Black women know
how to stand up against the powers that be, make
history and provide for a good photo op at the
same time. Black women have stood up to the
power of the state - armed police and all - and
have not flinched, and have not backed down.
That’s that Harriett Tubman energy right there.
In
recent years, there was the iconic photo of Ieshia
Evans, a Black woman and a nurse from
Pennsylvania who stood graceful and silent
against a formation of riot police in the
summer of 2016 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Evans was among a group of protesters who
demonstrated in the wake of the police deaths
of Alton
Sterling in
Baton Rouge, and Philando
Castile in Minneapolis, and were arrested for blocking a
highway. Back
in 2017, filmmaker Matthew
A. Cherry had
highlighted photos of Evans and other Black
women standing up to police in a Twitter
thread.
A
year earlier, Bree
Newsome Bass,
another
Black woman, made the daring move to climb a
30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina State
Capitol and remove the Confederate flag. “You
come against me with hatred, oppression, and
violence,” said Newsome Bass, an educator
and organizer from North Carolina. “I come
against you in the name of God. This flag
comes down today.” She was arrested for taking
a stand, which came only ten days after the
horrific massacre at the Mother
Emanuel A.M.E. Church in
Charleston, where a white supremacist killed
eight Black parishioners and their pastor.
Back in the day, there was the Black woman who punched a
police officer in the face, or another who
smoked a cigarette while standing next to an
armed officer, and yet another who shoved away
a national guardsman’s rifle.
In
another iconic photo from back in the day, Louise
Meriwether (a.k.a.
Louisa Jenkins), a writer and activist, is
shown nonchalantly smoking a cigarette while
standing next to two police officers
questioning her at a protest.
Then
there was Gloria
Richardson,
who shoved away the bayonet of a National
Guardsman during a 1963
protest in
Cambridge, Maryland. As a civil rights
activist and the leader of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, Richardson
fought against racial segregation and
discrimination in the Maryland city.
And
finally, there is the photo of a Black woman
punching a Milwaukee police
officer during the civil unrest of the summer
of 1967.
That image is powerful, capturing the anger
and frustration not only of that particular
woman, but also the rage and despair facing
Black people during that long hot summer, when
police violence and bad police-community
relations were under the spotlight. As the Kerner
Commission reported
on the causes of the 1967 urban uprisings that
took place throughout the nation, “The police are not merely a
‘spark’ factor. To some Negroes police have
come to symbolize white power, white racism
and white repression. And the fact is that
many police do reflect and express these
white attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility
and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread
belief among Negroes in the existence of
police brutality and in a ‘double standard’
of justice and protection - one for Negroes
and one for whites.”
Decades before Black Lives Matter, Black women were
showing up, showing out, and showing us how to
do it. And today, they continue to hold it
down and speak truth to power. The pictures
tell the story and provide us with everything
we need to know. Sisters, we salute you.
