as Scott did, with a parent or guardian; at sixteen, they could work in the factory on a full-time basis. Families prepared young women to migrate at an early age, as historian Elizabeth Clark-Lewis has detailed. Although many people searched for work near home, the closest town was not the only option southern black families considered. Farther north, in Washington, D.C., for example, younger girls worked as servants and domestics in white homes that employed their older female kin. Mothers, aunts, older sisters, and cousins who had already migrated made arrangements for their travel and employment at the new site. The issue of choice rarely applied to young African American women and girls, who were directed to school, field, and factory or to white employers’ homes in accordance with family needs. Meanwhile, the demand for household workers grew and remained strong throughout the first half of the 1950s.15 Despite the fact that jobs in southern cities—particularly those close to

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the rural family home—offered lower pay, they presented a viable, flexible, and familiar option for many black families, who could increase their earnings through multiple forms of work. From a nearby city, families were more easily kept together as members moved back and forth between sites. If one family migrated, extended kin could follow and live in the household. For that reason, Mabel Harris’s grandparents sent their three daughters to Durham in the 1910s to live with relatives so that they could go to school, but the needs of their Durham-based family diverted their path to the factory instead. As the Harris family’s decisions illustrate, work provided only one reason for black women to migrate off the land; they also desired education for their children. Likewise, Reginald Mitchner’s mother originally chose to move to the city to keep her children in school, even though economic need called her daughters to the factories. Although Harris’s aunts ended up working in tobacco, her family intended for them to attend school, an option that was not available for African Americans in their rural home area. In the 1920s, Lucille Norris, also born in rural North Carolina, came to Durham to attend Hillside High School, one of the few places in the state that offered secondary education for African Americans. Norris ended up working in tobacco. And Roxie McCollough’s family also moved to Durham for access to better schools, though she, too, left school for the factories.16 Durham’s character as a hub of the southern tobacco industry stimulated the striking transience that characterized women’s migration. The tobacco industry expanded at the turn of the twentieth century, and companies opened new facilities, from large processing ventures like Liggett and Myers to the small leaf dealers like Imperial Tobacco. The industry hired mostly women workers, especially black women, who moved all over North Carolina and contiguous states. Minnie Roxy originally hailed from rural Virginia. During the late nineteenth century, she traveled to WinstonSalem, North Carolina, another tobacco town, to work in the factories. Her daughter married a factory worker named Scott, and at the turn of the century, when tobacco production increased in Durham, the Roxys and the Scotts migrated again. They based their decision to move to Durham on the availability of work for women and thus the potential for greater family income.17 As black women vacated southern homes and factories during World Wars I and II, they left as experienced workers who could find jobs in the North. The regional shift in the workforce and wartime expansion

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in the tobacco industry created even more openings in black women’s southern urban employment. Blanche Scott, Minnie Roxy’s granddaughter, filled several such vacancies in her early life. In 1918, she left her job as a household laborer to work in tobacco at age twelve at the new Imperial plant. In 1919, when child labor laws raised the legal working age to fourteen, Scott was laid off, but she talked her way into a job at Liggett and Myers, where she worked with her grandmother, filling the place of a stemmer who had moved to the North. Blanche Scott continued this pattern throughout the year, dividing her childhood days between the classroom and the factory floor, household labor at home and in the homes of white families.18 Mostly seasonal, tobacco work offered better-than-average wages, if only for a few months. But “out of work”—so to speak—for the rest of the year, black women and girls like Blanche Scott, their mothers, and their grandmothers took in wash, performed day labor, and returned to the family farm or to school; others, in the constant search for better employment and wages, left one position or one city for the next. The abuses of industrial labor further encouraged black women workers to move on, especially as skilled workers were drawn northward. African American women tobacco workers had good reason to be dissatisfied. Factory work was characterized by long hours and short-lived employment. Worse, they suffered under intolerable, humiliating working conditions. “Rehandling”—sorting, drying, and stemming leaf, the task most black women tobacco workers performed—was a notoriously foul job. Segregated from white workers, black women toiled in hot, steamy, unventilated rooms, drenched with sweat and covered with dust. Many complained of nausea and coughing, symptoms of the respiratory diseases that raced through the factory in epidemic proportions. Others lost their appetites, which exacerbated malnutrition. Difficult pregnancies, stillbirths, death from tuberculosis, fainting, exhaustion, and numerous other health hazards characterized factory life. Work in the tobacco factories nonetheless provided African American women with an avenue paved with goals: to move their families to better neighborhoods, own their own homes, and provide education for their children. As Dora Scott Miller acknowledged, “It was bad, but it was the best you could do, and the most money you could make.” Thus, the cycle continued; seasoned workers exited, and others entered and exited again for better opportunities.19 Still, migration, even during the prosperous war years, offered ambigu-

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ous consequences, especially for young African American women. On the one hand, industrial expansion created economic opportunities that many poor families seized. Additionally, income to support one’s family and to provide individual necessities and incidentals and to satisfy wants appealed to young people’s desire for independence. On the other hand, the need for women’s labor not only separated them from their families, but also limited them in certain ways, particularly impeding girls’ education because so many of them left school for factory work. Blanche Scott and hundreds of other women in Durham adapted the old agricultural calendar to new circumstances, alternating between school in the morning, factory work in the afternoon, and chores at home in the evening—and between full-time work in the factory in the summer, school in the fall and spring, and household labor in the winter. But employment itself was fleeting. As easily as work could be found, it also could be lost, and with economic need primary, education became secondary.20 Yet migration provided options and escape. Annie Mack Barbee moved to Durham from rural South Carolina not only because her father struggled as a cotton farmer but also because she and her sisters faced the danger of sexual harassment by white men on the country roads between home and school. She loved the conveniences and the excitement of the city but lamented the fact that the need to work prevented her from pursuing an education. Theresa Cameron Lyons got married for two reasons: first, just so she “could leave the country,” where she had tired of the physical labor of farming, and second, so that she could settle down in one place. Her mother, Janie, left the farm as well and accepted household work for a white Durham merchant. In the 1940s she departed that position for Virginia, where she worked in a shipyard during World War II. With her daughter Janie gainfully employed and her granddaughter Theresa married, an elderly Patty Cameron could stop moving from place to place or alternating between farmwork and household labor. She chose to stop working altogether.21 Moving from position to position and place to place, women like Patty Cameron, her daughter, and her granddaughter; Minnie Roxy, her daughter, and her granddaughter; and the women of the Mitchner, Scott, Mack, Miller, Norris, Harris, and McCollough families all searched for better opportunities. Along the way, they built and sustained their own institutions, relationships, and networks—the basis for evolving urban African American communities. And yet, the same economic expansion that produced ever more

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options must have also generated ever more complications. Certainly, working-class families’ decisions to make women the primary migrants challenged middle-class male leaders’ perceptions of appropriate gender roles, for example. Just as clearly, however, family need took precedence in making separation migration a solution to economic and social problems. Women’s migration, then, reflects a compelling set of dynamics that historians have yet to deliberate.

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Part Six religion and spirituality

Chapter Eleven

Mai Chaza and the Politics of Motherhood in Colonial Zimbabwe B a r b a ra A . M o s s

Motherhood was a political issue in colonial Zimbabwe: African women used it to increase their eroding social and economic status, and missionaries encouraged it to validate their view of African womanhood. While Western society associates female empowerment with fewer births, African women in precolonial and colonial societies empowered themselves by increasing the number of children they had. Jean Hay and Sharon Stichter have interpreted motherhood as a shorthand that African writers use to convey resistance to Western culture: “a mother stands for traditional African society straining to uphold its standards against the corroding influence of the West.”1 By placing motherhood in opposition to Western culture, they assume that African traditions are static and African women are resistant to change. In fact, traditions change, and African women welcomed beneficial changes. They used Western medicine and institutions to enhance their fertility and better their lives, and they employed facets of African and European cultures to increase their self-esteem, status, and economic opportunities. 143

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This chapter examines the importance of motherhood for Shona women and shows how they used a Methodist women’s prayer union to enhance their chances of motherhood in colonial Zimbabwe. It also reveals how the Mai Chaza movement bridged African and European cultures to emphasize the value of motherhood among African women.

Motherhood and African Women African women and men live gender-specific lives: women associate primarily with women and men with men. African women obtain status and self-esteem by evaluation within their reference group of women. Instead of comparing themselves to men, they refer to women and the values they hold dear to assess their own self-worth. African women valued motherhood, spirituality, and resourcefulness. As Reyes Lazaro has pointed out, “Women’s reproductive consciousness is formed in the midst of specific social valuations of motherhood, which create their perception of motherhood.”2 This consciousness changes over time, as society either devalues or esteems motherhood. Much of the research on motherhood emphasizes its emotional aspects and the disabilities of maternal obligations. Psychological mothering roles increase as economic and biological roles decrease.3 While the emotional intensity of mother-child relations are important to them, African women gained more than emotional satisfaction from becoming mothers. Children were important not only as loved ones but also as linkages to the father’s lineage, giving the mother status and security. Sons provided mothers with potential male advocates in family and community affairs; daughters’ motherhood brought livestock. African women valued motherhood for the social and economic status it brought them. The reality of African women’s maternal experience left little room to romanticize women “who live[d] solely for their children.”4 Motherhood was not the ultimate goal, it was the means to an end. Buchi Emecheta’s novel The Joys of Motherhood stressed this point. Nnu Ego, the tragic protagonist, worshiped motherhood itself. She failed to realize that motherhood initiated her into a group of resourceful women molded by their family obligations. By glorifying the mother-child relationship, Nnu Ego neglected her relationship with other mothers. Yet it is from other mothers, not her children, that she received help during crises. They taught her survival

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skills of petty trading and loaned her money to start up her business. But Nnu Ego failed to cultivate these associations. She died alone “with no child to hold her hand and no friend to talk to her. She had never really made many friends, so busy had she been building up her joys as a mother.”5 This point emphasizes a corollary of motherhood—the need for support to manage its responsibilities. For African women, the word mother is synonymous with “mother who provides.”6 A mother is responsible for the children’s care, providing food, clothing, and shelter. She is not expected to depend upon the children’s father for these necessities. Motherhood carries with it a heavy economic burden. Women thus find themselves in the ambiguous position of being esteemed for their reproductive contribution to society but encumbered by the weight of it.

Motherhood in Precolonial Shona Society Motherhood was an essential part of Shona women’s lives in precolonial times. The household revolved around the woman and her children, although they belonged to the husband’s lineage. Women depended upon their own labor, rather than that of male relatives, to maintain themselves and their children. Self-reliance was a part of their culture. Marriage itself did not bring status to women, since within a polygamous society, virtually every woman married. However, it did provide access to land, and each wife had her own fields and worked in her husband’s field as well. But a successful marriage depended upon the wife bearing children. The new wife entered the community of female in-laws at its lowest ranks, performing the least desired household chores. Having little influence in her husband’s family, she addressed each of the other women as vamwene (owner). Her marriage was made possible by the cattle supplied by the vamwene’s bridewealth. The wife’s subordinate role was also the result of her position as an outsider, for she remained in her family’s lineage, protected by their ancestral spirits and participating in their rituals. Until she became a mother, she had little or no status within her husband’s family, and her loyalty was often suspect. As one proverb warned, “To give a knife to a wife is to invite your death.”7 However, a wife was important as a potential mother. Her status and trustworthiness grew with the birth and growth of her children and grandchildren. As another proverb intoned, “A

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girl is good once but great is a woman with a child.”8 Motherhood improved her social status and self-esteem. As a mother, she received her own cooking stones,9 was relieved of some chores, and became privy to mothers’ survival skills. Women profited as their daughters married and became mothers. A mother-in-law was respected and given favors and gifts. Upon her daughter’s marriage, the mother was rewarded with a “cow of motherhood” because she had “cradled the wife in her womb.” At the birth of a grandchild, she received a “goat of the grandchildren.” These animals became the woman’s property to dispose of as she wished. Her son-in-law cultivated goodwill by helping in her field, building or repairing her hut, and bringing her presents.10 Motherhood thus provided tangible benefits. The mother-in-law achieved a privileged position by virtue of the control she had over her daughter during gestation and in the child’s infancy. Her position was also enhanced by the power that she would have after her own death, for the Shona believed that failure to provide the cow of motherhood or the goat of the grandchildren would cause her avenging spirit to “steal the granddaughter’s menstrual blood” or “grip her womb,” thereby causing barrenness.11 Maternal spirits were associated with infertility and thought to be more powerful than paternal spirits.12 For the woman who was barren, only spirituality offered a refuge. According to Shona beliefs, spirits lived, possessed the living, influenced their actions, provided guidance, and delivered retribution. Misfortune was not considered arbitrary; it was caused by a displeased spirit, either an ancestor (mudzimu) or a foreign spirit (shave). Vadzimu were thought to be intermediaries to God, who was believed to be omnipotent but distant. To be possessed by a spirit was to have the ear of God, and women did much of the whispering. Women were thought to possess more spiritual powers than men, inheriting them from their mothers or grandmothers.13 Men’s spiritual powers, by contrast, were believed to be derived from external magic. The mudzimu selected women as spirit mediums at least as often as men; women mediums dealt with illness, poverty, and infertility. Mediums interpreted barrenness as a sign that a healing shave wanted to take possession of the unfortunate woman. By accepting the spirit, she was virtually assured that she would have children, but in the event of continued infertility, she attained status as a spiritual specialist and thereby avoided the stigma of childlessness.14 As in all societies, Shona women generally outlived their spouses. But

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even in widowhood, status as a mother was critical. Upon the death of her husband, a widow was usually inherited by one of his kinsmen. Widowed mothers preferred to remain in their husbands’ villages so they could have access to land, be near their children, and protect their inheritance. However, the childless widow had less communal support and relied upon her own lineage ties.15 A widow past childbearing age was less likely to be inherited and so depended upon an adult son for support; she worked her late husband’s fields, which were administered by the son. Children were valued as a hedge against the insecurity of old age. While adult children would take care of an aging mother, younger children provided labor and their birth meant the acquisition of livestock. The cow of motherhood could ensure some economic security for elderly women in the event that their own children failed to live up to their adult obligations. Thus, motherhood was valued not as an end in itself but for the social, psychological, and economic potential it provided. In a Dinka praise poem, a new mother “sings for herself as much as the child, for he has granted her a new status.”16 The same relationship applied to a Shona woman. As a mother, she became part of a network of self-reliant women whose knowledge and experience she could draw upon for practical help, as well as emotional and social support. Motherhood unleashed women’s potential by granting them acceptance from other mothers and access to their wisdom. Prior to becoming mothers, married women were laborers without status. In a sense, then, with the birth of a child, a woman was born as well. She was no longer called by her own name but became “mother of ———.”17 However, colonialism created problems for African women that made it difficult to be the mother who provides.

Colonialism and African Women The British South Africa Company invaded Zimbabwe in 1890, built a settlement, and, after military victories in 1893 and 1896–1897, established the colony of Southern Rhodesia. There, the Europeans developed “customary” laws based on a European understanding of precolonial law. These laws were designed to preserve African customs. However, the new laws were actually an aberration of “tradition,” and women suffered from their creation.

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Customary laws ignored family obligations, bridewealth, and women’s production. They exaggerated the chiefs’ powers to decide criminal cases and overlooked diviners, spirit mediums, and traditional healers—all of which were the influential preserve of women. Customary law replaced the patriarchal control which African men felt they were losing over African women under the colonial regime.18 Women’s rights were overlooked under the colonial system, and their earnings were turned over to their husbands. In precolonial times, women’s property rights had been understood, although not formally recognized, but the formality of colonial record keeping allocated property to men. Receipts for taxes and mandatory cattle dipping for disease control—and thus cattle ownership—were listed in the husband’s name.19 In addition, the wife’s property was diverted to the husband’s family in divorce and after her death. Women also lost land-use rights when land was allocated to the male head of the family.20 The colonial system penetrated all facets of African society—religious, social, and economic. Community life was altered and family structure was modified as men left their villages for long periods in search of wage labor. Motherhood was delayed and women’s workloads were increased as they performed both men’s and women’s roles. As more people became involved in cash crops, the amount of land available for food production decreased. Women worked harder to increase production for consumption and sale. But the most prominent change involved the control of family resources. Wage labor brought African men into the cash economy. Their relative monopoly over wages meant that they had access to cash while women did not. They could therefore dictate how it was spent. Women’s control over resource allocation was further eroded by the loss of land and the consequent loss of agricultural produce. Colonial transformations necessitated greater solidarity among women to develop new survival strategies as they faced the problem of providing for their families with dwindling resources. While some women looked to traditional healers and spirit mediums to relieve the additional stress of this situation, others sought refuge in the mission station.

The Mission Alternative Christian missionaries entered Zimbabwe as an integral part of the colonial

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system. The British South Africa Company gave the Methodist Church an extensive land concession. Some missionaries occasionally called into question discriminatory land legislation, but most fervently believed in AngloSaxon superiority and the need to evangelize Africans. Conversion was considered a physical as well as a spiritual transformation, requiring the rejection of African culture. Since many Africans perceived of all whites as Christians, the spread of Christianity was, for them, equivalent to the colonial occupation of their country. Nevertheless, some Africans, predominately women, saw advantages in the mission communities. African women, young and old, turned to mission stations for a variety of reasons. Older women, especially widows, found access to land they could farm. Before 1930, missionaries allowed women without husbands to live at their missions and attend their services. In addition, the missionaries’ outspoken stand against polygamy and arranged marriages attracted some girls to the stations. Women also found refuge in the missions from abusive husbands. (For example, one woman who was beaten by her husband because her baby had died reported this to the Reverend Shirley D. Coffin. The husband was made to carry stone for a week and threatened with a stiffer sentence if the abuse continued.)21 However, women of childbearing age were primarily attracted to the missions because of the medical attention they could receive in regard to childbirth and other issues of women’s health.

Motherhood and Missionaries Motherhood was often an elusive goal for African women. Yet with cash crops devaluing their work, the status of Shona women was increasingly based on reproductivity and surviving children.22 At the same time, infant mortality was high: the Reverend Arthur Shearley Cripps, an outspoken Anglican missionary, wrote of “dry breasts and wombs that miscarry.”23 Medical missionaries reported large numbers of maternal deaths in childbirth as well, as evidenced by the motherless children taken to the missions. Infant mortality also increased women’s stress, since Shona culture allowed only limited opportunity for mourning. After a miscarriage, stillbirth, or newborn death, public crying was prohibited.24 Motherhood was further complicated by the Shona belief that every birth should be a single one, not multiple. The Shona practiced twin

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infanticide, which meant that women who gave birth to twins or triplets lost those children. One woman, Muredzwa, was a local chief who commanded an army and had great wealth in cattle, but even she was powerless in the face of this custom. She lost nine babies in this way. “After her first daughter Mukonyerwa, she had three sets of twins and . . . triplets, which brought the number to nine babies who were all thrown away being put in big pots. . . . If a woman would give birth to twins, she would be left alone kept in a hut which no one was allowed to enter, to go nearby or to talk to her till a witch doctor would . . . come and give her some medicine which would make her not to give birth to twins anymore.”25 Muredzwa’s plight was echoed by that of other, less powerful, women who had the misfortune of giving birth to more than one child at a time. Aside from being treated as outcasts, these women were not allowed to grieve for their lost children. Public crying was taboo in such cases as well.26 Women bore the blame for infertility, infant deaths, and multiple births. At mission stations, by contrast, mothers received preferential treatment. Motherhood was stressed by the wives of the mission evangelists, who spent three periods each week giving talks to mothers on maternal and child care.27 Although the talks were designed to emphasize their Christian responsibilities to their children, African mothers viewed them as a source of valuable information that enhanced their children’s survival. The missionaries’ wives also organized mothers’ meetings to instruct prospective Christian wives about domestic duties. These social gatherings were accepted by African women, who requested that they be held regularly.28 By 1911, Mrs. L. Carson described the meetings: “Monday evenings I have a mothers’ meeting. I think the women enjoy it, perhaps because of the cup of tea or coffee. I have them bring their own cups and they see to it that they bring pretty big ones. After we have had the Scripture read, explained and discussed, coffee and cake or bread are handed around, and as it is our afternoon tea, tongues are loosened, and then I speak to them about keeping their homes, their persons and their children clean. We discuss children’s ailments and simple remedies.”29 For African women, these meetings were an opportunity to take a break from their work, enjoy coffee and cake (foods that were new status symbols), and obtain information on child care, preventive medicine, and maternal health care that increased their chances of having healthy children. Although grounded in a different culture, the meetings were popular among African women because they reinforced their own beliefs in the importance of motherhood.

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Motherhood was further supported through mission classes on infant care. For example, a course in mothercraft was part of the curriculum at Waddilove Girl’s School. Such courses eased parental resistance to girls attending mission schools, since they imparted important skills. Students used the classes as preparation for marriage two or three years in the future. They took courses in housewifery, cooking, laundry, first aid, home nursing, hygiene, and mothercraft, with five hours of academic work per week.30 Missionaries honored motherhood by awarding prizes to mothers and babies at mission baby shows, where babies were weighed and mothers answered questions about infant health care to receive prizes.31 Restructuring African ideas about family mores, the missionaries taught mothers to knit and sew and instructed fathers in how to make cradles (although precolonial African custom forbade providing baby items before a child was born because the infant might not live).32 Overall, then, missionary teachings were reshaping African motherhood, as well as recognizing successful mothers. The baby shows, for instance, reinforced missionary expectations and enhanced African motherhood by bestowing colonial validation. In motherhood, African women combined new standards with old status symbols. By offering daily lessons in sewing, cooking, and Bible study, European women attempted to establish a new pattern for African women to emulate. However, it was the women’s prayer union, run by African women, that transformed most African women into Christians. Becoming a Christian was not easy, and Christian African women bore a heavy burden. Accepting church standards meant rejecting African customs, which could cut women off from familial support and force them into lives of economic dependency. But missionaries preached female dependency, belittling women’s productive activities. The Reverend Holman Brown complained that “it must not be laid upon the women so much to be the food-producers. The man (husband) in living Christian circles is the breadwinner and the woman (wife) is homemaker.”33 However, these ideas were contrary to African custom and women’s needs. Even if their husbands were employed, wives were still held responsible for household needs and food for the family. To ease these burdens, some women used the women’s prayer union to enhance their resources, self-respect, and fertility. Wesleyan Methodist missionaries formed a women’s prayer union when they entered colonial Zimbabwe in 1891. Mrs. Charles Yafele, wife of the

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African minister at Penhalonga Mission, reported good attendance at weekly meetings as early as 1909: “We have a Women’s Prayer Meeting on Fridays and that is also well attended. We have forty members among the women.”34 By 1921, the women’s prayer union was known as Ruwadzano, a Shona term meaning “fellowship.” The group’s popularity grew rapidly, and weekly attendance at its meetings soon reached nearly one hundred.35 Ruwadzano was spread through the tireless efforts of women such as Mrs. Lewanika, an evangelist’s wife who traveled from village to village holding services and organizing women. Because there were few European women missionaries, most of whom were unable to speak Shona, African evangelists’ wives spread the Christian message. Confronted with an array of new regulations and changing conditions, African women looked to others like themselves who shared similar problems. Although the organization was created by missionaries, African women molded Ruwadzano in order to address their particular issues. Through conversation, prayers, and shared experiences in Ruwadzano, they provided practical and psychological relief to one another. In 1928, the Methodist Church Synod passed legislation making Europeans the leaders of Ruwadzano. The importance of motherhood for African women was not lost on the missionaries who took control of the group. The district chairman’s wife was given the title of “mother” of the organization36—a title deemed appropriate for the most respected position. Next in line of authority was the superintendent’s wife, who was appointed circuit president and treasurer. Then came the African minister’s wife as circuit vice president. Despite the fact that its officers were European, their influence and guidance remained contentious. As one member recalls, “My mother started the Ruwadzano in her own area, it wasn’t the white woman . . . the white minister’s wife who came and listened to them. It was the evangelist’s wives who mobilized the women in the rural areas . . . the white lady would just come around each time there was going to be the annual conventions.”37 Because the weekly administration of Ruwadzano was in African hands, the organization developed along lines that were important to African women. The organization’s stated aim was “to carry on Christian work among women and to further in every possible way the work of the Church.”38 However, Ruwadzano became popularly known as a vehicle to help women become mothers. Ruwadzano gained a reputation for being able to ensure fertility. When

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the Reverend T. A. O’Farrell preached at the group’s annual conference, he spoke of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. He informed the members that Wesley’s mother had nineteen children.39 Whether he meant for those in the audience to retain this fact above all else is debatable, but it must have fascinated them. Mrs. Wesley was a woman who, from an African perspective, had obviously been blessed with motherhood, and, for the Shona women, her association with Methodism enhanced its validity as a religion. In Methodist churches, women gathered together to pray for their childless peers. One second-generation member recounted how a grateful woman described the help she had received from Ruwadzano; she reportedly told the woman: “I want to tell you that I didn’t have children for ten years and in one of the Ruwadzano sessions . . . your mother took a group of childless women and we went to pray with her, and she said ‘all bring cobs, mealie cobs, and put it on your back and pray that God will do something.’ She said, ‘you know how many babies?’ not only her [but] ten children!”40 Members who had difficulty bearing children testified that they had come to God through Ruwadzano and had borne children soon after.41 Yet maternity cases continued to be a problem even for medical missionaries. In the 1930s, patients still came from outstations seeking help. Missionaries tried to use the issue of high infant and mother mortality to teach cultural superiority. They assumed that with their medical knowledge they could eradicate the problem quickly. According to the Reverend H. I. James, Africans were partly to blame, resigning themselves to the deaths of women in childbirth by stating that “It is the will of God.” However, he felt that “the maternity work is a clear testimony to the people that death in connection with motherhood is not God’s will but often the result of carelessness and neglect.”42 However, even with their preaching and teaching of European prenatal care, maternal and infant mortality plagued the missions and surrounding villages, resulting in embarrassment for the missions. Missionaries found themselves in an ongoing struggle, as Nurse Delainey conceded. “There were just six patients on my arrival and four motherless babies but soon there were many more and during the years we have suffered much embarrassment through numbers.”43 Ruwadzano alleviated some of the stress of the situation by acting as a conduit to medical services, while providing spiritual help and emotional support. Believing in Jesus’ words “Ask, and it shall be given you,” members made pilgrimages to their sacred grove, paChingando, where they left

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their burdens and asked God to solve their problems. The Ruwadzano organization defied tradition by offering counseling to women who had multiple births and providing clothing, food, labor for their gardens, and emotional support. Although colonial authorities made it difficult to carry out twin infanticide, the stigma attached to multiple births remained. Ruwadzano eased women’s level of ostracism and increased their selfesteem in this regard. The women’s organization had become a “women’s church” by the late 1930s, operating autonomously within the constraints of the Methodist Church. Evidence suggests that some women joined the Methodist Church as a prerequisite to joining Ruwadzano, and ministers complained that many women attended Ruwadzano meetings but were not seen in church. For some women, Ruwadzano was their church. The fact that the group held its meetings during the week, separate from other church functions, gave credence to the notion that it was a separate women’s church.

Mai Chaza and Motherhood In the early 1950s, the essential nature of motherhood within the Ruwadzano organization was exemplified by a breakaway movement known as the Mai Chaza Church. Its founder, Mai Chaza, led an unassuming life as a full member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church and Ruwadzano until 1948, when relatives accused her of causing her sister-in-law’s death by witchcraft. The relatives drove her from her home, and she found refuge with another member of the Methodist Church. She was believed to have died after a quarrel but then to have revived and become a healer. Earning her living by divination and spiritual healing, Mai Chaza maintained her membership in the Methodist Church and Ruwadzano. As her fame spread, she established a village called Guta ra Jehova, “the City of God.” Africans from all over Southern Rhodesia, predominantly women, journeyed there and waited to be healed by her powers and their own faith. The popularity of Mai Chaza’s movement was tied to the attention it paid to motherhood. Fertility and motherhood were prominent parts of the services conducted at the City of God. Visitors to the Guta ra Jehova in 1954 reported: “The touching strains of a Methodist hymn greeted us and we saw—in a grass-enclosure—hundreds of women, swaying and clapping hands. In their midst was a long line of women, sitting on the ground.

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. . . From one end came Mai Chaza, touching and praying. She touched and squeezed their bellies. These were barren women and the ceremony was intended to make them fruitful. Headman Chiota told us that within the last few weeks no less than 68 women who had not given birth to children for a very long time were now expecting.”44 Children born at Guta ra Jehova were conspicuously displayed. Mothers testified that they had had no children for years; only after Mai Chaza said prayers for them had they given birth.45 Motherhood was further highlighted by the choir, attired in white maternity frocks with the emblem GRJ (Guta ra Jehova). For women whose status was jeopardized by infertility or infant mortality, Mai Chaza provided psychological well-being, if not an actual cure. However, some women seeking a cure for infertility were disappointed in that endeavor but continued to wear maternity smocks past nine months. Mai Chaza instructed them to rely on their faith and refuse to be examined by medical doctors, warning that pregnancy was of the Holy Spirit and could not be physically felt. In some cases, the intense desire for motherhood forced even Western-educated women to reject reality. One such woman confessed that “the desire of having a baby can make you do things you don’t think you can do . . . I knew everything, I’m a qualified nurse, but I tried to believe.”46 Mai Chaza saw no contradictions between the power of her healing and that of the Methodist Church; ultimately, both received their powers from God. However, she openly embraced some precolonial beliefs in her ministry. She believed that healing required a complete confession of all sins and the disposal of all charms and medicinal potions, although she permitted European medicines in the City of God.47 Her admirers described her as “young and very modern in her approach to things.”48 As the number of her followers increased, she sought assistance from the Methodist Church. Mai Chaza’s movement was problematic for the church. To condemn it would invite desertions from the church and could even mean the loss of the two thousand people who attended her meetings, which many viewed as being sanctioned by the church. But to ignore it would increase the likelihood that the movement would develop contrary to church doctrine. Taking the middle ground, the Reverend Fred Rea and District Superintendent J. H. Lawrence advised tolerance and patience, while providing direction to what they hoped would be a “revival within the Church.”49 Since

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Mai Chaza sought their advice, Methodist ministers were sent to preach to those assembled at her village. In that way, they sought to combat any departures from “Christian thought and practice.”50 However, this strategy merely provided tacit legitimization in the eyes of her followers. By 1956, Mai Chaza was presiding over an even larger Guta ra Jehova (which now comprised 1,143 huts) and administering to hundreds. Unlike other breakaways, Mai Chaza regularly contacted the Methodist Church, requesting guidance and preachers. Evidence suggests that she viewed her spiritual healing as an extension of her role as a Ruwadzano member. She continued to wear the group’s red blouse and white headdress, adding a black shawl around her black skirt. Her followers were similarly dressed and sang Methodist hymns as she treated patients.51 Ruwadzano’s reaction to Guta ra Jehova was in line with the Methodist Church’s policy. In 1955, Ruwadzano tacitly endorsed Mai Chaza’s movement by providing funds for an individual to visit her for healing.52 And members attended her meetings without church reprimand. However, the relationship between Ruwadzano and Guta ra Jehova degenerated over time. Although Mai Chaza’s followers did not reject Methodism, a lack of clear Methodist policy encouraged mixed congregations, which set the stage for conflict. As these followers participated in Methodist Church services, they attempted to transform Methodism. Some women showed disapproval of a Methodist preacher’s sermons by going outside the church and vomiting or having “ecstatic frenzy” or speaking in tongues in the course of services. They also challenged the preacher’s authority by asking that he make a public confession of his sins. Some of Mai Chaza’s members wore the Guta ra Jehovah badge above the Ruwadzano badge, and others appeared reluctant to attend Ruwadzano sectional meetings.53 By 1956, Mai Chaza was inducting women into her own Ruwadzano. Church officials finally censured Methodist clergy who neglected their preaching assignments to attend her meetings, forbade her followers to hold meetings without the pastor’s consent, banned her badges in the Methodist Church, and prohibited her from baptizing children.54 The church also issued a statement on the work of faith healers, challenging their validity. Healing camps and “night prayers” were condemned on the grounds that they led to “excesses of hysterical exhibition.” Finally, in 1959, Mai Chaza’s name was removed from the membership roster of the Methodist Church; she was no longer a member of the church or of Ruwadzano.55 However, the

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movement that carried her name continued even after her death in 1960, fueled by the importance of motherhood in Shona society. Motherhood remained a constant in the lives of Shona women, in both precolonial and colonial societies. It offered social and economic stability and status. Women had access to land by virtue of their roles as wives and mothers, and their children could provide economic security, as well as love and social support. When fertility failed, women sought to reclaim their status by becoming spiritual specialists. As colonialism exacerbated the burdens associated with motherhood, appropriating land and forcing men into wage labor, African women responded by using spirituality in the form of Christianity, which appeared to nurture their ideals of motherhood. African women shaped the Methodist Church’s women’s prayer union to address their needs, linking it to fertility. Mai Chaza’s movement emphasized the importance of motherhood among Shona women in the colonial period. By taking advantage of both precolonial and colonial teachings, Mai Chaza sought to maximize the usefulness of all available knowledge for her followers. And in the village she founded, she offered a refuge where the centrality of motherhood in Shona women’s identity was validated.

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Chapter Twelve

Standing Their Ground Black Women’s Sacred Daily Life

Fay t h M . Pa rk s Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. —Ephesians 6:13

The term sacred daily life is used in this chapter to identify a psychological space. Sacred daily life is a consciousness at odds with harsh realities—a space where black women can exist and find, renew, and reclaim Self. It is an alternative consciousness that guards against annihilation. Sacred daily life is imbued with spiritual values. Individually and collectively, black women create, nurture, and sustain self, family, and community by means of these values. They are the basis of reasoning and action. This chapter presents some insights into the historical background and psychosocial context that shape black women’s sacred daily life. Positioned on society’s margins, black women are in danger of being pushed over the edge by the evilness of sexism, racism, and classism. For many of these women, resilience resides in their spirituality. Often filtered through the lens of Christian religion, this spirituality influences the ways in which they view life and cope with its challenges. Many African American women arm themselves with breastplates of righteousness, shields of faith, and swords

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of the spirit to combat hopelessness and despair. In the pages that follow, personal narrative will serve to illustrate how these spiritually based values, beliefs, and practices provide a gospel in which hope outlives despair. From where does sacred daily life evolve? Enslaved Africans brought with them religious systems, values, beliefs, and practices that encompassed all aspects of life. Spiritual values permeated daily life and provided a sense of identity and belonging. An example from West African women’s secret societies suggests the importance of Africa as a psychosocial foundation. In this context, initiation rituals were an expression of the interplay of spiritual beliefs and values for daily living; they provided a process through which social practices, identity, and a sense of belonging could develop. African American women place themselves, through their roles and memberships in church, social, and civic organizations, among the communities of women who construct and share in systems founded on common basic assumptions and worldviews, all of which guide their actions and shape consciousness of self.

Historical Background West African cultural influences are a foundation of African American culture. Anthropologists Sidney Mintz and Richard Price suggest that the cultural transformation of African people is not linear but a blending of bodies of values that form new institutions. They propose that African American cultural continuities may be found in common basic assumptions about social relations and worldviews.1 One basic, underlying assumption is that reality is both spiritual and material at once. These cultural influences are identifiable in African American music, art, foodways, and religious practices but more difficult to identify in terms of psychological dimensions. Working from a notion that enslaved Africans did not arrive into this New World circumstance with hearts and minds as tabulae rasae, scholars assert there is a psychology of black life grounded in African-influenced values and beliefs. Included among these is belief in the Supreme Being and other spiritual beings and intermediaries, honoring the continuity of life by respecting kinship bonds and ancestors, responsibility to community, respect for nature, and respect for the destiny of the soul. From this

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basis, all frameworks for communities evolved. Frequently implied or assumed, these beliefs and values served as organizers of experience. They formed the psychosocial foundation for an Afrocentric worldview.2 In the African context, secret society initiation rituals play an essential part in life. Rituals transmit shared values and meanings and foster social identity and belonging. Psychologists suggest that there are rational and irrational rituals. Irrational rituals are defined by and rooted in pathological phenomena. Rational rituals, by contrast, express strivings, which are recognized as valuable by the individual. One psychologist has defined rational rituals as “shared action expressive of common striving rooted in common values.”3 For example, among the Mende, Sherbro, and Temne people of Sierra Leone (West Africa), nearly all women undergo initiation. Secret societies control the realms of daily life. One such West African secret society is known as Sande. The Sande society influences every aspect of a woman’s physical, psychological, and social development, and Sande initiation rituals prepare young girls to be wives, mothers, and contributing members of their communities. Older women teach young girls spinning, fishing, and household and maternal crafts and instruct them in the use of medicinal herbs. Learning how to use ritual objects and medicinal herbs is an important link to life-sustaining resources in both the material and spiritual worlds. Spirit permeates all that exists. Members believe that the feminine principle is essential within the spiritual realm. In her book on Sande feminine beauty and art, Sylvia Boone explains that as a symbol of high rank, ruling Sande women wear white clothing and headdresses (fengbe). White symbolizes the spirit world and denotes purification. In the Mende culture, it represents the highest values and most prestigious associations. Boone further explains the importance of Sande to women’s sense of identity and belonging: “Every Mende woman goes into a Sande society because her mother before her, sisters, and aunts are Sande. Sande is the guardian of women. It preserves and passes on virtues, power, health, fertility and self-expression to members. Sande protects and holds high standards.”4 In the New World context, African-influenced values and beliefs blended to form new institutions. Traditional beliefs and practices formed what is called an “assumptive world,” according to one psychiatrist. These assumptions are organized as sets of structured, complex, interacting values and images closely related to emotional states. For enslaved Africans, an assumptive worldview was used to create a meaningful world.5

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In his book on slave culture, historian Sterling Stuckey refers to the Mende and Temne secret societies to illustrate linkages between an African past and African American culture. He explains that dancing in a circle was a common practice as part of the rites of passage for young girls. Dancing in a circle, clapping, and singing were included in a symbolic ceremony for the renewal of life through marriage and childbirth. The “ring shout” was a cultural form that survived in African diaspora communities. Observed in Sea Island communities along the southeast coast of the United States, the ring shout has been recognized as an example of the preservation of elements of African culture. Although it is doubtful that its original function as a marriage and childbirth ritual survived the trauma of American hegemonic culture, its primary significance has been in its use as a recognition and celebration of black societies by providing an occasion where people gather to give praise.6 Scholars have explored cultural landscapes such as language, folklore, religion, and music with the aim of providing some insight into the dynamic and complicated process of cultural transformation. For instance, Lawrence Levine states that syncretism explains the development of Negro music. He observes that due to the isolation in which the overwhelming majority of slaves lived separately from whites, the opportunity to develop New World music was advanced. White slave masters tolerated and encouraged slave musical expression as mere entertainment, in no way linked to any ritualistic traditions. Negro music was infused with West African traditions. Words, musical structure, and performance were West African traditions blended with Anglo-American music.7 Levine suggests that the psychological assault of slavery was never so complete as to eliminate the development of cultural forms among slaves. Cultural forms provided a process for transmitting and preserving basic values and a sense of community. The ability to transcend harsh realities through songs, tales, proverbs, and games served to provide individuals a release for deeply held emotions. He illustrates this by providing an example from the West African traditions of the Ashanti and the Dahomeans. Among these African communities, members gathered together from time to time using song, dance, and tales to express their feelings openly. The psychological release provided an opportunity for people to rid themselves of pain and other troubling feelings so as not to become sick. This process was known as cleansing one’s sumsum (soul). Evidence suggests that slaves had similar patterns and processes, using spirituals,

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folktales, proverbs, and other “verbal art.” This New World expression of African-influenced values, beliefs, and practices provided a means of emotional release and a way to establish psychological defenses and a sense of community.8 Many cultural forms were a fusion with a powerful African base. African-influenced elements can be found in crafts, burial customs, and artistic expressions in black American culture.9

Colonizing Black Women African traditional values and beliefs took many forms in the American context. In a collection of essays reflecting on African American women’s spirituality, Gloria Wade-Gayles and Ellen Finch ask, “How did they [slaves] remain sane?” They conclude that sanity was maintained by believing in the inevitability of freedom, the triumph of good over evil, and in the power of the spirit.10 In an 1896 American Folklore Journal interview with Maum’Sue, who lived in the South Carolina Low Country, the observation was made that “the Society for Psychical Research might gain some information by interviewing Maum’Sue on the subjects of dreams and ghost. None of her dreams are without significance; they are either warnings given for wrongdoing in the past or omens of future events.”11 Wade-Gayles suggests that “when people suffer they find solace in the Spirit. Must. In order to remain sane.”12 In the New World context, black women’s daily struggles against real and imagined dangers required psychological affirmation and strategies for survival. Spiritual power has helped black women survive forces of oppression and provided wisdom, insight, and strength through difficult ordeals. Across generations, golden threads of values and beliefs connect women in African and African diaspora communities; these threads illuminate their sacred daily life. Womanist scholar Delores Williams uses the term survival quality of life to refer to individual, family, and community attempts to arrive at a sense of well-being. She explains: “Whether quality of life involves positive or negative pursuit depends upon the nature of moral attitudes and ethical commitments guiding a person’s, a family’s or a community’s survival struggle toward well-being—well-being indicating a peaceful, balanced, upright, spiritual existence.”13 In her 1929 account of a meeting of the Order of the Eastern Star of Kentucky, Cecelia Dunlap wrote:

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It was my happy privilege and good pleasure to institute my first Chapter March 30, 1929 in the city of Louisville with the assistance of Sister Sallie E. Gray. It was a beautiful meeting, the women looking beautiful in their spotless white robes. They chose the name Naomi for their Chapter No. 121. There were fifteen present in the number. . . . I am trusting and praying that you will give careful consideration to perfecting and establishing the Youth Department. This is a step forward in the right way. Too much praise and credit cannot be given Rev. Copeland and his good wife through their indefatigable efforts in compiling a ritual for this department. I hope ere we depart from here each representative will thoroughly understand the absolute necessity of the department to our work. When this department has been thoroughly launched and we have become better acquainted with the work it will prove to be a most valuable asset.14 Similarly, an adult Sande woman belongs to a chapter or lodge. It is within this type of organizational structure that an individual woman locates herself. According to Boone’s account, older women prime young girls as initiates in what she likens to “young girls finishing schools.”15 Psychologist Nsenga Warfield-Coppock explains that within African traditions, three major components were required for adult status. These components included spirit, the people’s sacred history, and gender roles. The family and community were responsible for guiding all persons through life’s journey. Novices learned through ordeals, secret ceremonies, and extended teachings from elders.16 These examples speak to the threads of shared psychologies between black women in the Old World and the New. Elements of these shared psychologies deserve further study, for identifying them can provide deeper insights into black women’s consciousness. Historical and sociological studies on black women’s clubs, organizations, and church work detail the mechanics of sacred daily life. Psychology researchers are challenged to place these phenomena in a psychosocial framework. This effort would provide a deeper understanding of the underlying consciousness that motivates black women’s efforts, placing their actions in a context and making their achievements even more meaningful. A popular television program recently featured Codelia Taylor. Small in size, Taylor is a middle-aged African American woman. For years, she worked as a health-care administrator in a nursing home. Taylor “saw

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people who had a sparkle in their eye when they came into the nursing home but after being restrained in chairs, they lost the motivation to live.” She described crying all the way home on many days. “I needed to make a decision whether I was going to remain there and tolerate these things or whether I was going to make a difference.” Her husband supported her in this effort, and the couple moved back to their old inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. There, they converted their old residence and opened “Family House,” which houses elderly African Americans who would otherwise be homeless or placed in nursing homes. Through her spirituality, Taylor was able to confront secular issues: “I came back and found a whole different world than when we left.” She described an encounter with drug dealers. “I was afraid. I realized I had to talk to them. One gentleman pulled a gun on me. I told him it was OK to shoot me, he would just get me to heaven faster than I planned to go.” Within weeks, Family House grew, and more neighborhood houses were purchased. Taylor said, “Children in the neighborhood adopted us. Next thing I knew we had an after-school program.” By reclaiming and rebuilding her community, Taylor was functioning in the psychological space created through sacred daily living. Thus, she found a place in which she could combat urban blight with a heightened consciousness. The Mother archetype has an essential role in black communities. In African American communities, women who are committed to sacred daily living are often recognized with honorary titles such as Mother and Queen Mother. Thus, one community member recognized Codelia Taylor’s stature and work by stating, “Everybody in Milwaukee knows Mother Taylor.”17 The actions of other well-known mothers, such as Mother Hale and Queen Mother Moore, further demonstrate what sacred daily living means: Mother Hale cared for AIDS-infected infants in her Harlem community, and Queen Mother Moore organized political movements and founded the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women. In her extensive work on black women’s church and community work, sociologist Cheryl Gilkes writes: The roles of church and community mothers represent impositions of familistic and pseudo-familistic ties upon social organizations and the process of social influence. These mothers serve effectively for a very long time and accumulate great prestige and in many cases very real authority. Not only are they role models, power brokers, and venerable elders, but also the actuarial realities of black life are such

