Tag Archives: Barbara Jordan

Women Whose Statues Should be in the Town Squares

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Laurie and Debbie say:

For those of us who are in agreement that the world needs fewer (or no) statues of Confederate “heroes” and slave owners, what do we want in their place?

For starters, how about some statues of women who are being honored for what they did, not how they looked?

We got the idea from Transgriot, who lives in Houston. She suggests three Houston politicians. They are all excellent choices; the one we’ll focus on here is Barbara Jordan.

Here’s Transgriot’s reasoning:

She became in 1967 the first (and sadly so far) only Black woman elected to the Texas Senate and the first Black Texan to be elected to the Texas Legislature since Reconstruction.  

She then made history again by getting elected to the US House of Representatives in the newly created 18th Congressional District in 1972.   She … made two historic keynote speeches to Democratic national conventions in 1976 and 1992 and was the ethics advisor for Gov Ann Richards.

She made history even when she died in 1996.   She became the first Black Texan to be interred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.

A staunch warrior for civil rights throughout her lifetime, Jordan spoke in favor of impeaching Richard Nixon.

 

Far too few people remember Barbara Jordan at all, or could tell you anything specific she did or said. Even fewer people remember–or ever knew–that she was a Lesbian, though she chose to keep that fairly quiet. Here’s Corinne Werder, writing about Jordan as a queer woman history forgot:

Though Jordan wasn’t out as a lesbian, she made no secret of her life companion Nancy Earl, an educational psychologist. The couple met in the most lesbian of ways: on a camping trip in the late 60s. According to the Jordan Rustin Coalition, “Jordan never publicly acknowledged her sexual orientation, but in her obituary, the Houston Chronicle mentioned her longtime relationship with Earl. After Jordan’s initial unsuccessful statewide races, advisers warned her to become more discreet and not bring any female companions on the campaign trail.” 

The “Jordan Rustin Coalition” also honors Bayard Rustin, who deserves a whole post (and a lot of statues) of his own.

(The University of Texas does have a statue of Barbara Jordan, which they’ve displayed since 2009. However, universities are very different from public squares, and the woman certainly deserves more than one statue.)

In this week’s reading, we came across another woman whose statue we’d like to see. We don’t know if Portland has any “racist hero” statues it needs to take down, but in the unlikely event that it doesn’t, the city can still put up a memorial to Marie Equi.

Stephanie Buck tells Equi’s story at Timeline.

She carried a banner. “Prepare to die, workingmen,” it warned. “J.P. Morgan & Co. want preparedness for profit. Thou shalt not kill.” It was June of 1916, and the country was headed for war. The town of Portland, Oregon, was holding a preparedness parade, a show of patriotic unity and an effort to drum up support. Then Marie Equi, a lesbian anarchist and abortionist, showed up with her banner.

“The lawyers attacked me first, then the Knights of Columbus,” she recounted later that night at the police station. A group of men marching in the parade approached her car and tore the sign to pieces. One struck her with a staff and a scuffle ensued. Equi was bruised and her hand bloodied. Then another man offered her an American flag. “I was perfectly calm. I said, ‘Very well, brave American gentlemen, your flag is no protection to me,’” and she tore it up.

Equi got her medical degree around the turn of the last century. She was an open Lesbian, in a relationship with a brewing heiress whose family kept trying to disinherit her. Around 1915, the couple adopted a daughter (that must be an interesting story in itself!).

In 1913, she attended a Portland cannery strike where female laborers (and some of her patients) argued for better wages, with some making only five cents per hour. Especially during summer, conditions in the factory were dangerous: Despite the heat, floor bosses locked the doors to keep workers productive and union organizers outside.

