INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM SERIES
What If I Am A Woman?
A Black woman sparked the movement for women’s education
Imagine asking one question, “What if I am a woman?” and that sparking a movement towards women’s rights to education being seriously considered for the first time.
The fight for women’s rights around education started way before 1848, when the Grimké sisters Sarah (1792–1873) and Angelina (1805–1879), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 — October 26, 1902), and Lucretia Mott (January 3, 1793 — November 11, 1880) cottoned on to the idea that if they tied their white, female, and middle classed feminist movement and struggle to the fight for freedom of black slaves and abolition of slavery, that somehow white women would be free from white male oppression and everyone would be happy.
As the black feminist writer Angela Davis stated in Women, Race, and Class (1981) pg 50.
“The absence of black women at the Seneca Falls Convention (women’s rights address) was all the more conspicuous in light of their contributions to the fight for women’s rights. More than a decade before this meeting, Maria Stewart had responded to attacks on her rights to deliver public lectures.”