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that elderly black women provide the continuity necessary to promote unity in the face of ever-changing historical conditions. Such women are the senior members of diverse networks of community workers and provide a counterforce to the potential for fragmentation.18 African American women express the Mother archetype in how they see themselves, place themselves, and express spiritual values at home and in their communities. This golden thread of continuity arguably extends from an African past. By understanding her people’s sacred history and her essential role in it, a woman embraces the responsibility to create, nurture, and transform. Black women’s sacred daily life is full of spiritual values. These mystical qualities are important to health and well-being. Maintaining a connection with the unseen is essential: it provides access to spiritual truth, which exists on a metaphysical plane. Spirituality is set in motion in daily life by service, sacrifice, and praise. Spirituality in this context means a personal relationship with God (the Holy Spirit); it is a way of experiencing life, which characterizes what one values, brings peace in challenging circumstances, and motivates commitment to a larger purpose shared with others. For instance, black women praise and serve spirit through ritualized food preparation (especially on holidays) and church and civic celebrations. I recall my grandmother preparing for such an event. Her crisp, white cotton dress was a contrast against her maple brown skin. I watched as she placed a white-laced handkerchief so that it was peeking from the dress pocket just below her left shoulder. Putting on her white gloves and placing her Bible under her arm, she was preparing to attend her Woman’s Day Sunday afternoon service. She held my face while gently kissing my cheek, reminding me to be good. I was nine years old. Years later, I recalled her words: she was, I knew, telling me to be of good character, be of good service to God, be a good family and community member, and be good to myself. “Be good” was my grandmother’s assertion to me of the goodness of God—the goodness of God made visible. She believed that I could survive the oppression I would face as a black woman if I acted upon my spirituality (God’s goodness) and nurtured my dignity and self-esteem. A recently edited volume on African American women’s spirituality provides various examples of the value of this sacred daily consciousness as a source of strength and resilience.19 Some work has been done on the psychology of African American

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women. Thus far, major contributions have focused on sex roles and gender identity, self-esteem, personal efficacy, career and work-related factors, and personality traits. A review of this research points to a need for a more sustained effort. As one investigator puts it: “The examination of individual experience in a social science context has been cited in many places as an urgent need in psychological inquiry. Critics claim that, too often, we have studied specific behaviors and attitudes as if they were unconnected to other aspects of the person’s life, such as history and group values. . . . Investigators interested in the psychology of diasporan women have a unique opportunity to develop the field in many ways that consider both the person and the social context.”20 In my 1997 survey of two hundred adult, predominately middle-class black Americans who identified themselves as Christian, 76 percent were women. As predicted, I found women respondents expressed a strong belief in God and reported using their spiritual values as a means of organizing life events and facing life’s challenges. My main purpose was to survey folk-healing beliefs and practices. I found that traditions were kept alive within families via storytelling.21 Moreover, survey results identified four elements of folk healing: (1) spirituality, an awareness of a transcendent dimension; (2) ritual, an act or ceremonial acknowledgment of the spiritual realm; (3) the power of words, a belief in the influence of spoken words over personal well-being; and (4) dreams, a process for self-awareness and acknowledgment of signs and omens of future events. Survey respondents shared some folk beliefs that had been handed down to them and identified grandmothers, aunts, and mothers as primary communicators of these beliefs and practices. Examples of such folk beliefs include the idea that a person born with a caul or veil (that is, a membrane covering the head at birth) can communicate with the spirit world; that dreaming about fish means someone close to you is pregnant; and that reading the Twenty-third Psalm will safeguard the spirit of a newborn baby. Spirituality plays a very significant part in African American women’s belief system; it provides ways of organizing life events and coping with its challenges.22 In addition to folk-healing beliefs and practices, I surveyed participants’ religious orientation. Research has shown that people generally tend to use religion in one of two ways. These approaches are defined as extrinsic and intrinsic. On the one hand, persons who are extrinsic in their approach use religion as a social practice, a very self-serving and instrumental approach. On the other hand, persons who are intrinsic in their approach use religion as a framework in which to understand all of life. Results showed that 166

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women overwhelmingly use religion as an intrinsic practice of their spiritual beliefs and values. They weave spirituality into daily life as a source of newness, refreshing tired minds and weary souls. When the surface events of life are not interpreted as its ultimate meaning, the promise of hope lessens the disillusion of despair. This concept was illustrated in a front-page story from the November 12, 1996, New York Times about a woman named Oseola McCarty. The article described McCarty as a shy, stooped woman of eighty-eight who gave a gift of $150,000 to finance scholarships at a local college, the University of Southern Mississippi. It is important to know that McCarty saved this money a few dollars at a time while working as a laundress. Since 1967, she had lived alone in a quiet little house on Miller Street in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. While reading this article, I recognized the underlying spiritual values transforming the surface events of McCarty’s life, and, with that in mind, I offer the following scriptural commentary to the published article: New York Times: “Who else might she give her savings to, if not to strangers?” 2 Corinthians 9:7: Each should give what he [she] has decided in their heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. New York Times: “She did not ask for as much as a brick to be dedicated in her name. . . . Her generosity touched so many people, created such a fuss that Miss McCarty soon found herself flying all over the country, accepting humanitarian awards, meeting famous people and wearing high-heeled shoes. . . . People famous and ordinary sought her out and called her ‘holy.’” 2 Corinthians 9:14: And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. New York Times: “Ms. Tucker, whom Miss McCarty calls ‘my daughter,’ has witnessed the transformation of Miss McCarty since she gave her money to the university in the summer of 1995. It has been like watching a flower open. Nothing of value lost in the transformation. ‘I see her at the dinners in her French silk shoes,’ Ms. Tucker said, ‘and I see her at night when she gets down on her knees to pray.’” 167

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2 Corinthians 9:13: Because of the service by which you have provided yourselves, they will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. New York Times: “She was reared in a house full of women, her grandmother, mother, and aunt, and as they fell sick over the years she cared for them. She dropped out of school when she was eight years old and started working as a laundress. Her grandmother died in 1944, her mother in 1964, and her aunt in 1967, leaving her alone. People took clothes to her to clean, but seldom talked much to her. She had a dog named Dog, a pig named Hog and a cow named Hazel. She talked to them sometimes. . . . ‘Loneliness is a terrible, terrible thing. I used to get so blue, I would just cry about it. Now I get to humming a song or recite the 23rd Psalm. If you keep your mind occupied, Satan can’t attack you.’” 2 Corinthians 6:10: Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. Because some psychological frameworks view spirituality and religion as essentially irrational, it is difficult to examine the consciousness of sacred daily life as an assumptive worldview. However, humanistic-existential psychological theories provide some insight into its value. Such theories hold that people are challenged to face important dilemmas of human existence—the universal struggle to find meaning in life, to live by moral standards, to cope with harsh realities, and to develop an understanding of suffering and death. A humanistic-existential view acknowledges a person’s sense of self and experience as important. When viewing McCarty’s story from this perspective, her struggle to find purpose, value, and meaning in her life is illuminated. Spiritual values were her anchor in an alternative consciousness that transcended the harsh realities of her existence, and they were no doubt handed down by her grandmother, mother, and aunt. These golden threads of values and beliefs provided hope in the face of despair; joy and peace served as selfsustaining internal sources of the resilience needed to triumph over life’s challenges. McCarty practiced prayer and dedication as a way to quiet the mind. By providing coping strategies that are particularly important to psychological survival, McCarty acted upon her spirituality through

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service and praise. She recognized that, individually and collectively, we are participating in an interdependent relationship with the unseen. In summary, sacred daily life is an alternative consciousness that guards against the harsh realities of life. It is imbued with spiritual values. Spun in the African past, golden threads of values connect women in Africa and the African diaspora. The personal narratives of black women’s lives illustrate the primary feminine element within the spiritual realm that is expressed through the essential role of Mother. African American women recognize themselves as integral parts of their communities and take responsibility for the health and welfare of those communities. The process of transmitting beliefs and values from one generation to another has taken many forms for African American women. Essentially, the process involves ritualized activities. Women place themselves among communities of women who construct and share in systems founded on common basic assumptions and worldviews, which guide their actions and shape their self-consciousness. This forms the psychosocial foundation within the New World context. Using faith to spur themselves and others to action, many black women make remarkable contributions and transform communities. Positioned at societies’ margins, African American women create, nurture, and sustain self, family, and community by means of these spiritual values.

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Part Seven civil war and civil rights

Chapter Thirteen

Gender and Political Struggle in Kenya, 1948–1998 C o ra A . P re s l e y

As Kenyan women approached the millennium, forty years after they joined the struggle for freedom in their homeland, they were faced with increasing gender discrimination and exclusion from participation in their nation’s governance. During the 1980s and 1990s, women who opposed the authoritarian regime of President Daniel arap Moi and who challenged gender discrimination and antiwoman polices were subject to public censure, attack, and imprisonment. This state repression helped to galvanize women to organize resistance and to run for political office during the prodemocracy movement. The prodemocracy movement began in the 1980s and is still ongoing. After years of internal and external pressure, Moi’s government finally brought about the restoration of multiparty elections in 1991. Activism in the face of state oppression has its roots in the colonial period (1885 to 1963), when women played key roles in the liberation struggle. In the prodemocracy movement, women have employed strategies of resistance similar to those used by their foremothers: grassroots

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activism and mass antigovernment demonstrations. From the late 1940s through the 1990s, women activists organized around issues of government corruption, foreign influence in the economy, poverty, gender discrimination, and political repression.

Women’s Political Struggle during the Colonial Era In the British colony of Kenya, the Africans’ role was to provide a pool of exploitable labor for the state and the white settlers. The rhetoric of imperialism also called for “uplifting” Africans, which in essence produced an assault on African cultures deemed to be immoral, un-Christian, or both. The British colonial state in Kenya was buttressed by its laws. Among the many measures that created and sustained white domination were the laws on communal labor, taxation, reservations, social segregation, land alienation, and pass ordinances. Kenya’s pass ordinances were similar to the pass laws in South Africa. All Africans were required to carry passbooks that were issued only by the government when they left the rural areas to travel to the urban areas to seek work. Violations of the pass ordinances resulted in relocation back to the rural area, fines, or imprisonment. Moreover, white nationalism was encouraged and African nationalism discouraged as European residents voted and Africans were denied the franchise. The result was a segregated, divided society that created a leisurely lifestyle for European settlers and their families. For the vast majority of the African population, however, the result was a spiral of impoverishment, and over the years, their rights were eroded. African political and cultural pressures to transform and eliminate colonialism grew from the 1920s on but had little effect until after World War II. After decades of associational politicking, Africans in the Central Province of Kenya rose up in armed struggle against the state. The Land and Freedom Army—commonly known as the Mau Mau movement—began in the late 1940s when militants broke from the Kenya African Union, a moderate nationalist group. In the early 1950s, Kenya was plunged into a war—an anticolonial revolt—that resulted in the deaths of over ten thousand Kikuyu, who were either killed in battle, massacred, or executed by the state. One hundred thousand other Africans were sentenced to prison or interned in concentration camps for periods ranging from three months to seven years for expressing sympathy and solidarity with the rebellion or for being identified as members of the covert Mau Mau organization. At least a million Kikuyu 174

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were settled into newly constructed villages, where they lived under guard and under curfew and where they were subjected to artificially induced food scarcity.1 The rebellion fundamentally transformed the course of the independence struggle in Kenya, compelled the conservative government in Britain to rethink its colonial policy, and exposed the depth of women’s commitment to the nationalist struggle. Thousands of women were imprisoned, and hundreds of thousands more were reduced to penury because of the concentration camp experiences. Women were in the forefront of this struggle. Almost a year before the declaration of the state of emergency in Kenya in October 1952, thousands of them confronted the state, resisting its policies. Ironically, however, in the historiography of the Mau Mau rebellion, the description of the women’s protest is reduced to “some disturbances at Fort Hall” or not mentioned at all.2 The fact is that for four months in 1951 and 1952, women’s militancy was overtly expressed, forcing the British colonial state to take police action against them. Thousands of women participated in “riotous” behavior in opposition to the government’s agricultural and husbandry policies. The control of food resources was a central feature of the colonial government, so much so that in 1954 the government instituted a policy of land confiscation and villagization to defeat the Mau Mau.3 The policies were intended to break community support for the Mau Mau rebels and punish villages that supplied the rebels with food and other resources.4 Among Kikuyu women and men, this dislocating process aroused fierce resentment. By 1955, over eighty thousand households in Kiambu District had been forcibly relocated. Communal labor laws had first been instituted in 1905, with the goal of producing a wage-earning class. These laws were followed by land alienation acts, taxation policies, and other measures designed to exploit first the male labor force and then the female labor force. Colonial officials also sought to control the right to produce and market certain crops and to own land. Not until 1955, when “only the old men, who could no longer sleep in the same hut with their stock, [but] could still be heard grumbling about the ‘new look’ in Kikuyuland,” do we see the end of the process of violently silencing African protest. One could assert that only old men grumbled because it was safe for them, but not others, to do so.5 Young men and women were carted off to the detention camps for complaining, since opposition to government policy aroused suspicion that they were rebels, not loyalists. Women’s resistance to these policies had a long history, beginning with 175

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their own labor protests in the 1920s. In the 1940s, women and men protested the colonial agricultural polices of destocking and terracing and were repressed by the government. Perhaps the clearest indication of women’s perceptions of the importance of resistance to these kinds of policies can be seen in the incident at Fort Hall. We can observe a number of things from this: first, women were politically conscious and militant; second, the state did not respect women’s gender but used brutal repression against them when it was deemed necessary; and third, the state attempted to downplay the incidents to avoid shocking the British public and causing a crisis for the Colonial Office and the British government. The official government version of the events of November and December 1951, which was produced for public consumption by a government-sponsored scholar, situated the incident among a plethora of incidents beginning in the 1920s. African political activism was portrayed as simple frustration and dismissed as a turn from rationalism to atavism. The Corfield Report described the events at Fort Hall as “the mass demonstrations of thousands of Kikuyu women in the Fort Hall area in November and December 1951 which were inspired and incited by political leaders directed against compliance with Government regulations and attended by violence and destruction of Government and public property.”6 Neatly excised from this recounting is any mention of women’s persistence and the fact that women’s initiative was crucial both to the staging of the incident and the government’s violent reaction to it. The African Affairs Department reported the incident in the following way: “The November disturbances in this district [Fort Hall], when unlawful assemblies of women gathered and burned down cattle crushes, and after eight days of argument and persuasion including that of their Member for Legislative Council and fellowtribesman, the Hon. M. E. Mathu, had to be dispersed by the Police, led to the decision that it was necessary to impose additional Police on the area. Accordingly, an Assistant Superintendent and 50 men were posted there for four months.”7 Here, we see the version that shows that placating measures were taken. Africans had recently been allowed two members in the legislature. While Mathu was a champion of African rights, he was not associated with the militancy of the Kikuyu women in 1951. The Police Department reported the incident differently, showing exactly what countermeasures were meted out to rural women rebels: During the latter part of the year resistance to the inoculation of cattle against rinderpest in the Fort Hall Reserve was offered by

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African inhabitants. The objections, which lacked all validity, were fostered by the local branch of the Kenya African Union, leading members of which were charged with offenses connected with the agitation. Resistance manifested itself in the efforts of large numbers of women to release some of their menfolk remanded in prison custody for refusing to have their cattle inoculated, followed by demonstrations and the burning and destruction of cattle crushes. As a result of these disorders over 400 women were convicted of illegal assembly, or malicious damage to property, and sentenced either to short terms of imprisonment or to pay small fines. A police levy force was, consequently, imposed in certain locations in the area.8 In this version, the incident was described as “civil disturbances,” and women’s agency was either denied or muted, since it was “fostered by the local branch of the Kenya African Union.” Furthermore, the police dismissed the legitimacy of the incident, asserting: “The objections [to the inoculations] lacked all validity.” For the eyes of the Colonial Office—in the telegraphic correspondence from the governor’s office in Kenya and in response to a confidential telegram sent to inquire about the situation in Kenya—the governor justified cracking down on public assemblies in Kenya and argued for banning the Kenya African Union altogether: Government’s attitude is still as stated in these savingrams, but certain recent events have led to tighter control being required in order to ensure that no breach of the peace occurs. . . . In the Fort Hall district a Kenya African Union meeting on the 23 September started a campaign against compulsory Anti-Rinderpest inoculation. This resulted in the prosecution of 12 men who were accompanied to the Tribunal by 200 women, all objecting to compulsory inoculation. Demonstrations continued and on 3rd November a crowd of about 1000 women sang and danced outside the District Commissioners’ office and only dispersed on the appearance of the Kenya Police. As a result, on 4th November, District Commissioner issued a general prohibition against the holding of Kenya African Union meetings in the Fort Hall district. Despite this, meetings of women continued, and on 9th November, in order to prevent a breach of the peace, it was necessary to declare the crowd of several thousand women gathered in the district headquarters an unlawful assembly and to disperse it by the Police using light canes.9

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Another incident in which women had agency is also recounted in the same telegram and used to justify changes made by the police that limited the right of Africans to organize politically and confront the government. “This is not an isolated instance; similar results may be expected from the holding of public meetings by the Kenya African Union. In the Kiambu district, as a direct result of a Kenya African Union meeting on 14th October, pickets were posted next day to prevent African women going to work on neighbouring farms to pick coffee. In consequence, practically all picking on these farms ceased for a week. The District Commissioner has, therefore, temporarily withdrawn further permission for further meetings of the Kenya African Union in this district.”10 These actions by Kikuyu women demonstrated a number of things. First, as women, they organized to protest government policies that undermined their families’ economic survival, specifically, the demand for women’s labor on the European-owned coffee estates and the arbitrary culling of the Kikuyu cattle herds. Second, in the 1951–1952 riots, women turned out to demonstrate when the state oppressed men who had resisted the government and been jailed. In the Green Belt Movement of the 1990s, women’s environmental activism had similar causes; women in Central Province staged a hunger strike and yearlong demonstrations against the government in a women’s squatter community they built in Nairobi, demanding that political prisoners be freed. Third, the government used physical force against the women, beating them with whips and sticks to try to break their resistance. The January 1994 beating of Wangari Maathai, the leader of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, and the government’s use of beatings against women and men in the prodemocracy movement have chilling parallels with government actions during the colonial period.

The Transition to a One-Party Regime The Mau Mau freedom fighters were defeated militarily, but their struggle helped Kenya achieve its independence in 1963. Jomo Kenyatta, the leader of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), became the first president of Kenya. In the initial fifteen years of Kenya’s history as an African-ruled nation, the peasantry expected that they would share in the fruits of independence. However, during the Kenyatta years, as the African elite made

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advances in education, income growth, and political power, the peasants were left on the fringes. As the Kenyatta years drew to a close, the political system, which was dominated by a single party, was increasingly repressive. The state responded to political dissent with imprisonment and a few wellknown assassinations.11 The constitution was changed to allow for detention without trial and to eliminate a candidate’s ability to run for political office unless he or she had been nominated by a registered political party. The elimination of an effective opposition evolved over the next fifteen years. First, the Kenya People’s Union Party was banned in 1969; all opposition parties were eliminated either through banning, co-optation, or intimidation. In 1973, Kenya’s leading newspaper, the Daily Nation, printed a comment by the Central Province’s KANU chairman, James Njiru: “Just as KANU had managed to crush other parties such as KADU, APP, and KPU, so it would crush ‘any other party these people may be trying to form.’”12 In 1975, J. M. Kariuki, a member of the opposition and a former leader in the Mau Mau rebellion, was assassinated. Prominent critics of the government, such as the writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and members of Parliament Martin Shikuku, Mark Mwithaga, and Wawereu Kanja were detained or jailed between 1975 and 1980.13 By 1982, Kenya had been transformed into a de jure single-party state via a constitutional amendment.14 Under these conditions, women politicians did not fare well. Women candidates were able to run for office in the opposition parties, where they had better representation, before the parties were eliminated. In the primary elections of 1969 and the general elections of 1970, women candidates were unable to win. From the 1970 general election up to the 1992 election, however, those wishing to run for office had to be on the KANU party ticket. The primary elections of December 1969 and the general elections of January 1970 fielded seven hundred candidates, all of whom ran on the KANU ticket.15 Kenyatta’s reelection occurred without an opposition candidate running. Seven women ran for office in the 1969–1970 campaign, but only one, Grace Onyango, was successful.16 The elections were monopolized by a single ethnic group—the Kikuyu—and de facto one-party rule by the Kenya African National Union, which prevented women and gender issues from becoming a part of the political discussion.17 Even women who had been closely associated with the KANU leadership for over a decade found that they were not allowed to participate in electoral politics if they were associated with non-KANU or Kikuyu interests.

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The 1969–1970 elections presented problems for all candidates, as intimidation and the stuffing of ballot boxes were commonplace occurrences. In her autobiography, Wambui Otieno recalled how ethnic conflicts between the Luo and Kikuyu became an issue in her candidacy. Otieno was born into a prominent Kikuyu family and married to a noted lawyer, who was a Luo. KANU officials tried to stop her from running for office, but she persisted. On election day, KANU party affiliates confiscated and destroyed her ballots while they were in transit to the hall where the final tallies were to be made.18 Special Branch men were dispatched to Lang’ata by high-level politicians and civil servants to find out whether I was strong enough to win the election. They reported that I was popular enough to win. It was then agreed that, by hook or by crook, I should not be allowed to win the election for I would be disseminating information about the Kikuyu to the Luo. One of the top politicians, who favored my candidacy, asked “What if Wambui divorced S. M. Otieno?” And he asked whether they had forgotten that I had fought hand in hand with them [in the Mau Mau rebellion]. . . . He was told . . . that I could only be a successful candidate if I abandoned my Luo husband. When this information was conveyed to me, I felt very dejected. All that I had done was now being measured by my marriage to SM. I had to make a decision, and quickly. I sent the messengers back with the answer that since Parliament was not going to be my husband after the five-year term was over, I had no intention at all of divorcing my husband.19 In Otieno’s case, the results of these tactics were devastating. Officially, she received only 181 of the 9,640 votes cast. She attributed her poor showing on election day to gross fraud: A policeman who was a family friend . . . told me that my votes were being taken out and burned in the Kibera district officers’ office. I walked up there with some of my supporters and saw the ballot papers scattered all over the place . . . some . . . were only half-burned. . . . Mama Wambui Githeri entered [the Industrial Area polling station] in a hurry and called me outside to tell me that she had received a message . . . that my boxes were being removed to an unknown destination and that I had no votes in that area. . . . Apart from a few votes from Karen polling station . . . I had very few votes

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in the three major polling stations. There were only a few ballots stuck to the rough lids of four of the boxes. Others held nothing. . . . It has always been said that I was one of the first women pioneers to stand for election and that I lost heavily.20 Women’s abilities to participate in the government and raise gender issues were curtailed, even during the UN Decade for Women (1975–1985). In the early 1980s, women held fewer than 3 percent of the elected seats in Parliament. From 1963–1992 neither President Kenyatta nor President Moi included women in their cabinets, and there was only one woman among the 158 assistant ministers after the 1992 election.21 When women were appointed to positions in the government, they were designated as heads of bodies representing “women’s” issues, such as the Women’s Bureau (created in response to the UN Decade for Women), or in Maendeleo Ya Wanawake (MYW), a women’s rights and welfare organization. MYW had been created during the colonial period. As a nonpolitical, nongovernment organization, it came under direct scrutiny and control of the government until it was finally absorbed by the government in 1990.22

The Restoration of Multipartyism When Kenyatta died in 1978 and Daniel arap Moi became president, it was generally believed that the new Moi regime would usher in an era of tolerance and democracy. Political prisoners such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o were released, and to the relief of the nation, the popular expectations of ethnic warfare were quashed.23 For weeks after Kenyatta’s death, people tensely waited for some kind of retaliation by the Kalenjin (Moi’s ethnic group) against the Kikuyu elite, who had dominated economic and political life to the exclusion of Kenya’s other ethnic groups.24 However, by 1982, within four years of Moi’s selection as president, the regime was as totalitarian as the Kenyatta regime had ever been. This dictatorial system and the state’s widespread use of violence to silence the vocal opposition resulted in international scandal. In part because of an attempted air force coup in August 1982, the government initiated state repression on a scale not seen since the Mau Mau rebellion thirty years previously. Over a thousand air force personnel were arrested and convicted of treason; twelve were executed.25 Emergency powers were revived, especially those associated with detention. Prominent and outspoken critics were subject to arrest under

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the Public Security Regulations, which permitted arrest and indefinite detention in prison without a trial or specific charge. University lecturers, civil servants, journalists, and even politically active students were gathered up in security raids.26 Laws left over from the British colonial government and Kenyatta’s regime were used to silence dissent or force dissenters into exile. In this regard, the primary laws were: (1) the Public Order Act—a colonial law that prohibited public assembly unless permission had been obtained from the district commissioner; (2) the Public Collections Act— a law that limited the collection of harambee (or pull together) fund-raising events unless they had been licensed by the provincial administration; (3) the Preservation of Public Security Act—allowing for detention for indefinite periods of time; and (4) the Chief’s Authority Act—assigning to the chiefs unlimited powers to keep the peace. In practice, chiefs could forbid political meetings in private homes, ban educational meetings when they thought seditious ideas would be under discussion, and harass political opposition by sending armed administrative police to disband meetings. A fifth act, the Societies Act, required that all organizations be registered with the government. Collectively, the laws forbade free speech and free assembly and threatened any competing political (and sometimes economic) association with the arrest and detention of its leadership as a part of government policy.27 Ethnic-cleansing policies were introduced in the early 1990s, resulting in the murder of more than fifteen hundred Kenyans. At least three hundred thousand more were forced into internal exile.28 Political dissent became widespread among diverse disaffected groups, including coffee farmers, tea growers, students, taxi owners and operators, members of the clergy, journalists, a prominent legal association, the intelligentsia, and thwarted politicians. In the face of periodic rioting and a worsening economy, the government used all the draconian measures at its disposal.29 The government had eliminated the secret ballot, forcing voters to line up behind their candidates to be counted on election day; further, opposition candidates were weakened through co-optation, imprisonment, or forced exile. The opposition’s ability to get elected was further reduced by the large, nonrefundable fee of three thousand Kenyan shillings (about U.S. $50, a sizable sum for most Kenyans) required to declare candidacy.30 This dictatorial system and the state’s widespread use of violence to silence the opposition resulted in more international scandal. By 1992, Kenya’s donor nations (including the United States) had joined with in-

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digenous and expatriate Kenyans to press for reform. Meeting in Paris toward the end of 1991, the donor nations suspended economic aid to Kenya because of its curtailment of civil liberties. In December 1991, the World Bank refused to transmit loans to the government. Section 2a of the Kenyan Constitution, which had mandated that there be only one political party, was repealed in 1991, and prodemocracy advocates were able to force the end of one-party rule in Kenya. Multiparty elections were held for the first time in over a decade.31 Political pressure groups quickly reorganized themselves and emerged as political parties: the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy–Kenya (FORD-Kenya), the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy—Asili (FORD-Asili), the Democratic Party of Kenya (DP), the Kenya National Congress (KNC), the Kenya Social Congress (KSC), and the Islamic Party of Kenya (IPK). The disorganization and fracturing of the opposition meant that KANU still won most of the contests. The second multiparty election was held in December 1997.

Gender and the Prodemocracy Movement Women were prominent in the resistance to the Moi regime and participated in the multiparty elections as voters and candidates.32 Before the 1992 election, women politicians ran on the ruling party’s ticket. In the 1983 election, seven women candidates appeared on the ballot, but only one, Phoebe Asiyo, won a seat in Parliament, netting 12,831 votes to her closet rival’s 12,735. The other women candidates—Batroba Kemoli, Grace Bomet, Rose Osolo, Theresa Shitakha, Julia Ojiambo, and Grace Onyango (who had been elected in 1970)—lost by substantial margins.33 In the 1988 elections, six women attempted to win seats in Parliament. Only Agnes Ndeti and Grace Ogot won their seats.34 In the 1990s, despite KANU opposition, millions of Kenyans believed that Moi’s government would be unseated. Women, too, had cause for hope and began organizing for the 1992 election. According to Maria Nzomo: “Women, more than any other interest group, have come out very strongly demanding that their voices be heard; their gender based interests be included and mainstreamed in the new democratic agenda and that they participate on equal footing with men in the democratization process. Many meetings, seminars and even a national women’s convention have been held to discuss and map out the women’s agenda in the democratization

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process.”35 The women’s goals were to “change their marginalized status in public decision-making/policy-making and national development planning and implementation.”36 Organizers of the women’s convention hoped to capture 30 to 35 percent of the seats in the 1992 election. However, only 10 percent of the women candidates won parliamentary seats, and only forty-five women of the two hundred who ran for local civic offices were successful.37 The 1992 general election was the first in which women could run in opposition to the government. More women candidates ran on opposition tickets than ran under the ruling party’s banner. Of the eighteen women who ran for parliamentary seats, three were KANU candidates, five were FORD-Kenya candidates, nine were Democratic Party candidates, and one ran on the FORD-Asili ticket. Six of the eighteen women candidates won their seats.38 Women candidates charged the government with openly attempting to derail their campaigns and undermine the opposition parties through dirty tricks and sometimes violent confrontations carried out by governmentfinanced youth gangs. In her autobiography, Wambui Otieno described two attacks on her and fellow campaign workers. In one attack, she was beaten so badly by KANU youth wingers that her arm was broken and her clothing was soaked with blood. Wangari Maathai, head of the well-known environmentalist Green Belt Movement since 1977, was injured in the same attack and hospitalized for several days. In early March 1992, during another attack on opposition forces, Otieno narrowly escaped injury by scrambling over a fence and ducking between cars as youth wingers charged a FORD-Kenya rally.39 Maathai and others in the opposition were arrested in January 1992. Because of her association with the FORDKenya Party, of which she is a founding member, she was frequently attacked and harassed by government forces.40 Women’s grassroots resistance has also taken many forms, including collective action. Women in rural areas have resisted government policies that force them to grow cash crops by uprooting coffee plants and planting food crops on their land.41 Throughout the country, there have been instances of women’s individual as well as collective resistance to state oppression, such as that of Bernadette Musoga, a mother from West Pokot, who publicly condemned the government for selling famine-relief supplies. She was fined two thousand shillings for her actions.42 From February 29, 1992, through March 29, 1993, women staged a hunger

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strike to protest the arrests of their sons and of all political prisoners who had been accused of plotting to overthrow the government. After they had spoken out publicly for the restoration of democracy, Koigi wa Wamwere, a former member of Parliament, and seven other men had been imprisoned in October 1990 on charges of “plotting to overthrow the government.”43 The mothers who staged the strike were elderly rural women who had not been active in the prodemocracy movement. Yet they courageously challenged the state, garnered widespread support in Kenya, and focused international attention on the plight of political prisoners in Kenya. According to Alexandra Tibbets, who interviewed them, “the Mamas”—as they came to be known—ranged in age from sixty to seventy and had never been involved in protest politics.44 Monica Wangu Wamwere, Milka Wankiku Kinuttio, and Ruth Wangari Tungu met with the attorney general, Amos Wako, who promised to look into their case. On February 28, in Uhuru Park (uhuru means “freedom”), where public functions are staged, the women began their hunger strike. Nairobi supporters aided them with shelter; but the police were ordered to disband the sympathizers and compel the women to leave the park. Using brute force, the police attacked the crowd, beating and stomping the protesters. Several people, including activist Wangari Maathai, were hospitalized.45 When Nigel Rodley, special rapporteur for the UN Commission on Human Rights, sent a letter to the government about the beatings, officials replied that the women’s supporters had thrown rocks at passing motorists and blocked traffic. They claimed that force had been used only to restore order.46 The Mamas used the traditional Kikuyu women’s method of dissent— guturamira ng’ania (ritual cursing by exposing the body to the offender)— which had first been employed in nationalist protest by Mary Nyanjiru during the Thuku protests of 1922. Despite continued police harassment, the Kikuyu mothers occupied Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park and eventually won their struggle when their sons were released after a year of demonstrations and rallies. Support for these women’s efforts came from national as well as international groups. In Kenya, the Release Political Prisoners (RPP) group was organized to help the mothers’ efforts. The RPP provided technical support that included supplying the mothers with food after their hunger strike ended and engaging in fund-raising activities on their behalf.47 Elite women—most notably, members of the National Council of Women in Kenya and Mothers in Action—also spoke out about

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the situation. These actions garnered international attention and embarrassed the Moi government.48 Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement is among the best-known examples of women’s resistance to state policies. Since 1977, this organization has protested government policies of deforestation and damming rivers, which erode the environment. Government-backed agents have attacked the protesters and injured and imprisoned them.49 In 1992, Maathai, who had supported the Uhuru Park Mamas, was one of several candidates beaten up by members of KANU’s youth wing when they attempted to hold a rally. The most recent example of state violence against Maathai occurred on January 8, 1999. While leading a group of protestors who were demonstrating against government and private-sector plans to develop a reserve area of more than one thousand hectares of forestland, Maathai and twenty other protestors were beaten by two hundred armed guards.50 Because of her continued and high-profile political activism, Charity Ngilu is a frequent victim of state violence. In February 1996, police disrupted a meeting she coordinated with other opposition leaders, shooting and wounding one of their bodyguards.51 In mid-October 1996, police broke into a civic education meeting and detained and beat Ngilu, along with two women journalists.52 A year later, they forcibly broke up a public meeting Ngilu had organized in Kitui.53 These and other attacks against prominent women in the political arena comprise only a small part of the obstacles faced by Kenyan women. Their issues range from employment discrimination, unequal wages, lower levels of education, and unequal access to credit to cultural practices such as polygyny and genital mutilation.54 Rape and battery are also at high levels, and though the government has condemned violence against women, the rates of prosecution for such crimes are low because police are reluctant to intervene in domestic disputes and because cultural mores keep families from publicly discussing sex. There have also been noted cases where women who reported that they were raped were later beaten up because they had broken their silence. Kenya’s laws also officially discriminate against women. For example, a woman must obtain her husband’s or father’s consent before obtaining a passport. In practice, a woman must also have her husband’s or father’s approval to secure a bank loan. Pension laws dictate that a widow loses her work pension upon remarrying, whereas a man does not. Kenya’s Law of Succession, which governs inheritance rights, provides for equal consideration of male and female children. However, most cases do not go 186

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to court. Women are often excluded from inheritance settlements or given smaller shares than male claimants. In addition, a widow cannot be the sole administrator of her husband’s estate unless she has her children’s consent. Penal laws, succession laws, citizenship laws, and marriage laws all allow for discrimination against women. Women’s groups have persistently appealed to the government for changes in these laws via a constitutional amendment, without success. The last attempt to pass a women’s rights bill was defeated in Parliament in March 2000. Separate women’s organizations address these and other issues. However, no national coalition of women’s organizations exists. The oldest and largest women’s group, Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, has been co-opted by the government. Moreover, class divisions have kept these organizations from demanding radical, feminist solutions.55 A women’s convention was convened in 1992 to produce broad-based organizational support for a national women’s agenda. However, MYW leadership could not be convinced to subscribe to the convention’s resolutions.56 In addition, women’s organizations in Kenya do not give much support to women candidates. All of Kenya’s 16,000 registered women’s organizations are constitutionally nonpolitical bodies and cannot legally participate in politics.57 The situation is further complicated by the behavior of the women candidates themselves. The most notable example is that of Charity Ngilu, who, when she ran for president in the 1997 election, deliberately presented herself as a candidate for all the people and spoke out against attempts to describe her as the candidate for women.58 Maria Nzomo and other analysts speculate that this neutrality on the part of women politicians and the inability to reach consensus on a radical feminist agenda are rooted in elite women’s lack of identity with grassroots women’s issues and their disinclination to oppose men of their own class. It must also be recognized that, should elite women push gender equity in housing, education, and marriage laws, they, too, could share the fate of brutal retaliation, which has been meted out to public activists such as Maathai, Otieno, and the Mamas of Uhuru Park. Women are reminded daily of their proper place, and even elite women candidates for Parliament and the presidency are ridiculed and humiliated in the press by male politicians. The 1992 reforms opened the door for greater participation in Kenya’s electoral process by people of all ethnic groups. However, gender barriers have not been dismantled. This chapter has discussed the intersection of gender, race, class, and

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ethnicity in Kenya’s political struggles, exploring women’s participation in the nationalist struggle in colonial Kenya, women’s agency in the political processes, and how politics transformed their lives. Kikuyu women’s participation in the Mau Mau rebellion against colonialism in the 1950s began the transformation of gender roles in Kenya. The legacy left by the women who assumed leadership roles in the Mau Mau movement has inspired other women to rejoin the political struggle for democracy in contemporary Kenya. Women have increasingly confronted the authoritarian, oneparty rule of the Moi regime as leaders in antigovernment political parties and by staging single-sex civil disobedience campaigns. Despite their increased political activism in the prodemocracy movement, however, Kenyan women continue to be excluded from meaningful participation in government. Yet their struggles are ongoing. In the face of official state repression, Kenyan women leaders such as Charity Ngilu, Wambui Otieno, and Wangari Maathai keep the issues in the public eye. In contemporary Kenya, women’s rights organizations such as the National Council of Women in Kenya, the National Commission on the Status of Women, the Education Center for Women in Democracy, and the League of Kenyan Women Voters have enlarged the debate about citizenship and inclusion by putting the women’s agenda in the forefront of political discourse. .

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Chapter Fourteen

“The lady folk is a doer” Women and the Civil Rights Movement in Claiborne County, Mississippi

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In 1996, while explaining why she decided to run for justice of the peace in 1971 only after it was clear that no men were willing to do so, Marjorie Brandon explained, “I guess we just think, a thought, a man should step forward. A man should be the man. A man should lead. But in some cases, you know, that’s not always true.”1 Because of her successful campaign for political office and her years of service as the local secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Brandon is usually mentioned as one of the “women leaders” in the Claiborne County civil rights movement. Yet much about her movement leadership is obscured today, just as it was limited in the 1960s, by hierarchical, status-oriented, and gendered perceptions of leadership. Slowly, as more and more scholars and activists address questions of gender and leadership, our understanding of women’s work in the civil rights movement is growing and becoming more complex.2 Virtually everyone agrees that, throughout the South, women participated in the movement in disproportionate numbers. They canvassed 189

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door-to-door, attempted to register to vote, attended meetings, participated in demonstrations, and housed and fed civil rights workers more often than did men. Yet, despite this consistent and overwhelming participation, most of the well-known leaders were men, and there are few indepth examinations of women’s contributions. In part, that is because most activists and scholars initially equated movement leadership almost exclusively with public spokespeople and organizational heads, almost all of whom were men. Through an increased focus on women, however, scholars have begun to suggest that our conception of leadership should be much more broadly defined and that less-visible forms of leadership (which women were much more likely to perform) were essential to a successful movement.3 Women’s roles within the Claiborne County, Mississippi, civil rights movement reflect those of many women throughout the movement, and they illustrate some of the important questions that scholars and activists are grappling with today. Emerging as a mass movement in early 1966, the Claiborne County civil rights effort was led by the NAACP, and on the surface, it was overwhelmingly male. In 1952, when the county’s first NAACP branch was organized, fifty-five of the fifty-nine members listed on the charter were men. With no complete listing available, it is difficult to know with certainty how many women joined, but they were clearly outnumbered by men, and only men attended the group’s sporadic, secret meetings.4 Similarly, when the branch was rejuvenated in 1965, forty-three of the sixty charter members were men.5 Women quickly joined in a ratio similar to men, but all of the organization’s officers were male, and when the local movement sent a demand letter to the white community, it was signed by seven men and no women.6 The predominance of visible male leadership is closely tied to the movement’s association with the national NAACP and Charles Evers, who succeeded his assassinated brother, Medgar Evers, as the state field secretary for the organization. The NAACP was bureaucratic and hierarchical, and it was characterized by an individual, top-down style of leadership. In fact, its style and structure were closely tied to traditional conceptions of leadership, an approach that was embraced by Evers as he identified local people to head up the operation of the movement on a day-to-day basis. Because the movement was consciously built on the NAACP tradition and reinforced by Evers’s preferences, older, elite men dominated the visible leadership roles.

