This massacre further fueled an ongoing statewide disfranchisement campaign designed to crush black political power. Contemporary white chronicles of the event, such as those printed in the Raleigh News and Observer and Wilmington's The Morning Star, either blamed the African American community for the violence or justified white actions as necessary to keep the peace. African American writers produced their own accounts-including fictional examinations-that countered these white supremacist claims and highlighted the heroic struggles of the black community against racist injustice."
Black congressmen, who, as a rule, were better educated than their white colleagues were expelled from Congress.
Either Gloria Steinem hasn't done her homework, or as an ideologue rejects evidence that's a Google away, and the patriarchal corporate old media, which has appointed her the spokesperson for feminism, permits her ignorance to run rampant over the emails and blogs of the nation and though this white Oprah might have inspired her followers to march lockstep behind her, a progressive like Cindy Sheehan wasn't convinced. She called Mrs. Clinton's crying act," phony."
Moreover, some of the suffragettes that she and her followers hail as feminist pioneers were racists. Some even endorsed the lynching of black men. In an early clash between a black and white feminist, anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells opposed the views of Frances Willard, a suffragette pioneer, who advocated lynching.
"As the president of one of America's foremost social reform organizations, Frances Willard called for the protection of the purity of white womanhood from threats to morality and safety. In her attempts to bring Southern women into the W.C.T.U., Frances Willard accepted the rape myth and publicly condoned lynching and the color line in the South. Wells argued that as a Christian reformer, Willard should be speaking out against lynching, but instead seemed to support the position of Southerners."
Ms. Willard's point of view is echoed by Susan Brownmiller's implying that Emmett Till got what he deserved, and the rush to judgment on the part of New York feminists whose pressure helped to convict the black and Hispanic kids accused of raping a stockbroker in Central Park. After DNA proved their innocence (the police promised them if they confessed, they could go home), a Village Voice reporter asked the response of these feminists to this news; only Susan Brownmiller responded. She said that regardless of the scientific evidence, she still believed that the children, who spent their youth in jail, on the basis of the hysteria generated by Donald Trump, the press, and leading New York feminists, were guilty.
Feminist hero, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, offended Frederick Douglass--an abolitionist woman attempted to prevent his daughter from gaining entrance to a girls' school--when she referred to black men as "sambos." She was an unabashed white supremacist. She said in 1867," [w]ith the black man we have no new element in government, but with the education and elevation of women, we have a power that is to develop the Saxon race into a higher and nobler life."
Steinem should read. Race, Rape, and Lynching by Sandra Gunning, and Angela Davis's excellent Women, Culture, & Politics," which includes a probing examination of racism in the suffragette movement. The Times allowed only one black feminist to weigh in on Ms. Steinem's comments about Barack Obama, and how he appealed to white men because they perceive black males as more "masculine" than they, an offensive stereotype, and one that insults the intelligence of white men, and a comment which, with hope, doesn't reflect the depth of "progressive" women's thought.
Do you think that the Times would offer Steinem critics like Toni Morrison Op-ed space to rebut her? Don't count on it. The criticism of white feminism by black women has been repressed for over one hundred years (Black Women Abolitionists, A Study In Activism,1828-1860,by Shirley J.Yee).
I asked Jill Nelson, author of Finding Martha's Vineyard, Volunteer Slavery and Sexual Healing, how she felt about Gloria Steinem's use of a hypothetical black woman to make a point against Obama. She wrote:
"I was offended and frankly, surprised, by Gloria Steinem's use of a hypothetical Black woman in her essay supporting Hillary Clinton. I would have liked to think that after all these years struggling in the feminist vineyards, Black women have become more than a hypothetical to be used when white women want to make a point, and a weak one at that, on our backs. It's a device, a distraction, and disingenuous, and fails to hold Hillary Clinton - or for that matter, Barack Obama and the rest of the (male) candidates - responsible for their politics."
On the second day of a convention held at Seneca Falls, 1848, white suffragettes sought to prevent black abolitionist Sojourner Truth from speaking. The scene was described by Frances Dana Gage in Ms. Davis's book:
"Don't let her speak!" gasped half a dozen in my ear. She moved slowly and solemnly to the front, laid her old bonnet at her feet, and turned her great speaking eyes to me. There was a hissing sound of disapprobation above and below. I rose and announce 'Sojourner Truth,' and begged the audience to keep silence for a few moments."
Many minority feminists, Asian-American, Hispanic, Native-American and African-American, contend that white middle and upper class feminists' insensitivity to the views and issues deemed important to them persists to this day.
Their proof might be Ms. Steinem's lack of concern about how Ms. Clinton's war votes affect the lives of thousands of women and girls--her brown sisters--in Iraq and Iran. One hundred and fifty thousand Iraqi people have been killed since the American occupation was ordered by patriarchs in Washington D.C., patriarchs who were responsible for the welfare reform act.
With this in mind, I recently asked Robin Morgan, who was editor of Ms. magazine, when I was called the worst misogynist in America, whether she still held those views. I replied to this accusation that I should be accorded the same respect given to the men who ran the magazine at the time, Lang Communications. It was made by Barbara Smith, a black feminist whom I debated on television and whose bitter comments about the white feminist movement make mine seem timid. She also criticizes the white Gay and Lesbian movements. She said that when she tried to join the Gay and Lesbian March on Washington, the leaders told her to get lost. That they weren't interested in black issues. That they wanted to mainstream.
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