Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism

In 1851, Sojourner Truth, a Black woman, took the stage at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. Born into slavery in 1797, Truth grew up on a New York estate and experienced physical violence at the hands of her enslavers. In 1827, she escaped with her infant daughter and sued her former enslaver for custody of her son, making her the first Black woman to take legal action against a white man and win. In 1843, she experienced a religious conversion and felt called to share her story with others. By the time she reached Akron, Truth was an established abolitionist speaker. She traveled across the country, asking her audiences to turn their eyes to the reality of slavery and the specific impacts the institution had on Black women. At the convention in 1851, Truth reacted strongly when white men began to take over the meeting, and she argued that she deserved the same respect and rights as men and white women.

Sojourner Truth had a strong and revolutionary message: Black women, who experienced the most oppressive effects of sexism and racism within the institution of slavery, were excluded from the conversation about liberation. At the convention, Truth challenged any focus on women’s rights that failed to include the anti-slavery movement. One published version of her speech included the repeated question, “Ain’t I a woman?” The question echoed an 18th-century British abolitionist slogan: “Am I not a man and a brother?” Truth demanded that the white audience consider how the abolitionist and feminist movements intersected. Racism and sexism were intertwined, and one could not be separated from the other. Truth wanted her audiences to recognize that oppression for some is oppression for all, and that freedom must be an inclusive endeavor.

In addition to Truth, early activists like Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell drew attention to the overlooked experiences of Black women. Cooper, born into slavery in 1858, formed the Colored Women’s League and pushed for classical education for Black students over the vocational approach for which Booker T. Washington advocated. Terrell was the first Black woman to earn a college degree and serve on a city school board in 1895. She worked to elevate educational opportunities for Black women. These women paved the way for continued activism and scholarship.

In the 1980s, scholar and theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality,” citing hooks’s Ain’t I a Woman as a foundational text for the concept. Crenshaw and other scholars recognized a disparity: Americans want to believe that racism ended with the civil rights movement in the 1960s, but racism is pervasive and persistent. Critical race theory emerged as a way of examining how institutionalized racism shaped and continues to influence American policies and systems.

Crenshaw asserted that American economic and social structures are built upon a foundation of white dominance, and dismantling these structures requires consistent critical effort. She published an article entitled “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” in the University of Chicago Legal Forum in 1989, applying critical race theory to three legal cases to expose how both racism and sexism uniquely marginalize Black women. In her paper, Crenshaw argues that the experiences of Black women are not the same as the experiences of all women or the experiences of Black men. The experiences of Black women are unique because they stand at the crossroads of sexism and racism.

bell hooks recognizes the interlocking bricks of these two oppressive pillars as she asks Sojourner Truth’s question once more in Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Like Truth, hooks recognized the imbalance of feminism and its failure to include Black women. Like Crenshaw, hooks understood that white dominator culture uniquely challenges and silences Black women. hooks saw a correlation between the women’s suffrage movement and the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s; in both demonstrations, activists failed to include and acknowledge Black women.

In Ain’t I a Woman, hooks argues that the failure to include women begins with the intersectionality of racism and sexism that renders Black women invisible to others. The term “woman” is often associated only with white women, excluding Black women from the identity of womanhood. Meanwhile, hooks asserts that the identity of being Black is often associated only with Black men; scholarly focus on enslavement emphasizes the impact on Black men and the alleged emasculation they experienced by being denied patriarchal positions of power. Denied access to their identities as either Black or female, Black women are placed in a position of intersectional invisibility.