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Most of the NAACP officers and the movement leaders were better educated and part of a more secure economic class than their constituents. They were vocal in meetings, led marches, negotiated with whites, and ran for public office. There were no women among the members of the inner circle, who were known throughout the community as the “leading mens.” During marches, Evers implied that women needed protection, typically asking men to march in front and back, with the women and children in the middle. Similarly, during a court-protected march that limited the number of participants, Evers called for ministers and businessmen to demonstrate, asking everyone else to wait on the sidelines.7 Reports about NAACP mass meetings are filled with the names of male speakers and officers. Even at a special meeting sponsored by the Ladies Auxiliary, most of the speakers were men, who, according to the report, “commended the ladies for their efforts.”8 Despite the seeming male dominance, many participants from Claiborne County (as in other locales throughout the South), noted the importance of women, who were responsible for much of the daily work that sustained the effort. One younger activist claimed, “Women carried the Movement. There’s no doubt about it. I mean, there were some men who stood up, but it was a minority. Women were the backbone of the Movement. I’ll stand on that.”9 An older minister agreed with that interpretation, saying: “We do a lot of talk, we men, but the lady folk is a doer. They don’t do much talk, but they doing. We’ll do a lot [of talking about] what we gon’ do . . . and the ladies gon’ on getting the job done.”10 Another activist made a similar assessment: “Women . . . they quicker to do the work than the fellows. Lot of fellows don’t want to be standing out there.”11 Other details support this depiction of women’s overwhelming participation and critical importance. For example, despite the visibility of the all-male leadership, 80 percent of the first fifteen hundred blacks who registered to vote were women.12 Similarly, when the NAACP initiated a boycott against white merchants in April 1966, women took on the extra work and planning necessary to shop almost exclusively—with limited transportation and income—more than forty-five minutes from home. In addition to their crucial roles as consumers, women also worked closely with Rudy Shields, an organizer who came from Chicago to work in the movement and who had an informal association with the NAACP and Charles Evers. Together, they coordinated and supervised the young people. A woman sponsored the youth

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chapter of the NAACP, and she and several other women took care of the details associated with picketing and store watching. They bought poster board, created signs, and made sure there were picketers most afternoons and every Saturday. Based on instructions from civil rights attorneys and guidelines from the national NAACP, they taught store watchers and picketers what was legal and what was not. They made sure picketers kept a tight formation and did not block sidewalks or trespass on private property.13 Thelma Crowder was one of the most visible and prominent of these women. By the time she was born in 1908, her grandparents, who had been slaves, were fairly prosperous, owning farmland and a cotton gin. Living on the farm with her parents, she attended school on a full-time basis and graduated from tenth grade—the highest grade available for black students—in 1924. Unable to attend college and not interested in teaching, she supported herself as a seamstress; by the time the movement began, she was married and the mother of grown children. Serving on committees and fundraising for charitable causes, she continued a family tradition of community involvement. For example, her grandparents donated land to their church, and both her father and a cousin served as superintendent of her one-room elementary school. She continued in this tradition, serving on committees and raising funds for charitable causes. Well read and knowledgeable about the NAACP, she quickly applied her sense of civic responsibility to the movement when it took hold in Claiborne County. She attended meetings, marched, led singing, raised money, solicited NAACP memberships, and helped bring federal registrars into the community by describing the white registrar’s rejection of her voter application. Her commitment never wavered, even when white women canceled their dressmaking orders and her husband grew ill and asked that she stay home with him.14 Like Crowder, many of the most active movement women were well known and had spent years doing social welfare work for the community’s well-being. Some were fairly elite, with the resources to spend considerable time on movement work. Their very presence in the effort provided instant legitimacy to the movement, to Rudy Shields (who did not have roots in the community), and to the teenagers who were the most consistent picketers and canvassers. Leesco Guster was another of the women who played a major role in the movement, especially the voter-registration campaign. For several months in 1966, she drove Shields from house to house throughout

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Claiborne County, and together they encouraged African Americans to register to vote. Canvassing all over the county was tedious work, and it could also be dangerous. In one instance, prospective registrants asked them to return the next day, and when they did, they were met by a white man with a gun prominently displayed in his truck. The people who had asked them to return were frightened and refused to go with them to register. Guster remembers their return trip as harrowing: “This [white] man . . . parked on the other side of this little one way bridge and, talk about scared, I was. Cause I was driving. Mr. Shields had got, he was in the back with my old .45. When I got along near the bridge, I said, ‘Mr. Shields, there he is parked. What should I do?’ . . . He said, ‘You just drive.’ I say, ‘But if . . . he get to shooting, don’t I have to duck?’ And I was so scared. But we had to go across the bridge.”15 They were not attacked that day, but Guster did face repercussions for her work. She was fired almost immediately, and her husband, a prominent contractor, also lost all of his work. Fortunately, they were able to live on his veteran’s pension and social security, and instead of slowing her down, being fired just made Guster more determined and gave her additional time for movement work. She became even more of a target for antimovement harassment when she began to house Shields and white civil rights attorneys. One night a caller who identified himself as a member of the Ku Klux Klan called her abusive names and asked if she was tired of living. Guster was not intimidated and told the caller that “he would be a dead one if he came down here.” She spent that and many other nights standing guard with her gun, and she continued her movement work.16 Guster’s experience also reflected the complexity of prevailing assumptions about gender. In recent interviews, she and others have explicitly identified the car she used to drive Shields around as belonging to her husband. Moreover, in describing the job she had before the movement, she says that her husband “allowed” her to work as a domestic servant. This suggests that she, her husband, and the surrounding community assumed a gendered hierarchy within her marriage that mirrored prevailing norms. While her movement work was extensive, it was largely that typically done by women: canvassing; housing workers; selling NAACP memberships; singing at mass meetings and on marches; working with the youth chapter and its choir, which also sang at meetings; raising money; and picketing and store watching.17 Yet some aspects of the Gusters’ participation seem more ambiguous in

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terms of prevailing gender norms. Although she and her husband were both activists, Leesco Guster took the lead. She participated in marches, but says she would not “allow” her husband to do so. She worried that, with his high blood pressure, he could not handle being jailed. Moreover, although most of her work involved repetition and tedium, it also exposed her to danger. In addition to facing armed whites while canvassing with Rudy Shields, she joined the armed guard protecting her house.18 Historian Anne Standley, writing about several relatively well-known black women civil rights leaders, noted a pattern that Claiborne County women appeared to follow. She argued that many women’s behavior “showed contradictions—on the one hand a boldness in initiating protests and applying pressure on whites in power, while at the same time a submissiveness in their acceptance of the authority of the Black male clergy.”19 In Claiborne County, Guster and other women stepped up to do the work that needed doing—whether it was canvassing, challenging whites through public marching, or defending their homes with weapons—and simultaneously accepted prevailing gender hierarchies without question. Perhaps their experience and perspective was similar to that described by another Mississippi activist, Joyce Ladner. According to Ladner, racism and poverty were so pervasive for her female relatives and other black women in Mississippi that considering gender discrimination was a luxury they could not afford. “They had grown up in a culture where they had had the opportunity to use all of their skills and all of their talents to fight racial and class oppression. . . . And perhaps they didn’t know they were oppressed because of their gender, they were so busy trying to survive and fight day to day. It would have been a luxury for my mother to focus on gender concerns. It would never have occurred to her.”20 The experiences of Marjorie Brandon, whose quote opens this chapter, illustrate some of the complex ways that gender intersected with leadership roles and definitions. During an interview when she was in her sixties, Brandon had vivid memories of the outrage she felt when white children spat on her as they rode to school on buses, while she and other African American children had to walk. At the time, she talked to her father about it, and she remembers not being fully satisfied with his response: “[He told me,] ‘Well that’s just the way the whites treat the Blacks.’ He say, ‘I read my Bible and I really do believe that the rail that’s on the bottom is not going to always be on the bottom.’ He would always tell me that cause I could just not understand it. I just feel like it was so cruel.”21 Married and

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a mother at a young age, Brandon consciously taught her six children a more aggressive attitude of protest and was determined that they would have better opportunities than she had had. Her oldest son, Ken Brandon, remembers that on trips to town, he and his siblings would want to buy hamburgers but the café that sold them only served blacks out of a window in the back. He says, “Mom couldn’t stand that. And we got hungry. ‘You can wait until you get home.’ She would never allow us. ‘If I can’t have it out of the front door, my money is not good as yours.’ But that was part of her. ‘I will not stoop to that.’”22 Before the movement, Marjorie Brandon defied white supremacy by flatly refusing to use courtesy titles for whites her age and younger. In fact, Ken Brandon recalls that one of his parents’ few arguments was over his mother’s refusal to say “sir” to a younger member of the white family who employed his father. She and her husband also disagreed about joining the NAACP in the 1950s. There was considerable secrecy and fear surrounding the organization during that early membership period. Marjorie Brandon remembers, “I was always told that the white people would threaten you or maybe they might kill you and so once you got your card, you didn’t make them visible. . . . I believe I burned [mine].” Despite this danger and her husband’s opposition, she insisted on joining. She recalls talking to her husband and says, “I just kept convincing him that, you know, that [joining the NAACP] was the only way that we were going to be free or only way we were going to have any rights.”23 Years later, Ken Brandon discussed his parents’ conflict about challenging the racial status quo. “I can understand it more as I become an adult. She was trying to work a line. She respected my dad as head of the house. She wanted to support him but, at the same time, she wanted us to be free thinkers. She wanted us to know what was happening and she wanted to do what she could to be a part of the Movement and express her opinion and she did.”24 Reflecting on her willingness to risk retaliation, Marjorie Brandon says, “I just felt like someone had to take a stand. Life itself is just a chance. Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.”25 With this vivid awareness of racial inequities and determination to combat them, it seems that Brandon spent her life trying to find the movement. Yet despite this and her long-standing NAACP membership, her early contributions to the movement were even less visible than Guster’s, though like hers they combined typically female tasks with a willingness to take a stand on important issues. She registered to vote right away, participated

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in protest marches, and attended mass meetings, taking her older children and leaving the younger ones at home with her husband. She also encouraged friends and relatives to register and to join the NAACP. Over the years, she served on a number of traditionally female NAACP committees, canvassed for NAACP members, participated in the volunteer work necessary to initiate a Head Start program, and in the late 1960s became the NAACP branch secretary. Brandon’s role as a parent also provides important insight into her leadership potential. When the local public schools began their first year of token integration, forty-nine African American students were assigned to the “white” school—five in the high school and forty-four in grades one through eight. Given Brandon’s insistence that her children have greater opportunities and resist white supremacy, it is not surprising that all six of them attended the formerly white-only schools. Ken (twelfth grade), Vivian (eleventh grade), Carl (eighth grade), Maxine (sixth grade), Dennis (fifth grade), and John (second grade) faced an onslaught of verbal harassment as well as isolation, and the entire family received threatening phone calls and suffered considerable harassment.26 Throughout the year, Marjorie Brandon stood up for her children when they had difficulties with teachers or with classmates who were physically assaulting them. Like Guster, she was prepared to defend herself and her family. She carried a gun in her car and had permission from the sheriff to shoot back if her house was attacked. Ken Brandon had learned his mother’s lessons well and saw his year of harassment as a necessary part of achieving a community goal and furthering the struggle for racial equality. He says his ability to succeed at the white school “meant so much to older people who had been told all of their lives, ‘You’re dumb. You can’t compete.’ And to go over there and to make the honor roll and be right out there with everybody else, taking the same courses. For some older people, that was just—. . . . So things like that were really inspiring. . . . That gave you encouragement, cause I’m doing this for all of these people.”27 The willingness of Brandon’s children to participate in the struggle and their ability to excel in the face of considerable abuse are testament not only to them but also to her, reflecting the way in which she inspired and supported her children as well as her courage and determination. Brandon’s willingness to take on additional leadership responsibilities was evident in the 1971 election (the second countywide election held after blacks became a majority of registered voters in Claiborne County).

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Racially biased redistricting had moved a black incumbent out of the district, and Brandon was one of the people searching for a replacement candidate. She describes how, as the deadline approached, one of the movement’s male leaders suggested she run. “[He said,] ‘We can’t get a man, so I think you’ll be the good woman to go for that position.’ I said, ‘Alright, if a man don’t come forward between now and the deadline, I’ll run.’”28 Her experience was not unusual. Unita Blackwell, who has since served as mayor of Mayorsville, Mississippi, traveled the world and won a MacArthur Genius Award, had a similar experience. She remembers, “Women wasn’t supposed to be running. . . . I’m the organizer, but I’m organizing men cause that’s the way they did it. And this one man stood up and said, . . . ‘Why don’t you be justice of the peace?’ . . . We had one slot left and nobody would do it and then they pointed to me and I was honored.”29 Today, she marvels at that attitude and says, “I hadn’t even [gotten] near my own potential of what I was supposed to do.”30 The active involvement of women as movement workers and the genderbased limitations they encountered are also reflected in two long-term movement-related projects—the founding of Our Mart, a cooperative grocery store, and the local Head Start program. The idea for a cooperative grocery store originated with Julia Jones, a schoolteacher whose husband was an NAACP officer. She and two other women, also formally educated and prominent in the community, took charge of the project. They promoted the store at mass meetings, sold shares in the venture, and met with a lawyer to get the organization incorporated. When the lawyer drew up the papers, he objected to the all-female list of officers. On the spot, one of the women inserted her husband in her place as an officer. Before hearing the lawyer’s comments, the women had not questioned their abilities or the appropriateness of having only female officers. Yet they instantly implemented his suggestion for change. In part, they accepted that type of gendered hierarchy, and in part, they believed the project was far more important than the particular officers.31 Similarly, the workers (almost exclusively women) who did the advance volunteer work necessary to bring Head Start into the community were many of the same people who canvassed and worked with youth during the height of the activist phase of the movement. They used the methods that worked for building NAACP membership and recruiting new registered voters, going from door to door to explain the benefits of Head Start and gathering financial information. Many of these women later worked with

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Head Start as teachers, aides, trainees, cooks, and social workers.32 While women did these traditionally female jobs—cooking, cleaning, and interacting with children—movement men participated on advisory boards, worked as consultants and supervisors, and occasionally contracted to provide goods and services to the Head Start centers. The gender-based division of labor related to Head Start, the lawyer’s perception that men should be officers of Our Mart, and the preference for male political candidates all reflected a widespread pattern and inclination that permeated the Claiborne County movement. According to a black woman who moved into the community in the late 1960s, “Although women played key roles in Claiborne County in doing things . . . there was still this deference to men. There was an incredible deference to men. And, I recall . . . there were women who were honorary men in that they . . . were acknowledged and listened to, but I think their—I think it was because they were honorary men.”33 A young black man, who was a teenaged activist during the movement’s earliest years and an organizer later, also comments on the strict hierarchy: “The leadership, which was all Black males, saw young leadership, and they saw women, as footstools for the Movement, not as people who could bring some innovative and creative ideas and strategies to the Movement. Because they were the total repositories of all the knowledge. Often anything that you could bring or women could bring would be something as defined by them to support the agenda that they got going on.”34 In addition to Brandon, several other women did run for and win political offices in Claiborne County. Two of the earliest successful female candidates for countywide offices (in 1967 and 1971) illustrate the critical role that traditional ideas about status—and not just gender—played in what was widely perceived as being necessary for leadership, including elective office.35 Although both women were movement participants, they were less involved in the daily work than women such as Brandon and Guster. They were probably selected to run for office because they were teachers with relatively high standing in the community. Moreover, both were married to “leading mens.” Here, their elite class and their connection to important men were more important than the fact that they were women. Indeed, their community status, not their leadership potential or past movement work, was probably the most significant factor in their candidacies. With the public prominence of male leaders and the gendered division

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of labor that tended to devalue women’s work individually and collectively, it is important to reclaim and make visible the contributions of women. Marjorie Brandon, Leesco Guster, Thelma Crowder, and others involved in Our Mart, Head Start, voter-registration campaigns, and a wide range of movement work were absolutely essential to the Claiborne County movement. This pattern was repeated throughout the South and is becoming visible through the work of a number of the scholars who have been explicitly exploring leadership, gender, and women’s activism. These scholars have offered new interpretations and analyses that are useful for seeing and understanding women’s movement work and for examining broad questions of leadership, gender, and the dynamics of successful social movements. Bernice McNair Barnett, for example, used interviews and surveys with activists to identify and rank fifteen types of work that women and men did in the movement. In this broad range of activities, she found, not surprisingly, that women and men often did different tasks and that those done by women were typically less visible, rarely considered leadership, and generally undervalued. She concluded that women’s invisibility had to do with a limited conception of leadership, and she argued for an expanded “multidimensional” definition of leadership.36 Karen Sacks, in her study of a hospital-based union organizing drive, advanced similar arguments about the gendered basis of leadership. She found that men held the leadership positions of “public and solo speaker,” while women were “centerpersons” who nurtured and politicized existing networks of friendship and kinship. Women “created the detail,” “made people feel part” of the drive, and “did the menial work upon which things depended, while men made public pronouncements, confronted, and negotiated with management.” She concluded that interpretations of successful grassroots movements that stressed the relationship between a public orator and individuals failed to recognize the movements’ complexity. She contended that social movements are “profoundly collective” and dependent on an “interactive process among network members, centers, and spokespeople.”37 In his groundbreaking study of civil rights organizing in Greenwood, Mississippi, Charles Payne built on Sacks’s work, making similar arguments about the gendered nature of women’s leadership in the civil rights movement. He observed that women were particularly effective at organizing preexisting networks of family and friends and at performing the

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“everyday maintenance of the Movement.” In addition, he suggested that women’s participation may have helped to “establish and maintain trust” and to make movement relationships “less competitive [and] more nurturing.” He noted that, at times, “race women” (African American activists) were more trusted than “race men” because “of the perception that women could not as easily capitalize off of their activism.”38 Noting how, as Payne put it, women’s contributions were “effectively devalued, sinking beneath the level of our sight,” Payne, Barnett, and others show us how reexamining the movement and bringing in an alternative perspective can expand and shift our understanding.39 Through this type of analysis, we can begin to see where and how women’s work was so crucial in Claiborne County despite the appearance of male dominance. For example, Leesco Guster fulfilled six of the fifteen leadership functions on Barnett’s more inclusive list—raising money, initiating action, mobilizing and persuading followers, serving as an example, organizing and coordinating action, and teaching followers.40 Because of her class, she also had access to resources—time, a vehicle, and a house— that she contributed to the movement. Despite her impressive record, however, few of those in the community who were interviewed recently describe her as a leader. One former NAACP official, who is somewhat of an exception, recalls, “She did so much. And, look like to me she got less credit than anybody. Hardly ever anybody mention her . . . [but] she was a real civil rights worker.”41 Most of the interviewees probably overlook Guster because she did not fit the common conception of leadership that equated it with public speaking. Guster describes herself as a “doer” and says, “I’m not a great talker, I’ll sing and I’ll work.”42 While these traits meant that she had little visibility in a movement best known for its speakers, Guster was clearly a leader according to Barnett’s expanded model of multidimensional leadership. Similarly, Marjorie Brandon’s and Thelma Crowder’s ability to mobilize networks of family and friends and their day in, day out work of canvassing, fund-raising, and nurturing provided the almost invisible base for the successes of more visible leaders. However, while it is important to recognize and acknowledge the ways in which women made significant contributions and provided leadership, it is also important to recognize the ways in which their potential was circumscribed. Despite Guster’s contributions, for instance, she had little or no say in devising strategy or tactics. She had no authority to negotiate with whites, and she probably had little opportunity to influence move-

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ment priorities. Similarly, Marjorie Brandon, despite her long history of defiance, her NAACP membership, and her willingness to make a stand and take risks, was largely excluded from the NAACP’s inner circle. The contributions and the experiences of the women in Claiborne County were probably typical of women throughout the civil rights movement. But the Claiborne women were also limited by the NAACP’s central role in their community. As a hierarchical and bureaucratic organization, the NAACP reinforced gendered divisions of labor and the inequalities of the society and permitted few possibilities for women’s involvement in decisionmaking roles. In contrast, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) were much more open to leadership from women and others who lacked formal education or middle-class status. Charles Payne argued that SNCC’s “distaste for bureaucracy and hierarchy” and its commitment to finding and developing local leadership made the organization particularly receptive to women’s contributions.43 A former SNCC activist describes how the organization was an open and supportive place for her: “SNCC gave us the first structured opportunity to use our skills in an egalitarian way without any kind of subjugation because of our race or our class or our gender.”44 Thus, while women who worked for and with SNCC and the MFDP had the common female experience of doing much of the organizing and dayto-day, nitty-gritty work, they also actively participated in developing strategies and making decisions. We can see the important implications inherent in that type of participation through the critical intellectual, tactical, and strategic contributions made by women such as Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Diane Nash, and Ruby Doris Smith Robinson. Their work with SNCC and the MFDP gives us a sense of how women can respond in an open and receptive environment.45 The work of scholars such as Barnett, Sacks, and Payne gives us a way to examine more closely and question the hierarchy that privileges public and usually male forms of leadership. Moreover, with SNCC and the MFDP as a point of contrast, we can go beyond reclaiming women’s contributions and rethinking the relative values placed on different types of work. We can also begin to explore the differences in movements that more fully embraced women’s participation, not solely or primarily as workers but also as strategists and decision makers. Payne especially suggested that hierarchical, limited conceptions of leadership during the movement left it too dependent on charismatic individuals and may have

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also contributed to a competition for resources and rewards or status. Descriptions of Marjorie Brandon and Leesco Guster highlight their courage, determination, and strong sense of community. They were hard workers who acted on their beliefs despite threats and uncertainty. While searching for and emphasizing the multiple ways they contributed to the successes of the Claiborne County movement, we can also speculate about how they might have strengthened the effort if their creativity, clarity, and compassion had been utilized for devising strategies and making decisions as well.

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Part Eight women’s voices

Chapter Fifteen

Strategies for Survival by Luo Female Artists in the Rural Environment in Kenya Pa t r i c i a A ch i e n g O p o n d o

The tradition of the dodo songs performed by women’s groups in Kenya consists of a corpus of pieces performed essentially as dance songs and accompanied by hand clapping and rattles. The term dodo means “something pleasant” and thus summarizes the principal aesthetic and social attitude associated with this tradition. Dodo songs are mostly recreational and performed as entertainment by groups of women from the same neighborhood who, bound together through marital and kinship ties, form associative relationships. Membership in the groups is voluntary and open to all adult females in the homestead. Being married gives the women status and allows them to have a voice to which their communities listen.1 The women’s groups and their songs present a certain social reality, and music constructs their social experience. The women in these groups are custodians of knowledge and tradition, as they reflect the views of society in their compositions. Of course, personal views enter in as songs are presented from a particular soloist’s point of view. Nonetheless, their perspective 205

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as a group of women, articulated in song texts, establishes authority in the context of oral tradition. Dodo, previously a male genre, was adapted by women in the late 1950s and today represents women’s oratory. For this study, a group of Luo women and men in Nyanza Province was interviewed between 1989 and 1994. Living in an area that surrounds the Kavirondo Gulf of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, the Luo are predominantly subsistence farmers and are also involved in animal husbandry and small-scale trading.

Empowerment of Women: Having a Voice in the Associations Socioeconomic change encouraged the formation of associations in traditional society.2 Scholars Raymond Apthorpe and John E. Njoku accounted for the emergence of rural cooperatives as an outcome of traditional society restructuring itself to adapt to change. Women in these circumstances, they argued, seek to control their lives and to understand and deal with the forces affecting them by participating in the political and economic processes shaping their lives. They must respond to agricultural innovation, assume more burdens of agricultural labor, introduce labor-saving crops, adopt new implements, and make trade and market activities a regular part of their lives. They are thus agents of change, and the emergence of associations charts the women’s response to the demands of the neocolonial economy and modern economic development. In many rural communities, women are peasant farmers who depend upon subsistence farming. They have certain land rights and positions in the marketplace, where they exchange commodities and share the profits with their husbands and children. In many of these communities, women are marginalized from the workforce and do not have equal access to schooling and health care. The gaps in female access to productive resources and employment are part of the reason for the emergence of associations, as women assert their solidarity as a group. Within the associations, they are more visible and are able to become active participants in the development process. Women who belong to these self-help groups at the grassroots level in Nyanza Province consider their musical activities to be very important. They put a great deal of time and energy into songs that define them as a group, and they focus their efforts to help cope with their socioeconomic situation. As they express themselves during their performances, they are empowered to hold themselves together and make public statements. In 206

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situations where women sing about their social condition, the singing itself empowers them, for it provides a channel to critique the treatment they receive in society as well as to make the community aware of their achievements as women; thus, they raise the general consciousness and make their own activities more visible to the general public.

Gender and Political Status during Performance In traditional society, music has the power to help an individual establish a social position, and performance has a way of creating the special relationships that exist in traditional society. In her study of Kiganda radio songs, Helen Mugambi stated that song provides a nexus for traditional and emergent constructions of gender.3 Similarly, through the dodo repertoire of the Luo women’s groups, images of the women emerge through their perceptions of themselves as being both powerful and at times powerless, visible and yet invisible. Together, these images construct the social and political realities of Luo women. Reflected in dodo is a new female in Luo society, as women take over what was traditionally a male space. The gendered spaces created through performance can be viewed as paradigms when linked with the venues in which women are heard, and it is in these paradigmatic structures that gender interaction is influenced and newly delineated. Dodo, the voice of Luo women, places the singers in the public sphere, and their emancipation is evident as they cross boundaries to express themselves, providing an opportunity for women to speak for themselves. Singing before a public audience gives the women’s associations a sense of self-empowerment. There is a need to hear women’s voices, and the position of the soloist is highly regarded. Women making statements in public spaces that are typically perceived as male arenas for rational discourse shifts private discourse to the public sphere, empowering the women. The soloist is supposed to carry the performing group and the audience through a performance. Accordingly, she has multiple roles: she entertains and sings praises; informs her audience of historical, social, and political issues; educates; and consoles. In her leadership role, the soloist naturally stands out. She gets recognition for her talent and position, which in turn reinforces her individualistic tendencies. The soloist typically has a greater ability to express emotions in song than do the others. She is expected to be eloquent and, above all, knowledgeable. A soloist distinguishes herself 207

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from the other performers by her capacity for expressing herself through the effective use of images and idioms. Dodo may be regarded as a form of self-construction, defining the female subject, manifesting the individuality of the female soloists, and delineating women’s values. In dodo performance, women are placed at the center of the stage; the soloist, typically in the middle of a group of encircling dancers, becomes the center of energy and performance. During these moments, the soloist is a powerful figure; yet while working in the fields in her rural home, she is like any other woman. To be in the leadership role of a soloist, a woman must possess qualities that enable her to lead a group, to stand out and be forceful. The dodo performance usually draws the audience into actively participating with the performers. Through verbal references, sarcasm, and wit, soloists induce their audiences to take part in the performance. These gestures of participation include laughter, dancing along with the group, “greeting the music,” and presenting gifts. When an individual interrupts a performance to give a verbal oration, this is referred to as pakruok, a feature present in all musical forms of the Luo. When the group sings of an individual and that person is in the audience, he or she is expected to congratulate the group with a gift of money in a brief presentation while the singing and dancing continue. The individual dances with the ensemble and may decide to say a few words of selfpraise, at which point the music stops. The individual is no doubt happy that a song has been composed in his or her honor. People from the individual’s homestead follow after him or her, dancing and contributing more money. They all praise the singer for the happiness that she brings.

Venues for Performance During most fund-raising events, performance groups are invited to entertain those assembled. When women’s groups are among the invited performers, they are aware that their performances are part of the developmental process, and they use song as a tool to encourage gift giving. On the aesthetic level, the women realize that song stimulates the easy flow of money, and they appropriately arrange their song texts to excite members of the audience and encourage them to make contributions. The level of excitement is equal to the level of intensity with which those who listen to

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the performances respond. Their appreciation is expressed by applause, verbal encouragement, and monetary gifts. People seated at a fund-raising event who have songs bestowed upon them are flattered and prompted to rise up and give money immediately—a gesture that is referred to as moso thum (greeting the music). Performers are invited to take part in a variety of gatherings in the immediate community, including neighborhood and social events such as weddings and funerals; they also sing for the local chiefs and their assistants. In postcolonial Kenya, rural communities are administered by local chiefs, who have authority over most village matters. One of the ways in which these leaders achieve eminence in their communities is through the services of the singers. Among the officers in the provincial administration, the assistant chiefs have the most direct contact with women’s groups. The officers typically reside in the same community as the groups and are the government leaders at the sublocation level. The women call upon them for protection, as in the following song: Now I call upon our villager who I get along with I call upon the leader from a religious home He looks after us looks after his own people He is from a religious home the home of Aloyce Omondi is a religious home I hear women calling each other I see Sali, Muga’s sister Sali the cursed devil! We leave this home for the community I now call upon the leader the good man who is a convert Now I am close to our leader whom I am close to and is respected

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yet I am close to our leader the one who arrests our women! That is a very good person we respect each other I now call the leader acclaimed to be a very good man Don’t ask him to graze cattle with you he is so good don’t ask him to help fence the cattle pen I now call on our villager whom I get along with He looks after the community he looks after his own people Here, the women of the Oruma Women’s Group in Kano praise Aloyce Owala, a former assistant chief who worked well with them. But Salina Obudo, the soloist, expresses her ambivalence toward Owala because he had arrested her for illegally brewing alcohol. The incident troubled him because, in addition to his obligation to enforce the law, he is a Christian convert: the assistant chief wants Salina to stop brewing and start praying. Salina completely rejects this request and says that she is “a cursed devil”!4 Dodo singers are always present during important community gatherings and are called out to perform before the chief addresses the community. At such occasions, the goal of their performance is to impress the merits of the chief on the minds of the audience and to record the leader’s successes by weaving them into a praise song. In this way, the singers establish the chief’s claim to authority over the people. Some of the singers enjoy the privilege of being the official mouthpiece of the leadership in the locality. And once in a while, they take the liberty of advising the rulers or suggesting caution when they seem to be doing something improper. However, the major role of the singers at such events is to promote and favorably uphold the image of their local leaders.

Patronage of Performers In present-day Kenya, economic gain is an obligatory part of the perform210

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ances. Many gifts are made to the performers, and in return, they are grateful and their self-esteem is raised. Today, the dodo genre is commodified and commercialized: the performers expect payment for their performances. Indeed, they charge a fee for the engagement and travel and scale the price according to the location of the performance—the type of venue, the expected audience size, and past payments received. Profit is a priority. In their songs, the dodo singers reference requests made by patrons. The following song speaks of such a request, as passed on by Chief Patrick Orayo Gundo to Salina Obudo, the soloist for the Oruma Women’s Group, through an in-law: Orayo I met with your sister-in-law she asks Sali of Adero’s lineage the rattle singer Sali are you also singing about me? Oh I first bow down my head then I decide to lift up my head and I tell Pati the first born son leader, do you know the price of a song Leader, do you hear that then Pat counts the money and gives it to Sali the rattle singer you price your song too high! Patrons who give generously and know the worth of singers are particularly praised, as reflected in the next lines: He who knows my price has brought my development has brought development fit for me Onyango pleases me, Odongo’s child my friend, the first born of my grandmother The women rely on wealthy men in the communities for financial assistance, and these men are among their recognized patrons. The women also rely on the money made during a performance—when the audience participates in pakruok—and thus the audience itself constitutes another dimension of patronage. 211

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The recognition and success of these performing groups outside their immediate homesteads is dependent upon the support of influential patrons. There is a symbiotic relationship between the patrons and the performers—based on an understanding that those who actively support the groups become popular locally. As a consequence, many songs are composed in honor of noted locals, and their good deeds and actions are constantly referenced. For the Luo, as with other societies in Africa, popularization through song has a central importance because these societies rely on song to convey information. Politicians also use song—and the performing groups—as a political tool to promote their campaign platforms. When women praise rich men and politicians, their language is lofty and exaggerated, with the aim of pleasing their patrons in order to receive substantial rewards. The songs speak of how the subject’s qualities deserve attention beyond that given to anyone else, as illustrated in the following example: Arango the most handsome one the most handsome one The most handsome one with many bulls Ah you have helped us out very much he sends 400 shillings to where I am seated he sends a car to the road I got a ride in your car with this team of mine he slaughtered a purple ox we ate the ox and some was left over He places a bottle of Johnny Walker of the Kadongo lineage places those things on the table we drank the liquor and could not finish it I have found a name for my son I have found a name for Luke of the Kadongo lineage “a dog has no use for money” “his eyes are not afraid of visitors”

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Child I agree with this matter of my son he is the bank manager son of Ooko is the banker Arango is a wealthy bank manager who also owns many bulls. He is generous with his wealth and sends the group money and provides them with transportation. He entertains visitors well, with plenty to eat and drink, and even slaughters an ox. To top it off, he is very handsome. Most patrons have political status as well as economic influence. They are selected by the groups because of the important people they know and the circles they move in. Patrons are individuals who might, in the future, invite the group to travel and perform at national celebrations and other political gatherings. The women express their frustration that they are seldom invited to important functions where they could entice the audience to give them gifts. They blame their elected officials, who may refuse to visit them at their homes or channel assistance to the grassroots level. When politicians attempt to solicit votes in their rural constituencies and outlying areas, it is a problem for them if they are not popular with the performing groups, for they miss the opportunity to have songs composed in their honor. If local and national leaders want to be popularized through song, it is imperative that they support the groups to ensure that their popularity does not wane. Patrons of high political status approach performing groups through the location chiefs and their assistants. At political rallies during election campaigns, an ambitious politician frequently hires a singing group to capture the electorate’s attention and help promote his or her image and diminish that of the opposition. Most dodo singers enjoy public patronage and are available to perform for anyone willing to pay them. Their performances may be purely for entertainment or may be designed to satisfy a particular goal. When patrons dictate a certain agenda to the performers, the singers write songs accordingly, and there is little objectivity in their texts. If a patron invites the dodo singers to entertain a guest at his or her home, the host presents them with a gift or slaughters a sheep or goat for them as a token of appreciation before the group leaves the homestead. At later performances, the performers sing of what the host did and of the gifts they received. This was the case with the soloist Nyar Magoya when she made reference to a patron who sewed uniforms for her and her singers:

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I am talking about Olende of Konyango Olende the gentleman you enticed me with my group my dodo singers He greeted me with a beautiful dress I have measured the dress and have sent it to you he greeted me with a beautiful dress Sammy you brought me progress and to my dodo singers my in-law measured me with his eyes and brought the beautiful dresses When Sammy sewed the uniforms we looked like soldiers marching in his home you from Ugenya, soldiers are marching in your living room By associating with someone of social importance, the speaker instantly elevates his or her own status. What results from this type of association is that the speaker’s praise contributes to the friend’s or relative’s name, and people will respect the speaker more for the association. If the speaker at a later date visits the home of the singers, people residing at that homestead would already know who he or she is. Through mentioning a person’s accomplishments and praise names in song, dodo singers play an important role in creating images of the people they choose to sing about. When a person is bestowed with traits that they do not necessarily possess, this is done to re-create their personality and is expressed in an endearing way, as in the following lines: Oh I call upon the cotton material he refuses to dress in a coat from Kikomba5 neither does he wear a shirt from Kikomba he walks in a shirt made to measure How fashions differ I am speaking of Aton Kayoto the slender one

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son of Bele and Onyango how fashions differ The singer says that Aton does not shop for clothing at the Kikomba markets; instead, his clothes are tailor-made in a store.6 Some dodo groups, such as Kendu Muslim Pekee in Karachuonyo, are extremely dependent on patronage, and they lament the death of Lazaro Amayo, a former member of Kenya’s ruling party—the Kenya African National Union (KANU)—in south Nyanza. Because of him, the group traveled to a number of places around the country, including Kisumu, Kano, and Kendu. When President Daniel arap Moi arrived by plane in south Nyanza,7 they met him at the airport with welcoming songs. The women say that Amayo’s death is the reason for their reduction in status, and the soloist even claims that his death was the reason she nearly forgot her song.8 Amayo took the group everywhere, and the year he died, he had promised to take them to sing in Saudi Arabia as well as to the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa. The women say that one cannot compete with death, for they saw how it snatched their patron Amayo away. They lament that with Amayo’s death came darkness. His death brought an end to their careers as active performers. The group laments that today, they only hear President Moi’s voice on the radio and long to meet him face to face again. Without patronage, they have reverted to the level of an ordinary group. In the past, they had been respected and were seen as being close to the president. They yearn for this vanishing popularity and plead to have another patron like Amayo to hold their hands, to enable them to see new lands, and to have their voices played on the radio. They are dismayed when younger groups are heard on radio programs and feel they have been overlooked for lack of a patron. The groups expect their patrons to assist them with ideas and to relate their problems to higher authorities. There is a dependency created because those who have enjoyed this nurturing feel they cannot accomplish much without a patron’s support. Use of Song Texts to Restructure Female Narratives Dodo song provides a window through which we can see how Luo women view themselves and their society; song is an important genre by which to “theorize and articulate an indigenous epistemology for interpreting the

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conceptual positioning of women.”9 In dodo, we are able to identify female texts that reproduce paradigms of gendered space, and these, in turn, characterize emerging social and political institutions. As songs reinforce and re-create the historical and sociopolitical positions of women in society, they present paradoxes of meaning associated with womanhood. The themes of the songs are not necessarily definitive readings of history, but they do define Luo history from a variety of women’s perspectives. The beauty in this repertoire lies in the poetry, for it is on this level that wit and creativity are displayed. As suggested by Helen Mugambi in her study of Kiganda radio songs, dodo propagates and dialogizes gendered space.10 The study of dodo songs is central to understanding the dynamics of female empowerment in Kenya. As the songs intersect with daily social expressions, the women claim and create new social, cultural, and political space. But to understand and analyze song texts, one must fully grasp the ethnography of performance and the sociocultural poetics of Luo discourse. Songs communicate both facts and experience. They should be viewed as creative products, since most incidents mentioned in songs are allusive and not reported. Though the subjects of songs make reference to things drawn from society, the texts should be examined for their referential meaning and the experience that is communicated, for this experience is a creative aspect of the song. When drawing upon structural elements from which to craft songs, creative people are very selective. Dodo singers opt for an allusive rendering of their texts rather than a straightforward reporting of something that happened. This implies that in the dodo tradition, details of the references in the songs are not the most important elements. Song embodies the society’s referential system and sometimes draws from it too, using it in a way that saves one from making full statements. Oral tradition as a referential system allows people to get episodes and narratives of meaning in short and direct reports, and it is in the song texts and praise names that we see Luo culture organized in terms of specific references. Caution should be taken in attempting to reconstruct a history of Luo women by drawing information from song texts; rather, the texts should be examined for their poetic weight. This is because dodo songs do not always give factual information and may even modify the facts in order to show something quite different. Poetic imagery makes it possible for multiple interpretations, and this is what gives the song texts their literary quality. Viewing themes in this light enables one to get to the core of the kinds of ideas and the spectrum of emotions that performers intend to convey.

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Rather than transmitting absolute truths, song texts provide a perspective and an impression on a range of issues. Therefore, highlighting ideas conveyed in the performance setting is more important than attempting to sort fact from fiction with the hope of establishing “truths.” It is evident that singers may mention things that never really happened. This is because poetic license enables them to, for example, attribute traits of one person to another. These prescribed attributes are then passed on in a traditional manner to grace and elevate a person from that specific culture. In the song repertoires of the women’s associations, the singers voice the concerns of their situation and their gender. Certain feminist and antifeminist themes recur in the various dodo repertories, and these provide valuable insight from the perspective of the Luo women. This leads to questions of the status of women in Luo society and whether they have a functional role with regard to the context of grassroots development. Some songs offer a critique of the consequences of patrilineal marriage. When a man weds a woman, he must first pay a dowry (bridewealth) in the form of cattle before taking her away from her maiden home. In a solo song, women fondly remember their maiden homes, and the cow becomes a symbol of the troubles a woman may later encounter with her husband, for if the husband failed to pay dowry, she would not be obliged to remain in the home. Sentiments are expressed in a solo recitative regarding the implications of one’s role as a wife once the bridewealth has been paid. The cow has done me in, short one the cow is like a mistake, short one yes, the cow has done me in Our children, the cow removes me from a good place our children, to take me to a bad place our people, the cow offends me The cow removes me from Kodongo Bugo removes me from Kokech Owele removes me from Auma Odhiege the cow offends me, short one yes, the cow has done me in A woman must leave her home and her friends to go live with a stranger,

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and in time, she and her husband get to know each other’s habits. The following song expresses the difficulties of living together if people do not respect one another: Our children, the calling in English “common” it has reached a stage where this man throws me out with a kick the next day he alleges that I left and returned in the evening that is why the men think they are powerful these men look down upon us women Here, the singer complains about the treatment she receives from her husband, who calls her names and throws her out of the house. In many disputes, women get silenced because the dowry has been paid. Men feel powerful, and some disrespect their wives because they feel that paying the dowry gives them authority. But women are not embarrassed to let people know that they are beaten in their homes. According to Luo tradition, the husband builds a house for each of his wives; then it is the wives’ duty to plaster the walls: Our children, they build houses for us then they put on the roofs then we put mud on the walls for them that is why the men are spoilt so much why do these men look down upon us? The woman is always regarded as wuon ot (owner of the house), but in the larger context of the family, control over landholdings and other possessions is maintained by the man, and he is considered as wuon dala (overall head of the homestead). This situation presents another paradox regarding the household. There is much ambiguity surrounding women’s affinal relationships to the patriclan. Women enter a clan through marriage and bring with them potential trouble. When conflict does occur, it is expressed as a collision between male and female interests. The household is “individual,” in opposition to the “social” clan.11 This is, in part, due to the strong association of women to their households. Henrietta Moore commented on the importance of the household for the

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married woman: “Within the exogamous patriclan, where marriage is virilocal, the only point of articulation a woman has with her ‘new’ clan is through the household. The household is both the physical and the conceptual locus of a woman’s entry into the clan of her husband.”12 Though patrilineal structures advocate for a certain degree of subordination of the woman to the man, women find ways to express their strong wills and independence. Feminist themes regarding a woman’s individuality are expressed by the singer in the following song: A prostitute and is stubborn I am stubborn, and from Kisumu I the daughter of Okech Owala is stubborn I am from the strong-willed I am the biggest wanderer I am the sister-in-law to those with handcuffs I am the biggest wanderer I am stubborn No matter how much you love me I do not appreciate it even if you pay a lot of dowry I will leave you even if you bring me meat, I will leave even if you slaughter a chicken I will leave you I am the biggest wanderer I am proud and not easy to please Oh women say I am the biggest loiterer! We note that the singer is proud of the fact that she is stubborn and of strong will. She cannot be pushed around, and she threatens her husband. She comes and goes as she pleases, no matter how much he loves her and regardless of the amount he paid in dowry. She reminds him that she is not easy to please, though he may try to entice her with choice foods. The duality regarding women’s feelings toward womanhood is evident as the women complain in their songs about life in the married home while at the same time expressing their pride in the home and their in-laws, as in these lines:

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I am married in an established home the home of Onyango the cool home I am wife from the home I am married in an established home the home belongs to Ochieng the established home is very nice Porridge without milk or sugar we drink with Ochieng’s daughter we are amongst our people Boiled collards we eat with Oriko’s daughter we are amongst our people Gossip about our husbands we gossip with Oriko’s daughter and we are amongst our people We are good friends with my co-wife Oh how we are friends In the married home, women eat and drink together, and even if the food is bad, they do not care because they are among their people. The singer is married and in a good home, and even though she eats boiled vegetables and drinks watery porridge without milk or sugar, she likes the home. At times, the women also sing of their maternal homes, remembering how good life was there. At this time we were still chatting with my in-law at this time we were still chatting with my brother-in-law there was plenty of tea, white one13 I come from far, but my home is known That one’s maternal lineage is Alego, Siayo My maternal home is good my maternal home is very special! That one’s maternal home is Nyalgunga

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whose maternal home is Siaya where dogs are not commanded, that is me The maiden space is fondly remembered. In the following solo recitative, the singer still maintains her girl-like qualities, which sometimes bother her in-laws. This song confirms that a woman must behave in a mature manner in her married home and refrain from being playful, as young girls tend to be. The singer, however, maintains that some of her in-laws like her the way she is: The women who climb granaries oh you are like girls the girls who are too proud the other girls hate you so This girl who is too cheeky her brother-in-law is fed up with her the girl who is too playful your in-laws tend to hate you I am sister-in-law to Peter and Obong’a and his brother Okello my brother-in-law is fond of me my brother-in-law is fond of me in our home The female space in the maternal home is protected, and nostalgia for it is expressed in the coded speech of the sigweya (solo recitatives). In many solo interludes, women sing of the safety of their maiden space and of a time in the past when they were free and still children. Through singing dodo songs at homesteads, some level of socialization takes place, which teaches gender responsibilities and women’s expected compliance with domestic roles. Most songs reinforce the need for women to act in ways that promote the communal good of the group. These beliefs are informed by patriarchy, which emphasizes women’s responsibilities and curtails their authority. A woman must protect her children; she should work hard and be concerned primarily with the offspring and the household. There are no songs referencing the parenting of men. Women in general accept these roles. However, on a personal level, counterhegemonic discourse exists, as some women refuse to perform certain chores.

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This resistance and other veiled sentiments and criticism are expressed in the solo recitatives when singers make individual statements. The women recognize the leadership of the location chiefs and plead with them not to abandon them but instead to let them work through their problems together: Now Orayo of Onjiko’s lineage is good chairman of the Onjiko’s lineage the leader son of Apiyo the leader son of Apiyo is good Gentlemen the leader the matter is with you Leader, the one I will never forget brown one of Onjiko’s lineage the village issues are problematic [there are many issues in the village] the leader is the one we work with Orayo is the one I will never forget you are used to these issues of Onjiko’s lineage, the song enters his home the leader and I are good friends The one I will never forget some issues remain that I want to handle with you of Onjiko’s lineage handcuffs are many in the village leader do not run and leave us alone [leader, lift your eyes and remember us] The songs complain about the numerous arrests in the area authorized by the same chief whose praises they sing. There are paradoxes of meaning as complaints are couched in these songs of praise. In the song about Assistant Chief Ojowi, Salina Obudo of the Oruma Women’s Group praises him because he got her out of jail: My friend, a policeman arrests me because of taxes14 police arrest me because of taxes

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then Ojowi lifted his eyes then Ojowi saw us they agreed and Owang’ entered the office then I returned home and sat down and started composing this song This important man, I sing as a girl the man from Sakwa Bondo I sing with dudu song15 men are gathered while I gently sing of the man with a crown Ojowi you got me out of the cold house Ojowi you got me out of the dispute house I call Ojowi my lover Groups enjoy the leadership from an assistant chief especially when he continues to maintain contact with them while carrying out his responsibilities in office. The women remember times where there was continued conflict between the village chief and those in the Komiti community where the Oruma women live. Some songs comment on this period: People of Komiti I ask you a question Are you carrying the leadership in the lineage people of the Konyango lineage? this thing is in the lineage our children remember the case of chief Otongo? If those things recur be careful these things have returned to the lineage people of the Konyango lineage this thing is in the lineage Our children remember the case of our Obudo Isaac Obudo was the husband of the soloist of Oruma Women’s Group, who complained because he constantly had disputes with neighbors: My friend, son of the daughter from Kabar he likes disputes, he likes disputes disputes are his weakness

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He likes disputes, Obudo likes disputes Obudo son of Anyango son of the daughter from Kabar son of Obuga and Okelo the husband of my heart, this man I am blasting the rattles for! I call the friend of my heart with joy the boy is pleasing to me yet he likes disputes In this song, the singer expresses her love and loyalty to her husband and sings that she “blasts the rattles for him!” She mentions that the frequent disputes he has with his neighbors is a flaw in his behavior, but she loves him in spite of this. She ends most stanzas in the song singing “the boy is pleasing to me, yet he likes disputes.” During performances, some gender roles are reconfigured, for dodo songs either deconstruct or reaffirm Luo myths. According to the Luo’s cultural valuations, positively valued social qualities such as clan allegiance, social responsibility, and rhetorical ability are associated with the male. Additionally, predominant Luo values are articulated in terms of a male world-position. Values associated with the female are linked to the household, and these include being a provider, knowing how to host visitors, and being clean and of good virtue. A woman is expected to work hard for the communal good of the group. The male and female categories are part of a symbolic order that constructs masculine and feminine ways.

