scholarly journals Conjuring Hands: The Art of Curious Women of Color

Hypatia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Gloria J. Wilson ◽  
Joni Boyd Acuff ◽  
Venessa López
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American Woman ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Art Educators ◽  
The World

The verb “to conjure” is a complex one, for it includes in its standard definition a great range of possible actions or operations, not all of them equivalent, or even compatible. In its most common usage, “to conjure” means to perform an act of magic or to invoke a supernatural force, by casting a spell, say, or performing a particular ritual or rite. But “to conjure” is also to influence, to beg, to command or constrain, to charm, to bewitch, to move or convey, to imagine, to visualize, to call to mind, or to remember. —Rachael DeLue 2012, para 1. When we create with our Brown hands, feminine energy, and full spirits, we conjure. To exist, survive, and thrive in these bodies is a continuous act of conjuring. Our walks conjure. Our smiles conjure. Our tears conjure. Our laughs conjure. Our words conjure. Our artworks are conjurings. We, a Black/Filipina-American woman, a Dominican-American, and a Black-American woman, are guided by our solidarity with one another and all other Black and Brown female identifying persons whose raced and gendered subjectivities exist both inside and outside of colonization, white supremacy, and patriarchy. We bring to life our colored imaginations and curiosities, and share them with the world. We are united by our need for safety, autonomy as beings, dissolution of trauma, and desire to ask, “What would happen if I…?” Imaginative, curious Women of Color (WoC) founded the underground railroad, guided captured Africans and Tainos to the mountains, ignited the Civil Rights Movement, organized laborers and immigrants, birthed the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, conceived the #MeToo Movement, and so much more. Like our kindred counterparts, we have an unrelenting urge to examine, question, wonder, desire, speak to, lead, be curious, and “conjure.” As practicing artists and art educators, our critical arts-based practices are grounded in intersectional feminisms like Womanism, Black Feminist Theory, and Chicana Feminist Theory, which allow us to do these very things.

Teaching Freedom Song as Antiracist Praxis

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-465
Author(s):  
Stephen Stacks
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Music Curriculum ◽  
Black Freedom Movement ◽  
Integral Component ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Freedom Movement

In the teaching of history, oversimplification is, perhaps, unavoidable. In certain cases, however, that oversimplification can be deadly. There are some lessons that are too complex, some stories that are too nuanced, to be reduced in such a way. By their contours and particularities, they resist easy digestion. In the spirit of this particularity, my contribution to the colloquy is specific, but hopefully applicable to contexts beyond its specificity: I argue that the US Black Freedom Movement (or civil rights movement) and its music is a story that must be taught in all its complexity, for oversimplifying it does concrete harm to the ongoing struggle against white supremacy in the present. Teaching the US Black Freedom Movement and its music is also vital if we hope to enable our students to be forces of understanding, healing, and justice in the world, and should be an integral component of any undergraduate music curriculum that hopes to be antiracist.

Racial Realities

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Natsu Taylor Saito
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Empowerment ◽  
American Indian Movement ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s, global decolonization and the civil rights movement inspired hope for structural change in the United States, but more than fifty years later, racial disparities in income and wealth, education, employment, health, housing, and incarceration remain entrenched. In addition, we have seen a resurgence of overt White supremacy following the election of President Trump. This chapter considers the potential of movements like Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock water protectors in light of the experiences of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and other efforts at community empowerment in the “long sixties.”

Selling White Supremacy in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Party ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
Sustained Effort ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces South African foreign policy responses to the civil rights movement in the United States. It explores how the National Party engaged with the racial politics of the Cold War in an attempt legitimize apartheid to an increasingly sceptical global audience. The National Party did not shy away from challenging negative portrayals of apartheid. In the United States, South African diplomatic officials mounted a systematic propaganda campaign to correct “misconceptions” and present the apartheid system in a positive light. Equating black protest with communist subversion, South African diplomats engaged in a deliberate and sustained effort to defend apartheid in the United States.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Azaransky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The World ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Independence Movements

The introduction describes a group of black Christian intellectuals and activists who looked abroad, even in other religious traditions, for ideas and practices that could fuel a racial justice movement in the United States. They envisioned an American racial justice movement akin to independence movements that were gaining ground around the world. The American civil rights movement would be, as Martin Luther King Jr., later described it, “part of this worldwide struggle.”

scholarly journals “Hell Is Popping Here in South Carolina”: Orangeburg County Black Teachers and Their Community in the Immediate Post-Brown Era

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-62
Author(s):  
Candace Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Teachers ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Training School ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Equal Education ◽  
Long Civil Rights Movement

When the South Carolina legislature created the anti-NAACP oath in 1956, teachers across the state lost their positions. But it was the dismissal of twenty-one teachers at the Elloree Training School that captured the attention of the NAACP and Black media outlets. In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, South Carolina's Black and White communities went head-to-head in the battle over White supremacy versus expanded civil rights. The desegregation movement in 1955 and 1956 placed Black teachers’ activism in the spotlight—activism that mirrored what was happening in their community. This largely unknown episode of civil rights activism demonstrates that Black teachers were willing to serve not only as behind-the-scenes supporters in the equal education struggle but as frontline activists. Furthermore, it shows that South Carolina was an integral site of the long civil rights movement.

Breaking White Supremacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Dorrien
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Civil Rights Movements ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Martin Luther King

Breaking White Supremacy analyzes the twentieth-century heyday of the black social gospel and its influence on the Civil Rights Movement. Asserting that Martin Luther King Jr. did not come from nowhere, it describes major figures who influenced King, offers a detailed analysis of King’s leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and his catalyzing and unifying role in the southern and northern Civil Rights Movements, and interprets the legacy of King and the black social gospel tradition.

God, Morality, and Politics

1979 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-9
Author(s):  
Eugene Carson Blake
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
National Council ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
The World ◽  
Church And Society ◽  
World Council ◽  
National Council Of Churches

Eugene Carson Blake has in recent years been actively associated with the Christian citizens' movement, Bread for the World. Before retiring as Secretary of the World Council of Churches in 1972, he served both church and society in many leading capacities, as a distinguished pastor, the chief executive officer of his denomination (the United Presbyterian Church), university and seminary trustee, and president of the National Council of Churches. In 1960, he preached a sermon in the Episcopal Cathedral of San Francisco, where the late James A. Pike was Bishop. This sermon, welcomed by the Bishop, led to the establishment of the Consultation on Church Union. In the forefront of the civil rights movement, Blake was jailed, vilified, and denounced as a communist. In 1978, he was made the subject of a biography, Eugene Carson Blake: Prophet With Portfolio, by R. Douglas Brackenridge (Seabury Press). This present essay is a revised version of an address delivered at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, as “The Willson Lecture.”

Sisters in the Life

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 76-86
Author(s):  
Yvonne Welbon ◽  
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Keyword(s):  
Women Of Color ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Queer Women ◽  
Media Arts ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
Queer Women Of Color ◽  
Media Project

Yvonne Welbon, an award-winning filmmaker and founder of the Chicago-based nonprofit Sisters in Cinema, interviews Alexis Pauline Gumbs, cofounder of the Black Feminist Film School, as part of a larger trans-media project on the history of queer Black lesbian media makers, SistersintheLife.com. Gumbs speaks about Black feminist practices of education and filmmaking, delving into the founding and inspiration of the Black Feminist Film School and its mission to “create the world anew.” She explains her “community accountable practice” that is connected to traditions of Black intellectualism, her position as provost of a “tiny Black feminist university” that she calls Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, as well as how she and her collaborators have been inspired by QWOCMAP (Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project).

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