One day, the strike turned violent and Equi clashed with counter-protesters. Then she watched as a police officer struck and forcibly dragged a pregnant woman to jail. It was the last straw. She declared herself an anarchist and a socialist, and publicly supported the radical labor union Industrial Workers of the World. Days after the strike, she climbed onto a chair in the middle of Portland’s city hall and threatened to “shed blood” if anyone stood in the way of the cause. Her weapon, she snarled, would be a poisoned hat pin to cause a “slow and lingering death.”

She was friends (and perhaps lovers) with Margaret Sanger, and also a close ally of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. And yet, her name is even further from being a household word than Jordan’s is. Between us, we know a lot of women’s history — and queer women’s history — and neither of us had heard of Equi until we found Buck’s article.

Lesbian photographer and activist Tee Corinne always spoke up for Lesbian history, and for remembering the sexual orientation of both women who had to keep their choices quiet to survive or thrive, and women who lived openly in dangerous times and places.

We’re rooting for a statue of Jordan in Houston and a statue of Equi in Portland. And we’re also imagining a whole sculpture garden of women who changed the world for the better–we know many more we can write about in future blogs.  Let’s put up the statues where lots of people can come and appreciate the amazing things these women have done and, for a change, remember them.

Freedom’s Sisters

Laurie says:

The Freedom’s Sisters Exhibition is at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.  The website is an exhibition in it’s own right.

Much of our national memory of the civil rights movement is embodied by male figureheads whose visibility in boycotts, legal proceedings, and mass demonstrations dominated newspaper and television coverage in the 1950s and 1960s. While less prominent in the media, a group of extraordinary women also shaped much of the spirit and substance of civil rights in America, just as their mothers and grandmothers had done for decades. That … brings to life 20 African American women. The women range from key 19th century historical figures to contemporary leaders who have fought for equality for people of color.

The National Civil Rights Museum is … at the Lorraine Motel, the assassination site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It chronicles key episodes of the American civil rights movement and the legacy of this movement to inspire participation in civil and human rights efforts globally. The Freedom’s Sisters exhibit runs through 2013.

Melissa Harris-Perry did a tour of the exhibition that’s fascinating

It was hard to decide which women I would blog about here since all of them are remarkable heroes.

Septima Poinsette Clark was any early civil rights warrior in the 19th century that I have always admired.


The photo is from Brian Lanker’s book I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America.  The book is a series of superb fine art portraits.

Clark is known as the “Grandmother of the Civil Rights Movement” because of her work for equal access to education and civil rights for African Americans several decades before the rise of national awareness of racial inequality. In 1919, she became involved in the NAACP and persuaded community members to sign petitions to allow blacks to become principals in Charleston’s public schools and enjoyed the legal victory when they were given that right. Clark was later fired from her job because of a legislature that banned city and state employees from being involved with civil rights organizations.

I heard Barbara Jordan‘s speech at the 1976 Democratic Convention.  It knocked me out.  She was a stunning, charismatic, forceful and cogent speaker.

 

A champion of the poor and disadvantaged, Jordan sponsored the Workmen’s Compensation Act, increasing maximum benefits paid to injured workers and the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. She won a seat in the Texas Senate in 1966 becoming the first African American state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in that body. Jordan was considered by President Jimmy Carter for Attorney General or Ambassador to the United Nations, but chose to remain in the U.S. House. She received national recognition for becoming the first African American to keynote a major political convention in 1976.

 

Ida B. Wells is someone whose life I’ve be interested in for years.  Wells was amazingly brave in her long battle against  lynching at a time when it was extremely dangerous. She was an impressive and powerful speaker and traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours.

Civil rights advocate, fearless anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women’s rights advocate, journalist and speaker, Wells became a public figure in Memphis in 1884 when she led a campaign against segregation on the local railway. She was asked by the conductor to give up her seat on the train to a white man and ordered into the smoking or “Jim Crow” car. Wells refused to give up her seat and the conductor, assisted by two other men, dragged her out of the car. She hired an attorney and sued the railroad company. In 1910, she helped to form the NAACP and founded the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago.

Go to the website and check it all out.