Dodo Texts as Praise Poetry and Social Commentary This chapter explores the ways in which women’s performing groups in rural Nyanza Province in Kenya devise strategies for survival as they adapt to change. As social, economic, and political factors transform people’s lives, changes in the social setting alter the presentation of musical materials. This is evidenced in the things that people sing about. As the venues in which the groups perform are extended, so the impetus for creating new songs is increased. In their capacity as praise poets and bards, the dodo singers eulogize and interpret public opinion and organize it. Dodo singers celebrate Luo victories, sing songs of praise, sing of laws and customs, recite kinship and fa224

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milial ties, criticize local leadership for their abuse of power or their neglect of responsibility, and also sing of deceased Luo leaders. Therefore, the singers can define social values, celebrate what is historically significant, and act as democratic agents to reaffirm the approval or disapproval of their local communities. When the entire dodo repertoire is examined, we find that there is a degree of expressed ambivalence. Feminist and antifeminist themes emerge as the soloist or other singers interject with solo interludes in the form of sigweya. Singers are proud of the homes they are wedded in and take time to praise their in-laws for their achievements. These interludes are also an opportunity to complain about certain aspects in the married homes, including the behavior of their husbands. Dodo songs cover a wide range of society’s concerns. Some discuss the political hierarchy, drawing upon historical knowledge to praise or pass judgment on power; others deal with social problems and development issues; and there are songs concerned with communal as well as personal feelings. Even songs performed primarily for entertainment place a high premium on social commentary. The dodo genre in the context of women’s associations is a tradition of praise singing that has developed in response to historical and political change in Kenya since the 1970s. Dodo songs praise present-day local leaders, such as chiefs and their assistants, and national leaders, including the president and members of Parliament. As praise singers, the dodo women are autonomous spokespersons for their societies. They usually legitimize the ruling group and foster unity or mirror prevailing sentiments at a particular time. The genre as it exists in women’s groups can be categorized as a medium to provide both praise and entertainment. Dodo texts should be viewed as historical texts merged with myth. Each soloist may be viewed as a mythmaker or mythbreaker. When songs honor individuals considered to be outstanding, some of the information and characterization is not factual because it is more important to convey subtle images. In many instances, merely mentioning a praise name on its own is more effective than providing detailed information about an individual’s personality. The performing women represent a store of knowledge in society. They are custodians of knowledge in terms of what they pass on in the song texts. They are also custodians of tradition, representing and reflecting the views of society in their songs. Their songs establish some kind of authority in

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terms of what we can learn about the culture. The women voice their opinions about the influence that male decisions have on them, and the activity of singing provides a forum for women to “talk back.” The women find ways to raise their own voices and locate sources of their power as well as manifest their self-definition. Thus, knowledge, confidence, validation, and affirmation are expressed in the songs, which reveal much about the cultural position of Luo women. Dodo songs can be appropriated as a means of commenting on aspects of power, and they may be used by those in positions of power as a vehicle of propaganda. In the context of women’s associations, dodo is a subversive and courageous art form, a repertoire of songs performed by females that manifest the women’s self-definition through the medium of their own performances. As a privileged form of expression, dodo has value. Dodo songs can also be used as indicators of contemporary Luo women’s expression in the construction of womanhood. The songs present paradoxes of meaning associated with womanhood, as songs recall, reinforce, and recreate the historical, mythical, and sociopolitical locations of women in society.

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Chapter Sixteen

Wild and Holy Women in the Poetry of Brenda Marie Osbey A n d re a B e n t o n R u s h i n g

Studies that I conducted in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated that most representations of African American women in African American poetry, by women and by men, were about earnest, prayerful, self-sacrificing, hardworking mothers; in fact, there were more poems about mothers than there were about all other representations of women combined.1 Poems about singers, with their regal praise names—Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues; Dinah Washington, the Queen of the Blues; Aretha Franklin, the Lady Soul; Nina Simone, the High Priestess of Soul—composed the second largest category. Although some of the poems about these singers centered on their tragic lives, many more presented them as “God’s divas.”2 The gallery of women Brenda Marie Osbey portrays in her poetry is very different from the representations I wrote about those many years ago. Writing after the civil rights and black arts movements, Osbey never concerns herself with creating “positive role models” or paradigms. Her women have some family resemblances to earlier poetic versions of women 227

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in African American characters—but only as descendants and/or very distant relations. Osbey can be difficult to read and not just because she excavates layers of New Orleans history and culture, uses words and phrases that make us grateful for her glossaries, and writes long poems. As Osbey observes of her own writing: “The specifics aren’t necessarily that important because the stories I try to tell in these poems are not that important. . . . They are important because they are told by certain characters, or they’re important because of the way they’re told. But you almost never get an accurate accounting of any series of events in an orderly fashion, beginning, middle, and end. What you get is a way of speaking, a way of thinking, and the story isn’t all that valuable; but all the things that go into making the story are really what count.”3 She adds, “I love to have characters, several characters, all telling the same story from differing viewpoints, or to have individual characters who each tell the story from several of their own many viewpoints. So that one character will be speaking different versions or in different voices.”4 Rather than being inarticulate victims, Osbey’s women are often deft, rhythmic, and ironic users of similes, metaphors, understatement, hyperbole, repetition, ellipses, and pauses who display wry, robust, bawdy senses of humor. She neither idealizes her characters nor generalizes about women of African descent: her Minneconjoux, Lavinia, Thelma V. Picou, Clarissa, Marie Crying Eagle, and Elvena are originals, and even though Mother Catherine and the Seven Sisters are based on New Orleans lore and legend and Nina Simone is an actual contemporary singer, Osbey brings them to life with a particularity and a peculiarity that both stamp them as her own and make them seem alive to us. She also eschews explanations and tidy conclusions, preferring to leave her poems resonating in our minds and disturbing our peace long after we’ve withdrawn our ears and eyes from them. Osbey calls “hoodoo”—with its origins in African religious systems like those of the Fon, the Kongo, and the Yoruba—the dominant religion in New Orleans, despite the Catholicism its Spanish and French colonizers tried to impose on the city. The anthropologist Filomina Steady does not discuss indigenous African religions at all. Steady posits societies where women and men have separate but complementary spheres of power and sees “the role of ridicule in women’s world view” as a way of deflecting the tension between women and men. Osbey’s poetry, though blues-steeped in

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many ways, either backgrounds men or has her protagonists taking much more direct action against them than mere ridicule. Not all of Osbey’s poems are about wild and/or holy women, from her earliest portraits in Ceremony for Minneconjoux to her latest in All Saints, but those that are interest me most. Some of her women go mad, some are killed; some survive, some even triumph. All are on a first-name basis with what blues songs call “trouble in mind.” In contrast to what I wrote in 1987 about African American women singers in “God’s Divas,” Osbey’s “The Evening News (A Letter to Nina Simone)” has a different register, valence, and tone. Her work recalls the role the High Priestess of Soul had in the black cultural and political nationalism of the 1960s and 1970s, when she performed and recorded songs such as “Mississippi, Goddamn” and “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead).” The poem captures the singer’s legendary outspoken wildness, alludes to the years Simone spent in Europe as an expatriate when her proud stance and angry lyrics made it difficult for her to work in the United States, and apologizes to the High Priestess of Soul for the ways “we” have treated her: dear nina, i want to say to you how we did not mean it. how we didn’t not mean to give you up to let you go off alone that way. i want to say how we were a younger people, all of us but none of it is true. we used you and we tossed what we could not use to the whites and they were glad to get it. we tossed you out into such danger and closed our eyes and ears to what was to become of you ... and worst of all we did not even say your name. we ate you like good hot bread fresh from the table of an older woman and then we tossed the rest out for the scavengers. ... does it matter this is no gift or tribute or right or holy thing

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but just a kind of telling ... how cursed, how sorry a mess of people can we be, nina when outside-a you there is no place to go?5 Osbey’s wild characters, among them Thelma V. Picou in “Letter Home” and Augustine in “The House,” are not only unconventional— they don’t even seem to know that anyone expects them to be conventional. “Letter Home,” a sequel to “Thelma,”6 returns to a character who a mere five pages earlier “was out in the middle of the neutral ground / dancing and screaming / eating the black dirt / calling freedom / freedom.” When we next hear from her, she is in an infirmary that seems like a madhouse—missing her house and backyard but not her children; she seems transformed. When she first addresses “Darling Henry,” she appears sincere, but then we learn that she has duped a priest to get out of the infirmary: Father Dorelle says if I had prayed first I never would be here now. But then, if Darling Henry had not driven me till I saw fit to run stark naked out into the neutral ground screaming freedom I would not be here now. We hear the sarcasm and stoked rage when she uses the endearment the second time. “Darling Henry” may have had power over her once—but no more. Her letter ends: I pray to God you are not in my house When I get loose from here Wednesday because I have most absolute faith that while I might not can be free of you, Lord knows I can kill you. And I can see to it you stay dead

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on a daily basis. Your loving woman Thelma V. Picou7 Notice that the house is Thelma’s, that her sense of humor allows her to sign “Your loving woman” to a man she has just threatened to kill, and that Osbey leaves us with the paradox of a woman who knows that she may be unable to be free of Henry’s effect on her but is prepared to kill and (perhaps, using hoodoo) to keep him dead anyway. Wild Thelma V. Picou lives, but wild Augustine commits suicide, and Osbey, characteristically, does not explain why. Augustine grew up in a house where murder had been committed: we cooked in the fireplace. there was a bloodstain right out front of it. folks round d’abadie street said she killed him, said she put that meat cleaver in him and cut out his heart. ... ‘say she cut it right out.’ ‘fed it to her cat.’ ‘ . . . and watched him eat it.’ Her mother finds Augustine harmless and says “she was just peculiar.”8 A neighbor disagrees: “but to tell the truth, that augustine bears watching. a child like that will bring turmoil.” “or sorrow, for sure.” ... “i tell you that girl ain’t right.”9 Another neighbor woman addresses Augustine directly: “you’ll have no peace in this house, neighbor.

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you are like those women people read about: the kind who cut and scream.”10 Here, Osbey introduces hoodoo almost nonchalantly—and we only hear the adept’s side of the conversation: “child, i can’t help you but i can feel with my hands and i believe you have a gift. i can teach you what i know you can do what i do you can out-do me. ask your mama to let you learn.”11 Next, Augustine is using a “big scrub brush / suds everywhere, working at that bloodstain.” While dinner’s being prepared and after her weekly visit to the doctor, we learn that: “no one knows what he told her. but when she come in we were putting on dinner. augustine went to the upstairs bathroom and then she come down and lit a fire in the fireplace. ... augustine stood in plain view of the kitchen she ate rat poison and threw the box in the fire.”12 One of the givens, the stereotypes of African American women, is their steely devotion to their families. In “Eileen,” Osbey provides a quite different character: 1. ... i could kill me somebody was all she said and afterwards there were dead people lying about the linoleum ... 232

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2. for five days she told no one the sixth day she went out into the middle of onzaga street and said you all come help i have done killed my people like pie-man telling out his pies you all help i’ve done killed my people and they been dead near on a week. 3. ... and so eileen went back into the house to wait for the law and the law came with plastic bags scooping up miss dotty and miss martha and little julienne and doreen the law scooped them up into plastic bags and called next of kin to clean out the mess eyes and noses thick portions of flesh ... 4. a year or more went by eileen stopped wearing black ... eileen could be heard all hours of the night not what she said but her voice her laughter empty and stark 233

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a hungry laugh it was 5. ... and after dark when she was alone ... she would stand before the mirror i could kill somebody, she’d say and laugh like anything like nothing at all.13 Osbey’s creations are more eccentric, sensual, and sexual than those that Steady, an anthropologist, theorizes about. Many are openly sexual—and not only with their husbands. In Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman, for example, Marie Crying Eagle’s mother has a years-long extramarital affair with the màron/maroon Olender, and her daughter has one with Percy, who leaves his wife and children to move in with her. Ophelia’s monologue begins, “i must have beautiful things . . . / always about me,” and she complains that during her stay in the infirmary, “they never would let me have no beauty.” In a two-page, forty-six-line poem, while she smiles and dresses her mourning braids, she mentions four men, and the poem’s end tempts us to believe she has killed them: Jonathan, who “never did want me to have no flowers / never did know what it meant to me / to have a little beauty”; sweet-natured Halbert who would “bring [her] peaches in honey / i’d suck the parsley off the top . . . gave [her] these feathers for her hair”; and “ricard. ricard was just for pleasure / nothing but pleasure. / he thought i was a young fool.” But he was obviously wrong: after ricard was berthaw. i remember the day i told him “berthaw? you don’t mean me a bit of good you and none like you.” ... and the flowers? that’s for my beauty

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i keep me some beauty here in my bedroom and keep my lovers long dead.14 Steady’s African feminism emphasizes “autonomy and cooperation among women.” “Alberta (Factory Poem/Variation 2)” provides a compelling, if grisly, example of the “autonomy and cooperation” Steady posits:15 when my grandmother alberta was a girl she worked . . . alongside women who stood to stitch men’s suits ... to put food on the table to keep children in school or a husband home to avoid the indignity of government “relief” to protect a mother or a father from the old folks’ home. Her grandmother saw: women bleeding through triple-layered toweling afraid to leave their machines the length of time it took to wash and change the wadded cloth between their legs afraid to lose the pay ... and more than once a woman who had to go— but not soon enough. a woman sprawled against the white commode the dark fluid slipping across the floor and the two or three other women standing guard against the door hiding away the solution: quinine and castor oil to bring on the quick violent abortion

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... [The grandmother] was a woman with a husband and children by the time she knelt between her own baby sister’s knees and caught the nearly full-term moving mass felt its warm head in her hand before she flushed it down the toilet and wiped between galena’s legs.16 Their experiences in the factory made these women “manufacturers” of blues and not the kind about hearts broken by men. Here’s the narrator, quoting her grandmother: “we stood together we worked together. ... we cursed the cloth we stitched together and the lives it cost us to stitch it. we cursed the babies we dropped and the men who gave them to us, the bodies, our own bodies, that held to them in the womb, the conditions that dogged us so and made us drop them by choice or by accident by long standing in heat or cold, the perfect solution handed over to us by the women we stood among, manufacturing blues for all we were worth.”17 Some of Osbey’s characters are both wild and holy, and many of her poems are about women whose practice of religions with African taproots goes beyond being merely mysterious and exotic. The religion outsiders call “voodoo,” which New Orleanians know as “hoodoo,” is sometimes a survival strategy and often a form of resistance. To understand the holy aspects of these women, we must remember that before enslaved Africans confronted

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Catholicism, they knew the Fon, Kongo, and Yoruba cosmologies and religions that they brought across the Atlantic from Africa to New Orleans— religions that have powerful, sensual, sexual female deities worshiped by women and by men. Unlike the Virgin Madonna or Catholic women saints, they are neither pious nor celibate nor subordinate to male deities.18 As I move beyond Steady to consider women’s spiritual powers, the nexus between New Orleans and West Africa is pivotal. Although Spanish and French colonizers made Catholicism the city’s nominal religion, Osbey contends that its spirituality is predominately African. New Orleans is the most African city in the United States. New Orleans historian Keith Weldon Medley ascribes this to the city’s proximity to the Caribbean (he calls it a “loosely tethered Caribbean port city”);19 the constant arrival of free Africans from the Caribbean (especially Haiti after its revolutions in the 1790s) and from Africa; and the city’s Black Codes, which permitted the practice of African culture—such as drumming and dancing in Congo Square on the slaves’ Sunday half day off—as long as it did not interfere with the politics and business of the city. People of African descent—enslaved and free—have been in New Orleans since its earliest days. “Their sweat is in the city’s architecture, their rhythms move its music, their creativity and flair spice its cuisines.”20 In 1786 a bishop described seeing “Negroes, who, at the Vespers hour, assembled in a green expanse called Place Congo to dance the bamboula and perform rites imported from Africa by the Yolofs, Foulahs, Bambarraras, Mandigoes.” Early Congo Square rituals reflected West African faiths that came to be called Vodou. Imagine the scene in Congo Square late one Sunday afternoon in the 1820s. . . . Under the New Orleans’s Black Codes, slaves had Sundays off. . . . Wmen of color, wearing distinctive head wraps called tignons, sold pralines, coffee with chicory, and brown ginger cakes. . . . Drummers straddled variously shaped drums crafted from hollowed logs. As in West African societies, performers bore scarifications . . . incisions, cuts, dots, and other “irreversible markings” on the skin that denoted class, family, and [ethnic] origin. During the week, the musicians were “darkies” and slaves. In Congo Square, they were called candios: chiefs.21 Two large beef bones, pounded against an empty barrel, resounded the call to gather. Women rocked slowly from side to

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side, holding handkerchiefs high above their heads. Tambourines were slapped against open palms to add percussion. Thumb pianos lent melody. An old, old man strummed a banjo, his instrument’s neck carved into the shape of a human figure. This weekly event was like a scene out of an African village. Then, at nine o’clock, policemen fired a signal gun and abruptly ended what one writer has called a “half-day of half-freedom.” The penalty for lingering was twenty lashes. So into the night the Africans walked, back to slavery. “Bonsoir dance,” they chanted as they departed. “Soleil couche.” (“Goodbye dance, the sun is asleep.”)22 Brenda Marie Osbey is the consummate New Orleans poet. She says, “My family goes back to slavery and freedom in New Orleans. . . . I write about New Orleans, what makes it the way it is—the way we talk, the way we think, the way we live.”23 “New Orleans,” she adds, “is definitely the spiritual core of everything I write.”24 Osbey sees the city as “a distinctly black space”—with “whites as marginal”25—and as a female character.26 The bases of New Orleans hoodoo—such as candomblé in Brazil, santéria in Cuba, and vodun in Haiti—are in traditional African religions. The holiness of Osbey’s women is quite different from that of the Virgin Madonna and the celibacy of the saints and nuns whose meekness is emphasized by the Catholic Church. In New Orleans, what Osbey calls the “little Catholic saints” and hoodoo coexist, and—unlike Haitian vodun, which is dominated by male doctors—women, such as Marie Leveau, Mother Catherine, and Osbey’s mysterious chorus of “bone-step,” “féfé,” and “bahalia” women, are the center of New Orleans hoodoo: 1. these women mean business burn their hair only on the ends and spit tobacco in the reverend’s hedges they call themselves mothers and wear bare feet in public daring fathers and brothers to come down on the bankette ... 2. the bahalia women are coming 238

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... carrying the bamba-root in their hands believe on those hands and they will see you through seasons of drought and flood believe on these hands and you will cross the grandy-water ... 4. just before you see them there is their confounded jingling the sound of those root ends against their tambourines but no one really hears them coming just the thud of those bare feet ... the low rumbling of song and then bahalia bahalia.27 The first poem in the “ex votos” section of All Saints dramatizes the understated heresy trial—with its echoes of Pilate’s colloquy with Jesus—of Mother Catherine, “healer and saint of the Spiritual church of New Orleans,”28 whose religion Osbey links to hoodoo. Two “white men’s negroes,” duped and prodded by Euroamericans, are offstage witnesses against her: my name is catherine. some call me mother some saint. ... we stand. we kneel. sometimes we faint. ... sometimes we sing or else we chant or speak in tongues. 239

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sometimes when the spirit moves us so we dance.28 Outraged and scandalized by reports that she’s claimed sainthood, her Catholic judges demote her from “drawing up their holy water” to being a common lavatrice: and that is why whenever it rains and thunders and pours there in the lower nine and floods the levees my followers those who remember me can be heard saying: “it is mother catherine washing the robes of the blessèd congress of the saints and showering down her blessings on her people.”29 The tour de force in All Saints is the bold, breath-stopping “Sor Juana.” Set in Lima, Peru, and stippled with Spanish, this nine-page poem narrates the stoning of a wild and holy woman—again at the instigation of whites— by blacks convinced that she had betrayed them. Rather than forgiving her murderers, she curses them: “oye! oye, merditos! stop stop, you fools i am the sister of martin de porres!”30 Soon after the 1579 martyrdom of Sor Juana—this “santisma/batardita santo,” child of a Spanish officer and an African, with “gifts of healing and of tongues and so much else”31—her holiness becomes visible: after they had bathed you with the oil of roses how your aged, battered skin turned once more golden healed made young again and virgin before the eyes of your holy women.32

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The narrator’s heaven is as implacably and oppressively racist as Earth. White saints are sorry about the brutality of Sor Juana’s death but exclude her from their company: . . . behind the high gates of san pedro they call you heretic worker of black forces mulata.33 Although the descendants of the murderers realize their crime, abase themselves, and entreat forgiveness, Sor Juana does not free them from slavery. Instead—in a way that would be unthinkable for “the little Catholic saints” and is more in line with the behavior of a female deity such as vodun’s Eruzlie in her Petro (hot) aspect34—one hundred years after her death, she seduces hundreds of thousands of enslaved women and men from plantations, convincing them to march to a parody of freedom that has clear parallels with the strategies, tactics, and ploys of so-called emancipation: we know how you called them to the great great ocean we know how you tempted them with the soil of africa which you carried beneath your tongue o pobrecita! we know you called them to the water’s edge held out the soil of our africa in your bruised left hand and walked them into the waters where they drowned.35 Centuries later, the still enslaved devise a gruesome ritual. Selecting “the purest of our own virgin daughters” and giving the first stones “to her mother / her sisters / the sisters of her mother,”36 they stone her as they pray for and expiation and blessing. . . . sometimes she is restored to us sometimes she is not. . . . we say it is a chancy and a necessary rite. we say that generations will be forgiven

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set free made clean. but we know it is not enough.37 Osbey had read Mary Helen Washington’s 1974 call for an end to “sacred cow” literary representations of African American women, but she said that “it didn’t matter as I was writing specifically about New Orleans women and simply hadn’t any of the standard stereotypes to fall back on.”38 Juxtaposing Washington and Osbey is, often, like hearing an African American call and response. In creating women such as Augustine and Ophelia, Osbey has provided us with “women who have nervous breakdowns . . . wives who are not faithful . . . women whose promiscuous behavior has caused them to be labeled ‘easy,’ women in interracial relationships.”39 Many of the characters I have discussed—among them Marie Crying Eagle, Thelma V. Picou, Nina Simone, Mother Catherine, and Sor Juana— embody Ralph Ellison’s blues ideology of “keep[ing] the painful details and episodes of an experience alive in one’s aching consciousness . . . finger[ing] its jagged grain . . . chronicl[ing] autobiographical catastrophe lyrically.”40 Brenda Marie Osbey’s painstakingly crafted suites of rarely rhyming, end-stopped, or alliterating narrative poetry portray a gallery of arresting women without a single stereotypically New Orleans tragic and glamorous quadroon or octoroon concubine among them. Trope by trope, refrain by refrain, dialogue by dialogue, stanza by stanza, her often vernacular poetry lets us see the actions and overhear the inner lives of singular women. Grounded in New Orleans’s “Africaneity,” it demonstrates both the umbilical relationship between Africa and African American women and the ways in which “African feminism” is not entirely, not exactly congruent with New World African women’s lives. The articles I wrote decades ago on mothers and singers demonstrated the survival, in permutated and attenuated forms, of African mores. I find the same kind of differences, riffs, and echoes in Osbey’s wild and holy women.

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Part Nine decolonizing black women

Chapter Seventeen

Owning What We Know Racial Controversies in South African Feminism, 1991–1998

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In the 1990s, the world rejoiced with South Africa’s people over the release of political prisoners, the return of the exiles, and the achievement of formal democracy. Today, the “no blacks–whites only” signs have come down, and the new society is fighting to keep social justice on the agenda. However, the legacies of centuries of racial segregation and decades of apartheid mean that racialism—seeing life through lenses tinted with prejudice—remains a South African reality. A careful listener can still hear the awful voice of H. F. Verwoerd grimly echoing through South African life: “When I have control over native education, I will reform it so that natives will be taught from childhood that equality with Europeans is not for them.”1 This chapter will discuss some of the racial and gender crosscurrents in the search for decent feminist research methodology and practice in the postapartheid South African academy.

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Who Are “We”?: Black Women Here and There Well, You don’t know my people. You don’t know Keorapetse, What he bears, has borne.2 Sometimes, it is expected that being black anywhere is the same as being black everywhere. But more pertinently, given the long, painful history of exploitation between North America and Africa, can South African women of color and black American women overcome their differences?3 If so, how far into the research encounter might commonalities extend? In my experience, there is no automatic congruence of identity, but there can be a shared recognition of social responses and strategies. From this perspective come the arguments that (1) racialist scholarship is alive and well in Southern African scholarly circles, (2) racial tension between researchers and subjects is far from being amicably resolved, (3) researchers who are women of color are more likely to be sensitive to that tension and skilled in negotiating it, but (4) this ultimately is not a racially exclusive skill.

Academic Life and Scholarship in South Africa South Africa has a huge tertiary education sector because apartheid-era “logic” dictated that each so-called population group should have its own set of universities and training colleges. Thus, a few well-funded, Englishand Afrikaans-medium universities for white students towered alongside a plethora of poorer institutions for black, Indian, and colored students.4 All were staffed predominantly by white academics.5 The Afrikaans-medium universities (Stellenbosch, Potchefstroom, Pretoria, Rand Afrikaans) housed offensive and aggressive government projects and experiments; no dissent ever issued from their hallowed halls before 1994.6 At the black institutions, “third-rate Afrikaner lecturers . . . would literally transfer the conservative intellectual traditions of their home universities.”7 Some managed to partially free themselves from their shackles: for example, students, administrators, and academics defied police repression and sidestepped regulations to partially transform the University of the Western Cape (UWC) from a conservative university for “coloureds” to the premier home of the

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South African leftist intelligentsia.8 Similarly, after the enforcement of the segregationist Extension of University Education Act of 1959, universities such as Witwatersrand (Wits) and Cape Town (UCT) were restricted to enrolling white students but did to some extent become sites of political dissent, sheltering some critical, antiapartheid students and faculty.9 However, they also carried the legacies of decades of segregation when they admitted but discriminated against black students.10 University faculties remain overwhelmingly male; the percentage of women academics in South African higher education institutions was 30 percent in 1992.11 The South African system grants tenure after two years of probation, so in the 1990s, many departments were staffed with white males whose qualifications had initially been acceptable but had never been upgraded: department heads with honors degrees (the equivalent of a fouryear degree in the United States) were not the exception. Given the high level of paternalism and sexism in the old South Africa, white women who found academic jobs tended to be well-trained, competent achievers, many with leftist credentials. In practice, however, their numbers were too few to enable them to be more than honorary males. One woman applying for a job at Wits in the 1980s was asked to pledge that she would not have any more children if she were employed at the university!12 Young white women—most of them English speakers rather than Afrikaans speakers—who went abroad for social science training in the late 1970s and 1980s were exposed to feminism and the women’s movement of the Northern Hemisphere. There was a growing, if small, South African interest in women’s studies by the late 1980s and in gender studies by the 1990s. Those who returned to South Africa went back with goals similar to those of their progressive male colleagues—to turn moribund traditions of scholarship around, to make the work of the academy relevant and meaningful to the majority of South Africans, to recover forgotten history, and to become broadly aligned with the political movements seeking to end white minority rule.13 Some of these women took personal risks in the face of an intransigent and vengeful regime (most often those who were connected with the trade union movements); others did not. The South African women’s movement had an activist, rather than an academic, tradition for black women. The women drew strength from the great political initiatives of the 1950s and inspiration from stories of the endurance of the political detainees and freedom fighters of the 1970s and 1980s.14 In addition, some of the black women who went into exile with the

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liberation movements completed degrees abroad, often in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. These women generally did not return to the tertiary education sector after 1994 and were absorbed quickly into the ranks of the new democratic government or the corporate sector.15 How could women advance the cause of meaningful scholarship in South Africa? In hindsight, in answering this question in the 1980s, a difficult methodological line was repeatedly crossed. The problem was that the people whose history needed to be recovered, whose coping mechanisms needed to be investigated, and whose oral traditions needed to be recorded were all black. In the political context of those times, it was worse than navel gazing for progressive whites to propose to do research on their own communities. How could liberation be advanced by the kind of ideologically narrow, mediocre scholarship churned out in the Afrikaans-medium universities? And yet, it was very difficult to make clear distinctions between progressive and reactionary scholarship, given South Africa’s corrosive traditions of white scholarship on black people. In several generations of racist “bantu studies,” black people were treated as part of the natural landscape—as creatures whose instincts could be tested, whose crania and genitalia could be measured, whose quaint customs could be preserved.16 Did progressive South African researchers make a big enough break from these racist traditions? As a way of evaluating this question, some of the women’s studies conferences and meetings held in South Africa since 1991 will be reviewed.

Hard Times in Durban The first women’s studies conference in southern Africa in the 1990s was held in January 1991 at the University of Natal–Durban. I attended that conference; it was my first visit to South Africa, after having lived in the region for eight years. In the full flush of optimism and excitement that followed the 1990 unbannings and the release of the political prisoners, it was, for the first time, politically permissible to travel to South Africa. With the added excitement of meeting some of the big names in South African feminist scholarship, the conference promised a great deal. Despite the high quality of many of the individual papers presented there, the conference will be remembered for the nonformal things that took up a great deal of the time and energy of the participants.17 Foremost

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among these matters was the issue of race, expressed through the dismay and anger articulated by black women about the ways that “their” experiences and histories were being appropriated by white women researchers. Paper after paper turned out to be an examination of some aspect of the lives of black women that reflected nonparticipatory, disempowering research. For example, while a paper presented at the conference about women’s health in the bleak Cape Town shantytown-cum-township of Khayelitsha was coauthored by six people surnamed Cooper, Hoffman, Klopper, Myers, Pick, and Sayed,18 the acknowledgments at the end of the paper thanked, inter alia, “the interviewers who worked under difficult and arduous conditions in painstakingly collecting the survey data” and went on to list the names Dlakavu, Gangana, Jara, Macingwane, Magodla, Maneli, Mgqambo, Ngubane, Nongwe, Ntanyana, Qoyise, and Vungu-vungu! The obvious question was, Why were none of these women also listed as authors of the paper? One answer might have been that the black “research assistants” were so badly educated that they were unable to write academic papers. But this was precisely the crux of the epistemological issue for the black women at the conference. If the research carried out by black women with black women was the material on which the scholarly edifice rested, it was a perpetuation of the exploitative politics of South African knowledge production for white, university-based writers to lift the data into the ivory tower and claim ownership of them. In such scholarship, the research “commodified [black women’s] suffering to generate relevant papers.”19 In only a few cases did the white researchers acknowledge such problems. The conference organizers, who were almost all white, were angered. They felt that with virtually no resources, they had pioneered an international women’s conference. If other people wanted a different kind of conference, they contended, they should have participated earlier or organize another one themselves. There were other cleavages in the conference between the academics and the activists who objected to inaccessible jargon and the lack of time and space for discussion.20 But the central issue remained the anger and conflict generated between white organizers and researchers who maintained that they had a legitimate right to access the lives of black people in the name of objective research, on the one hand, and black women who sat through endless dissections, some of them clumsy, of black women’s lives, on the other. At one point, when a black woman protested about a

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presentation, she was derided by the individual presenting the paper as a non-working-class person who therefore wasn’t as black as the subjects/ objects of study and who understood less about black life than the white researcher did.21 In retrospect, perhaps the “liberation year” expectations had clouded everyone’s vision of what a women’s conference could do. Certainly, that meeting of scholars did not override the legacies of racist interaction ingrained in the participants and organizers.

The Beach at Camps Bay Later in 1991, I had the privilege of attending a workshop/conference in Cape Town organized partly in response to the January conference: “Black Women by and for Ourselves.”22 To my knowledge, it was a unique effort by black women to share their work and ideas with each other in a supportive way. I had only lived in South Africa for a few months, and while I greatly enjoyed the workshop, it was only later that I came to realize how special it actually was. Professional women are beset with so many demands on their time and energy that to have three whole days in a city removed from the pressures of work and family was very precious. I didn’t realize this at the time; I thought South Africa was a place where such things could happen regularly. In fact, as it turned out, the sponsoring organization declined to pick up the whole tab for the workshop, we didn’t see much of each other after everyone returned to everyday life, and the hoped-for book of workshop papers never materialized. This is a great pity because a wealth of thought and reflection, experience and history, analysis and stocktaking has been lost in a collective sense. But it was liberating for us to know that the dreaded racial feminist dynamic was not going to rear its ugly head. No one lectured about the meanings of the things black women did in everyday life; no one claimed to be an expert on others whose names they would not try to pronounce. One of the highlights was a tour that the participants took around Cape Town. It was winter, and in the very south, that means some days of cold, wet, blustery gales that blow up from the Antarctic. On such a day, we drove past a beach called Camps Bay—popular with the sun-bathing and beach-volleyball set during the summer. But on this gray, wintry day, Camps Bay was deserted. One of the conference participants was the nov-

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elist Lauretta Ngcobo,23 who said that she had long read about “the beach at Camps Bay”—a whites-only space in the old days—and that this was the first time she had ever seen it. She wanted to set foot on it, so she and I climbed out of the taxi and ran a few steps, laughing; we bent into the cold, bitter wind, our feet sinking into the gray sand. It was affirming to see the range of talents, professions, and ages at the workshop and know that we might be able to find common ground. And we did. It didn’t last, and we had our differences, but it was a strengthening time.

Electronic Formaldehyde The third feminist conference I attended in South Africa was a one-day workshop entitled “Promoting Women’s History—Local and Regional Perspectives,” held in July 1995 following the biennial meeting of the South African Historical Society.24 This conference was an interesting hybrid. The organizers of the workshop were not all white; a great (and successful) effort had been made to broaden the range of people involved in the behindthe-scenes work. South Africa in the early 1990s was beset by the myth that there were no qualified black people in general and certainly no professional black women. Yet the workshop featured dynamic and outspoken black women historians and sociologists. There was a much greater sense of shared enterprise than in the Durban conference. However, the workshop was marked dramatically by the racial feminist problematic. The opening session featured a video made by three white women (a political scientist and two others) based at Wits. It was about a protest held by black women residents of a squatter camp outside Dobsonville, a section of Soweto, a few years previously. The protesters had been trying to stop the police from demolishing their illegal shack-homes. What had made this a newsworthy event was their method of protest. At a certain point, they had taken off all their clothes except their panties in front of the police. “Ukuhamba Ze—To Walk Naked” (the title of the video)—actually, the term literally means to dance and sing and shout defiantly, naked—was the women’s method of last resort. The filmmakers had added television footage to interviews with some of the female protesters to develop the eight-minute video. The result was very powerful: the images of big, angry, naked black women desperately defying the jeering police of the new South Africa were unforgettable.

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But the film clearly angered many black women (and men) in the workshop audience. They questioned how the video had been made, by whom it was seen, and how the community of squatter women had been involved in the product. In other words, they posed all the old questions about how and why white women had the right to display as much of black women as they pleased. (Ironically, many of the questions they asked after viewing it were answered in the paper presented by one of the filmmakers—though no one had had the chance to read it.) The filmmaker replied that there had been a great deal of discussion with the community women about the video. She said that they had wanted their story to be told and that they all wept together whenever they watched it. Yet to my mind, the filmmaker betrayed herself when she described the immediate impetus for the making of the video and the uses to which it was being put. It had been made, she said, for a section called “The Body Politic” of an avant-garde Johannesburg art exhibition. And, she went on, the video was being used for training workshops. The exhibiting of black women’s bodies as art brought forth warning echoes from a workshop paper on the so-called “Hottentot Venus,” Saartjie Baartman. Baartman was a black South African woman who became a visual plaything for nineteenth-century Europeans (in Europe), who treated her as a circus freak.25 Her genitalia ended up severed from her body and pickled in a jar in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris for the later assuaging of scientific curiosity. This obvious barbarity in the name of popular entertainment and pseudoscience has made a significant mark on the scholarly imagination.26 But had anyone actually learned anything in the intervening 180 years? How different was Baartman’s abuse than the pickling of the naked protests of the Dobsonville women in electronic formaldehyde? In an eight-minute video, it was impossible to discuss the context, the significance, or the history of women protesters premeditatively tearing off their clothes.27 We saw their bodies heaving in slow motion, we heard some of their words and saw them translated into subtitles, we were moved by their plight. But were we not also intellectually titillated? Did not a public protest become a gumboot dance for histotourists?28 There was very little time to formally discuss these issues, but the video was talked about intensely throughout the day: conferences must have tea breaks, and tea breaks must have caucuses. I heard that the criticism from black women had driven the filmmaker to tears. One speculates that she

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was expecting sisterhood from participants and instead got what she may mentally have referred to as “the same old ———.” There was, by this point, the relatively new phenomenon of white women being lambasted for their representations of black women. This new canon went as follows: white women researchers preyed on povertystricken, badly educated black women. In addition, when an expert was needed, they were called. When conference papers were invited, they were the recipients of the foreign travel grants. When books were written—and often written well—white authors thanked their black research assistants in the acknowledgment section and collected their awards.29 On the one hand, one can understand how this criticism caused bewilderment and anger in white women who had set out to chronicle, investigate, and even ameliorate aspects of the cruel, racist world around them. On the other hand, the possibility of their complicity with the “bantu studies” research styles of the past was hardly discussed.30 Their departments continued to attract, support, and produce graduates who left the townships with their tape recorders full of information and never came back.

The Thin Kente-Cloth Line It is amazing what loud, uppity black women can achieve in three days of sustained critique. The voices of the Durban disaffected continue to echo through South African scholarship. An unspoken question hangs over the heads of all conference organizers: will the black women get angry again? In January 1997, for example, a “Gender and Colonialism” conference was held at UWC. The conference (which I did not attend) was not marked by tensions over racial scholarship; nonetheless, “struck by the ‘polite’ character of the gathering, especially in contrast with the fierce debates of the Durban Gender Conference in 1991, Shula Marks asked a provocative question. Had a divorce taken place between politics and the academy?”31 Similarly, the first regional “Colloquium on Masculinities,” held at the University of Natal in 1998, reflected memories of the Durban conference. A participant, writing a letter to Agenda, quoted an earlier letter whose author had expressed puzzlement that the colloquium had not generated “the kind of anger expressed at African women’s conferences over recent years at the confident ‘othering’ of black peoples’ experiences by colonizers.” The participant replied, “As for there not being ‘anger’ generated, I agree

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with her. There was a comfortable feeling of collective purpose in getting a young field up and running.”32 How could this be? Women in the South African academy no longer have “the struggle” to back them up. Academic discourse has gone into a postmodernist orbit and has left activists and activism far behind. Outside the ivory tower, the energy of women’s community organizations has drowned in the generation of government policy papers and the independent consultant boondoggle. Other than government commissions on gender equality and human rights, the organized women’s movement has disappeared from South African life. What is largely missing from academia, therefore, are the confident voices of organizationally experienced black women who have seen and survived all the tricks of the system. As an individual, the one junior black woman in History Department X or Sociology Department Y may choose not to be very vocal on tricky racial issues: every woman’s employment is on the line as universities are beginning to cut back.

Owning What We Know Most of the retrospective writings on the Durban conference have “criticized the criticism.” Thus, after conceding that “it is inappropriate for white or privileged women to seek authority in the political imperatives of feminism, women’s ‘interests,’ or nonracialism,” Jenny Robinson immediately asserts that “it is, however, equally inappropriate for the black woman researcher or subject to claim an unambiguous authenticity and privileged insider knowledge by virtue of her own life experiences.”33 Similarly, after acknowledging that white feminists must confront racism, Shireen Hassim and Cherryl Walker write, “We have serious reservations about the way in which ‘race’ is being used by some black feminists. . . . The assumption that there is an all-embracing sisterhood among black women, based on a common experience of oppression under apartheid, is no less fallacious than the by now totally discredited notion that sisterhood is global.”34 But there is such a thing as authentic experience—which some people have had but other people have not. The “common experience of oppression” is exactly why and how understandings of race, class, and gender can be shared among people. The fact that this commonplace assertion can even be seen as controversial is a measure of the intellectual arrogance of some feminist academics who really do see themselves—perhaps because of a sense of

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successful escape from white patriarchal culture—as the most appropriate arbiters of all women’s historical realities. Hassim and Walker, for example, while asserting that “experience is not the only source of understanding,” state that “gender issues which were profiled by a handful of white feminists, such as abortion and rape, were sidelined from the mainstream of women’s political organisation, despite the fact that they were issues which concerned all women. As already noted, it is only now, in the 1990s, that this is changing.”35 This rather patronizing statement suggests that black women do not understand their own reality; only when “women’s political organisations” come around to the same views as those held by “a handful of white feminists” will real progress come. However, “other” researchers might be more likely to understand that for the majority of South African women, the abortion issue is not a knee-jerk legalism and viscerally involves difficult issues of identity, culture, and social obligation. This the handful of white feminists clearly did not understand. The authentic understanding that Hassim, Walker, and Jenny Robinson discount comes in many guises that change over time. As suggested at the beginning of this chapter, sometimes a gendered link across the African diaspora can be a way of achieving it; sometimes, it can come through language proficiency. Those who have experienced it, however, will attest that although authenticity is not the whole story, it is “what we know.” We must not squander this head start to understanding. Historically, what have black women tried to do with this head start? Unfortunately, attempts to develop black feminist ways of knowing in South Africa attracted the antagonism of the apartheid state and were crushed. The Black Women’s Federation (BWF), for example, which existed from 1975 to 1977, might have developed new pathways of research and activism if it had been allowed to grow. Led by Fatima Meer, almost the only black woman academic of her generation active inside South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, the BWF was an offshoot of the black consciousness movement. Not only did it encourage black women to reject exploitative traditions of scholarship and to represent themselves in academic terms but it also was beginning to work in urban and rural settings “in the areas of housing, trade unions, rural development and the legal disabilities of black women.”36 In 1976, however, BWF leaders were detained. The organization was banned in 1977 in the government crackdown that followed the outrage over the police murder of Steve Biko.37

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Both in the Old World and in the New, black women are at the bottom of academic, social, and economic hierarchies in the twenty-first century. As black women, we must continue to refuse to be talked down to or used as intellectual cannon fodder and as window dressing in research proposals with old racialist agendas. With colleagues who are willing to learn and listen, we must work with “what we know” against the perpetuation of exploitative methodologies. I have faith that this can be done. For example, a recent biographical study undertaken by a black woman sociologist at UCT discusses the potential pitfalls in old and new research styles in South Africa and the “complexities of sameness/difference” in her research: The interview process involved issues of power at two levels. Firstly, there was the process of Mrs. Thomas taking the power to author herself through the telling of her story. Secondly, there was the relationship of power between Mrs. Thomas as the narrator and myself as the researcher. . . . Being a coloured-african woman myself and from initially working class parents, there is a sense in which I am from parts of Mrs. Thomas’ world. This is manifested in moments of recognition between us. Simultaneously, being middle class now and having a sense of cultural distance from the worlds of working class coloured-african women enables me to see and value the particularity of her world.38 Black women academics in South Africa remain scattered, junior, and few—now thankfully often in e-mail contact with each other—but generally determined to try to make a collective difference. In Cape Town, a group of black women academics and cultural workers organized the Women of Colour Consciousness Raising Group (WCCR) in 1997. Some WCCR members organized the African Womanist Workshop at UCT in January 1998 and wrestled with issues of feminism, patriarchy, racism, naming, and dreaming. At the end of the event, they acknowledged that the workshop had had two shortcomings: “inadequate representation of rural and working-class women” and not enough demonstrative respect and affection.39 In tandem with Zimitri Erasmus’s reflections about power and the research process, these brave self-criticisms refute assumptions that black women simply do not understand class and power differences in the academic encounter.40 We are all finding ways to own and accurately represent “difference/sameness” in what we know. A luta continua.

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Chapter Eighteen

Decolonizing Culture The Media, Black Women, and Law

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At various times in U.S. history, African Americans have been viewed as a people without a culture or moral values. Through enslavement, segregation, and discrimination, African Americans’ culture has, in a sense, been “colonized” and appropriated. Their languages, traditions, and art forms have been destroyed or suppressed in some periods, denigrated or demonized in others. Yet in formal and informal resistance efforts, African Americans in general and black women in particular have struggled to control their own images and to be represented with dignity and humanity. Reasserting one’s own cultural, social, and moral values and mores is, in part, the social process of decolonizing culture. In contemporary American society and increasingly worldwide, the media are the principal—and the most pervasive—sources of cultural information. They create and disseminate ideologies “because the rituals and myths they reproduce for public consumption ‘explain, instruct and justify practices and institutions.’” More than a reflective mirror of society, media

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representations work as refractive lenses that mirror, create, and shape societal perceptions about ourselves and others.1 Through sheer size, volume, and color and the ability to transport images directly into the home, the media have a tremendous power to affect perceptions and group interactions. Through media, individuals in the consuming public or audience receive cues about themselves, others, and their relative place in society. The persistent messages of the media tell us who has power and who is powerless, who is expert and who is untrained, and who serves and who is served. In this way, the mass media reinforce and influence dominant societal hierarchies and roles.2 A process of decolonization must examine the role of media and popular culture in reinforcing society’s racial and gender hierarchies. Popular culture is, in large part, a result of the media’s shape and form, which are in turn a product of legal regulation. Laws and governmental regulation set boundaries and create barriers for media ownership and community influence on media production. Media ownership, consolidation, and the growing impact of commercialization on content all affect the imagery presented in popular culture. The process of decolonization requires more than placing blacks into the current media structure. It requires the reevaluation of media institutions and assessing whether they can represent the culture and values of historically colonized people. Most media messages do little to challenge dominant hierarchies of power. In media, “groups and classes are ranked in relation to each other in terms of productivity, wealth, and power, and . . . cultures may be similarly ranked in terms of domination and subordination, along the scale of ‘cultural power.’3 In this framework, those with greater power in society are frequently portrayed as rational, analytical, successful, kind, and moral. Thus, the judge, detective, doctor, scientist, priest, expert, and all-around hero are quite often male and white (although occasionally they are permitted to be black and male). Similarly, the floor scrubber, laundress, sympathetic victim, and temptress (who can and has led to the downfall of man and civilization) are typically female—and usually white. Challenges to these dominant representations have, on occasion, been successful: thus, for example, Thelma and Louise and Set It Off depict female characters (white and black, respectively) who mastermind and carry out criminal activity. Yet more frequently, television and film reflect a certain troubling consistency of imagery regarding social hierarchies, gender, and race. Media imageries often erase or marginalize black existence, contribu-

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tions, and dilemmas in American society, or, in depicting black characters and black life, they frequently rely on stereotypes that lend support to widely accepted beliefs in black inferiority and white superiority.4 Black life is often collapsed into predictable patterns that give credence to race mythologies. Most common are the characters that present blacks as foolish buffoons, loyal servants, entertainers, or athletes.5 Infrequently present in serious dramatic presentations about black life, black characters instead serve comedic functions, entertain, demonstrate athletic prowess, or act as adjuncts to central white characters. At the same time, cultural critics charge that American mass media often appropriate much of black culture, humor, music, and dance to enrich their offerings even as they ignore the diversity of black achievement and contribution.6 In contrast to their portrayal of blacks, the media frequently construct an unrealistic positive imagery of whiteness, conveying the illusion that negative behaviors and traits predominate in the black community but are largely absent (except for a few bad actors) in white communities.7 (Along similar lines, many feminists, recognizing the harm inherent in creating images of the “perfect” woman, have challenged the allegedly positive and unrealistic images of white women embodied in characters such as Donna Reed, Mrs. Brady, and “That Girl” and even in contemporary characters such as Ally McBeal.) An accurate and realistic depiction of the lives and contributions of real black women has rarely made it onto the screen. Instead, they are denigrated and often appear as formulaic characters used to provide lessons about morality and the social hierarchy.8 For example, in traditional cinema depictions, the tragic mulatto is doomed by her biracial heritage. Usually sympathetic and likable, she is nonetheless a “victim of divided racial inheritance.”9 As a direct result of her mixed-race heritage, the tragic mulatto is relegated to a life of unhappiness and sorrow. Her character is used to teach the dangers of racial mixing.10 Black women are also frequently depicted as devoid of mainstream sexual values and mores. Often portrayed as sexually loose and available, the black woman has appeared throughout the media as a vamp or whore (both by occupation and by nature).11 Such images reinforce ideas that blacks are less inhibited socially and sexually. Designed to teach the dangers of operating outside the bounds of social behavioral constraints, particularly concerning sexuality, the black body is used to reinforce social norms. Recent media depictions have expanded on each of these themes and depicted black women as poor,

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incompetent, lazy, and dependent upon the state for support. In the words of one scholar, “Portraying African-American women as stereotypical mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients, and hot mommas helps justify U.S. Black women’s oppression.”12 Among the most enduring caricatures of black womanhood are the Mammy and Aunt Jemima characters. The Mammy “is usually big, fat, and cantankerous,” while the related and well-known Aunt Jemima is “sweet, jolly and good-tempered.”13 Depicted as domestic workers, Mammy and Aunt Jemima are loyal servants who apparently exist for no purpose other than to serve their employers. Thus, Mammy and Aunt Jemima are central to the construction of racial hierarchies.14 The film Imitation of Life provides a paradigmatic example of the depiction of the Aunt Jemima character. The movie traces the lives of two widows—one white, one black—during the depression. Each with a daughter to raise, they decide to live together. The black woman, Aunt Delilah, will care for the house and children, and the white woman, Miss Bea, will pursue a career. They are poor and struggling until good fortune comes their way when Miss Bea decides to market Aunt Delilah’s family recipe for pancake flour. She offers Aunt Delilah a 20 percent interest in the business, telling the black woman that she can now afford her own car and house. Aunt Delilah responds, “My own house? You gonna send me away, Miss Bea? I can’t live with you? Oh, honey chile, please don’t send me away.” When asked if she doesn’t want her own house, Delilah replies, “No’m. How I gonna take care of you and Miss Jessie if I ain’t here. I’se your cook. And I want to stay your cook.”15 Aunt Delilah, with childlike adoration, prefers her subordinate status to the promise of obtaining independence and material things. Similarly, Beulah, a domestic worker in the Aunt Jemima tradition, starred in her own show on ABC from 1950 to 1953. Beulah happily served the middle-class white family who employed her, working assiduously to help them solve their problems. The characterization of the black woman as a servant without any family or goals separate from her employer has persisted in contemporary media. From 1981 to 1987, for example, Nell Carter played a nurturing although somewhat controlling domestic in Gimme a Break on NBC. In charge of the children and household of a motherless, blue-collar white family, Nell makes the family her own; she has little or no life outside of their orbit.16 In a scene remarkably similar to the scene from Imitation of Life, “Nell went to court to beg the judge not to take ‘her babies’ since she had promised their dead mother that she

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would raise them as her own. The judge decided against the children’s aunt and in Carter’s favor when Nell fell to her knees, crying and beseeching the judge to let her keep ‘her’ children.”17 Beyond such historical relics as Beulah and Aunt Delilah, contemporary media depictions of black women continue to reflect strains of these conventionally stereotypical images. Thus, Hollywood persists in clinging to the myth of the complacent black woman, eager and happy to serve her white employers. This characterization is fulfilled by Whoopi Goldberg in Clara’s Heart, Corinna Corinna, and Girl, Interrupted, by Alfre Woodard in Passion Fish, and by Cicely Tyson in Fried Green Tomatoes. Seen as nurturers of others, these black characters often have no lives of their own—robbed of love, family, and children, they function primarily as servants to the dominant class. Furthermore, their relative status, including the obvious inequities in power, prestige, and monetary wealth, is left unchallenged. Neither Mammy nor Aunt Jemima nor their employers ever question the social hierarchy in which they find themselves. As Jannette Dates noted, “The maids among these characters were not scripted to question the system that placed them in the servant’s role, and they consciously relegated their own lives to secondary status. Viewers could not conceive of Beulah wanting to be anything but what she was or of her fighting for her children to have a life more self-fulfilling than her own. The characters consistently reflected the values and beliefs of mainstream America.”18 Such characters underscore the myth that black women revel in servitude. They further maintain the mythology of harmony and warmth between employer and maid. These images conflict directly with the reality of domestic work for black women and the cultural focus on ambition and self-reliance in American society. While it is true that African American women have served as domestic workers in large numbers, media images of domestic workers have contrasted sharply with the reality of the lives and labors of black women. Generally, black women began paid work as domestics following the Civil War, as a result of virulent race discrimination and a lack of employment choices. They had to take domestic work in order to contribute to the economic support of their immediate and extended families.19 World War II enabled many blacks to move out of domestic work and into factory positions. When the end of the war pushed black workers out of their wartime employment, these women were often unwilling to return to domestic work. “Some preferred to take advantage of their twenty-six weeks’ worth

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of unemployment compensation benefits and wait to find jobs in factories.”20 Others worked to increase their prewar wages and conditions of employment.21 In contrast to the servile passivity often portrayed in the media, domestics actually “sought to reconcile their jobs with their feelings of dignity and self-worth,” according to historian Jacqueline Jones, who added that these women “relied on workplace strategies of survival and resistance.” On one level, they exercised some control over their choice of employer: one woman responded to the unreasonable demands of a white housewife by declaring, “This job is not the type of job that I have to live with the rest of my life. I lived before I ever came here and I could leave here and go back to the city and find another job.” On a daily basis, they set limits on their work assignments (“Well, you said your girl cleans the floor, and I’m not your girl . . . and I don’t scrub floors on my hands and knees”) and used their own judgment when it came to handling tantrum-prone children (“If he kicked me on the shins, I’d kick him back”).22 These autonomous and proud black women are a stark contrast to the imagery of Mammy and Aunt Jemima. Actively pursuing self-actualization and control, domestic workers refused to identify with the work they did or embrace their employers as family.23 Unlike the representation of solitary black women who substituted their white employers for families and friends, domestics actually kept close ties with their own families and coworkers and regularly sought out social and professional networks with other domestic workers. According to Jones, “These support groups served to inform job hunters of openings and to shield members against the snobbery of their neighbors who worked in institutional settings.”24 And in contrast to the implicit messages about positive and supportive working conditions, the job was, in truth, demanding, the hours were long (ten- and twelve-hour workdays were usual), and the pay was low with few, if any, benefits.25 Again belying the myth of an apolitical, apathetic black domestic, many of these workers were active in social struggles and provided critical support to the civil rights movement. For instance, “female domestic and service workers refused to ride the Montgomery [Alabama] buses for 381 days and thereby threw white household arrangements into disarray. . . . The boycott ended only with the federal intervention in the form of a Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregated buses.”26 Clearly relishing the contradiction between the happy servant and the militant resister protesting

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the racial hierarchies of her times, “a demonstrator in a Philadelphia march responded to the shocked expression of a white bystander with the cry, ‘Yes! It’s me and I’ve kept your children. I could’ve spit in their milk for all you know!’”27 Although many domestic workers supported the civil rights struggle, they wisely understood the practical need to suppress that fact when they had to. As Jones noted, “Some female employees engaged in the timehonored ‘deference ritual’ perfected by their slave grandmothers. This strategy could at times enable a movement supporter to keep her job. A Montgomery domestic told her white employer that she walked to work not out of sympathy for the boycott but because she wanted to ‘stay away from the buses as long as that trouble is going on.’ ‘Anna Mae, . . . one of the best block captains and most militant civil rights workers in Greenwood,’ sang freedom songs at night, but in the day, queried by a suspicious white housewife, she would profess ignorance of ‘silver rights workers’ and would deny with a hearty ‘No ma’am’ that she knew ‘anythin’ about freedom.’”28 This contrived deference toward employers was a consistent element of domestic work but belied the strength and nobility of these workers.29 James Baldwin stated, “I have great respect for that unsung army of black men and women who trudged down back lanes and entered back doors, saying, ‘Yes, Sir’ and ‘No, Ma’am.’ . . . They did not like saying ‘Yes, Sir,’ and ‘No Ma’am’ but . . . these black men and women knew that the job had to be done, and they put their pride in their pockets in order to do it. It is very hard to believe that they were in any way inferior to the white men and women who opened those back doors.”30 Domestic workers today are largely undocumented immigrant women of color who continue to face the same struggles for dignity, respect, and decent wages. But U.S. black women, working in a variety of jobs in hospitals, nursing homes, and daycare centers, “still do a remarkable share of the emotional nurturing and cleaning up after people, often for lower pay.”31 The reality is that the lives and contributions of black domestic workers were and are far richer and more complex than revealed in media depictions. The caricatures ignored the details of black life. Erasing the strength, activism, ambition, and wisdom of domestic workers from the imagery is characteristic of the way in which media construct a mythology of blackness that supports dominant social hierarchies. The media consciously substitute characters that are docile, loyal, and protective (not only of their white employers but also of the systems in which they are trapped as servants) for

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more realistic impressions of black women. Illustrating the reality of domestic work and the modes of resistance engaged in by domestic workers would challenge mainstream ideas about the status of black women as well as fundamental structures of power that frequently locate black women and their children at the bottom of the economic ladder. These media-created characters also work to mask societal power and class imbalances, as well as masking the constant and degrading nature of the work, the lack of privacy, and the disregard for the dignity of domestic workers.32 As Dates and Barlow noted, “Black media stereotypes are not the natural, much less harmless, products of an idealized popular culture; rather, they are more commonly socially constructed images that are selective, partial, one-dimensional, and distorted in their portrayal of African Americans.”33 Media-based caricatures of black women are less a reflection of black life than a cultural and political statement about race and racial politics in the United States as perceived by their creators and producers. The consistency and persistence of these false representations are more reflective of the biases of their makers and the structure of the media itself than those whom the media purport to represent. Dates observed that the “values and beliefs of African Americans seen on . . . television have not revealed a unique African American experience but rather the perceptions of white producers, sponsors, writers and owners.”34 While it is debatable whether media create these biases or merely reflect them, it is clear that the media do little to destabilize and challenge them. The mere repetition of a stereotypical imagery of black life is harmful, particularly since the media often purport to provide us with an intimate view into the lives of others. Through film and television, the audience is invited into others’ homes, relationships, and lives. There is often a certain air of authenticity and genuineness about the social-gender-racial messages woven into the medium’s fabric. As media critics note, media images often give “white Americans a false impression of black life, art, and culture.”35 This ability to present “false truths” is particularly powerful in a contemporary America that continues to maintain highly segregated neighborhoods.36 In fact, in light of segregation, the media often provide a principal, if not the only, source of information about people from racial and ethnic backgrounds different from one’s own.37 Researchers Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton have established the extensive and deliberate nature of historical and contemporary segregation of black America across socioeco-

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nomic lines.38 Despite fair-housing and antidiscrimination laws, America’s neighborhoods continue to be so racially segregated that Massey and Denton have stated that blacks are “hypersegregated” and that “racial segregation still constitutes a fundamental cleavage in American society.”39 They tie the pattern of “American apartheid” to discriminatory governmental conduct as well as racial attitudes held by whites. Interestingly, these biases, revealed in a number of studies, are consistent with many of the stereotyped images of blacks in the media. Studies examining attitudes about integration have revealed that “whites still harbor substantial prejudice against blacks as potential neighbors.”40 They have documented that most whites would be unwilling to live in a neighborhood that was onethird black and that most believe that black neighbors undermine property values, reduce neighborhood safety, are less likely to take good care of their homes, are more prone to violence and committing sex crimes, and are both less quiet and less moral than whites.41 Similar studies show respondents believe blacks are lazier than members of other groups and that they are less intelligent, less self-supporting, more likely to live off welfare, less ambitious, and lacking a work ethic.42 Unfortunately, the reality of racial segregation in the United States reveals that few of the producers of media imagery historically—or today— could have based their perceptions on ongoing and equal relationships with people of color. According to this view, media producers affected in their own worldview by media-produced stereotypes repeat these stereotypes— stereotypes that they believe are consistent with their target viewers’ understanding and beliefs.43 Media imagery thus becomes part of a circle that ripples outward, directly affecting culture as well as informal and formal institutions. Fearful of the reach and effect of media stereotypes, cultural critics demand greater and more positive images of black women. But though more complete and well-rounded images of black women are sprinkled throughout the media, they are rare and inconsistent. Even in the few positive roles in which they have appeared, black women are scarcely ever shown as lovers or nurturers of their own family members. Even more rare is the depiction of black women confronting issues of race and gender oppression or poverty. Few characters challenge the overarching ideas projected by the dominant stereotypes of black womanhood or resist the hierarchies cast in other media fare. The real story of women struggling to survive economically by balancing work and family while facing racism and sexism

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has gone largely untold in media entertainment. Instead, black women characters have been forced into cardboard caricatures that prevent an examination of black female life. The narrow nature of media representations of black women is, in part, due to the infrequency with which the reality of being black and female and American is the focal point of popular culture. That culture lacks vehicles in which black women’s realities and their perceptions become the unquestioned and accepted norm from which reality is judged. Self-representation may provide a greater number of and more accurate representations of black women. Yet self-portrayals may nevertheless reproduce stereotypes unless the images are used constructively to provide critical analyses and realistic, balanced portrayals of black women facing their daily struggles or in their varied and overlapping roles as mothers, lovers, professionals, and day laborers. It is true, therefore, that “blackness as a sign is never enough. What does that black subject do, how does it act, how does it think politically . . . being black isn’t really good enough for me: I want to know what your cultural politics are.”44 In this regard, cultural critic bell hooks has aptly noted, “The crises of black womanhood can only be addressed by the development of resistance struggles that emphasize the importance of decolonizing our minds, developing critical consciousness.”45 Representative television and film productions must first seek to explore and portray all of the nuances of being black and female in American society.46 Black women report daily assaults and barriers as a result of gender, race, and class biases, but these experiences are largely erased from media sources.47 Media should include an accurate historical and contemporary presentation of the details of being black and female in America. It should also depict the wide-ranging and important contributions black women have made and continue to make to the fabric of American society. But any transformation of the media to reflect a greater diversity of thought and ideas must also include a critique of dominant hierarchies. Cultural decolonization can only occur by using media to examine the hierarchy of status, power, prestige, and influence in American society. This effort would require critical portrayals of black life and contribution, as well as more accurate and critical portrayals of whites and other ethnic and racial groups. The media should look at the role of individual and institutional racism and biases in the current struggles as well as the deprivation of rights in the lives of black women. It should address the issues of poverty, violence, re-

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productive concerns, lack of education, sexual abuse, and discrimination in employment, in housing, and in retail settings—all of which black women routinely face. Decolonization must also involve a scrutiny of the manner in which media structures assist in essentializing black female existence by ratifying hierarchies that undervalue the strength and nobility of black women. Media images are not merely the result of individual action but are also a product of—and are influenced by—the very structure of the media, and the media, in turn, are products of and exist by virtue of law and legal institutions.48 Media stereotypes may also directly affect law, since juries, lawyers, lawmakers, and even judges are subject to the daily barrage of stereotypes.49 Law and legal institutions have been complicit in the increased consolidation and conglomeration of media outlets. Since the broadcast spectrum is a limited public asset, broadcast television stations must apply and receive licenses from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). As initially conceived, broadcast television stations were to operate as “public trustees” and were to give space to “every school of thought, religious, political, social and economic.”50 The FCC, however, has largely abandoned the concept of broadcasters as public trustees that are to subordinate their interests to those of a wider public good.51 It has repealed the Fairness Doctrine that at one time required broadcasters to give fair and balanced coverage to public issues.52 It has expanded the number of stations one corporation may own and suspended the demand that stations do any public service work, such as providing news and community issues programming. The FCC has instituted a process of deregulation that allows a consolidation of the industry and has resulted in larger and fewer media corporations. In The Media Monopoly, Ben Bagdikian reported that by the 1980s, most U.S. mass media organs—newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books, and movies—were controlled by fifty corporations; in 1987, twentynine corporations accounted for the same majority as the largest fifty had controlled in 1980, and in 2000, just a half dozen corporations were supplying most of the nation’s media.53 Even as the number of companies operating media outlets has been sharply reduced, the variety of media owned by each company has increased. Today, large corporations frequently have major holdings in several different media sectors. Thus, for example, Time Warner owns or has an interest in: the WB Network, the largest cable system in the United

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States; CNN; Headline News; TNT; Turner Classic Movies; the Cartoon Network; Comedy Central; Court TV; HBO; Cinemax; PrimeStar; Warner Bros.; New Line Cinema film studios; one thousand movie screens outside of the United States; a library of over six thousand films; twentyfive thousand television programs, books, music, and cartoons; twentyfour magazines, including Time, People, and Sports Illustrated; DC Comics; the second-largest book-publishing business in the world; Warner music group; Six Flags; the Atlanta Hawks; and the Atlanta Braves as well as retail stores.54 Through a series of measures, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has continued to support this increase in size and concentration of media ownership. The act eases restrictions on the number of television or radio stations that may be owned by a single entity, allows television broadcasters to operate more than a single television station in a single market, extends the terms of broadcast licenses, and creates a stronger presumption in favor of renewal of licenses already granted.55 The act also provides current television broadcast licensees, free of charge, with a license to broadcast in a digital format that can be used to air as many as six additional channels of programming plus other services.56 Each of these measures reinforces the power of large corporations to control media images. The influence of commercial messages creates additional barriers to developing diverse images and challenging hierarchies. Advertising is the primary income source for the mass media. Some assert that the advertising industry almost entirely finances the U.S. media system, both directly as owners of media conglomerates and indirectly as a source of revenue.57 The advertisers’ primary interest in supporting a medium is to maximize the number of viewers that they believe are most likely to purchase their goods. As a result, media images are primarily geared toward pleasing coveted consumers.58 Reflective rather than transformative media images are designed to make the majority of viewers, producers, and sponsors feel comfortable. The heavy dependence upon advertising money to support media outlets also makes it difficult for smaller outlets to compete effectively, and it discourages a critical examination and review of corporate activities in the media. This media structure is unlikely to accurately reflect the lives of black women or produce imagery that challenges the corporate voice or current power relations.59 While it is unclear whether increased minority ownership of broadcast media has a direct impact on media output, there is some

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suggestion that increasing the number of minority-owned broadcasting stations does increase the amount of minority-oriented programming.60 Yet in an environment of horizontal and vertical integration in the media industry, African Americans have found it difficult to purchase media outlets. They are underrepresented in the ownership of media outlets and in the creation and dissemination of media imagery. Minority broadcast ownership totals remain consistently low, and no minority commercial broadcast ownership has ever exceeded 3.1 percent. In 1998, minorities owned 2.9 percent of all broadcast properties in the United States, and people of color did not own any broadcast properties in sixteen states.61 The lack of diversity in media ownership is due to a number of factors, including a lack of access to investment capital and a lack of policies and incentives designed to promote full participation in and ownership of broadcast stations. Unfortunately, recent legal regulations and government actions have negatively influenced media diversity. Government-sponsored programs designed to increase diversity in the telecommunications industry have been abandoned, and regulations that encourage corporate consolidation, including the 1996 act, make it more difficult for people of color to participate in the media as owners. In 1995, Congress eliminated a minority tax certificate program that allowed a broadcaster or cable company to defer capital gains taxes after selling a property to a minority. The certificates that first permitted sales to minorities in 1978 helped them acquire 288 radio stations, 43 TV stations, and 31 cable companies. But lawmakers argued that the tax breaks were subject to abuse, allowing some minority buyers to sell out after owning the stations for only a year. The FCC also eliminated a program that allowed a broadcaster threatened with license revocation to sell a station to a minority for up to 75 percent of its market value rather than submit to an FCC hearing. From 1978 to 1990, these “distress sales” turned 18 broadcast stations over to minority owners. As a result, “minority ownership has not kept pace with the developments within the industry as a whole, and Black ownership is losing ground”; as a consequence, “minority broadcasters are finding it increasingly difficult to compete in the rapidly consolidating broadcast industry.”62 The mass media should more accurately reflect a broader spectrum of society. But today, the reality is that legal and political actions that have supported media consolidation and integration will make it more difficult to replace the imagery of Sapphire, Mammy, and Aunt Jemima with more accurate and diverse representations of black womanhood. Media outlets

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and their regulation must be measured, in part, by the extent to which the media reflects diverse views and cultures in media ownership, control, and imagery.63 Diversity in representations that challenge unstated norms of power and hierarchy and subvert commonly held stereotypes of black women would require a transformation of the media structure, making it less dependent upon corporate and commercial interests. A restructured media system might increase the number of owners who are people of color, women, and nonwealthy, expand the spectrum and funding for public broadcasting, revive an obligation on the part of broadcasters to act in the public interest, and provide a more meaningful way for audiences to participate in the creation of media products.

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Notes introduction 1. E. Frances White, “Africa on My Mind: Gender, Counter Discourse, and AfricanAmerican Nationalism,” in Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel, eds., Expanding the Boundaries of Women’s History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 51–73. 2. Filiomina Chioma Steady, The Black Woman Cross-Culturally (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Books, 1981); idem, “African Feminism: A Worldwide Perspective,” in Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Andrea Rushing, and Sharon Harley, eds., Women in Africa and the African Diaspora (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1987). 3. See, for example, Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Knopf, 1953), and Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963). 4. Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope (New York: Broadway Books, 1999); David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds., More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996); Darlene Clark Hine, Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-construction of American History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), and Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890–1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Morrow, 1984); Dorothy Sterling, We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984); and Gerda Lerner, Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (New York: Pantheon, 1972). See also Darlene Clark Hine, ed., Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1993). Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (London: HarperCollins Academic, 1991). On this issue, see also Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought (New York: New Press, 1995); Stanlie M. James and Abena P. A. Busia, eds., Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women (New York: Routledge, 1993); Barbara Smith, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1983); Gloria P. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1982); bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981). 5. Nancy J. Hafkin and Edna Bay, eds., Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976); Claire Robertson and Iris Berger, eds., Women and Class in Africa (New York: Africana Publishing, 1986); and Jane L. Parpart and Kathleen A. Staudt, eds., Women and the State in Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990). See also Iris Berger and E. Frances White, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, African Women: A Modern History (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997); and Margaret Jean Hay and Sharon Stichter, African Women South of the Sahara (London: Longman, 1984). 271

N o t e s t o Pa g e s x v – 4 6. See, for example, Claire C. Robertson, Trouble Showed the Way: Women, Men, and Trade in the Nairobi Area, 1890–1990 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Cora A. Presley, Kikuyu Women, the Mau Mau Rebellion and Social Change in Kenya (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992); Louise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Margaret Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890–1975 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), and Three Swahili Women: Life Histories from Mombasa, Kenya (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Terri Barnes, To Live a Better Life: An Oral History of Women in the City of Harare, 1930–1970 (Harare, Zimbabwe: Baobab Books, 1992); Elizabeth Schmidt, Peasants, Traders, Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870–1939 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1992); Irene Staunton, ed., Mothers of the Revolution: The War Experiences of Thirty Zimbabwean Women (London: James Currey, 1991); Iris Berger, Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry, 1900–1980 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); Belinda Bozzoli, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Strategy and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900–1983 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1991); Shula Marks, ed., Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); and Cheryl Walker, Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Claremont, South Africa: David Philip, 1990), and Women and Resistance in South Africa (London: Onyx Press, 1982). 7. Darlene Clark Hine, Wilma King, and Linda Reed, eds., “We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible”: A Reader in Black Women’s History (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1995); Sharon Harley, Andrea Benton Rushing, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Women in Africa and the African Diaspora (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1987).

chapter one 1. CO (Colonial Office) 271/7 fol. 325, Sierra Leone Royal Gazette, August 1896. From 1808, when the British declared the area a Crown Colony, to 1896, the name Sierra Leone referred only to the territory that is now the Western Area. The immediately surrounding territories that the British called the hinterland remained under the authority of the local indigenous rulers. The 1896 Act, however, effectively extended the boundaries of Sierra Leone almost to what they are today. Thus, from 1896 until independence was attained in 1961, the country was administratively divided into and governed as the colony (i.e. Western Area) and protectorate (i.e. hinterland) of Sierra Leone. For more information on the policy of indirect rule, see C. Harrison, T. B. Ingawa, and S. M. Martin, “The Establishment of Colonial Rule in West Africa, c. 1900–1914,” in J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, eds., History of West Africa, vol. II, second edition (London: Longman, 1987), 492–504; A. E. Afigbo, The Warrant Chiefs: Indirect Rule in Southeastern Nigeria, 1891–1929 (New York: Humanities Press, 1972); F. D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1922). 2. Iris Berger and E. Frances White, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Ayesha Imam, Amina Mama, and Fatou Sow, eds., Engendering African Social Sciences (Dakar: CODESRIA, 1997); Nancy Rose Hunt, Tessie P. Liu, and Jean Quataert, eds., Gendered Colonialisms in African History

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 4 – 7 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997); Oyeronke Oyewumi, The Invention of Women (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 121–56; Susan Kent, ed., Gender in African Prehistory (Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 1998); Dorothy L. Hodgson and Sheryl McCurdy, eds., “Wicked” Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2001); Jane Guyer, Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston: Boston University, African Studies Center, 1984), 5; Nina Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900–1965 (Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies, 1982), 54. 3. Doyle L. Sumner, Education in Sierra Leone (Freetown: Government of Sierra Leone, 1963), 335. 4. Secret societies played a very important role in the social and political lives of African communities. In Sierra Leone, all adult members of a village belonged to a secret society. The most popular society for males was the Poro and that for females the Bundu, also called Sande in the Southern Province. Secret society initiation, which included successful completion of an appropriate educational curriculum, symbolized a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. For more information, see Lynda Day, “Rites and Reason: Precolonial Education and its Relevance to the Current Production and Transmission of Knowledge,” in Marianne Bloch, Josephine Beoku-Betts, and B. Robert Tabachnick, eds., Women and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Power, Opportunities, and Constraints (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), 49–72. 5. Milton A. S. Margai, “Welfare Work in a Secret Society,” African Affairs 47, no. 189 (1948): 227–30; David Scanlon, Traditions of African Education (New York: Columbia University Bureau of Publications, 1964), 13–26; Clarice Davies et al., eds., Women of Sierra Leone: Traditional Voices (Freetown: Partners in Adult Education, Women’s Commission, 1992), 112–17. 6. CO 267/458, Governor Charles King-Harman to Honorable Joseph Chamberlain, dispatch no. 184, May 31, 1901. 7. Ibid. 8. CO 267/462, enclosure no. 1 in King-Harman to Chamberlain, dispatch no. 87, March 26, 1902. 9. CO 267/462, Arthur Hudson, Attorney-General, to King-Harman, enclosure no. 2 in dispatch no. 87, March 26, 1902. 10. CO 267/479, Report on the Blue Book of the Colony of Sierra Leone for 1904, enclosure in dispatch no. 347, August 7, 1905. 11. CO 267/463, Report on the Blue Book of the Colony of Sierra Leone, enclosure in Henstock to Chamberlain, dispatch no. 204, August 2, 1902. 12. Ibid. 13. CO 267/549, Protectorate Education Report, 1912, enclosure in dispatch no. 218, May 20, 1913. 14. CO 267/557, Report on Non-government Schools in the Protectorate for 1913, enclosure in dispatch no. 246, April 29, 1914. 15. CO 267/479, Blue Book 1904. 16. CO 267/479, James Proudfoot to Colonial Secretary, enclosure no. 1 in dispatch no. 364, August 1, 1905. 17. CO 267/485, Proudfoot to Colonial Secretary, enclosure in dispatch no. 219, July 11, 1906.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 7 – 1 0 18. CO 267/494, Proudfoot to Colonial Secretary, enclosure in dispatch no. 213, June 7, 1907. The matrons were in charge of the boarding department and acted as mother figures. 19. Thomas Jesse Jones, Education in Africa (New York: Phelps Stokes Fund, 1922), 114–15. 20. CO 267/534, Governor Merewether to Honorable L. V. Harcourt, dispatch no. 448, October 2, 1911. 21. Ibid. 22. Sumner, Education in Sierra Leone, 265–66. 23. BDA (Bombali District Archive, Sierra Leone) E/68/03, Principal’s Report of Kamabai Secondary School for Girls to the Board of Governors, January 21, 1966, 10–12. 24. CO 267/557, Report on Non-government Schools in the Protectorate for 1913. 25. Sierra Leone, Report of the Education Department for the Colony of Sierra Leone for the Years 1909, 1910, 1911 (Freetown: Government Printing Office, 1915), 19–22. 26. CO 267/541, Annual Report on the Blue Book for the Colony of Sierra Leone for 1911, enclosure in dispatch no. 308, July 16, 1912. 27. CO 267/458, King-Harman to Chamberlain. 28. CO 267/529, G. B. Haddon-Smith, Acting Governor, to Honorable L. V. Harcourt, dispatch no. 62, February 4, 1911. 29. CO 267/541, Annual Report on the Blue Book for the Colony of Sierra Leone for 1911. 30. CO 267/575, Governor R. J. Wilkinson to Honorable W. H. Long, dispatch no. 179, June 30, 1917. 31. CO 267/578, Annual Report on Protectorate Education for 1917, enclosure in dispatch no. 235, July 25, 1918. 32. CO 267/575, Wilkinson to Long. 33. CO 267/575, Wilkinson to Long, dispatch no. 261, August 28, 1917. 34. CO 267/583, Wilkinson to Honorable Viscount Milner, dispatch no. 535, December 5, 1919. 35. “Report of Proceedings of the Legislative Council,” Sierra Leone Royal Gazette, March 13, 1920, 153–54. 36. Ibid., 155. 37. CO 267/626, Education in the Protectorate, enclosure in dispatch no. 531, December 1, 1928. 38. CO 267/611, Annual Report of the Education Department for 1924, enclosure in dispatch no. 502, November 19, 1925. 39. “Report of Proceedings of the Legislative Council,” 156. 40. Sierra Leone, Report of the Education Department for 1914–1922 (Freetown: Government Printing Office, 1923), 15–20, 65. 41. Ibid., 66. 42. CO 267/592, Blue Book Report for 1920, enclosure in dispatch no. 442, August 31, 1921. 43. Jones, Education in Africa, 97–120. 44. “Memorandum by the Advisory Committee on Native Education in the British Tropical African Dependencies,” Parliamentary Papers, 1924–25, Cmd. 2374, XXI, 27–34. 45. Ibid., 33–34.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 1 – 1 5 46. Sierra Leone, Report on the Development of Education in Sierra Leone, Sessional Paper no. 11, Freetown, 1948, 3–16; Scanlon, Traditions of African Education, 93–101. 47. Sumner, Education in Sierra Leone, 340–44. 48. CO 267/611, Annual Report of the Education Department for 1924. 49. Ibid. 50. CO 267/611, Governor A. R. Slater to Honorable L. S. Amery, dispatch no. 502, November 19, 1925. 51. Ibid. 52. CO 267/626, Education in the Protectorate, 9. 53. Education Ordinance 1929, Legislation of Sierra Leone (Freetown: Government Printing Office). 54. CO 267/628, Annual General Report of the Colony, enclosure in dispatch no. 224, May 4, 1929. 55. Education Department of Sierra Leone, “The Njala Training Scheme, Sierra Leone Protectorate,” Overseas Education 19, no. 4 (July 1948): 748–52. 56. Sierra Leone, Report on the Development of Education in Sierra Leone, 3. 57. Ibid. 58. CO, Annual Report on Sierra Leone for the Years 1944–1948 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1948). 59. CO 267/626, Education in the Protectorate, 9. 60. Sierra Leone, Annual Report on the Sierra Leone Protectorate (Freetown: Government Printing Office, 1948), 12. 61. Sierra Leone, Education Department Triennial Survey, 1955–57 (Freetown: Government Printing Department, 1957), 25, 28. 62. BDA E/68/03, Principal’s Report; Patricia Forki-Sonkoi, interview by author, Maforki Chiefdom, Port Loko District, Sierra Leone, March 1, 1993. 63. Humphrey J. Fisher, “The Modernization of Islamic Education in Sierra Leone, Gambia and Liberia: Religion and Language,” in Godfrey Brown and Mervyn Hiskett, eds., Conflict and Harmony in Education in Tropical Africa (London: Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1975), 188; idem, “The Ahmadiyya in Sierra Leone,” Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion 2, no. 1 (1960): 1–10. 64. Fisher, “The Modernization of Islamic Education,” 188–90. 65. Diane Barthel, “Women’s Educational Experience under Colonialism: Towards a Diachronic Model,” Signs 2, no. 1 (1985): 137–54, esp. 139. 66. Sierra Leone, White Paper on Education Policy, 1970 (Freetown: Government Printing Department, 1970), 3. 67. Central Statistics Office, Annual Statistical Digest, 1977 (Freetown: Government Printing Office, 1977), 16–18. 68. Staneala M. Beckley, “State Sponsored Educational Services in Sierra Leone,” in C. Magbaily Fyle, ed., The State and the Provision of Social Services in Sierra Leone since Independence, 1961–91 (Oxford: CODESRIA, 1993), 67–68. 69. Sierra Leone, Annual Statistical Digest, 1990 ed. (Freetown: Central Statistics Office, 1990), 24. 70. Sierra Leone, Department of Education Statistics, 1988/89 and 1990/91. 71. Mariatu Koroma, principal, Port Loko Teachers College, interview by author, Port Loko, Sierra Leone, March 26, 1993.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 5 – 2 0 72. Here, urban refers to those localities with 5,000 or more persons; often this meant only the district headquarter towns. 73. Sierra Leone, Department of Education Statistics, 1990/91.

chapter two 1. Anna T. Jeanes was born on April 7, 1822, the youngest of ten children. Never married, she was the longest survivor of her family and inherited a small fortune. She also gave money to Hampton Institute, Tuskegee Institute, and the General Education Board (GEB). The funding was administered by the GEB, which was established in 1902 and composed of businessmen whose charge was to “provide funds and to follow up and give effect to the work of the propagandists.” The Southern Education Board, established at the same time, served as “an investigating and ‘preaching’ board for carrying on a propaganda of education.” Jeanes funding was provided for Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Lance G. E. Jones, The Jeanes Teacher in the United States, 1908–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1937), 18; James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 85. 2. N. C. Newbold to Homemaker’s Club agents, May 10, 1927, Director’s Correspondence, Box 3, Homemakers Club Folder, North Carolina Division of Negro Education Records (hereafter NCDNE Records), North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina. 3. Annie W. Holland to Charlotte Hawkins Brown, December 31, 1920, Charlotte Hawkins Brown Papers, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Raleigh, North Carolina. A special thanks goes to Charles Wadelington for bringing this note to my attention. 4. Prior to 1921, her salary and all her expenses were paid by the Jeanes Fund and the (Colored) State Teachers’ Association. See “Outline for a Department or Division of Negro Education, North Carolina, April 22, 1921,” Box 118, Folder 1074, General Education Board Records (hereafter GEB Records), Rockefeller Archives Center, Tarrytown, New York. 5. Ibid. 6. Annie W. Holland to N. C. Newbold, October 15, 1914, NCDNE Records. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. “Extract from Report of N. C. Newbold since Beginning His Work June 1914,” Box 116, Folder NC.236.2, GEB Records. The GEB appropriated $1,000 in 1914 to the Bureau of Plant Industry of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to organize clubs in North Carolina. Jeanes Teachers established clubs in fourteen counties during that year and were paid an average of $54 per month for two months of summer work. In a letter to Wallace Butterick, dated June 8, 1914, Newbold noted he had suggested that, rather than using the $1,000 in ten counties, each county should be given $50 on the condition that it match the support; he reported that thirteen counties agreed to this approach and that a total of fourteen counties were financed. Newbold also used the balance of the funds to pay the Virginia state agent to visit and assist North Carolina supervisors; to pay

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 0 – 2 6 for North Carolina supervisors to attend a canning demonstration in Raleigh; and to extend the deadline for some supervisors to complete their work. 10. Holland to Newbold, September 5, 1914, General Correspondence, NCDNE Records. 11. “Report of Committee to Assist with Organization of Negro State Parent-Teacher Association,” North Carolina Congress of Parent Teachers Association Executive Committee Records, Association Headquarters, Raleigh, North Carolina. Holland started a movement to organize local and county associations in 1923. See “Organization Meeting of State Association of Colored Parents and Teachers Minutes,” April 2, 1927, Association Headquarters Records, Raleigh, North Carolina. 12. “Negro Education” (1921–1930), NCDNE Records. 13. See “Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1927–1928,” North Carolina Collections, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 14. HELPS for Parent-Teacher Workers, n.d., North Carolina Congress of Parent Teachers Association Headquarters’ Records, Raleigh, North Carolina. 15. Anderson, Education of Blacks, 32–78. 16. James H. Dillard to N. C. Newbold, August 14, 1914, NCDNE Records. Such a perception is evident in the employment records of the fund throughout the program’s existence. For “a roll call of workers” for all states, see NASC Interim History Writing Committee, The Jeanes Story: A Chapter in the History of American Education, 1908–1968 (Atlanta, Ga.: Southern Education Foundation, 1979), 109–91. I thank Susie W. Wheeler, a former Jeanes Teacher and member of the writing committee, for bringing this work to my attention. 17. Jones, The Jeanes Teacher, 47, 72–73. 18. J. Y. Joyner, “Informational and Explanatory Letter about Industrial Work in Public Schools of the State,” circa 1913, Box 1, Folder 1913, Miscellaneous Reports and Outlines, NCDNE Records. 19. J. A. Capps to Annie W. Holland, June 21, 1926, NCDNE Records. 20. H. P. Robertson to Annie W. Holland, June 16, 1926, NCDNE Records. 21. See Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Southern Black Women: Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance,” in Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki Ruiz, eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History (New York: Routledge Press, 1990). See also James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), and “‘We Are Not What We Seem’: Re-thinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South,” Journal of American History 80, no. 1 (June 1993): 75–112. 22. Mary Battle to N. C. Newbold, July 13–16, 1916, Newbold Correspondence, NCDNE Records. 23. Ibid. 24. Newbold to T. Jesse Jones, U.S. Bureau of Education, January l8, 1917, Box 3, Folder J-K, NCDNE Records. Jones served as director of research for the Phelps Stokes Fund; from 1914 to 1916, he conducted a survey on black higher education for the bureau and was possibly in residence at the Federal Bureau of Education office working on a two-volume study using the survey data collected. See Anderson, Education of Blacks, 250. 25. Newbold to T. Jesse Jones, January 18, 1917. 26. Cynthia Griggs Fleming, “Instruction for Independence or Schooling for Servility:

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 6 – 3 3 The Education of Black Tennesseans, 1865–1930” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1977), 165. 27. James L. Leloudis, Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina, 1880–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 211. 28. Ibid. 29. Battle to Newbold, July 13, 1916, Director’s Correspondence, NCDNE Records. 30. N. C. Newbold to Mary Battle, July 8, 1916, and Battle to Newbold, July 14, 1916, Director’s Correspondence, NCDNE Records. Battle promised to “not press the Training School matter as you have advised, and live down the other, if I can.” See also Box 3, Homemakers Club Folder, NCDNE Records, for another example of racial harmony achieved at the expense of African American education. J. A. McGoogan, superintendent of schools in Hoke County, wrote Newbold on April 4, 1917, that he had approached the board about the Homemakers Club work and that the board members were highly pleased with the previous year’s work and wanted it continued. “Had it not been for the scarcity of funds, and the fact that we do not have a canning club for the white girls, they would have made a larger appropriation.” Director’s Correspondence, NCDNE Records. 31. N. C. Newbold to J. E. Debham, June 19, 1916, Director’s Correspondence, Box 2, Training School Folder, NCDNE Records. 32. Scott, Domination, 8. 33. N. C. Newbold to James H. Dillard, January 21, 1921, Director’s Correspondence, Box 5, Folder D, NCDNE Records.

chapter three 1. Extract from the Liberia Herald, March 2, 1853, quoted in African Repository 29, no. 9 (September 1853): 266. 2. Ibid. 3. For a general history of Liberia, see Tom Shick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); Richard West, Back to Africa: A History of Sierra Leone and Liberia (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970); Charles S. Johnson, Bitter Canaan: The Story of the Negro Republic (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987); Elwood D. Dunn and Svend E. Holsoe, eds., Historical Dictionary of Liberia (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1985); Alexander Crummell, Crummell, Africa and America: Addresses and Discourses (1891; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969); Bell Wiley, ed., Slaves No More: Letters from Liberia, 1833–1869 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1980); Samuel Williams, Four Years in Liberia: A Sketch of the Life of Rev. Samuel Williams (n.p.: King and Baird, 1857); and Randall Miller, ed., Letters of a Slave Family (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978). 4. Letter from Josiah Sibley, Sinoe County, November 5, 1856, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 270. 5. William Burke to Ralph R. Gurley, January 2, 1858, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 199. 6. See Joanna Tenneh Diggs Hoff, “The Role of Women in National Development in Liberia, 1800–1900” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1989), chapter 4.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 3 3 – 3 7 7. Diana Skipwith James to Sally Cocke, March 6, 1843, quoted in Wiley, Slaves No More, 43. 8. It is likely the Erskine family was a free family. The roll of the ship on which the family traveled indicates most of the Erskines were able to read. See “Roll of Emigrants 1820–1843,” The Liberian History Page, available: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/ Atrium/3770/e.html. The Payne family emigration dates can also be found on this roll. 9. Nine Erskines are listed as having immigrated to Caldwell in February 1830. The ACS encouraged settlers to farm, and many moved further inland. Those who advocated continued expansion inland also argued that it would improve relations between the Americo-Liberian settlers and the indigenous African populations and promote “Christianity and civilization.” Africans also influenced the African American population, and, as Shick stated, it was in these river settlements that “a uniquely Liberian personality developed blending both settler standards and local African standards to create the ‘river man.’ This was the Liberian who adapted to the environment by combining American social values with African patterns of life. In the years after 1850 there developed in the upriver settlements an alternative settler standard, which competed with the more conservative standard of coastal settlers”; see Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 73. Hopkins Erskine can aptly be described as a “river man,” and his daughters would have been influenced by such values. 10. Rosabella Burke to Mary C. Lee, August 21, 1854, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 192. 11. Ibid. 12. The four churches were of the same denominations as the churches in Monrovia— one Baptist, one Methodist, one Presbyterian, and one Episcopal. See Wiley, Slaves No More, 192. 13. William Burke to Ralph R. Gurley, June 27, 1856, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 194. 14. Edith Holden, Blyden of Liberia: An Account of the Life and Labours of Edward Wilmot Blyden as Recorded in Letters and Print (New York: Vantage Press, 1967), 55; African Repository 41, no. 5 (May 1865): 138. 15. Extract from the Cavalla, Liberia Messenger, quoted in African Repository 42, no. 12 (December 1866): 371. 16. Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 84. 17. Dunn and Holsoe, Historical Dictionary of Liberia, 127, 186. See also African Repository 42, no. 8 (August 1866). Under items of intelligence: “A Prominent Liberian— Rev. H. W. Erskine, the Attorney-General of the Republic of Liberia arrived in the ‘Gem of the Sea,’ at Boston, July 7, 1866.” 18. Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 53–59. 19. Ibid., 53. 20. Ibid., 54, 55. 21. R. Burke to Lee. 22. William Burke to Ralph R. Gurley, June 12, 1856, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 194. 23. For a comprehensive discussion of the role of missionaries in education and of education in the colony in general, see Hoff, “The Role of Women,” chapter 4. 24. In 1826, Miss E. Jackson opened a school for girls in Monrovia. Though she faced difficulty initially, she was later subsidized by the ACS; see Hoff, “The Role of Women,” 88. See also Debra L. Newman, “The Emergence of Liberian Women in the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., Howard University, 1984). 25. Hoff, “The Role of Women,” 89–98.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 3 7 – 4 3 26. Thomas W. Livingston, Education and Race: A Biography of Edward Wilmot Blyden (San Fransisco: Glendessary Press, 1975), 8. 27. Extract from the Liberia Herald, December 1848, quoted in African Repository 25, no. 5 (May 1849): 238. 28. African Repository 28, no. 8 (August 1852): 244. 29. Ibid., 245. 30. See African Repository 36, no. 4 (April 1860). The most comprehensive account of Blyden’s life is Edith Holden’s Blyden of Liberia. See also Hollis Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan Negro Patriot, 1832–1912 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967); Selected Letters of Edward W. Blyden (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1978); and Black Spokesman: Selected Published Writings of Edward Wilmot Blyden (New York: Humanities Press, 1967). 31. Livingston, Education and Race, 39. 32. Ibid., 46. 33. African Repository 44, no. 4 (April 1868): 124. 34. See Ottey Scruggs, We the Children of Africa in This Land: Alexander Crummell (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Department of History, 1972); Gregory Rigsby, Alexander Crummell: Pioneer in Nineteenth-Century Pan-African Thought (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 60; and Wilson J. Moses, Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 35. Alexander Crummell, “The English Language in Liberia,” in The Future of Africa: Being Addresses, Sermons, Etc., Delivered in the Republic of Liberia (1862; reprint, Detroit: Negro History Press, 1969), 42, 43, 44. 36. Letter from Alexander Crummell, quoted in African Repository 47, no. 1 (January 1871): 15. 37. Ibid. 38. Hoff, “The Role of Women,” 104; Livingston, Education and Race, 129. 39. William Burke to Ralph Gurley, December 10, 1856, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 195. 40. Holden, Blyden of Liberia, 440–41. 41. Rev. Erskine to Rev. Lowrie, February 10, 1867, quoted in Holden, Blyden of Liberia, 157. 42. Rev. Erskine to Rev. Lowrie, May 23, 1868, quoted in Holden, Blyden of Liberia, 157. 43. Blyden himself observed Erskine’s deterioration, claiming that the older man was not able to work and that the church was suffering; see Holden, Blyden of Liberia, 343. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 912. For more on class tension in Liberian society at that time, see Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 44–53. 46. Shick, Behold the Promised Land, 44–53. 47. Ibid. 48. Holden, Blyden of Liberia, 914. 49. Hopkins Erskine died in 1879. Anna kept in touch with her family in Liberia, though it is unclear whether she communicated with her father toward the end of his life; Edward Blyden III, interview by author, Fort Worth, Texas, March 1999. 50. In 1891, a school was established exclusively for Muslim children, and in August 1899, the Amaraia School was officially opened by the colonial governor. The Department of Mohammedan Education was also established in the colony, with Blyden as its director. (I am thankful to Gibril Cole for supplying this information.) See Holden, Blyden of Liberia, 915. 280

N o t e s t o Pa g e s 4 3 – 4 8 51. Perhaps this was, in part, because Muslims practiced polygamy.

chapter four 1. Interestingly enough, there seems to be a gender difference in this practice, with far fewer men being involved. Society seems much more positive toward the image of a black male, while many young women continue to believe, at times erroneously, that a light skin makes them more appealing to men. 2. Some of the lyrics are: “Mi luv mi car / mi luv mi bike / mi luv mi money an’ ting / but mos’ of all mi luv mi browning.” The outcry that accompanied the release of this song forced this deejay to later write a positive song about black women. Yet Buju claims that his song related to a particular woman in his life and was not at all intended to be a reflection of his views about skin color generally. 3. Morris Cargill, “Bleaching etc.,” The Gleaner, July 29, 1999, A4. 4. Audley Foster, “The Bleaching Craze,” Weekend Observer, July 23, 1999, 7. 5. Flair Magazine, May 31, 1999, 4. 6. See, for example, F. V. Smith, “Colour Code and Beauty Contests,” and Annette Donaldson, “Self-Esteem and Skin Tone,” The Gleaner, July 1, 1999, A5, and also Amina Blackwood-Meeks, “Emancipation without Apology,” The Gleaner, July 30, 1999, A4 and A8. 7. Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797 (New York: Methuen, 1986), 1. 8. D. J. R. Walker, Columbus and the Golden World of the Island Arawaks (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1992), 270. As Veronica Gregg observed in a 1993 conference paper in which she looked at Edward Long, the image of the sensual, promiscuous, “easy-going,” and exotic black woman still persists and is manifested in overseas popular culture, particularly in posters and brochures that promote tourist destinations in the Caribbean. 9. Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, trans. Shelley L. Frisch (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1997), 107–12. 10. Veronica Gregg, Jean Rhys’s Historical Imagination: Reading and Writing the Creole (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 11. 11. Joseph Inikori and Stanley Engerman, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas and Europe (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992), 5–6. 12. Elsa Goveia, A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1980), 53; Charles Leslie, A New and Exact Account of Jamaica (London: J. Hodges, 1740), Letter 11, 305–6. 13. Leslie, A New and Exact Account. 14. Gordon Lewis, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolution of Caribbean Society in Its Ideological Aspects, 1492–1900 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 97–98. 15. Monson 31/1, June 26 and July 17, 1750, Thistlewood Papers, Lincolnshire County Record Office, United Kingdom. For a summary of the journals, see Douglas Hall, In Miserable Slavery (Warwick, United Kingdom: Macmillan, 1989). Trevor Burnard, a New Zealand scholar, is also engaged in a detailed work on Thistlewood. 16. Historians continue to differ over whether Thistlewood and Phibbah had a “love 281

N o t e s t o Pa g e s 4 8 – 5 4 relationship.” My view is that this so-called relationship was really rape under a system of unequal power; after all, Phibbah was not free. 17. Stephen Harmer to Saul Harmer, June 21, 1842, Ms. 675, National Library of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica. 18. Benjamin M’Mahon, Jamaican Plantership (London: E. Wilson, 1839), 186. 19. Lewis, Main Currents, 107–8. Among those currently doing detailed critiques of histories like Long’s are Nadi Edwards of the University of West Indies, Mona Campus, and Veronica Gregg of Hunter College, City University of New York. I am grateful to both these scholars for generously sharing their ideas with me. 20. Carol Francis, “Edward Long: The Man, the Historian,” M.A. research paper, University of the West Indies, 1992. See also Edward Long, History of Jamaica, 3 vols. (London: T. Lownudes, 1774), Additional Manuscript 12, 404, British Library, London. 21. Long, History of Jamaica, 2: 276–77. 22. Philip Wright, ed., Lady Nugent’s Journal of Her Residence in Jamaica from 1801–1805 (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1966). 23. For two recent discussions of Nugent, see Bridget Brereton, “Text, Testimony and Gender,” in Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton, and Barbara Riley, eds., Engendering History (Kingston, Jamaica: I. Randle, 1995), 63–93, and Hilary McD. Beckles, Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1999), 88–105. 24. Wright, Lady Nugent’s Journal, 156. 25. Ibid., 220. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 59. 28. Robert Renny, A History of Jamaica (London: J. Cawthorne, 1807), 209, 211–12, 315, 325. 29. Cynric Williams, A Tour through the Island of Jamaica (London: Huntean, 1826), 53. 30. Ibid., 53. 31. Ibid., 255. 32. Ibid. 33. Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Diana Paton’s paper on apprenticed women and their resistance was presented at the Berkshire Women’s History Conference, June 1999, Rochester, New York. See also Swithin Wilmot, “Females of ‘Abandoned Character?’” in Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton, and Barbara Riley, eds., Engendering History (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 1995), 279–95. 34. Manuscript 765, Manuscript Collection, National Library of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica. 35. Thomas Carlyle, Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question (London: T. Bosworth, 1849), and Anthony Trollope, The West Indies and the Spanish Main (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1860). 36. James A. Froude, The English in the West Indies, or the Bow of Ulysses (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1888). 37. Nancy Gardner Prince, A Black Woman’s Odyssey through Russia and Jamaica, 1850 (New York: M. Wiener Publisher, 1990), 54.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 5 4 – 6 0 38. Douglas Hall, “The Flight from the Estates Reconsidered,” Journal of Caribbean History 10 and 11 (1978): 7–24. 39. William Sewell, The Ordeal of Free Labour (New York: A. M. Kelley, 1968), 175, and W. P. Livingston, Black Jamaica: A Study in Evolution (London: S. Low, Marston and Company, 1899), 47. 40. Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1967), 9, 167. 41. William Green, “The Creolization of Caribbean History: The Emancipation Era and a Critique of Dialectical Analysis,” in Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, eds., Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 1993), 28–40. 42. Patrick Bryan, “History in the Tropics,” Professorial Lecture, presented at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, April 1999, 11. 43. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds., Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 66–111. 44. William Green, British Slave Emancipation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); Philip Sherlock and Hazel Bennett, The Story of the Jamaican People (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 1997). 45. Olive Senior, Working Miracles: Women’s Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), xiii. 46. Linnette Vassell, comp., Voices of Women in Jamaica, 1898–1939 (Mona, Kingston, Jamaica: Department of History, University of the West Indies, 1993).

chapter five 1. Research for this chapter was funded by a University of Tennessee Faculty Research Award and by a grant from the university’s Department of History. I thank Sibongile Madolo, Sean Redding, Janis Appier, Owen Bradley, Palmira Brummett, and Lorri Glover for their comments and insights. 2. James Taylor Davidson and Sipo Makilima, interview by author, Alice, South Africa, October 27, 1987; John and Irene MacQuarrie, interview by author, Somerset West, April 11, 1988; Robert W. Shepherd, Lovedale, South Africa: The Story of a Century, 1841–1941 (Lovedale, South Africa: Lovedale Press, n.d.), 519; Catherine Higgs, The Ghost of Equality: The Public Lives of D. D. T. Jabavu of South Africa, 1885–1959 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 55. 3. Sean Redding, “Legal Minors and Social Children: Rural African Women and Taxation in the Transkei, South Africa,” African Studies Review 36, no. 3 (December 1993): 59. 4. There was one club in Johannesburg and five in Basutoland (Lesotho). In the National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria (hereafter NASA), see African Women SelfImprovement Association, Annual Report of the African Women Self-Improvement Association [1938], NTS 7243 177/326; Bantu Women’s Home Improvement Association, Report on the Bantu Women’s Home Improvement Association for 1938, NTS 7244 181/326; L. D. Mahlasela to M. Ballinger, Societies and Association, Bantu Women’s Home Improvement Association, May 10, 1944, VWN 602 SW 94/31.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 6 0 – 6 4 5. Daily Dispatch, September 4, 1938, located in NASA, file NTS 7243 177/326. 6. M. Noah, Zenzele History, prepared and compiled by V. B. Moleshe (n.p., n.d. [1993?]), 4; Anne Kelk Mager, Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945–1959 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1999), 60. 7. Noah, Zenzele History, 1–3; see also David H. Anthony III, “Max Yergan in South Africa: From Evangelical Pan-Africanist to Revolutionary Socialist,” African Studies Review 34, no. 2 (September 1991): 27–55. 8. V. Boniwe Moleshe, interview by author, Alice, South Africa, August 12, 1998. 9. Thomas E. Nyquist, African Middle Class Elite, Occasional Paper no. 28 (Grahamstown, South Africa: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, 1983), 93; Mager, Gender, 61. 10. Phyllis Ntantala, A Life’s Mosaic: The Autobiography of Phyllis Ntantala (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 69–70. 11. This observation was made by Sean Redding. 12. The 1922 club may have been founded by a Mrs. Marambana, a prominent Peddie resident and the wife of Knight Marambana, one of the first African agricultural inspectors. See [S. W. Yergan], Home Improvement: Suggestions for Promoting the Work of the Women’s Home Improvement Association (Alice, South Africa, 1936), 5; Mary V. Noah, “Zenzele History” [1986], Harriet M. Mdyesha Papers, Cory Library for Historical Research, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa (hereafter Cory Library); Cecil Manona, conversation with author, Rhodes University, July 29, 1998; Women’s Home Improvement Association Report for 1938, NTS 7244 181/326; L. G. Njikelana to the Secretary, Bantu Welfare Trust, November 9, 1938, J. D. Rheinallt Jones Papers, Historical and Literary Papers, University of the Witwatersrand Library, Johannesburg, AD 843/RJ Pb 11.2.56. 13. Noah, Zenzele History, 3. 14. Linda Ntuli, “Zenzele Women’s Self-Improvement Association,” trans. Cecil Wele Manona (typescript, n.d.), 1–2, and “Zenzele: The African Women’s Self-Improvement Association: Constitution” (typescript, n.d.), 1, in author’s private collection. 15. Ntantala, A Life’s Mosaic, 69. 16. Shula Marks, “Patriotism, Patriarchy, and Purity: Natal and the Politics of Zulu Ethnic Consciousness,” in Leroy Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 227; Mager, Gender, 60; Sean Redding, “A South African Town in Black and White: Umtata 1870–1955,” manuscript, 1990, 292–93, 295–96. 17. Caroline Khaketla and Nozipo Lebentlele, interview by author, Maseru, Lesotho, March 30, 1988. 18. Elijah Makiwane to Florence Jabavu, May 11, 1925, Alexander Kerr Papers, Cory Library, PR 4088. 19. Higgs, The Ghost of Equality, 56. 20. Mager, Gender, 101–4; Redding, “South African Town,” 278–79, 282–83. 21. Mager, Gender, 90; Redding, “South African Town,” 291–92. 22. Joel and Bernice Mohapeloa, interview by author, Mafeteng, Lesotho, April 1, 1988. 23. Dawn Costello, Not Only for Its Beauty: Beadwork and Its Cultural Significance among the Xhosa-Speaking Peoples (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1990), 5–12. 24. Cecilia Nduna, interview by author, Grahamstown, South Africa, August 17,

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 6 4 – 6 8 1998; Gladys Makhapula and Cecilia Nduna, interview by author, Grahamstown, South Africa, August 26, 1998. 25. On the tension between Xhosa patrons and their Mfengu clients, see Higgs, The Ghost of Equality, 9–19. 26. Tandi Sondlo, Nomthetho Ngqase, Blanche Zonke, and Alice Ngqase, interview by author, Queenstown, South Africa, August 10, 1998; Lezina Mini, interview by author, Alice, South Africa, August 14, 1998; Ester N. Njokweni, Virginia N. Nabe, and N. Maria Macembe, interview by author, Healdtown, South Africa, August 18, 1998; Nomadeshi Coko, interview by author, Grahamstown, South Africa, August 21, 1998; Nomisa Mini, interview by author, Middledrift, South Africa, August 22, 1998; and Esther Mqhayi, interview by author, Middledrift, South Africa, August 22, 1998. 27. Tandi Sondlo et al. interview, August 10, 1998. 28. Nyquist, African Middle Class Elite, 136. 29. Redding, “South African Town,” 293–94. 30. Annual Report of the African Women Self-Improvement Association (1938), NTS 7244 181/326. 31. C. H. Malcomess to D. L. Smit, November 4, 1939, NTS 7244 181/326. 32. Harriet Mdyesha, Cecilia Nduna, and Gladys Makhupula, interview with author, Grahamstown, South Africa, August 9, 1998. 33. Nomadeshi Coko, interview by author, Grahamstown, South Africa, August 21, 1998; Mdyesha Papers, photograph book, Cory Library. 34. L. D. Mahlasela to M. Ballinger, May 19, 1944, NTS 7244 181/326; Linda Mahlasela Papers, Cory Library. 35. Nyquist, African Middle Class Elite, 90–91; Nduna interview, August 17, 1998; Mqhayi interview, August 22, 1998. 36. Higgs, The Ghost of Equality, 8–10, 152. 37. Marks, “Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity,” 221; see also [J. B. Peires], “Ethnicity and Pseudo-Ethnicity in the Ciskei,” in Leroy Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 395–413. 38. Costello, Not Only for Its Beauty, 2–3; Higgs, The Ghost of Equality, 152. 39. Davidson and Makalima interview, October 27, 1987; MacQuarrie interview, April 11, 1998; Florence Jabavu, “Bantu Home Life,” in J. Dexter Taylor, ed., Christianity and the Natives of South Africa: A Year Book of South African Missions (Lovedale, South Africa: Lovedale Press, [1928?]), 173. 40. Daily Dispatch, September 4, 1938, NTS 7243 177/326. 41. Unity Home Improvement Association, Grahamstown Branch [1947], VWN 603 SW 94/37; Yergan, Home Improvement, 8. 42. Higgs, The Ghost of Equality, 70. 43. “Zenzele: The African Women’s Self-Improvement Association: Constitution,” 1–2; Njokweni, Nabe, and Macembe interview, August 18, 1998. 44. Secretary for Native Affairs to J. D. Rheinallt-Jones, September 2, 1939; Chief Native Commissioner, King William’s Town to Secretary for Native Affairs, September 11, 1939; and Daily Dispatch, September 4, 1938, NTS 7243 177/326. 45. Jacklyn Cock, “Domestic Service and Education for Domesticity: The Incorporation of Xhosa Women in Colonial Society,” in Cheryl Walker, ed., Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town, South Africa: David Philip, 1990), 91–92, 95–96.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 6 8 – 7 4 46. Tim Couzens, The New African: A Study of the Life and Work of H. I. E. Dhlomo (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985), 82–124. 47. “Zenzele: The African Women’s Self-Improvement Association: Constitution,” 1–2. 48. Jabavu, “Bantu Home Life,” 165–67. 49. Women’s Home Improvement Association, Report for 1938, and L. D. Mahlasela to M. Ballinger, May 19, 1944, VWN 602 SW 94/31. 50. Jabavu, “Bantu Home Life,” 167–68. 51. Marks, “Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity,” 224. 52. Jabavu, “Bantu Home Life,” 169. 53. Redding, “South African Town,” 274. 54. Higgs, The Ghost of Equality, 41–42. 55. Redding, “Legal Minors,” 60. 56. Mager, Gender, 72. 57. Jabavu, “Bantu Home Life,” 173. 58. Redding, “Legal Minors,” 63. 59. Mager, Gender, 175–88; Redding, “South African Town,” 275–83. 60. Marks, “Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity,” 222. 61. Redding, “South African Town,” 274; Higgs, The Ghost of Equality 38–39; Ethel Mzamane, interview with author, Middledrift, Ciskei, South Africa, August 3, 1988. 62. Redding, “South African Town,” 292–93. 63. Higgs, The Ghost of Equality, 155; Death Notice, Lucy Njikelana, 228/49, Master of the Supreme Court, Grahamstown, South Africa. 64. Social Welfare Officer to Secretary for Social Welfare, February 18, 1948, VWN 603 SW 94/37. 65. Noah, Zenzele History, 4; Mager, Gender, 14; “Zenzele Minute Book,” 163, V. Boniwe Moleshe Papers, Cory Library; Nduna interview, August 17, 1998; whoseTandi Sondlo et al. interview, August 10, 1998.

chapter six 1. The historiography on black women’s clubs includes: Wanda Hendricks, Gender, Race, and Politics in the Midwest: Black Club Women in Illinois (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Anne Meis Knupfer, Toward a Tenderer Humanity and a Nobler Womanhood: African American Women’s Clubs in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago (New York and London: New York University Press, 1996); Dorothy Salem, To Better Our World: Black Women in Organized Reform, 1890–1920 (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1990); and Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, Afro-American Women of the South and the Achievement of the Race, 1895–1925 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989). See also Deborah Gray White’s work, which traces the intellectual/ideological history of black women’s organizations in Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). 2. “The Report of the Indianapolis Branch of the NAACP, 1913–14,” National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Manuscript Collection, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NAACP papers), Box G–63, Branch Files, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1911–1922.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 7 4 – 7 7 3. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 8–9. 4. For the most helpful work on African American women and suffrage, see Rosalyn Terborg-Penn’s work: “Nineteenth-Century Black Women and Woman Suffrage,” Potomac Review 7 (spring/summer 1977): 13–24; “Discrimination against Afro-American Women in the Woman’s Movement, 1830–1920,” in Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Sharon Harley, eds., The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1978); and “Discontented Black Feminists: Prelude and Postscript to the Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment,” in Darlene Clark Hine, Wilma Kind, and Linda Reed, eds., “We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible”: A Reader in Black Women’s History (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1995), 487–504. See also Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1985), 119–31 and 159–70. 5. I created a club database in which I combined roughly ten thousand entries about black women and their organizations that were gleaned from Indianapolis city directories, local histories, newspapers, and the 1880, 1900, and 1910 federal censuses. For a separate database, I extracted almost twenty-five hundred entries between 1920 and 1930 from those same sources and compiled a sample survey of clubwomen between 1926 and 1928. 6. Indianapolis Recorder, June 15, 1901, and April 16, 1907; and Indianapolis Freeman, October 13, 1894, and February 23, 1895. 7. For discussion of the part played by African American women in the NAACP’s founding, see Dorothy Salem, “Black Women and the NAACP, 1909–1922: An Encounter with Race, Class, and Gender,” in Kim Marie Vaz, ed., Black Women in America (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1995), 54–70; Mary White Ovington, Black and White Sat Down Together: The Reminiscences of an NAACP Founder, edited by Ralph E. Luker (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1995); and Christopher Robert Reed, The Chicago NAACP and the Rise of Black Professional Leadership, 1910–1966 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997). 8. Indianapolis Branch Constitution, filed May 24, 1913, Box G-63, NAACP papers. 9. Indianapolis Freeman, November 9, 1889, April 21, 1891, April 9, 1892, January 13, March, 24, September 8, October 13, and December 22, 1894, March 23, 1895; Indianapolis World, April 30, 1892; Indianapolis Recorder, February 16, 1901, August 15, 1903, April 9 and 16, 1904, September 29, 1906, May 30, 1910, January 10 and 27, March 23 and 30, 1912, April 26 and May 10, 1913; and Indianapolis Ledger, January 31, 1914. 10. “Constitution for the Indianapolis Branch of the National Association of Colored People,” May 24, 1913, NAACP papers, and Indianapolis Recorder, January 3, 17, and 24, 1914. 11. Indianapolis Recorder, January 11 and 18, February 8, and March 1, 1913. 12. Crisis, May 1913, 39; Indianapolis Recorder, January 18, 1913; “The Report of the Indianapolis Branch of the NAACP for 1913–14,” NAACP papers. It is not clear how many white women, if any, joined the local branch. The national NAACP office encouraged Cable to recruit white members but acknowledged that local whites were not “particularly friendly” to NAACP work; see May Childs Nerny to Mary Cable, Indianapolis, December 29, 1913, NAACP papers. 13. A good account of discrimination and segregation in Indiana at the turn of the century can be found in Emma Lou Thornbrough, Since Emancipation: A Short History of Indiana Negroes, 1863–1963 (n.p.: Indiana Division American Negro Emancipation

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 7 7 – 8 2 Centennial Authority, [1962?]), 4–8, and idem, “Segregation in Indiana during the Klan Era of the 1920s,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47 (March 1961): 594–618. For the impact of increasing racism on black clubwomen nationwide, see Tullia Kay Brown Hamilton, “The National Association of Colored Women, 1896–1920” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1978), 39–40, and Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1985), 17–31; Indianapolis Freeman, December 21, 1895, and January 1 and 25, 1896. 14. Indianapolis Recorder, February 8, 1902. Black grade schools, however, were housed in residences that were originally converted for use as white schools until they were “unfit for use and then new ones were built for the white children and the old ones were given to the colored children.” 15. Indianapolis Ledger, April 24, 1915. 16. Indianapolis Recorder, January 4, 1913. 17. Indianapolis Recorder, January 25, 1913. 18. Indianapolis Recorder, February 1, 1913. 19. Bert J. Loewenberg and Ruth Bogin, eds., Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), 330–31. 20. Indianapolis Recorder, February 22, 1913. 21. Indianapolis Recorder, February 8, 1913. 22. Indianapolis Recorder, February 15, 1913. 23. Jacob Piatt Dunn, Greater Indianapolis: The History, the Industries, the Institutions, the People of a City of Homes, 2 vols. (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1910), 1:252–53; Thornbrough, Since Emancipation, 258; Earline Rae Ferguson, “A Community Affair: Black Women’s Club Work in Indiana, 1879–1920,” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1997), 22–24. 24. Indianapolis Recorder, January 27, 1912, January 3 and 11, 1914; Indianapolis Ledger, January 3, 1914. 25. Indianapolis Recorder, January 9 and 11, 1914. 26. “The Report of the Indianapolis Branch of the NAACP for 1913,” NAACP papers. 27. Indianapolis Recorder, February 1, 1913. 28. “The Report of the Indianapolis Branch of the NAACP for 1913,” NAACP papers; Indianapolis Recorder, February 1 and 8, 1913. 29. Indianapolis Recorder, January 11 and February 1 and 8, 1913. The NAACP’s annual meeting in New York on January 21, 1913, also exhibited paintings by African American artists, among them Harry Roseland’s painting of a little slave girl being sold away from her mother, entitled To the Highest Bidder. Northern galleries had refused Roseland’s work, contending that the subject was “one the Nation wishes forgotten.” Roseland had been offered “substantial sums” for this picture by European collectors but preferred that his work remain in the country of his birth. See Indianapolis Recorder, January 18, 1913. 30. Indianapolis Recorder, January 12, April 27, and November 16, 1901, March 22, April 17, and October 4, 1902, August 8, 1903, April 26, July 21, and October 20, 1906, July 27, 1907, and March 14 and April 30, 1908. 31. Indianapolis Recorder, January 18, 1913. 32. Mary Cable to Miss Nerny, Indianapolis, January 23, 1914, NAACP papers. 33. Nerny to Cable, December 29, 1913, NAACP papers. 34. Ibid. 288

N o t e s t o Pa g e s 8 3 – 9 0 35. Robert Lee Brokenburr to Mary White Ovington, January 14, 1918, NAACP papers. 36. Indianapolis Ledger, April 24, 1915. 37. Robert W. Bagnall to Louis H. Berry, April 25, 1922, NAACP papers. 38. Elsa Barkley Brown, “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom,” Public Culture 7 (1994): 107–46, and White, Too Heavy a Load.

chapter seven 1. Belinda Bozzoli, “Marxism, Feminism and Southern African Studies,” Journal of Southern African Studies 9 (1983): 139–71; idem, Women of Phokeng (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1992), 235–42; Shula Marks, “Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity: Natal and the Politics of Zulu Ethnic Consciousness,” in Leroy Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 215–40; Mamphela Ramphele, A Bed Called Home: Life in the Migrant Labour Hostels of Cape Town (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993), 70–83. 2. Ludwig Alberti, Alberti’s Account of the Xhosa in 1807 (Cape Town, South Africa: A. A. Balkema, 1968), 49–50; see also Jeff Peires, The House of Phalo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 206 n. 83. 3. Monica Wilson, Reaction to Conquest, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 316. See also Ralph Austen, “The Moral Economy of Witchcraft: An Essay in Comparative History,” in Jean and John Comaroff, eds., Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 89–110. 4. Cape Province Archives Depot, Cape Town, Records of the Chief Magistrate of the Transkei (hereafter CMT) 3/679, Returns labeled “Social Conditions,” for Blue Book for 1910. 5. Cape Province Archives Depot, Cape Town, Records of the Resident Magistrate, Bizana District, Transkei (hereafter 1/BIZ) 1/1/8, Criminal case #130/1904, King vs. Mampalani and Mabontshi, July 21, 1904. 6. Karen Fields, “Political Contingencies of Witchcraft in Colonial Central Africa: Culture and State in Marxist Theory,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 16 (1982): 567–93; Alan R. Booth, “‘European Courts Protect Women and Witches’: Colonial Law Courts as Redistributors of Power in Swaziland, 1920–50,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18, no. 2 (1992): 253–75; Sean Redding, “Government Witchcraft: Taxation, the Supernatural, and the Mpondo Revolt in the Transkei, South Africa, 1955–63,” African Affairs 95 (1996): 555–79. 7. See various court cases arising from the prosecution of arsonists: 1/BIZ 1/1/9, Criminal case 101/1909, R. vs. Mantunya, April 30, 1909; 1/BIZ 1/1/9, Case 10/1922, R. vs. Manyawa ka Siketile, Preparatory Examination, 1922; 1/BIZ 1/1/9, Case 38/1945, R. vs. Mbolsodweni Mgangeni and Mate Mpele, February 5, 1945; 1/BIZ 1/1/10, Case 434/ 1949, R. vs. Malitshwa, April 1950; Cape Province Archives Depot, Cape Town, Records of the Resident Magistrate of the Engcobo District (hereafter 1/ECO) Criminal cases 1922–1935, Case 381/1932, King vs. Diniso Vivi, December 8, 1932; Cape Province Archives Depot, Cape Town, Records of the Resident Magistrate of the Tsolo District (hereafter 1/TSO) 1/1/21, Case 265/1926, R. vs. Mtsongwana Isaac, May 1926; Cape 289

N o t e s t o Pa g e s 9 1 – 9 7 Province Archives Depot, Cape Town, Records of the Resident Magistrate, Lusikisiki District (hereafter 1/LSK) 1/1/11, Case 108/1910, R. vs. Mjaji Tshakana, August 12, 1910; 1/LSK 1/1/14, Case 778/1946, R. vs. Hlupeko Sirele, August 19, 1946; Cape Province Archives Depot, Cape Town, Records of the Resident Magistrate of Qumbu District (hereafter 1/QBU) 1/1/1/36, Case 449/1945, R. vs. Mavotshobana Hlakanyana, July 19, 1945; Cape Province Archives Depot, Cape Town, Records of the Resident Magistrate of Tabankulu District (hereafter 1/TBU) 1/1/16, Case 186/1960, R. vs. Tshokubani Siganga, August 8, 1960; Cape Province Archives Depot, Cape Town, Records of the Resident Magistrate, Umtata District (hereafter 1/UTA) 1/1/78, Case 1039/51, R. vs. Mmoshi Joubert, Masimini Skondo, Dlala Wanyaza, Resina Richard, Lolo Msingisana, and Sithole Mazibuku, August 8, 1951; 1/TSO 1/1/22, Case 100/56, R. vs. Nose Mheno and Makubani Duwasha, April 7, 1956; and Cape Province Archives Depot, Cape Town, Records of the Resident Magistrate of Libode District (hereafter 1/LBE) 1/1/12, Case 118/1953, R. vs. Mandunaksi Mtatsiya, February 13, 1953. 8. Wilson, Reaction to Conquest, 33. 9. Ibid., 43, 35, 312–13. 10. For examples of this type of court case in the magistrates’ records, see 1/ECO Criminal cases 1922–1935, King vs. Diniso Vivi, Case 381 of 1932, December 8, 1932; 1/BUT 1/1/26, Case #375 of 1932, R. vs. Nowam Zwelinjani alias Ntengo; 1/ECO Criminal cases 1936–1946, Case #141 of 1937, R. vs. Tshatimani Folo, February 8, 1937; 1/UTA 2/1/1/145, Case 401/37, Dyubele Komanisi vs. Kwalukwalu Masi, July 28, 1937; 1/UTA 1/1/1/77, Case 911/1951, R. vs. Nohalala Mfana, September 7, 1951; 1/TBU 1/1/16, Case 555/1951, R. vs. Zikwele Qekelana and Sukulapu Zikwele, November 12, 1951; 1/UTA 1/1/1/78, Case 1143/1951, R. vs. Ngubeliso Nani, October 5, 1951; 1/TBU 1/1/15, Case 123/1945; 1/TSO 1/1/22, Case 100/1956, R. vs. Nose Mheno and Makuboni Duwasha, April 7, 1956; 1/LBE 1/1/12, Case 37/1960, R. vs. Qapulani Buza and Mtedula Balobalo, February 10, 1960; and 1/LBE 1/1/12, Case 118/1953, R. vs. Mandunaksi Mtatsiya, February 13, 1953. 11. For another example of this type of case, see 1/LSK 1/1/15, Case 649/1950, R. vs. Mpindiswa Myaleni and Mtshona Mfinci, November 29, 1950. 12. 1/ECO Criminal cases 1936–1946, Case #141 of 1937, R. vs. Tshatimani Folo, February 8, 1937. 13. Ibid. 14. W. J. G. Mears, “A Study in Native Administration: The Transkeian Territories, 1894–1943” (Litt.D., University of South Africa, 1947), 128–41. 15. Ibid.; Anne Mager, “‘The People Get Fenced’: Gender, Rehabilitation, and African Nationalism in the Ciskei and Border Region, 1945–55,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18 (1992): 761–82; Charles Simkins, “Agricultural Production in the African Reserves of South Africa, 1918–1969,” Journal of Southern African Studies 7 (1981): 195. 16. T. Dunbar Moodie, Going for Gold: Men, Mines, and Migration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 38–40. 17. 1/LSK 1/1/15, Case 669/51, R. vs. Mketwa Mnganda and Kaizer Mtunywa, September 5, 1951. 18. 1/LBE 1/1/12, Case 118/1953, R. vs. Mandunaksi Mtatsiya, February 13, 1953. 19. Ibid. 20. 1/TSO 5/1/133, File N1/9/2, anonymous letter to R. M. Tsolo, 1958. This typescript was a translation (probably by the magistrate’s African clerk) of a letter in Xhosa received by the magistrate. 290

N o t e s t o Pa g e s 9 7 – 1 0 7 21. Jeff Peires, “Unsocial Bandits: The Stock Thieves of Qumbu and Their Enemies,” University of the Witwatersrand, History Workshop, 1994, 15. 22. 1/TSO 5/1/133, File N1/9/2, anonymous letter to R. M. Tsolo, 1958. 23. A similar case occurred in Butterworth in 1960, where two men and their families were ostracized and threatened because they refused to pay ten shillings each to an antigovernment organization. See 1/BUT 7/1/88, File C.25, Letter, March 9, 1961, R. M. Butterworth to C. M. T., enclosing statement made by two African men in the resident magistrate’s office. 24. Sean Redding, “Government Witchcraft”; Peires, “Unsocial Bandits,” passim; Clifton Crais, “Of Men, Magic, and the Law: Popular Justice and the Political Imagination in South Africa,” Journal of Social History 32 (1998): 49–72. 25. I/TSO 5/1/52, File C.2, Letter 25, February 1961, BAC Tsolo to CMT. 26. In 1963, the Butterworth resident magistrate alleged that members of Poqo (the Pan-Africanist Congress’s militant wing) were actively fomenting unrest in his district. He also claimed that they were consulting “witchdoctors” (presumably diviners or amagqirha) because “they believed the witchdoctors could treat them so that they would be immune from arrest and prosecution”; see 1/BUT 7/1/88, File C.25, Letter, March 8, 1963, RM to CMT.

chapter eight 1. Edward Kamau Braithwaite, Barabajan Poems (Kingston, Jamaica: Savacou Press, 1994), 67, 167. 2. Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), 37–38. 3. Ibid., 38. 4. Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, African Wo/Man Palava: The Nigerian Novel by Women (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 29. 5. Ibid., 29–30. 6. Ibid., 30; see Flora Nwapa, Efuru (London: Heinemann Books, 1966). 7. Ogunyemi, African Wo/Man Palava, 31. 8. Ibid. 9. Novels by African men that fall outside this broad generalization, such as Yambo Ouolou-guem’s Le Devoir de Violence and Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons, often present African collaborators in the slave trade as decadent monsters who impose their travesties on hapless Africans. By contrast, the African women writers cited here present the slave trade as a social institution that involved a range of ordinary people, many of whom were considered upstanding members of their communities. I have yet to encounter a satisfactory literary explanation for this gendered difference in tone. 10. See Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identity in the Colonial and Antebellum South, 1526–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), for a useful summary of the kinds of African political and economic accommodations and resistances that developed around the procurement of slaves. Chapter 6, in particular, discusses aspects of Igbo, Congo, and Angolan institutions related to the trade. Gomez concedes that African collusion in the trade was the rule rather than the exception, especially in well-organized kingdoms such as that of the Ashanti. However,

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 0 8 – 1 2 9 he points out that West African societies ultimately were the net losers in this arrangement, since the insatiable demand for slaves created widespread political instability in African states involved in procuring slaves and contributed to their eventual demise. 11. Kincaid, Autobiography, 69–70. 12. Ibid., 133–34. 13. Ibid., 89.

chapter nine 1. Guglielmo Verdirame, “Rights of Refugees in Kenya,” Migration World Magazine 27, no. 1 (January-February 1999): 27. 2. Cassandra R. Veney, “The Formation of Ethnic Identity and Its Implications for Refugees in Kenya,” Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives 17, no. 2/3 (June and September 1998): 5. 3. Jonathan Stevenson, Losing Mogadishu (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 2. 4. F. Jeffress Ramsay, Global Studies-Africa (Guilford, Conn.: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 1997), 131. 5. Ibid., 129. 6. Francis Deng, Protecting the Dispossessed (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute, 1993), 66. 7. U.S. Committee for Refugees, World Refugee Survey (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Nationalities, 1994), 70. 8. Africa Watch, Denying the “Horror of Living”: Sudan, a Human Rights Disaster (Washington, D.C.: Human Rights Watch, 1990). 9. Deng, Protecting the Dispossessed, 66. 10. Amnesty International, Kenya—Torture, Compounded by Denial of Medical Care (New York: Amnesty International, 1995), 2. 11. “Multipartyism Betrayed in Kenya,” Human Rights Watch Africa 6, no. 5 (July 1994): 1. 12. Amnesty International, Women in Kenya (New York: Amnesty International, 1995), 16. 13. Teleconference on Women’s Health Issues, United States Information Agency, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, February 10, 1998. 14. Patricia Campbell, “Gender Persecution and Women Refugees: Recognizing the ‘Unrecognized’ Refugees” (Ph.D. diss., University of Denver, 1994), 9. 15. Verdirame, “Rights of Refugees in Kenya,” 28.

chapter ten 1. Reginald Mitchner, interview by Glenn Hinson, Durham, N.C., November 15, 1976, interview H-212–1, transcript, Southern Oral History Program, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (hereafter SOHP). The material in this article previously appeared in Leslie Brown, “Common Spaces, Separate Lives: Gender and Racial Conflict in the ‘Capital of the Black Middle Class’” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1997). 292

N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 0 – 1 3 3 2. Mitchner interview. 3. Denoral Davis, “Towards a Socio-historical and Demographic Portrait of TwentiethCentury African-Americans,” in Alferdteen Harrison, ed., Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 1; Earl Lewis, “Expectations, Economic Opportunities, and Life in the Industrial Age: Black Migration to Norfolk, Virginia, 1910–1945,” in Joe William Trotter, ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 23–25. 4. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Changing Characteristics of the Negro Population: A 1960 Census Monograph, prepared by Daniel O. Price, in cooperation with the Social Science Research Council (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1969), 17–40; U.S. Census of the Population: 1960, Subject Reports, State of Birth, 52–59; Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, Internal Migration, 1935–1940, Age of Migrants, 256–57, and Color and Sex of Migrants, 18–19. Census reports did not detail migration by sex until 1940, when the bureau published reports based on county of residence in 1935 compared to residence in 1940 and identified more women than men as migrants. Scholar Earl Lewis noted that African American women migrated into Norfolk, Virginia, a naval base and shipbuilding site, at higher rates than men during the 1910s and 1940s; see Earl Lewis, “Expectations, Economic Opportunities,” and idem, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 5. See Carter G. Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration (New York: Russell and Russell, 1969); Elizabeth Ross Haynes, “Negroes in Domestic Service in the United States,” Journal of Negro History 8 (October 1923): 384–443; James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Joe William Trotter, Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915–1945 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985); Carole Marks, “Farewell—We’re Good and Gone”: The Great Black Migration (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). 6. Lillian Brant, “The Make-Up of Negro City Groups,” Charities 18 (1905): 7–11; Kelly Miller, “Surplus Negro Women,” reprinted in Kelly Miller, Race Adjustment: Essays on the Negro in America (New York: Neal Publishing, 1908), 185; W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Damnation of Women,” in Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, reprinted in David Levering Lewis, ed., W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 309. 7. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Families, and Work, from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1985); Dolores E. Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender, and Class in a New South Community (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Tera W. Hunter, “To ’Joy My Freedom”: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), and “Domination and Resistance: The Politics of Wage Household Labor in New South Atlanta,” Labor History 34 (spring/summer 1993): 205–55; Leslie Schwalm, A Hard Fight For We (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998); Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, DC, 1910–1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1994); and Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance,” Signs 14 (summer 1989): 911–32. 8. Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, 110–12; Hunter, “To ’Joy My Freedom,” and 293

N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 3 – 1 3 6 “Domination and Resistance”; Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, 55–57; Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Negro Women in Industry (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922), 8; Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out; Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We; Suzanne Lebsock, Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784– 1860 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984). 9. For an extensive look at the race and gendered aspects of these connections, see Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, and Brown, “Common Spaces, Separate Lives.” 10. The population of black men and women in Durham was 3,016 and 3,736, respectively, in 1910. At a 2 percent per year rate of natural increase, the population of men should have reached 3,637; it reached 3,676. The same rate of increase among women should have yielded a population of 4,585; it reached only 4,017, falling 568 short of its potential. Unless otherwise noted, all population data, including those for tables, are compiled from the following works, all of which were prepared by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census: Eleventh Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1890, Population, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895); Census Report, vol. 1, Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1900, Population, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1901); Thirteenth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1910, Population, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913); Fourteenth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1920, vol. 3, Population, Composition, and Characteristics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922); Fifteenth Census of the United States, Population, vol. 3, Part 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932); Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, vol. 2, Characteristics of the Population, Part 5 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943); Report of the Seventeenth Decennial Census of the United States, Census of the Population, 1950, Part 33, North Carolina (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952); Negro Population, 1790–1915 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918); and Negroes in the United States, 1920–1932 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1933). 11. Marcia Guttentag and Paul F. Secord, Too Many Women?: The Sex Ratio Question (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1983), 200–215. For a standard treatment of the sex ratio, see Rodney Stark, Sociology, 4th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1992), 333–50. 12. Janie Cameron Riley and Lottie Phillips, interview by George McDaniel, June 6, 1975, transcript, interview in McDaniel’s possession; Mildred Oakley Page, interview by Doris Dixon, Durham, N.C., June 1, 1995, transcript, Behind the Veil Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American Documentation (hereafter BTV/JHF); anonymous, interview by author, Durham, N.C., June 15, 1994, tape recording, BTV/JHF; Harriet A. Byrne, Child Labor in Representative Tobacco-Growing Areas, U.S. Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau, Publication no. 155 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1926). 13. Riley and Phillips interview; anonymous interview (BTV); Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, 28–32. 14. Claudia Goldin, “Female Labor Force Participation: The Origins of Black and White Difference, 1870 and 1880,” Journal of Economic History 37 (March 1977): 87–108; Janice L. Reiff, Michael R. Dahlin, and Daniel Scott Smith, “Rural Push and Urban Pull: Work and Family Experiences of Older Black Women in Southern Cities, 1880–1900,” Journal of Social History 15 (summer 1983): 39–48; Negroes in the United

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 6 – 1 4 5 States, 1920–1932, 183; Theresa Jan Cameron Lyons, interview by author, August 16, 1995, BTV/JHF. 15. W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., “The Negro American Family,” Atlanta University Publication no. 13 (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1908; reprint, New York: Arno Press and New York Times, 1969), 129; William H. Harris, The Harder We Run: Black Workers Since the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 36, 64–65; Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out, 42–43 and 56–57; Scott interview; Riley and Phillips interview; and other interviews with tobacco workers in the Piedmont Industrialization Project, SOHP. 16. Mabel Harris, interview by author, Durham, North Carolina, October 26, 1995, tape recording in author’s possession; Mitchner interview; Beverly Jones and Claudia Eglehoff, eds., Working in Tobacco: An Oral History of Durham’s Tobacco Factory Workers (Durham: History Department, North Carolina Central University, 1985), 35 and 27. 17. Blanche Scott, interview by Beverly Jones, Durham, N.C., July 11, 1979, interview H-229, transcript, SOHP. 18. Scott interview. 19. Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied; Beverly Washington Jones, “Race, Sex and Class: Black Female Tobacco Workers in Durham, North Carolina, 1920–1940, and the Development of Female Consciousness,” Feminist Studies 10 (fall 1984): 441–51; Emma L. Shields, “A Half-Century in the Tobacco Industry,” Southern Workman 51 (September 1922): 419–25; Negro Women in Industry; Carolyn Manning and Harriet A. Byrne, The Effects on Women of Changing Conditions in the Cigar and Cigarette Industries, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, no. 100 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932); Dora Scott Miller, interview by Beverly Jones, June 6, 1979, interview H-211, SOHP. 20. Scott interview. 21. Annie Mack Barbee, interview by Beverly Jones, Durham, N.C., May 28, 1979, interview H-190, SOHP; Charlie Neconda Mack, interview by Beverly Jones, Durham, N.C., May 22, 1979, interview H-209, SOHP; Lyons interview.

chapter eleven 1. Margaret Jean Hay and Sharon Stichter, African Women South of the Sahara (London: Longman, 1984), 103. 2. Reyes Lazaro, “Feminism and Motherhood: O’Brien vs Beauvoir,” Hypatia 1, no. 2 (fall 1986): 100. 3. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 6. 4. Carole Boyce Davies, “Motherhood in the Works of Male and Female Igbo Writers: Achebe, Emecheta, Nwapa and Nzekwu,” in Carol Boyce Davies and Anne Adams Graves, eds., Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1990), 244. 5. Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1988), 224. 6. Ibitola Pearce, “African Women and AIDS,” Women’s Studies Program Brown Bag Lunch Talks, winter 1993, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, February 19, 1993. 7. Mordikai A. Hamutyinei and Albert B. Plangger, Tsumo-Shumo, Shona Proverbial Lore and Wisdom (Gwelo, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1974), 387. 295

N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 4 6 – 1 5 1 8. Ibid., 377. 9. Elizabeth Schmidt, Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870–1939 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1992), 16. 10. J. F. Holleman, Shona Customary Law with Reference to Kinship, Marriage, the Family and the Estate (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1969), 70. 11. M. L. Daneel, Old and New in Southern Shona Independent Churches (The Hague: Mouton, 1974), 48, 99. 12. M. F. C. Bourdillon, The Shona Peoples: An Ethnography of the Contemporary Shona, with Special Reference to Their Religion (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia: Mambo Press, 1976), 47. 13. M. Douglas, ed., Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations (London: Tavistock, 1970), XXIX. 14. Hubert Bucher, Spirits and Power: An Analysis of Shona Cosmology (Cape Town, South Africa: Oxford University Press, 1980), 115. 15. Betty Potash, Widows in African Societies: Choices and Constraints (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986), 4. 16. Hay and Stichter, African Women, 108. 17. Schmidt, Peasants, Traders, 16. 18. Martin Chanock, “Making Customary Law: Men, Women, and Courts in Colonial Northern Rhodesia,” in Margaret Jean Hay and Marcia Wright, eds., African Women and the Law: Historical Perspectives (Boston: Boston University Press, 1982), 63. 19. Joshua M. M. Mpofu, “Some Observable Sources of Women’s Subordination in Zimbabwe,” Centre for Applied Social Sciences, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, 1983, 19. 20. Joyce L. Kazembe, “The Women Issue,” in Ibbo Mandaza, ed., Zimbabwe: The Political Economy of Transition, 1980–1986 (Harare, Zimbabwe: Jongwe Press, 1987), 382. 21. Shirley D. Coffin, East Central Africa Mission Conference, Minutes of the East Central Africa Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1909 (n.p.: Methodist Episcopal Church, 1909). 22. Jeannette R. Folta and Edith S. Deck, “The Impact of Children’s Death on Shona Mothers and Families,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 19, no. 3 (autumn 1988): 449. 23. Ezekiel Mphahlele, The African Image (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), 77. 24. Folta and Deck, “The Impact,” 439. 25. Janet Choto, “Ishe Muredzwa’s Story,” Mtasa file, Shepherd Machuma Files, Old Mutare Mission Archives, Mutare, Zimbabwe. 26. Folta and Deck, “The Impact,” 439. 27. Women’s Conference report, East Central Africa Mission Conference, Minutes of the East Central Africa Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1915 (n.p.: Methodist Episcopal Church, 1915). 28. Mrs. Richards’ report, East Central Africa Mission Conference, Minutes of the East Central Africa Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, November, 1907. 29. Mrs. L. Carson, East Central Africa Mission Conference, Minutes of the East Central Africa Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1911. 30. Waddilove Girl’s Department, December 31, 1936, Methodist Missionary Society Box 1033, School of Oriental and African Studies (hereafter SOAS), London. 31. Elizabeth A. Noble to Miss Bradford, November 26, 1929, Methodist Missionary Society Box 1052, SOAS.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 5 1 – 1 5 6 32. Margaret Dry to Miss Bradford, March 26, 1929, Methodist Missionary Society Box 1258, SOAS. 33. Rev. Holman Brown, Minutes of Leaders Meeting at Epworth, October 28, 1931, Methodist House Archives, Harare, Zimbabwe. 34. East Central Africa Mission Conference, Minutes of the East Central Africa Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1909 (n.p.: Methodist Episcopal Church, 1909). 35. Rev. Latimer P. Hardaker, Epworth Circuit Report 1921, Methodist Missionary Society Box 349, SOAS. 36. Muriel Pratten to Miss Bradford, February 5, 1928, Methodist Missionary Society Box 1052, SOAS. 37. Mrs. Mapondera, interview by author, Harare, Zimbabwe, March 18, 1988. 38. Southern Rhodesia District Ruwadzano-Manyano, Rules and Constitution, MET 1/4/2, National Archives of Zimbabwe (hereafter NAZ), Harare, Zimbabwe. 39. Rhodesia Annual Conference, Official Journal of the Rhodesia Annual Conference of the Methodist Church, 1944, SOAS. 40. Mrs. Rudo Kapenzi, interview by author, Old Mutare Mission, Mutare, Zimbabwe, March 31, 1988. 41. Mrs. Dikanifuwa, Mrs. Mujoma, and Mrs. Jijita, interview by author, Harare, Zimbabwe, 1987. 42. H. I. James, Old Umtali, Rhodesia Annual Conference, Official Journal of the Rhodesia Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1934, SOAS 43. K. Delainey, Waddilove Medical Work Annual Report, 1939, Methodist Missionary Society Box 1034, SOAS. 44. “Woman Claims Power to Heal by Faith,” African Weekly, November 3, 1954, NAZ. 45. “Methodist Minister Preaches at Guta Ra Jehova, Shown Children of Mai Chaza’s Work,” Bantu Mirror, November 2, 1957, 1. 46. Kapenzi interview. 47. “Mai Chaza’s Status Questioned,” African Weekly, December 29, 1954. 48. “Woman Claims Power to Heal by Faith.” 49. Rev. Fred Rea, visit to Kandaba Methodist Church on Sunday, February 27, 1955, HM MS 239/23, NAZ. 50. Supt. J. H. Lawrence to Rev. Per Hassing, August 30, 1957, HM MS 239/23, NAZ. 51. “Mai Chaza Holds Sway over New Village Headquarters,” Bantu Mirror, December 8, 1956, 18. 52. African Christian Convention, Rhodesia Annual Conference, Official Journal of the Rhodesia Annual Conference of the Methodist Church, 1956, SOAS. 53. Tom Baird, Chibero Mission to Supt. Lawrence, June 10, 1956, HM MS 239/23, NAZ. 54. African Christian Convention, Rhodesia Annual Conference, Official Journal of the Rhodesia Annual Conference of the Methodist Church, 1956, SOAS; Nengubo Circuit Quarterly Meeting Resolution, December 26, 1958, HM MS 239/23, NAZ. 55. Ruwadzano/Manyano District Committee, Bulawayo, January 7, 1959, Methodist House, Harare, Zimbabwe.

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chapter twelve 1. Sidney W. Mintz and R. Price, “The Birth of African-American Culture,” in Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, eds., African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture (London: Routledge, 1997), 39–53. 2. L. J. Myers, “Transpersonal Psychology: The Role of the Afrocentric Paradigm,” Journal of Black Psychology 12 (1985): 31–42; W. W. Nobles, “African Philosophy: Foundations for Black Psychology” in Reginald L. Jones, ed., Black Psychology (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), 23–35. 3. Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950), 108. 4. Sylvia A. Boone, Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), 23. 5. In Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), Jerome D. Frank and Julia B. Frank explain that an assumptive world exists at different levels of human consciousness. 6. Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 15. 7. Lawrence Levine, “Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness,” in Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, eds., African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays (New York: Routledge, 1997), 59–87. 8. Ibid. 9. Joseph E. Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). 10. Gloria Wade-Gayles and Ellen Finch, “The Finn-Fanny Rain: Three Women’s Spiritual Bonding on Sapelo Island,” in Gloria Wade-Gayles, ed., My Soul Is a Witness: African-American Women’s Spirituality (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 81. 11. J. Hawkins, “An old mauma’s folk-lore,” Journal of American Folklore 9 (1896): 129–31. 12. Gloria Wade-Gayles, ed., My Soul Is a Witness: African-American Women’s Spirituality (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995). 13. Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993), 246 n. 6. 14. Order of the Eastern Star, Chapter Minutes by Cecelia Dunlap, August 6–7, 1929, Grand Chapter Order of the Eastern Star of Kentucky, 35th Annual Communication, 20, Frankfort, Kentucky. 15. Boone, Radiance from the Waters, 15. 16. N. Warfield-Coppock, “The Balance and Connection of Manhood and Womanhood Training,” Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community 16 (1997): 121–45. 17. Codelia Taylor, interview by Oprah Winfrey, Oprah, American Broadcasting Corporation, June 26, 2000. 18. Cheryl Gilkes, “The Roles of Church and Community Mothers: Ambivalent American Sexism or Fragmented African Familyhood?” in Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, eds., African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays (New York: Routledge, 1997), 369. 19. Wade-Gayles and Finch, “The Finn-Fanny Rain,” 81.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 6 6 – 1 8 0 20. Saundra R. Murray, “Psychological Research Methods: Women in the African Diaspora,” in Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Andrea Benton Rushing, eds., Women in Africa and the African Diaspora (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996), 66. 21. Fayth M. Parks, “Attribution Models of Helping and Coping: A Transgenerational Theory of African-American Traditional Healing” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1996). 22. Ibid.

chapter thirteen 1. Robert Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible (New York: Free Press, 1989), 92–93, 131, 243; Cora Ann Presley, Kikuyu Women, the Mau Mau Rebellion and Social Change in Kenya (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), 121–55. 2. Kenya National Archives, Nairobi, Kenya (hereafter KNA), Kenya Colony and Protectorate (hereafter KCP), African Affairs Department (hereafter AAD), Central Province Annual Report (hereafter AR) 1955, 48. 3. The villagization scheme involved the wholesale destruction of Kikuyu villages and the relocation of the population into new villages that were surrounded by barbed wire fences and kept under guard. 4. KNA, KCP, AAD, AR 1954, 33. 5. Ibid., 35. 6. Colonial Office, Historical Survey of the Origins and Growth of Mau Mau, Cmnd. 1030 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1960), 141. 7. Great Britain Public Records Office (hereafter PRO), CO 822/544/741, KCP Administrative Reports, Part I, AAD, AR, 1951. 8. Administrative KCP Reports, Part II, Kenya Police Annual Report, 1951, PRO, CO 822/544/74/20. 9. Telegram from Sir P. Mitchell, Governor of Kenya, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, November 12, 1951, PRO, CO 822/435/50. 10. Ibid. For a full discussion of women’s involvement in the settler coffee estates, see Presley, Kikuyu Women, 43–82. 11. Jennifer A. Widner, The Rise of a Party-State in Kenya from “Harambee” to “Nyayo” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 30–38; Stephen N. Ndegwa, “The Incomplete Transition: The Constitutional and Electoral Context in Kenya,” Africa Today 45, no. 2 (April 1998): 193–211. 12. Widner, The Rise of a Party-State, 93. Respectively, these were the Kenya African Democratic Union, the African People’s Party, and the Kenya People’s Union. 13. Ibid., 98–106. 14. Stephen N. Ndegwa, “Citizenship amid Economic and Political Change in Kenya,” Africa Today 45, no. 2–4 (July 1998): 351–36; Widener, The Rise of a Party-State, 30–37. 15. Institute for Education in Democracy, National Elections Data Book Kenya, 1963– 1997 (Nairobi, Kenya: Institute for Education in Democracy, 1997), 34. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 33. 18. Wambui Waiyaki Otieno, Mau Mau’s Daughter: A Life History, edited and with an

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 8 0 – 1 8 4 introduction by Cora Ann Presley (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), 103–7. 19. Ibid., 104. 20. Ibid., 105–6. 21. Maria Nzomo, “Women, Democracy and Development in Africa,” in W. O. Oyugi and A. Gitonga, eds., The Democratic Theory and Practice in Africa (Nairobi, Kenya: Heinemann, 1987), 121–22. 22. Women’s International Network, “Women and Human Rights,” WIN News 24, no. 2 (spring 1998): 6–36; Widner, The Rise of a Party-State, 69. 23. Widner, The Rise of a Party-State, 130–33. 24. In the early 1990s, Kenya’s ethnic composition was 17.7 percent Kikuyu; 12.4 percent Luhya; 10.6 percent Luo; 9.8 percent Kalenjin; 9.8 percent Kamba; and 39.7 percent other. 25. Amnesty International, Women in Kenya—Repression and Resistance (New York: Amnesty International, 1995), 3; Widner, The Rise of a Party-State, 144–46. 26. Amnesty International, Women in Kenya, 3. 27. For a more detailed discussion of the ways political freedoms were curtailed, see Frank Holmquist and Michael Ford, “Kenyan Politics: Toward a Second Transition?” Africa Today 45, no. 2 (April 1998): 227–58; Ndegwa, “Incomplete Transition,” 193–211; and United Movement for Democracy in Kenya, Moi’s Reign of Terror (London: Umoja Publications, 1989). 28. Holmquist and Ford, “Kenyan Politics,” 227–58. 29. Widner, The Rise of a Party-State, 162–97. 30. Widner, The Rise of a Party-State, 162–97; Institute for Education in Democracy, National Elections, 89–91, 123–25, 153–55. 31. Institute for Education in Democracy, National Elections, 179–86. 32. Widner, The Rise of a Party-State; Institute for Education in Democracy, National Elections, 89–91, 123–25, 153–55. 33. Institute for Education in Democracy, National Elections, 132–45. 34. Ibid., 157–71. 35. Maria Nzomo, “Political and Legal Empowerment of Women in Post-Election Kenya,” in Maria Nzomo, ed., The Gender Dimension of Electoral Politics in Kenya: Capacity Building of Women Candidates for 1997 and Beyond (Nairobi, Kenya: National Commission on the Status of Women, 1997). 36. Maria Nzomo, Empowering Kenya Women: Report of a Seminar on Post-Election Women’s Agenda: Forward-Looking Strategies to 1997 and Beyond (Nairobi, Kenya: National Committee on the Status of Women, 1993), 1. 37. Nzomo, Empowering, 1–2. 38. These were Nvlva Mwendwa, Phoebe Asiyo, Charity Ngilu, Agnes Ndeti, Martha Njoka, and Mary Wanjiru. Ndegwa, “Incomplete Transition,” 193–211; Institute for Education in Democracy, National Elections, 196–211. 39. Otieno, Mau Mau’s Daughter, 215–21; Church of the Province of Kenya, Report of Kenya’s First Multi-Party General Elections (Nairobi, Kenya: CPK Communication and Documentation Centre, 1993), 7. 40. Bessie House-Midamba, “Gender, Democratization, and Associational Life in Kenya,” Africa Today 43, no. 3 (1996): 300–301. 41. Leigh Brownhill, “Mau Mau Women in Their Own Words,” paper presented at

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 8 4 – 1 8 9 the Eleventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, June 4, 1999. 42. United Movement for Democracy in Kenya, Moi’s Reign of Terror, 27–28. 43. Alexandra Tibbetts, “Mamas Fighting for Freedom in Kenya,” Africa Today 41, no. 4 (1994): 27–48. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 30. 46. UN Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Punishment, UN Doc. E/CN.4/1994/31 (1994), Nigel Rodley, special rapporteur, available: http://www.unige.ch/humanrts/commission/torture94/ cat-kenya.html/. 47. Tibbetts, “Mamas Fighting”; Amnesty International, Women in Kenya, 5–6. 48. House-Midamba, “Gender, Democratization,” 300; Tibbetts, “Mamas Fighting,” 30; Brownhill, “Mau Mau Women.” 49. House-Midamba, “Gender, Democratization,” 299–300. 50. Philip Ngunjiri, “Kenyan ‘Green’ Protestors Brutally Beaten,” Daily Mail & Guardian, available: http://www.mg.za/mg/news/99jan1/14jan-kenya.html; Africa Policy Information Centre, Kenya “Wangari Maathai Attacked,” available: http://www.africapolicy.org/docs99/ken9901.html. 51. U.S. Department of State, Kenya Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1997, available: http://www/usis.usemb.se/human97/kenya.html. 52. U.S. Department of State, Kenya Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996. available: http://www/usis.usemb.se/human/human/96/kenya.html. 53. U.S. Department of State, Kenya Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1998, available: http://www.usis.usemb.se/human/human1998/kenya.html. 54. Royal Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kenya Country Gender Profile (Nairobi, Kenya: Directorate-General for International Co-operation [hereafter DGIS], 1994); U.S. Department of State, Kenya Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1998. 55. April Gordon, “Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in Kenya: ‘Burying Otieno’ Revisited,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20, no. 41 (1995): 883–912. 56. Nzomo, Empowering, 1–5. 57. Nzomo, “Women, Democracy and Development,” 123–24; Nzomo, ed., Gender Dimension; and Miriam Kahiga, Socio-political Obstacles to the Participation of Women in the Democracy Process (Nairobi: Kenya Human Rights Commission, 1995). 58. BBC News Online, “Female Candidate on Kenyan Campaign Trail,” Tuesday, December 9, 1997, available: http://www.news1.thls.bbc.co.uk/low/english/despatches/ newsid_37000/37699.stm; “Savvy Woman Candidate Will Test Moi’s Rule in Kenya,” in Christian Science Monitor International, available: http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/ 1997/11/13/intl/intl.2.html.

chapter fourteen 1. Marjorie Brandon, interview by author, Claiborne County, Mississippi, July 23, 1996. All interviews conducted by the author in Claiborne County unless otherwise noted. In subsequent citations, I will include dates only when necessary to distinguish multiple interviews with the same person. Interviews in author’s possession and available to the public at Mississippi Cultural Crossroads, Port Gibson, Mississippi.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 8 9 – 1 9 4 2. I am grateful to the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia, the State University of New York—Geneseo, and the State of New York/United University Professors Drescher Affirmative Action Leave Program for their financial support for my work on the Claiborne County civil rights movement. 3. See, for example, Bernice McNair Barnett, “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” in Gender & Society 7 (June 1993): 162–82; Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965 (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson, 1990); Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Karen Brodkin Sacks, Caring by the Hour: Women, Work, and Organizing at Duke Medical Center (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long? African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Oxford, 1997); Christina Greene, “‘Our Separate Ways’: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina, 1940s–1970s” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1996); and Rhoda Lois Blumberg, “Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Reform or Revolution?” Dialectical Anthropology 15 (1990): 133–39. 4. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (hereafter NAACP) Papers; membership list, Claiborne County, November 22, 1951; Marjorie Brandon interview, May 4, 1992, 3. 5. Charles Evers to Gloster Current, January 14, 1966, NAACP Papers. 6. Nathaniel H. Jones, Walter L. Griffin Sr., James N. Dorsey, Calvin C. Williams, Alexander Collins, Floyd D. Rollins, Charles Evers, to Mayor and Board of Aldermen, Claiborne County Board of Supervisors and of Education, Sheriff Dan S. McCay, Port Gibson, Mississippi, March 14, 1966, NAACP Papers. 7. Memo from Charles E. Snodgrass, April 1, 1966, Box 147, Folder 2; Snodgrass report, March 14, 1966, Box 147, Folder 1, Paul B. Johnson Papers, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 8. Vicksburg Citizens’ Appeal, September 21, and October 19, 1966; Ed King Papers, Tougaloo College, Mississippi. 9. James Miller, interview by author, February 11, 1994, 20. 10. J. L. Sayles, interview by author, May 20, 1992, 11–12. 11. Charles Bunton, interview by author, August 5, 1996, 4. 12. Smith, Bill B., MS v., file, microfilm edition, reel 109, Southern Civil Rights Litigation Records (hereafter SCRLR). 13. James Devoual interview, July 23, 1992, 10. Testimony of Lawrence Rice, September 20, 1966, in Shields v. Mississippi, 71, Shields v. Mississippi file, reel 110, SCRLR. 14. Thelma [Crowder] Wells, I Ain’t Lying, vol. 4, fall 1989 (Port Gibson, Miss.: Mississippi Cultural Crossroads); Thelma Crowder Wells interview, April 7, 1992; Port Gibson Reveille, January 14, 1960, January 31, 1963. 15. Leesco Guster, interview by author, July 3, 1996, 4. 16. Ibid., 3. 17. Nathan Jones, interview by author, June 30, 1996; Guster interview. 18. Guster interview. 19. Anne Standley, “The Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement,” in Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 187.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 9 4 – 2 0 1 20. Joyce Ladner, quoted in Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, ed., A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, 1998), 142–43. 21. Marjorie Brandon, interview by author, May 4, 1992, 1. 22. Ken Brandon, interview by author, October 11, 1994, 6. 23. Marjorie Brandon interview, 1992, 2–3. 24. Ken Brandon interview, 5. 25. Marjorie Brandon interview, 1996, 11. 26. Port Gibson High Yearbook, 1966–1967, Port Gibson, Mississippi (copy in author’s possession); Marjorie Brandon interview, 1992. 27. Ken Brandon interview, 10–11. 28. Marjorie Brandon interview, 1996, 10. 29. Unita Blackwell, interview by author, July 17, 1996, 7. 30. Ibid. 31. Nathan Jones interview, 1996; Julia Jones interview, June 29, 1992; Julia Jones interview, June 30, 1996; and Marguerite Thompson interview, Natchez, Mississippi, May 12, 1992. 32. Port Gibson Reveille, Mississippi, October 20 and 27, 1966, and March 16, 1967; James Miller interview, February 1994, 15; James Miller interview, December 21, 1994, 15; Celia Anderson interview, April 14, 1992, 5; Wells interview. 33. Barbara Sullivan, interview by author, Oxford, Mississippi, September 8, 1998, 10–11. 34. James Miller interview, 1996, 10. 35. Julia Jones, who is pictured on the cover showing some Girl Scouts the voter registration books that she used in her capacity as chancery clerk, was one of those women. She was elected in 1971. 36. Barnett, Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders, 166, 172. Her list of leadership roles, ranked in order of importance, is: articulate/express concern and needs of followers; define/set goals; provide an ideology justifying action; formulate tactics and strategies; initiate action; mobilize/persuade followers; raise money; serve as an example to followers and leaders; organize/coordinate action; control group interactions (e.g., conflict); teach/educate/train followers and leaders; ability to not alienate colleagues and followers; lead or direct action; generate publicity; and obtain public sympathy and support. 37. Sacks, Caring by the Hour, 120–21, 216. 38. Payne, I’ve Got the Light, 275. See also Blumberg, “Women in the Civil Rights Movement,” 135, 138. 39. Payne, I’ve Got the Light, 276. 40. Barnett, Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders, 172. 41. Nathan Jones interview, 1996, 19. 42. Guster interview, 7, 12. 43. Payne, I’ve Got the Light, 268. 44. Ladner, quoted in Greenberg, ed., A Circle of Trust, 143. 45. For more on women in SNCC and the MFDP, see, for example, Payne, I’ve Got the Light; Greenberg, ed., A Circle of Trust; Cynthia Griggs Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998); Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Urbana: University of

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 0 5 – 2 2 8 Illinois Press, 1999); Kay Mills, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (New York: Dutton, 1993); and Barbara Ransby, “Ella J. Baker and the Black Radical Tradition (Civil Rights)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1996).

chapter fifteen 1. The research for this chapter was funded by a grant from the joint committee on African studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, with moneys provided by the Ford, Mellon, and Rockefeller Foundations. 2. Raymond Apthorpe, Rural Cooperatives and Planned Change in Africa: An Analytic Overview, Report no. 72.4 (Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1972); John E. Njoku, The World of African Women (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1980). 3. Helen M. Mugambi, “Intersections: Gender, Orality, Text and Female Space in Contemporary Kiganda Radio Songs,” Research in African Literatures 25, no. 3 (1994): 47. 4. Salina is actually a Catholic. She refers to herself as the “cursed devil” because she is closely connected with the drinking circles in her neighborhood and is a supplier for the area. 5. Kikomba is an open-air second-hand clothing market. 6. When I met Aton, I saw that this was not the case. 7. President Moi has been in power since 1982. 8. Kendu Muslim Pekee group, interview by author, Kendu Bay, Rachuonyo District, Nyanza Province, Kenya, June 29, 1994. 9. Mugambi, “Intersections,” 47. 10. Ibid., 48. 11. Henrietta Moore discussed the conflict between male and female interests as being a conflict between the clan (what is social) and what is not clan (what is individual). See Henrietta Moore, Space, Text and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 12. Ibid., 110–11. 13. This is simply a praise name used in an endearing way. Other names given to an individual include “brown,” “black,” “slender,” and “stout.” 14. Taxes here refers to the fines Salina had to pay either for not building a latrine or for being caught brewing illegal liquor. 15. Dudu is synonymous with dodo; dudu is the dialect spoken in northern Kenya.

chapter sixteen 1. Andrea Benton Rushing, “Images of Black Women in Afro-American Poetry,” in Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Sharon Harley, eds., The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images—A Reader, reprint (Baltimore, Md.: Black Classic Press, 1997), 74–84; Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Andrea Benton Rushing, eds., Women in Africa and the African Diaspora: A Reader, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996). 2. Terborg-Penn and Rushing, Women in Africa and the African Diaspora, 193–201. 3. John Lowe, “An Interview with Brenda Marie Osbey,” in Jefferson Humphries and 304

N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 2 8 – 2 4 2 John Lowe, eds., The Future of Southern Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 96–97. 4. Ibid., 101. 5. Brenda Marie Osbey, “The Evening News (A Letter to Nina Simone),” in Osbey’s All Saints: New and Selected Poems (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 61–62. 6. Brenda Marie Osbey, In These Houses (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 4. 7. Ibid., 9. 8. Ibid., 28. 9. Ibid., 27–28. 10. Ibid., 27. 11. Ibid., 29. 12. Ibid., 29–30. 13. Brenda Marie Osbey, Ceremony for Minneconjoux, Callaloo Poetry Series (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1983), 58–62. 14. Osbey, In These Houses, 5–6. 15. Osbey, All Saints, 15–21. 16. Ibid., 15–16. 17. Ibid., 18–19. 18. Diedre Badejo, SUN GSÍ: The Elegant Deity of Wealth, Power, and Femininity (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1996). 19. Keith Weldon Medley, “Black New Orleans,” American Legacy 6, no. 2 (summer 2000): 16. 20. Ibid., 18. 21. Ibid., 19. 22. Ibid., 19–20. 23. New Orleans Magazine, June 15, 1999, http://www.neworleans.com/nomagazine/ 32.2–Arts.html. 24. Lowe, “An Interview,” 100. 25. Ibid., 117. 26. Ibid., 108. 27. Osbey, Ceremony for Minneconjoux, 3–6. 28. Osbey, All Saints, 81–83. 29. Ibid., 84. 30. Ibid., 89. 31. Ibid., 93. 32. Ibid., 95. 33. Ibid., 88. 34. Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit (New York: Random/Vintage, 1984), 180, 184. 35. Osbey, All Saints, 92–93. 36. Ibid, 94. 37. Ibid, 95–96. 37. Personal communication, October 25, 1999. 38. Mary Helen Washington, ed., Black-Eyed Susans: Classic Stories by and about Black Women (New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1975), xxxii. 40. Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York: Random/Vintage, 1964), 78–79. 305

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chapter seventeen 1. H. F. Verwoerd, minister of native affairs in 1953, quoted in Pam Christie, The Right to Learn: The Struggle for Education in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986), 12. 2. Gwendolyn Brooks, “Winnie,” in Michael Harper and Anthony Walton, eds., Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans since 1945 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), 54. 3. In 1980s South Africa, the term black was increasingly used to describe African, Coloured, and Indian women in South Africa, but it has fallen out of widespread use in that inclusive sense. I refer to the era of the slave trade and to the shameless Cold War–era manipulation of Africa in the twentieth century. 4. These are the Universities of the North, Western Cape, Durban-Westville, Bophutatswana, and Fort Hare. The University of Bophutatswana has been renamed the University of the North West. 5. At the white English universities, the percentage of white academics declined slightly to 87 percent in 1998, but at the Afrikaans universities, it remained at around 97 percent. See Nico Cloete and Ian Bunting, Is Higher Education in South Africa Moving towards National Transformation Goals? (Pretoria, S.A.: CHET, 2000), 32–33. 6. Jonathan Jansen, “Knowledge and Power in the World System,” in Jonathan Jansen, ed., Knowledge and Power in South Africa: Critical Perspectives across the Disciplines (Johannesburg: Skotaville, 1991), 24–25. Ironically, they are surviving handsomely in the new South Africa and are well positioned to attract funding with which they can lure black students and faculty (and some progressive whites) away from the HBU’s and the English-medium institutions, thus meeting the racial and gender equity requirements of new legislation. 7. Ibid., 29; Saleem Badat, “The Expansion of Black Tertiary Education, 1977–90: Reform and Contradiction,” in Elaine Unterhalter et al., eds., Apartheid Education and Popular Struggles (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1991), 88. 8. Although discredited by progressives during the late 1970s and 1980s, the term colored is once again in use due to the continuing legacies of the differential social engineering projects of the past. Peter Kallaway, ed., Education and Apartheid (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984); Christie, The Right to Learn. 9. Until 1984, a few black students gained access to white universities by applying for permits to attend courses that were not available at a black university. 10. For example, in 1998, UCT granted an honorary degree to an elderly black pediatrician. He spun an absurd but classic tale from his preapartheid student days. Black medical students were not allowed to watch autopsies being performed on white bodies; instead, sympathetic lecturers later took the internal organs to them for private seminars! This practice persisted despite the fact that an “uneducated” black worker had opened up the white bodies in preparation for lessons and had stitched them closed afterward. See the damning chapter “University Apartheid,” in Brian Bunting, The Rise of the South African Reich (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1964), 215–22. 11. This figure rose slightly to 35 percent in 1998. See Cloete and Bunting, Higher Education, 34. 12. She refused, was employed nonetheless, and did have another child. Personal communication with the author, 1991.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 4 7 – 2 5 1 13. See, for example, Jenny Robinson’s discussion of this process in her own case: “White Women Researching/Representing ‘Others’: From Anti-apartheid to Postcolonialism?” in Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose, eds., Writing Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), 198. 14. Gay Seidman, “‘No Freedom without the Women’: Mobilization and Gender in South Africa, 1970–1992,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 18, no. 2 (1993): 291–320. 15. Five of the ministers in President Thabo Mbeki’s first cabinet were black women who fit this profile. 16. This is a developing literature. See Saul Dubow, Illicit Union: Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1995); Andrew Bank, “Of ‘Native Skulls’ and ‘Noble Caucasians’: Phrenology in Colonial South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 22, no. 3 (1996): 387–404; idem, “Racial Ideology at the Cape of Good Hope” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1995); and Pippa Skotnes, ed., Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen (Cape Town, South Africa: David Philip, 1996). In Cape Town, the South African Museum displays body casts of Khoisan people and archaeological treasures from Great Zimbabwe alongside whale and elephant carcasses. The Cultural History Museum, also in Cape Town, has been more successful in transforming racial representation, although the heart of the collection remains the flotsam and jetsam of settler colonial culture. 17. See Susan Bazilli, “Feminist Conferencing,” Agenda 9 (1991): 494–520; Shireen Hassim and Cherryl Walker, “Women’s Studies and the Women’s Movement: Defining a Relationship,” Women’s Studies International Forum 16, no. 5 (1993): 523–34; Desiree Lewis, “The Politics of Feminism in South Africa,” Women’s Studies International Forum 16, no. 5 (1993): 535–42; and Susan Holland-Muter, “Opening Pandora’s Box: Reflections on ‘Whiteness’ in the South African Women’s Movement,” Agenda 24 (1995). 18. D. Cooper, M. Hoffman, J. Klopper, J. Myers, W. Pick, and R. Sayed, “Urbanisation and Women’s Health in Khayelitsha—Demographic and Socio-economic Profile,” paper presented to the Conference on Women and Gender in Southern Africa, University of Durban, January 1991. That township researchers faced real physical dangers in 1980s does not negate the fact that the power of authorship generally did not devolve to the black women who did the actual data collection and who faced those dangers for the sake of the research projects. In fairness, the authors were certainly progressive academics for whom these issues also represented quicksand to be negotiated. Nonetheless, the unequal power relations of scholarship are revealed in their paper. 19. Kedibone Letlaka-Rennert, “Briefing,” Agenda 9 (1991). For discussions of some of these issues on a regional level, see Ruth Meena, ed., Gender in Southern Africa: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues (Harare, Zimbabwe: SAPES Books, 1992). 20. Letlaka-Rennert, “Briefing.” 21. Personal observation of the author. The subtext was that the black woman was the daughter of a man who had left the PAC and joined the Bantustan government of the Transkei; his family was thus afforded material benefits far beyond those of the average black South African family. Visiting the sins of the father on the daughter, however, did not automatically delegitimize her criticisms. 22. It was organized by Kedi Letlaka-Rennert, then a researcher at the Family Institute. 23. Her novels are Cross of Gold (London: Longman, 1981), and They Didn’t Die (New

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 5 1 – 2 5 5 York: Feminist Press, 1999). She is also the editor of Let It Be Told: Black Women Writers in Britain (London: Virago, 1988). 24. The conference was held at Rhodes University in Grahamstown in the eastern Cape Province. 25. Yvette Abrahams, “The Great Long National Insult: Science, Sexuality and the Khoisan in the 18th and early 19th Century,” paper presented to the Conference on Women and Gender in Southern Africa, University of Durban, January 1991. See also Ciraj Rassool and Patricia Hayes, “Gendered Science, Gendered Spectacle: /Khanako’s South Africa,” paper presented to the Gender and Colonialism Conference, University of the Western Cape, January 1997. 26. See Sander Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth Century Art, Medicine and Literature,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985); Patricia Hayes, “‘Cocky’ Hahn and the ‘Black Venus’: The Making of a Native Commissioner in South West Africa, 1915–46,” in Nancy Rose Hunt, Tessie R. Liu, and Jean Quataert, eds., Gendered Colonialisms in African History (London: Blackwell, 1997). 27. The practice of naked protest by women in Africa is not unique to this situation; even at the workshop, people shared anecdotal evidence of it elsewhere. Full-body protests are, in one sense, made for postmodernist analysis, yet in another sense, it is such a difficult subject to represent that there have been no historical studies to date. 28. Black South African Mine Workers created gumboot dancing as resistance to oppression during the apartheid era. Forbidden to talk while working, boot slapping was used as communication during work hours. During their off hours black miners choreographed intricate dance steps to accompany the rhythmic boot slapping for entertainment. Gumboot dancing has become a popular tourist attraction in post-apartheid South Africa. 29. A book that is often used as an example of this is Belinda Bozzoli (with the assistance of Mmantho Nkotsoe), Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900–1983 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1993), but the charge has been leveled at the entire “social history” school of South African historiography. See Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee, eds., Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (Cape Town, South Africa: Oxford University Press, 1996). 30. For a revealing, if nongendered, debate about Bantu studies, African studies, and South African epistemology, see the 1997–99 discussions initiated by Mahmood Mamdani at the UCT African Studies Center. 31. Wendy Woodward, Gary Minkley, and Patricia Hayes, “Deep Histories: Gender and Colonialism in Southern Africa,” paper presented to the Department of History and Institute for Historical Research South African and Contemporary History Seminar, University of the Western Cape, May 1999. I thank the authors for allowing me to quote a work in progress. 32. Sandra Scott Swartz, letter, Agenda 37 (1998): 4–5. 33. Robinson, “From Anti-apartheid to Postcolonialism?” 202. 34. Hassim and Walker, “Women’s Studies,” 528. 35. Ibid., 529. 36. Richard Lapchick and Stephanie Urdang, Oppression and Resistance: The Struggle of Women in Southern Africa (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 152. For an example of the kind of research Meer might have encouraged through the 1980s had she

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 5 5 – 2 6 2 not been banned, see Fatima Meer, Black-Woman-Worker (Durban, South Africa: Institute for Black Research, 1992). 37. See Thomas Karis and Gail Gerhart, eds., From Protest to Challenge, vol. 5, Nadir and Resurgence, 1964–1979 (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1997), 311–16. 38. Zimitri Erasmus, “Speaking and Writing the Feeling: Power and Positioning in the Research Encounter,” African Gender Institute Associates Programme Seminar, September 1998, University of Cape Town, 2, 9. I thank her for allowing me to quote from this work in progress. 39. ChiChi Aniagolu, “The First African Womanist Workshop,” Agenda 37 (1998): 96. 40. J. Sunde and V. Bozalek, “(Re)searching Difference,” Agenda 19 (1993): 30.

chapter eighteen 1. Yanick St. Jean and Joe R. Feagin, double burden: Black Women and Everyday Racism (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 206. 2. Jannette L. Dates and William Barlow, eds., Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1990), 4. 3. Ibid., 4–5. 4. Ibid., 5. 5. Margaret M. Russell, “Race and the Dominant Gaze: Narratives of Law and Inequality in Popular Film,” in Richard Delgado, ed., Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 57–58. 6. Dates and Barlow, Split Image, 455. 7. David Croteau and William Hoynes, Media/Society, Industries, Images, and Audiences (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 1997), 139. 8. St. Jean and Feagin, double burden, 205–6; Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1996), 9. 9. Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, 9. 10. Ibid. 11. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge Press, 2000), 81–82. 12. Ibid., 69. 13. Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, 57. 14. Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 72–3. 15. Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, 57. 16. Dates and Barlow, Split Image, 298. 17. Ibid., 275–76. 18. Ibid., 263. 19. Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910–1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 153. 20. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 258. 21. Ibid., 259. 22. Ibid.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 6 2 – 2 6 8 23. Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out, 168. 24. Jones, Labor of Love, 259–60. 25. Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985), 63–79. 26. Jones, Labor of Love, 279. 27. Ibid., 287; Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1984), 264–66. 28. Jones, Labor of Love, 288. 29. Rollins, Between Women, 155–73. 30. Ibid., 170. 31. Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 40. 32. Ibid., 74; Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out, 123–24. 33. Dates and Barlow, Split Image, 5. 34. Ibid., 253. 35. Ibid., 456. 36. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 77–82, 223; Dates and Barlow, Split Image, 5. 37. Lisa M. Anderson, Mammies No More: The Changing Image of Black Women on Stage and Screen (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 1. 38. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 85. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 92–93. 41. Ibid., 94. 42. Ibid., 95. 43. Dates and Barlow, Split Image, 2–3. 44. Stuart Hall, “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture,” in Gina Dent, ed., Black Popular Culture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1992), 32. 45. bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 60. 46. St. Jean and Feagin, double burden, 206. 47. Ibid., 134. 48. Great Lakes Broadcasting Co., 3 F.R.C. Ann. Rep. 32 (1929), aff’d in part, rev’d in part, 37 F.2d 993 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 281 U.S. 706 (1930). 49. Margaret M. Russell, “Law and Racial Reelism,” in Martha A. Fineman and Martha T. McCluskey, eds., Feminism, Media & the Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 136. 50. Great Lakes Broadcasting Co., 3 F.R.C. Ann. Rep. 32 (1929); Benjamin M. Compaine and Douglas Gomery, Who Owns the Media? Competition and Concentration in the Mass Media Industry, 3rd ed. (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. Publishers, 2000) 198, 508. 51. Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 249–50. 52. Croteau and Hoynes, Media/Society, 81. 53. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly x, xx–xxi. 54. Ibid., 3–26; Compaine and Gomery, Who Owns the Media?, 241. 55. Peter W. Huber, Michael K. Kellogg, and John Thorne, The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996), 67–69.

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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 6 8 – 2 7 0 56. Ibid., 64. 57. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, 150–51. 58. Ibid., 160–61. 59. Croteau and Hoynes, Media/Society, 43–44. 60. Jeff Dubin and Matthew Spitzer, Testing Minority Preferences in Broadcasting, 68 S. Cal. L. Rev. 841 (1995). 61. National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Survey of Minority Ownership, available at http://www.ntia.doc.gov. 62. Ibid. 63. Compaine and Gomery, Who Owns the Media?, 523–24.

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Contributors

Teresa Barnes is a lecturer in history at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Zimbabwe, where she earned her Ph.D. degree. Her articles about the economic and social history of African women and gender in colonial Zimbabwe have appeared in Signs, the African Studies Review, and the Journal of Southern African Studies. She is the author of To Live a Better Life: An Oral History of Women in the City of Harare, 1930–1970 (1992), and We Women Worked So Hard: Gender, Urbanization, and Social Reproduction in Colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930–1966 (1999). Nemata Blyden is an assistant professor of history at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history and international relations from Mount Holyoke College, and she holds both an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in African history from Yale University. She is the author of West Indians in West Africa, 1808–1880: The African Diaspora in Reverse (2000). Leslie Brown is an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, with a joint appointment in history and African and AfricanAmerican studies. Her research interests focus on African American women’s history, especially women’s experiences with segregation. In 1997, she received her Ph.D. in history from Duke University, where she cocoordinated the oral history project “Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South.” Currently, she is working on a book about the intersection of gender and class in black community development in Durham, North Carolina, from 1865 to 1945. Rhonda Cobham is a professor of English and black studies at Amherst College, where she teaches African and Caribbean literature and postcolonial studies. She is the editor of Watchers and Seekers, an anthology of writing by black women in Britain, and her scholarly articles have appeared in Research in African Literatures and Callaloo. She is working on a monograph entitled Corporeal States: Body, Nation, Text in Modern African Literature. 313

Contributors

Emilye Crosby is an assistant professor of history at the State University of New York-Geneseo. She received her B.A. degree from Macalester College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University. She is completing a book on the civil rights movement in Claiborne County, Mississippi. Earline Rae Ferguson is an assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island, where she teaches African American and women’s history. Her research on the black women’s club movement in Indiana has resulted in several articles on clubwomen’s work and the development of Indianapolis’s black community in Midwestern Woman (1997), Indiana’s African American Heritage: Essays from Black History News & Notes (1993), and Indiana Magazine of History (1988). She is currently writing a book about black women’s club work in Indianapolis at the turn of the twentieth century. Catherine Higgs is an associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She earned a B.A. degree from Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada, and both an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. at Yale University. Her articles have appeared in the Canadian Journal of African Studies and the Journal of African Travel Writing. She is the author of The Ghost of Equality: The Public Lives of D. D. T. Jabavu of South Africa, 1885–1959 (Ohio University Press, 1997). Deseriee Kennedy is an associate professor of law at the University of Tennessee College of Law. She teaches in the areas of civil procedure, torts, business torts, women and the law, and race and gender. She holds a B.A. degree from Lehigh University and a J.D. from Harvard University. She was an Abraham Freedman Fellow at Temple Law School, where she earned an LL.M. degree. Her articles have appeared in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, the Capital Law Review, and the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. Valinda W. Littlefield is an assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. She is the associate editor and author of the introduction to Education, volume 7 of the Facts on File Encyclopedia of Black Women in America. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Negro History (1994) and in Black Women in America: A Historical Encyclopedia (1994). Her University of Illinois dissertation, completed in 2002, was titled “‘I Am Only One, but I Am One’: Southern African American Female School Teachers, 1884–1954.”

314

Contributors

Barbara A. Moss is an assistant professor of history at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia. Her area of specialization is southern Africa, and her research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism, women, passive resistance, and religious beliefs. She earned a B.A. degree in African American studies from Howard University, an M.A. from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. in African history from Indiana University. Her current research examines Christian African women’s agency in colonial Zimbabwe. Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley is an assistant professor of history in the Division of Social Science at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. She studied at Fourah Bay College and the University of Sierra Leone and received her Ph.D. from Howard University. Her current research focuses on African agency and the gendered impact of colonial rule in Sierra Leone. Patricia Achieng Opondo is a lecturer in African music and dance and director of the African Music Project at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa. She earned her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh for her study “Dodo Performance in the Context of Women’s Associations amongst the Luo of Kenya.” She is a member of the executive board of the International Council for Traditional Music and a panel member of the National Indigenous Music Project in South Africa. Fayth M. Parks is an assistant professor in Leadership, Technology, and Human Development at Georgia Southern University. Her research and writing interests include the helping and coping strategies inherent in African American folk-healing beliefs and practices, about which she has given numerous presentations. She received a research award from the Interamerican Society of Psychology for her dissertation on folk healing. Cora A. Presley is an associate professor of African American studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She earned her Ph.D. degree in African history from Stanford University and has taught at Loyola University (New Orleans), Tulane University, and Humboldt State University. She is the author of Kikuyu Women, the Mau Mau Rebellion and Social Change in Kenya (1992) and the editor of Mau Mau’s Daughter: A Life History (1998). She has contributed chapters on Kikuyu women, labor, and the Mau Mau struggle to In Resistance: Studies in African, Afro-American and Caribbean Resistance (edited by G. Okihiro, 1986) and Women and Class in Africa (edited by Claire Robertson and Iris Berger, 1986).

315

Contributors

Sean Redding is a professor of history at Amherst College, where she teaches African and South African history. She earned a B.A. degree at Swarthmore College and both an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. from Yale University. Her articles about the history of the Transkei region of South Africa have appeared in the African Studies Review and the Canadian Journal of African Studies. She is currently working on a study of African tax paying in the rural areas of South Africa as a rough gauge of African political thought and protest. Andrea Benton Rushing is a professor of English and black studies at Amherst College. She earned a B.A. from Queens College, an M.A. in English from Simmons College, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She received a fellowship to the Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and served as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. She is coeditor of Women in Africa and the African Diaspora, and has written numerous articles and reviews in academic journals and collections. She is working on a monograph entitled Speaking in Tongues: The Language of Yoruba Women’s Attire. Verene A. Shepherd, a graduate of the University of the West Indies (UWI) at Mona, Jamaica, and the University of Cambridge, is an associate professor of history at UWI. She is the immediate past secretary-treasurer of the Association of Caribbean historians. She is also the author of Transients to Settlers: The Experience of Indians in Jamaica (1994), and coeditor of Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective (1995), Caribbean Slave Society and Economy (1991), and Caribbean Freedom (1993). In 1999, she compiled and edited Women in Caribbean History: An Introduction. Cassandra R. Veney is an assistant professor of political science at Illinois State University, where she teaches courses on African politics and U.S. politics. She earned a B.A. degree from Syracuse University and an M.A. in African studies from Howard University. She worked for the U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington, D.C., in its Migration and Refugee Services Division before earning a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1995. She has also conducted field research on refugees in Kenya and Tanzania.

316

Index

Note: Tables are indicated by an italicized t following the page number.

A

African American connection, 159–62 Caribbean connection, 102, 106–7 presence and repression of in New World, 111–12 selective forgetting and remembering of, 107 African goddesses, 102–4 African literature, 105 Africans gender-specific lives, 144 interaction with Europeans in slave trade, 104 “uplifting,” 174 African Womanist Workshop, 256 African Wo/man Palava (Ogunyemi), 102–4 African women activism in Kenya, 173–74, 175–78, 184–86 anticolonialism in Kenya, 174–78 church standards accepted by, 151 and civil war in Somalia, 119 and colonialism, 147–48 extortion by rebel organizations, 97 internally displaced in Sudan, 120–22 Luo society roles of, 217–18, 221–22 as majority of refugees and internally displaced, 117 and motherhood, 144–45 in politics in Kenya, 179–81, 183–85, 187 refuge in missions, 149, 150 responsibilities in Transkei region, 87–88 Ruwadzano transformed by, 152 social power of, 91–92, 99 Somali refugees, 118–19 in South African government, 248, 307 n. 15 in South African higher education, 247–48, 306 n. 11

abortion issue, 255 academic life, in South Africa, 246–48, 253–54, 254–56 activism environmental activism, 186 of Kenyan women, 173–74, 175–78, 184–86 by NAACP, 77–80, 82 South African women’s movement, 247–48 advertising, in media, 268 African Americans American values retained in Liberia, 35–36 colonization of culture, 257–58 color distinctions among, 41–42 community social systems, 20 divisions of class and gender, 74 education in rural south, 18 entertainment media depictions, 258–61 in Great Migration, 130–40, 293 n. 4 laziness characterization, 53–54, 260, 265 leisure activities of, 81 in New Orleans, 237–40 return to Africa, 32 sex ratios among, 133–34, 135t, 294 n. 10 women educators, 17–18 African American women as domestic workers, 261–63, 264 media depictions of, 265–67 in Osbey poetry, 227–42 psychology of, 165–66 sacred cow, literary depictions of, 242 stereotypes of, 232–34, 260–61, 263–64 African culture adult status requirements, 163

317

Index Sudanese refugees, 119–20 suspicions about independent women, 96–97 vulnerability in Transkei region, 94–96 African Women’s Self-Improvement Association, 60, 62–64, 64–71 Afrocentric worldview, 159–60 agriculture Kenyan government policies, 176, 184 state intervention in Transkei region, 93 training in Sierra Leone, 9 Aidoo, Ama Ata, 105 “Alberta (Factory Poem/Variation 2)” (Osbey), 235–36 Alberti, Ludwig, 88 Alexander High School, Liberia, 37, 39 All Saints (Osbey), 229, 239–40 Amayo, Lazaro, 215 American Colonization Society, 32 American Wesleyan Mission, 6, 8, 13 anticolonialism in Kenya, 174–78 antifeminist themes, in dodo repertories, 217, 225 apartheid, 66, 245 “apprenticeship,” 52 Apthorpe, Raymond, 206 arranged marriages, 63 Asiyo, Phoebe, 183 assassination, of Kenya state enemies, 179 assistant chiefs, in Kenya, 209–10, 223 associations, in Kenyan society, 206–7 assumptive worldview, 160, 298 n. 5 audience participation, in dodo performances, 208 Augustine (fictional character), 230–32 Aunt Delilah (fictional character), 260–61 Aunt Jemima character, 260 Autobiography of My Mother, The (Kincaid), 100–2, 107–11, 112–13

Association, 60, 61, 62–64, 64–71 Barabajan Poems (Braithwaite), 100 Barbee, Annie Mack, 139 Barlow, William, 264 Barnett, Bernice McNair, 199 Barre, Mohammed Siad, 119 Battle, Mary, 24–25, 26–27, 278 n. 29 Beckford, William, 47 belief systems African-derived in Caribbean, 101–2, 112 codified by dominant culture, 102 tensions among, 105 Beulah (fictional character), 260–61 bias in electoral redistricting, 197 gender bias in education, 5–6, 6–7, 8–12, 12–16 Western cultural bias, 61 Bible study, 151 Biko, Steve, 255 biracial children, 103 “black,” usage of term, 306 n. 3 Black Consciousness Movement, 255 blackness, 44–45 blacks laziness characterization, 53–54, 260, 265 Liberia settled by, 32 Blackwell, Unita, 197 black women’s bodies as art, 252 Black Women’s Federation, 255 blues, 228–29, 236 Blyden, Edward Wilmot, 34, 37–38, 39, 40–43 Bomet, Grace, 183 Boone, Sylvia, 160 Bo School, Sierra Leone, 7 boycotts, 191–92, 262–63 Braithwaite, Kamau, 100 Brandon, Ken, 195, 196 Brandon, Marjorie, 189, 194–97, 199, 200–201, 202 Brant, Lillian, 131 bridewealth, 92, 145, 148, 217–18 British South Africa Company, 147 Brokenburr, Robert, 83 Brown, Charlotte Hawkins, 18–19 Brown, Elsa Barkley, 84 Brown, Holman, 151 Bryan, Patrick, 54 Buju Banton, 44, 281 n. 2 Bundu society, 273 n. 4 Burke, Rosabella, 34, 36 Burke, William, 33, 34, 36 Butcher, Louise, 78

B Baartman, Saartjie, 252 Bagdikian, Ben, 267 bahalia women, 238–39 Baker, Ella, 201 Baldwin, James, 263 Ballinger, Margaret, 65 “bantu studies,” 248, 253, 307 n. 16 Bantu Women’s Home Improvement

318

Index

C

circumcision, female, 124, 126 Ciskei Bantustan, 71 Ciskei Zenzele Women’s Association, 71 “civilization” education as instrument for, 4, 32–33, 38 and nudity, 46, 47 civil rights curtailment in Kenya, 183 struggle for, 77–80 civil rights movement Montgomery bus boycott, 262–63 women in Clairborne County, 189–94, 195–99, 200–202 civil war in Somalia, 119 in Sudan, 120 Clairborne County, Mississippi, 189–94, 195–99, 200–202 Clara’s Heart (film), 261 Clarke Memorial Girls School, Sierra Leone, 8, 13 Clark-Lewis, Elizabeth, 136 class. See social class Clay-Ashland, Liberia, 34–35, 39 Cock, Jacklyn, 68 Coffin, Shirley D., 149 colonial education, Sierra Leone about, 4–5 agricultural training, 9 attendance statistics by gender, 11t churches in administration of, 6 costs of education, 9–10, 13 education reform, 12 enrollment statistics by gender, 10, 14t gender bias, 5–6, 6–7, 8–12, 12–16 Islamic primary schools, 8 male-only schools, 7 men trained in areas previously dominated by women, 12 for Muslim community, 5–6 vernacular instruction, 9 colonial government, in Sierra Leone, 3 colonialism and African women, 147–48 and gender subordination, 88 women’s struggle in Kenya, 174–78 color consciousness, 41–42, 44–45, 51–52 “colored,” usage of term, 306 n. 8 commercial messages, in media, 268 community associations, 20, 36, 164 community gatherings, and dodo performances, 210

Cable, Mary, 76, 79, 81–82 Cameron, Janie, 136 Cameron, Patty, 135, 136, 139 Camps Bay, Cape Town, 250–51 candomblé, 238 Cape Town, South Africa, 250–51 Cape Zenzele Women’s Association, 71 Cargill, Morris, 44 Caribbean African-derived belief systems, 101–2, 112 connection with Africa, 102, 106–7 individual acceptance of relationship to past, 112 proximity to New Orleans, 237 Caribbean folk culture female water spirits, 100–101 in literature, 105 relationship with modernity, 105–6 unequal relationship to African precursors, 106 Caribbean literature, 105–6 Carlyle, Thomas, 53 Carter, Nell, 260–61 Catholicism, 6, 237, 238 Ceremony for Minneconjoux (Osbey), 229 Chaza, Mai, 154–57 childbearing in slavery, 50–51 child labor, 136 childlessness Mammywata’s devotees and, 104 slave trade wealth and, 105 as stigma for widows, 147 children as hedge against old age, 147 as linkage to father’s lineage, 144 Chrispus Attucks High School, 84 Christianity conversion to, 149 cult of domesticity, 68 and cultural prejudice, 32–33, 35–36 marriage concepts, 63 missionary education, 60 missionary model of African womanhood, 68–69 spirituality in form of, 157 training in Christian values, 150–52 churches. See also specific churches in colonial education in Sierra Leone, 6 importance to African American settlers in Liberia, 36 Church Missionary Society, 6 Church of England, 6

319

Index community work, 164–65, 192 Congo Square, New Orleans, 237–38 Cooper, Anna Julia, 79 Cope, John, 48 Corinna, Corinna (film), 261 coup attempt, Kenya, 122, 181–82 creole culture, origins of, 104 creole genre histories, 54 Cripps, Arthur Shearley, 149 Croker, Ella, 80 Crowder, Thelma, 192, 199, 200 Crummell, Alexander, 38–39 cultural enslavement, 107–13 cultural forms, and psychological release, 161–62 culture. See also African culture; Caribbean folk culture belief systems codified by dominant culture, 102 colonization of, 257–58 creole culture origins, 104 negation of, 107 shaped by media, 257–58 trivialization of practices in relation to Western culture, 106 customary laws, 147–48

remuneration for, 208, 209, 210–15 restructuring female narratives, 215–24 as social commentary, 224–26 venues for performance, 208–10 domesticity, cult of, 68 domestic workers, 261–63, 264 double consciousness concept, 74 dreams, in folk healing, 166 Dube, John, 66 Du Bois, W. E. B., 74, 132 Dunlap, Cecilia, 162–63 Durham, North Carolina black demographics, 133–34, 135t, 294 n. 10 as cross-migration example site, 131–33 population by race and sex, 1890–1950, 134t tobacco industry, 129–30, 132, 135, 137–38 transient African American population, 133

E economic independence, for African women, 69 economy as migration factor, 130, 133, 139 of rural life, 92 as witchcraft allegation factor, 92–93 Eden, 109 education. See also colonial education, Sierra Leone; female education as “civilizing” instrument in Africa, 4, 32–33, 38 domestic sphere focus, 7 enrollment statistics in postcolonial period, 15 gender bias, 5–6, 6–7, 8–12, 12–16 harassment of African American students, 196 improvement by parent-teacher associations, 21–22 in Liberia, 36–37, 43, 279 n. 24, 280 n. 50 as migration factor, 132, 133, 137 missionary education, 60 in mothercraft, 151 need for media scrutiny, 267 vs. need to work, 139 in rural south, 18 segregated schools, 77, 84, 288 n. 14 in self-improvement techniques, 67–69

D Dates, Jannette, 261, 264 Davis, G. E., 19 Davis, Jenny, 39 Debham, J. E., 25 Decade for Women, United Nations, 181 demographics, of African American migrants, 133–34, 135t, 294 n. 10 Denton, Nancy, 264–65 Desperate Circumstances, Dangerous Woman (Osbey), 234–35 dictatorship, in Kenya, 181, 182–83 Dillard, James Hardy, 23 discrimination as migration factor, 130 need for media scrutiny, 267 against women in Kenya, 186–87 women’s organizations against, 75, 77–80 dodo songs about, 205–6 empowerment of women, 206–7 gender and political status during performance, 207–8 patronage of performers, 210–15 as praise poetry, 212–13, 214–15, 222–23, 224–25

320

Index in sexually transmitted diseases, 126 in Sierra Leone, 12, 14–16 unequal distribution of resources, 26 universities in South Africa, 246–48, 306 n. 4, 306 n. 6 white anxiety over black education, 25–26 “Eileen” (Osbey), 232–34 elections. See also politics activism in, 79 biased redistricting, 197 dodo singers at campaign events, 213 fraud in, 180–81 voter-registration campaigns, 192–93, 199 Ellington, Barbara, 45 Ellison, Ralph, 242 Emecheta, Buchi, 105, 144–45 environmental activism, 186 Erasmus, Zimitri, 256 Erskine, Anna, 32, 33, 34–43 Erskine, Eliza Payne, 34 Erskine, Hopkins W., 34, 35, 39–40, 279 n. 9, 280 n. 43, 280 n. 49 Erskine family, 279 n. 8, 279 n. 9 Ethiopia, as Soviet Union client, 118 ethnic cleansing, in Kenya, 182 ethnic tensions minimizing, 64 in Somalia, 119 in women’s organizations, 66 ethnic violence, in Kenya, 122–23 ethnocentrism, 46, 55 Europeans, interaction with Africans in slave trade, 104 “Evening News, The (A Letter to Nina Simone)” (Osbey), 229–30 Evers, Charles, 190–91 Evers, Medgar, 190

Islamic studies, 13 in Liberia, 36–38, 39–40 in Sierra Leone, 5–6, 6–7, 8–12, 12–16 and social class, 14 female narratives, restructuring in dodo songs, 215–24 female space, 207, 221 feminism development among black women, 255–56 in dodo songs, 217, 225 in Osbey poetry, 235–36, 242 in “Promoting Women’s History” conference, 251–53 of South African women, 247 white women’s attitudes, 255 fertility and Mai Chaza Church, 154–55 and Ruwadzano, 152–53 spirituality beliefs, 146 film, and blacks, 258–61, 266–67 Finch, Ellen, 162 folk healing, 166 Fon religion, 228, 237 food, as weapon, 121, 175 Fort Hall (Kenya) incident, 175–77 Foster, Audley, 45 Fox, Lillian Thomas, 80 Franklin, Aretha, 227 Fried Green Tomatoes (film), 261 Froude, James Anthony, 53 fund raising dodo singers at events, 208 NAACP, 80–81 parent-teacher organizations, 22

G Garvey, Marcus, 55 gender divisions of African Americans, 74 education statistics in Sierra Leone, 10, 11t, 14t infant mortality rates, 134 labor role divisions, 132, 135, 198, 199, 201 leadership, perceptions of, 189–91, 194–95, 198–99 in migration strategies, 130 mortality rates, 134 and political status during performance, 207–8 roles in Luo society, 224 shared understandings of, 254–55 gender bias

F Fairness Doctrine, 267 Family House, Milwaukee, 164 farms female migration from, 134–35, 136 gender labor roles, 135 rural life, 87–88, 92 subsistence farming, 206 Federal Communications Commission, 267, 269 female circumcision, 124, 126 female education advocates for, 37–40 hidden curriculum of Western ideologies, 14

321

Index colonial education in Sierra Leone, 5–6, 6–7, 8–12, 12–14 postcolonial education in Sierra Leone, 14–16 gendered hierarchies, 197 gendered spaces, 207, 216, 221 gender-specific lives, of Africans, 144 gender studies, 247 gender subordination, 88 Gilkes, Cheryl, 164–65 Gimme a Break (television show), 260–61 Girl, Interrupted (film), 261 Githeri, Wambui, 180 Goldberg, Whoopi, 261 Gray, Sallie E., 163 Great Migration, 130–40, 293 n. 4 Green, William, 54 Green Belt Movement, 178, 184, 186 Gregg, Veronica, 46 gumboot dancing, 252, 308 n. 28 Gundo, Patrick Orayo, 211 Guster, Leesco, 192–94, 199, 200–201, 202 Guta ra Jehova, 154–55, 156 guturamira ng’ania, 185

housing shortages, in Sudan, 121 Hulme, Peter, 45 humanist vision, 78–79 human rights abuses in Kenya, 119, 122–24, 124–25 of refugee women in East Africa, 127 in Somalia, 119 in Sudan, 119–20, 121 hut burnings, of accused witches, 89–90, 95–96, 97

I Idemili, 102–3 Idle Hands Needle Club, Indianapolis, 76–84 Imitation of Life (film), 260 Indianapolis, Indiana, 73–74, 76–84 infanticide, 149–50, 154 infant mortality by gender in U.S., 134 in Shona society, 149–50, 153 in Sudan, 121 infertility. See fertility internally displaced populations in Kenya, 117, 122–24 in legal limbo, 126–27 poverty of, 124 in Sudan, 120–22 women as majority of, 117 international aid organizations refugee conventions, 118 and refugee women, 125–28 Islam education in Liberia, 43, 280 n. 50 education in Sierra Leone, 5–6, 8, 13 imposition of Islamic law in Sudan, 120 in Liberia, 41

H Hall, Douglas, 54 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 201 harassment of African American students, 196 of civil rights workers, 193 Harmer, Stephen, 48–49, 53 Harris, Ada, 76 Harris, Mabel, 137 Hassim, Shireen, 254–55 Hay, Jean, 143 Head Start, 197–98, 199 Henderson, Sallie, 74, 76, 78 Hine, Darlene Clark, 74 Holland, Annie Welthy Daughtry, 18–19, 20–22 Holt, Thomas, 52 Home Improvement (pamphlet), 62 Home-Makers’ Clubs about, 18 Holland and, 19 production output of, 20 hoodoo, 228, 232, 236–37, 238–40 hooks, bell, 266 Hottentot Venus, 252 “House, The” (Osbey), 230–31 household, importance in Luo society, 218–19

J Jabavu, D. D. T., 59–60, 62–63 Jabavu, Florence, 59–60, 62–64, 66–67, 68–71 Jamaica about, 45–46 color consciousness, 44–45, 51–52 emancipation, 52–54 histories of, 47–52, 52–54, 54–56 Jamaica Plantership (M’Mahon), 49 James, H. I., 153 Jeanes, Anna T., 18 Jeanes Teachers about, 17, 18

322

Index autonomy of, 24 demographics, 22–23 ends achieved by, 22 expectations of, 23 funding of, 276–77 n. 9 within Jim Crow system, 18–19, 23–26 placement of, 22 power relations with county superintendents, 24–25, 26–27 working within confines of system, 27 Jim Crow system Jeanes Teachers within, 18–19, 23–26 rise of, 74 women’s organizations against, 75 Jones, Jaqueline, 262, 263 Jones, Thomas Jesse, 25, 277 n. 24 Joys of Motherhood (Emecheta), 144–45

refugees, 118–20, 123, 124–25, 126 societal associations, 206–7 Somali refugee women, 118–19 Sudanese refugee women, 119–20 white nationalism, 174 women in prodemocracy movement, 183–87 women’s organizations, 181, 185–86, 187, 188 Kenya African National Union, 122, 178–80, 184, 215 Kenya Africa Union, 177–78 Kenya People’s Union Party, 179 Kenyatta, Jomo, 178–79, 181 Kikuyu in Kenyan politics, 179–80 militancy of women, 176–77 oppression of, 174–75 women in Mau Mau rebellion, 188 Kincaid, Jamaica, 100–102, 106, 107–13 Kinuttio, Milka Wankiku, 185 Kongo religion, 228, 237 Koran, education in, 5 Ku Klux Klan, 84, 193

K Kanja, Wawereu, 179 Kariuki, J. M., 179 Kayoto, Aton, 214–15, 304 n. 6 Kemoli, Batroba, 183 Kendu Muslim Pekee, 215 Kenya advances of African elite, 178–79 agriculture policies, 176, 184 anticolonialism by women, 174–78 civil rights curtailment, 183 colonial law, 174, 175 coup attempt, 122, 181–82 dictatorship, 181, 182–83 discrimination against women, 186–87 dodo songs, 205–6 empowerment of women, 206–7, 216 ethnic cleansing, 182 ethnic violence, 122–23 female activism, 173–74, 175–78, 184–86 Fort Hall incident, 175–77 halt to migration flows, 127 hope following independence, 118 human rights abuses, 119, 122–24, 124–25 internally displaced populations, 117, 122–24 multipartyism restoration, 181–83 one-party regime transition, 178–81 politics, 178–81, 181–83, 183–85, 187 rape, 119, 123, 125, 186

L labor child labor, 136 gendered roles, 132, 135, 198, 199, 201 household work, 136, 138 seasonal in tobacco industry, 138 labor migration and gender divisions in Transkei, 87–88, 99 as marriage strain, 70, 87, 92 social tensions exacerbated by, 93 in South Africa, 69–70 Ladies Liberia School Association, 36–37 Ladies’ Monrovia Literary Institute, 37 Ladner, Joyce, 194 land, women’s access through marriage, 145 land alienation, 148, 175 Land and Freedom Army, 174. See also Mau Mau movement landlessness, 69–70, 93–94 language of dodo songs, 212–13 training in English, 38 of witchcraft, 90 law in colonial Kenya, 174, 175 customary laws, 147–48

323

Index discrimination against women in Kenya, 186–87 media ownership, 269 media regulation, 267–68 political repression in Kenya, 182 Lawrence, J. H., 155–56 Lazaro, Reyes, 144 laziness characterization of blacks, 53–54, 260, 265 leadership of dodo soloists, 207–8 expanded definition of, 199, 303 n. 35 gendered perceptions of, 189–91, 194–95, 198–99 of NAACP, 82–83, 84, 189–91 by women in civil rights movement, 199–202 Leslie, Charles, 47 “Letter Home” (Osbey), 230 Leveau, Marie, 238–39 Levine, Lawrence, 161 Lewis, M. G. “Monk,” 47, 50 Liberia about, 32–33 African inferiority notion, 32–33 education of females, 36–38, 39–40, 279 n. 24 Islam in, 41, 43, 280 n. 50 missionary work in, 34–35, 36, 38–39 Liberia College, 39 Life’s Mosaic, A (Ntantala), 61–62 Lilian Hartford School for Girls, 7 literary associations, 36, 37 literature, 105–6 living standards, improvement by parent-teacher associations, 21–22 Livingston, W. P., 54 Long, Edward, 47, 48, 49, 281 n. 8 Luo society arrests in, 222–23 cultural valuations, 224 dodo songs of, 206 gendered spaces, 207 gender roles in, 224 household importance in, 218–19 marital roles in, 217–18 maternal homes in, 220–21 myths, 224 sociocultural poetics of, 216 songs conveying information, 212 women’s feelings toward womanhood, 219–20 women’s roles in, 221–22 women’s status in, 217–18

lynchings, 25, 26, 74 Lyons, Theresa Cameron, 136, 139

M Maathai, Wangari, 178, 184, 185, 186, 188 Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, 181, 187 Mager, Anne Kelk, 61 Magoya, Nyar, 213–14 Mahlasela, Linda, 65, 71 Mai Chaza Church, 154–57 maiden space, 221 Makhulu Span rebel organization, 97–98 Makhuphula, Gladys, 66 Makiwane, Elijah, 59 Malcomess, C. H., 65 male space, 207 malnutrition, 121, 138 Mamas of Uhuru Park, 185–86, 187 Mammy character, 260 Mammywata, 102–4, 105–6, 111, 113 Manyanos, 66 Marie Crying Eagle (fictional character), 228, 234, 242 Marks, Shula, 253 Marley, Bob, 44 marriage access to husband’s land, 145 arranged, 63 Christian concepts, 63 labor migration as strain, 70, 87, 92 outsider status of wife, 91–92 patrilineal marriage, 217, 219 profit from daughters’ marriages, 146 roles in Luo society, 217–18 and status in dodo groups, 205 Massey, Douglas, 264–65 Masumbu Girls’ Primary School, 13 maternal homes, in Luo society, 220–21 Mathu, M. E., 176 Mau Mau movement, 174–75, 178, 188 Maum’Sue, 162 McCarty, Oseola, 167–69 McCullough, Roxie, 137 media advertising, 268 domestic worker images, 261–63 lack of ownership diversity, 269 minority ownership, 268–69 ownership of, 267–68 as principal source of cultural information, 257–58 regulation of, 267–68

324

Index stereotypes of African American women, 260–61, 263–64 Media Monopoly, The (Bagdikian), 267 Medley, Keith Weldon, 237 Meer, Fatima, 255 men deference to, 197, 198 as majority in South African education, 247, 306 n. 5 in NAACP leadership, 82, 83, 189–91 and skin bleaching, 281 n. 1 Mende secret society, 160 mental slavery, 44–45 Methodist Church and Mai Chaza, 155–57 missionaries in Zimbabwe, 149, 151–54 and Ruwadzano, 154 migration, of African Americans, 130–40, 293 n. 4. See also labor migration Miller, Dora Scott, 138 Miller, Kelly, 131–32 minority-oriented programming, 269 Mintz, Sidney, 159 missionaries African womanhood model, 68–69 in Liberia, 34–35, 36, 38–39 and motherhood, 149–54 in Zimbabwe, 148–49, 151–54 missionary education, 60 Mississippi, Clairborne County, 189–94, 195–99, 200–202 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 201 Mitchener, Reginald, 129–30, 137 M’Mahon, Vincent, 49 Mohammedan Education Ordinance, 5–6 Moi, Daniel arap, 123, 173, 181, 183, 215, 304 n. 7 Moleshe, V. Boniwe, 61, 62 Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott, 262–63 Moodie, Dunbar, 94 Moore, Henrietta, 218–19 Morant Bay Rebellion, 55 mortality rates, by gender, 134 mother archetype, 164–65 Mother Catherine, 228, 238–39, 239–40, 242 Mother Hale, 164 motherhood and African women, 144–45 economic burden of, 145 and Mai Chaza, 154–57

and missionaries, 149–54 in precolonial Shona society, 145–47 in Zimbabwe, 143–44 mother mortality, in Shona society, 153 Mothers in Action, 185–86 Moyamba Girls School, Sierra Leone, 7 Mqhayi, Esther, 66 Mugambi, Helen, 207, 216 music. See also dodo songs blues, 228–29 in cultural transformation, 161 Muslim community. See Islam Musoga, Bernadette, 184 Mwithaga, Mark, 179 My Brother (Kincaid), 111 myth, 100–101, 224

N narcissism, 101, 113 Nash, Diane, 201 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People activism of, 77–80, 82 Brandon in, 189, 195–96 bureaucracy of, 190, 201 in civil rights movement, 189–92 early secrecy of, 195 exhibitions of African American art, 288 n. 29 female leadership, 84 fund raising, 80–81 hierarchy of, 190, 201 in Indianapolis, 73–74, 76–77 male leadership, 82, 83, 189–91 membership building, 197 membership declines, 83 men admitted to ranks in Indianapolis, 81 national and local philosophy disagreement, 83 recruitment of whites, 287 n. 12 reports to black community, 77 as women’s club, 75–76 National Association of Colored Women, 75 National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, 20–21 National Council of Women in Kenya, 185–86 National Islamic Front, 120–21 Ndeti, Agnes, 183 Nduna, Cecilia, 65–66, 71 neighborhoods, racial segregation of, 265 Nerny, May Childs, 81–82

325

Index patronage, of dodo performers, 210–15 Patterson, Orlando, 54 Payne, Charles, 199–200, 201–2 Phelps Stokes report, 10 Phibbah, 48, 281–82 n. 16 philanthropists, alliances with southern educators, 25, 26–27 philanthropy of Jeanes, 276 n. 1 of McCarty, 167–69 of women’s organizations, 77 Picou, Thelma V. (fictional character), 228, 230–31, 242 Plessy v. Ferguson, 27 poetic imagery, 216 political activism. See activism political consciousness, of Kenyan women, 176 politics. See also elections and academy, 253 biased redistricting, 197 dodo songs as political tool, 212–13 parties in Kenya, 183 restoration of multipartyism in Kenya, 181–83 transition to one-party regime in Kenya, 178–81 women in Kenya, 179–81, 183–85, 187 women in Mississippi, 197, 198 Poqo, 291 n. 26 Poro society, 273 n. 4 post-apartheid era, 245 poverty of internally displaced, 124 in Mississippi, 194 need for media scrutiny, 266 in South Africa, 67 in Sudan, 121 power, commentary on, 226 power relations, etiquette in southern states, 20, 27 praise names, 214, 304 n. 13 prejudice African inferiority notion, 32–33, 35–36, 38 against independent women, 96–97 in Jamaica, 47–49 against unmarried women, 63 preschool clinics, 22 Price, Richard, 159 Prince, Nancy Gardner, 53–54 prodemocracy movement, in Kenya, 183–87 propaganda, dodo songs as, 226 prostitution, as last resort, 121 protest

New and Exact Account of Jamaica, A (Leslie), 47 Newbold, N. C., 18, 19, 25–26, 26–27 New Orleans, 228, 237–40, 242 Ngcobo, Lauretta, 251, 307–8 n. 23 Ngilu, Charity, 186, 187, 188 Ngqase, Alice, 64 Njikelana, Lucy, 59–60, 62–64, 65, 71 Njiru, James, 179 Njoku, John E., 206 Nnu Ego (fictional character), 144–45 Noah, Mary V., 61, 62 noblesse oblige, 65 Norris, Lucille, 137 North Carolina Colored Parent Teacher’s Association, 20–22 novels, by African men, 291 n. 9 Ntantala, Phyllis, 61–62 nudity, sexual stigma of, 46, 47 Nugent, Maria, 50 Nwapa, Flora, 105 Nyanjiru, Mary, 185 Nyanza Province, Kenya, 206, 215, 224 Nyquist, Thomas, 61 Nzomo, Maria, 183–84, 187

O Obudo, Isaac, 223–24 Obudo, Salina, 210, 222–23, 304 n. 4 O’Farrell, T. A., 153 Ogot, Grace, 183 Ogunyemi, Chikwenye, 102–4, 106 Ojiambo, Julia, 183 Onyango, Grace, 179, 183 oral tradition, 206, 216 Oruma Women’s Group, 210, 211, 222–24 Osbey, Brenda Marie, 227–42 Osolo, Rose, 183 Osterhammel, Jürgen, 46 Osun, 102, 103–4 Otieno, Wambui, 180–81, 184, 188 Our Mart, 197, 198, 199 Owala, Aloyce, 210 Oyewumi, Oyeronke, 4

P parent-teacher organizations, 20–22 Passion Fish (film), 261 pass ordinances, 174 paternalism, 40, 247 Paton, Diana, 52 patrilineal marriage, 217, 219

326

Index attitudes of, 195 gumboot dancing, 252, 308 n. 28 by naked women in Africa, 251–52, 308 n. 27 psychology of African American women, 165–66

black women, 254 physical dangers to, 307 n. 18 white women, 249–50, 252–53 ring shout ceremony, 161 Ritch, Dawn, 44 ritual in folk healing, 166 in Osbey poetry, 241–42 in secret societies, 160 ritual cursing, 185 River Mumma, 102. See also Mammywata Robinson, Jenny, 254, 255 Robinson, Ruby Doris Smith, 201 Rodley, Nigel, 185 Roman Catholic Church, 6, 237, 238 Roxy, Minnie, 137 Royall, Louise, 76 rural life. See farms Ruwadzano, 152–54, 156

Q Queen Mother Moore, 164

R race consciousness, 84, 254–55 race riots, 74 racial conflict, black and white researchers, 249–50 racism “bantu studies,” 248, 253, 307 n. 16 Caribbean settler ideology, 47–49 need for media scrutiny, 266 obsession with racial purity, 49 pervasiveness in Mississippi, 194 toward the “other,” 46 white women confronting, 254 rape of refugee women in Kenya, 119, 123, 125 and sexually transmitted diseases, 124 of women politician in Kenya, 186 Rea, Fred, 155–56 rebel organizations, 97–98, 174–75, 178, 188 refugees camp conditions in Kenya, 123, 124–25, 126 conventions of international aid organizations, 118 government-sponsored roundups in Kenya, 125 and international aid organizations, 125–28 Somali women in Kenya, 118–19 Sudanese women in Kenya, 119–20 women as majority of, 117 Release Political Prisoners group, 185 religion. See also specific religions of African origin, 228, 236–37, 238 humanistic-existential view of, 168 orientation of African American women, 166–67 Renny, Robert, 47, 50, 51 researchers black assistants, 249, 253, 307 n. 18

S Sacks, Karen, 199 sacred daily life about, 158–59 of African American women, 163–69 African and African diaspora communities, 162–63, 169 as alternative consciousness, 169 historical background, 159–62 Sande society, 160, 163, 273 n. 4 santeria, 238 Schick, Tom, 35–36 scholarship, in South Africa, 246–48, 253–54, 254–56 Scott, Blanche, 136, 138, 139 Scott, Minnie, 76 Scott, W. E., 81 secret societies importance in Africa, 159 linkage between Africa and African Americans, 161 ritual in, 160 in Sierra Leone, 5, 273 n. 4 segregation of black America, 264–65 in factories, 138 as migration factor, 130 in schools, 77, 84, 288 n. 14 in South African higher education, 247, 306 n. 9, 306 n. 10 women’s organizations against, 77–78 self-construction, dodo as, 208 self-help groups, 206–7

327

Index Senior, Olive, 55 Sewell, William, 53, 54 sexism, 247 sex ratios, African Americans, 133–34, 135t sexual abuse, need for media scrutiny, 267 sexual domination, literary negation of, 107–11 sexual exploitation, of female slaves, 48–49 sexuality, media depictions of blacks, 259 sexually transmitted diseases, 124, 126 Sherbro secret society, 160 Shields, Rudy, 191, 192–93 Shikuku, Martin, 179 Shitakha, Theresa, 183 Shona society, 145–47, 149–50, 151, 153 Shorunkeh-Sawyerr, A. J., 9 Sibley, Josiah, 32–33 Sierra Leone. See also colonial education, Sierra Leone colonial government, 3 education in postcolonial period, 14–16 education in precolonial period, 5 governance of, 272 n. 1 Simone, Nina, 227, 228, 229–30, 242 skin bleaching, 44, 281 n. 1 Slater, A. R., 12 slavery benevolence toward enslaved, 50 childbearing in, 50–51 and cultural forms, 161–62 Emancipation Act, Britain, 52–54 in Jamaica, 47–52 resettlement of freed slaves to Liberia, 32 slave trade acknowledgment in modern African literature, 105 childlessness associated with wealth from, 105 fictional depictions of, 291 n. 9 social interaction between Europeans and Africans, 104 Smith, Bessie, 227 SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), 201 social class and female education, 14 in Liberia, 32–33 in migration strategies, 130 racial prejudice in Jamaica, 47–49 shared understandings of, 254–55

tension within women’s organizations, 64–66 social commentary, in dodo songs, 224–26 social events, and dodo performances, 209 social hierarchies black women in, 256, 264 media depictions of, 258 ratification by media, 267 socialization, through dodo songs, 221 social movements, dependence on interaction of members, 199 social reality, in dodo songs, 205 social services, in Kenya, 125, 126 social status with motherhood, 146 in Sande society, 160 sought by dodo singers, 214 social systems, in African American community, 20 social tensions ascribed to supernatural forces, 90 exacerbated by labor migration, 93 soloist, in dodo groups, 207–8, 225 Somalia civil war, 119 refugee crisis, 118–19 as U.S. client, 118–19 Somali National Movement, 119 Somali Patriotic Movement, 119 Sondlo, Tandi, 71 “Sor Juana” (Osbey), 240–41, 242 soul cleansing, 161–62 South Africa. See also Transkei region, South Africa academic life and scholarship, 246–48, 253–54, 254–56 “black” as term, 306 n. 3 “colored” as term, 306 n. 8 labor migration, 69–70 Natives Land Act, 69–70 post-apartheid era, 245 poverty, 67 professional black women lack, 251 universities, 246–48, 306 n. 4, 306 n. 6 women’s movement, 247–48 women’s studies conferences, 248–50, 250–51, 251–53, 253–54 Southern Rhodesia, 147 Spingarn, Joel, 82 spirituality of African American women, 162 in Christian form, 157 in daily life, 165 female water spirit, 100–101 and fertility, 146

328

Index in folk healing, 166 humanistic-existential view of, 168 as predominately African, 237 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 54 Standley, Anne, 194 starvation, in Sudan, 120–21 Steady, Filomina, 228, 235–36, 237 stereotypes of African American women, 232–34, 260–61, 263–64 media worldview, 265 sexuality stereotypes of women, 54, 259 Stichter, Sharon, 143 Story of the Jamaican People, 55–56 storytelling, 166 Stuckey, Sterling, 161 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 201 subsistence farming, 206 Sudan civil war, 120 internally displaced populations, 120–22 Islamic law imposition, 120 women refugees from, 119–20 Sudan People’s Liberation Army, 120, 121 Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, 120 suicide, 231–32 supernatural forces female water spirit, 100–101 social tensions ascribed to, 90 survival quality of life, 162

Tibbets, Alexandra, 185 tikoloshe, 89, 93 tobacco industry in Durham, 129–30, 132, 135, 137–38 female labor force, 132, 137–38 seasonal labor in, 138 torture acceptance of dehumanization by victim, 110 of women refugees in Kenya, 124 Transkei region, South Africa labor migration and gender divisions, 87–88 landlessness in, 93–94 state intervention in agriculture, 93 taxation effects, 94–95, 96–97 vulnerability of women, 94–96 Trollope, Anthony, 53 Tungu, Ruth Wangari, 185 twin infanticide, 149–50, 154 Tyson, Cicely, 261

U Uhuru Park Mamas, 185–86, 187 United Brethren in Christ Church, 7 United Methodist Church, 6 United Nations, 126, 181 United Somali Congress, 119 Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, 164 University of Cape Town, 247, 306 n. 10 University of Mississippi, 167 University of the Western Cape, 246–47 unmarried women prejudice toward, 63 as threat in rural Transkei, 91 urban migration, 130–40

T taxation effects in Transkei region, 94–95, 96–97 equated with collaboration with state, 97–99 Taylor, Codelia, 163–64 Taylor, Olivia, 84 Telecommunications Act of 1966, 268, 269 television imagery of blacks, 258–61 imagery of whites, 259 need for accurate portrayals of African Americans, 266–67 Temne secret society, 160 Thiong’o, Ngugi wa, 179, 181 Thistlewood, Thomas, 47, 48, 49, 55, 281–82 n. 16

V Vassell, Florentinus, 48 Vassell, Linnette, 55 verbal oration, 208 vernacular instruction, 9 Verwoerd, H. F., 245 Vidal, Polly, 51 violence, need for media scrutiny, 266 vodun, 238 voodoo, 236–37. See also hoodoo voter-registration campaigns, 192–93, 199

329

Index

W

in civil rights movement, 189–94, 195–99, 200–202 as educators, 17–18 emigrants to Liberia, 31–32 empowerment in Kenya, 206–7, 216 hierarchical placement of blacks, 256, 264 in Mississippi politics, 197, 198 negative representations of, 46, 50–52, 53 as primary African American migrants, 131 self-sufficiency of, 43 sexual exploitation of female slaves, 48–49 sexuality stereotypes, 54 sexual stigma of nudity, 46, 47 in socially ambiguous positions in colonial era, 91 twentieth-century writings on, 54–56 unmarried, 63, 91 value in missionary movement, 38–39 Women of Colour Consciousness Raising, 256 Women’s Civic Club, Indianapolis, 76–84 women’s era, 73 women’s history, 54 Women’s Improvement Club, Indianapolis, 81 women’s organizations class tension in, 64–66 ethnic tensions in, 66 in Kenya, 181, 185–86, 187, 188 network of black organizations, 76–77 philanthropy of, 77 rivalry among, 60, 62–64 for social change, 73, 75 in South Africa, 255, 283 n. 4, 284 n. 12 women’s studies “Black Women by and for Ourselves” conference, 250–51 “Colloquium on Masculinities” conference, 253 “Conference on Women and Gender in Southern Africa,” 248–50 “Gender and Colonialism” conference,” 253 interest in South Africa, 247 “Promoting Women’s History” conference, 251–53 Woodard, Alfre, 261 words, power of, 166

Wade-Gayles, Gloria, 162 Wako, Amos, 185 Walker, Cherryl, 254–55 Wamwere, Koigi wa, 185 Wamwere, Monica Wangu, 185 Warfield-Coppock, Nsenga, 163 Washington, Booker T., 74 Washington, Dinah, 227 Washington, Justine, 23 Washington, Mary Helen, 242 Wesley, John, 153 Wesleyans, 6, 8, 13 western cultural bias, 61 Western culture, inculcating in Shona society, 151 White, Gray, 84 white nationalism, in Kenya, 174 whites, images in entertainment media, 259 white supremacy, 84, 195–96 widowhood mother status critical to, 147 rates among migrants, 136 wife beating, 218 Williams, Cynric, 44, 47, 50, 51–52 Williams, Delores, 162 Wilmot, Swithin, 52 Wilson, Monica, 91 witchcraft allegations in rural Transkei region, 87–88 anthropological interpretations of, 90 apartheid-era accusations, 90 distressed economy as factor in allegations, 92–93 equated with collaboration with state, 97–99 evolution from precolonial period, 88–90 and gender-based conflict, 88 illustrations of female vulnerability, 95–96 imputation as illegal act, 93 labor migration as exacerbating factor, 93 witchdoctors, 291 n. 26 Witwatersrand University, 247 womanhood, women’s feelings toward in Luo society, 219–20 women. See also African American women; African women; female education bahalia women, 238–39

330

Index

X

YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association), 66

Xhosa dress, 59–60, 63, 64, 65 Xhosa identity, 66–67 Xuela (fictional character), 101, 107–11, 112–13

Z Zenzele clubs, 60–61, 62–64 Zenzele History (Noah and Moleshe), 61, 62 Zimbabwe missionaries in, 148–49, 149–54 and motherhood, 143–44 Zulu identity, 66

Y Yergan, Max, 61 Yergan, Susie Wiseman, 61–64 Yoruba religion, 228, 237

331