Words of Fire (12 page)

Not unfelt, then, if unproclaimed has been the work and influence of
the colored women of America. Our list of chieftains in the service, though not long, is not inferior in strength and excellence, I dare believe, to any similar list which this country can produce.

Among the pioneers, Frances Watkins Harper could sing with prophetic exaltation in the darkest days, when as yet there was not a rift in the clouds overhanging her people:

Among preachers of righteousness, an unanswerable silencer of cavilers and objectors, was Sojourner Truth, that unique and rugged genius who seemed carved out without hand or chisel from the solid mountain mass; and in pleasing contrast, Amanda Smith, sweetest of natural singers and pleaders in dulcet tones for the things of God and of His Christ.

Sarah Woodson Early and Martha Briggs, planting and watering in the school room, and giving off from their matchless and irresistible personality an impetus and inspiration which can never die so long as there lives and breathes a remote descendant of their disciples and friends.

Charlotte Forten Grimke, the gentle spirit whose verses and life link her so beautifully with America's great Quaker poet and loving reformer.

Hallie Quinn Brown, charming reader, earnest, effective lecturer and devoted worker of unflagging zeal and unquestioned power.

Fannie Jackson Coppin, the teacher and organizer, preeminent among women of whatever country or race in constructive and executive force.

These women represent all shades of belief and as many departments of activity; but they have one thing in common—their sympathy with the oppressed race in America and the consecration of their several talents in whatever line to the work of its deliverance and development.

Fifty years ago woman's activity according to orthodox definitions was on a pretty clearly cut “sphere,” including primarily the kitchen and the nursery, and rescued from the barrenness of prison bars by the womanly mania for adorning every discoverable bit of china or canvass with forlorn looking cranes balanced idiotically on one foot. The woman of to-day finds herself in the presence of responsibilities which ramify through the profoundest and most varied interests of her country and race. Not one of the issues of this plodding, toiling, sinning, repenting, falling, aspiring humanity can afford to shut her out, or can deny the reality of her influence. No plan for renovating society, no scheme for purifying politics, no reform
in church or in state, no moral, social, or economic question, no movement upward or downward in the human plane is lost on her. A man once said when told his house was afire: “Go tell my wife; I never meddle with household affairs.” But no woman can possibly put herself or her sex outside any of the interests that affect humanity. All departments in the new era are to be hers, in the sense that her interests are in all and through all; and it is incumbent on her to keep intelligently and sympathetically en rapport with all the great movements of her time, that she may know on which side to throw the weight of her influence. She stands now at the gateway of this new era of American civilization. In her hands must be moulded the strength, the wit, the statesmanship, the morality, all the psychic force, the social and economic intercourse of that era. To be alive at such an epoch is a privilege, to be a woman then is sublime.

In this last decade of our century, changes of such moment are in progress, such new and alluring vistas are opening out before us, such original and radical suggestions for the adjustment of labor and capital, of government and the governed, of the family, the church, and the state, that to be a possible factor though an infinitesimal one in such a movement is pregnant with hope and weighty with responsibility. To be a woman in such an age carries with it a privilege and an opportunity never implied before. But to be a woman of the Negro race in America, and to be able to grasp the deep significance of the possibilities of the crisis, is to have a heritage, it seems to me, unique in the ages. In the first place, the race is young and full of the elasticity and hopefulness of youth. All its achievements are before it. It does not look on the masterly triumphs of nineteenth-century civilization with that
blasé
world-weary look which characterizes the old washed-out and worn-out races which have already, so to speak, seen their best days....

J
ulia Foote, born in Schenectady, New York, to an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church family, was among a small group of women evangelists (“sisters of the spirit,” according to William Andrews) in the nineteenth century who defied gender conventions by insisting on their right to preach. In 1894, against the wishes of her parents, husband, and minister, she became the first ordained deacon in the A.M.E. Church and the second woman to become an ordained elder in the church. Her spiritual autobiography,
A Brand Plucked from the Fire
(1879), like Jarena Lee's
Religious Experience and Journal
(1849) and Virginia W. Broughton's
Twenty Year's Experience of a Missionary
(1907), makes a feminist argument for Christianity's embrace of women evangelists like herself.

Later, the black church would continue to be a site of resistance on the part of feminist women. Nannie Burroughs (1879—1961), born in Virginia to former slaves, was a prominent clubwoman, educator, orator, religious, and women's rights leader, who devoted her life to various self-help initiatives for the race. One of the founders in 1900 of the Women's Convention Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention, she delivered her inaugural speech in Richmond on “How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping.” An insightful analysis by historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham [in
Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880
—
1920
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993)] of the feminist theology of black Baptist women includes a discussion of Burrough's campaign for gender equality within the Baptist church. She also discusses their indebtedness to Maria Stewart and disdain for black male sexism. Foote and Burroughs are important foremothers for a cadre of contemporary womanist theologians.

T
hirty years ago there could scarcely a person be found, in the churches, to sympathize with anyone who talked of Holiness. But, in my simplicity, I did think that a body of Christian ministers would understand my case and judge righteously. I was, however, disappointed.

It is no little thing to feel that every man's hand is against us, and ours against every man, as seemed to be the case with me at this time; yet how precious, if Jesus but be with us. In this severe trial I had constant access to God, and a clear consciousness that he heard me; yet I did not seem to have that plenitude of the Spirit that I had before.

Though I did not wish to pain anyone, neither could I please anyone only as I was led by the Holy Spirit. I saw, as never before, that the best men were liable to err, and that the only safe way was to fall on Christ, even though censure and reproach fell upon me for obeying His voice. Man's opinion weighed nothing with me, for my commission was from heaven, and my reward was with the Most High.

I could not believe that it was a short-lived impulse or spasmodic influence that impelled me to preach. I read that on the day of Pentecost was the Scripture fulfilled as found in Joel ii. 28, 29; and it certainly will not be denied that women as well as men were at that time filled with the Holy Ghost, because it is expressly stated that women were among those who continued in prayer and supplication, waiting for the fulfillment of the promise. Women and men are classed together, and if the power to preach the Gospel is short-lived and spasmodic in the case of women, it must be equally so in that of men; and if women have lost the gift of prophecy, so have men.

We are sometimes told that if a woman pretends to a Divine call, and thereon grounds the right to plead the cause of a crucified Redeemer in public, she will be believed when she shows credentials from heaven; that is, when she works a miracle. If it be necessary to prove one's right to
preach the Gospel, I ask of my brethren to show me their credentials, or I can not believe in the propriety of their ministry.

But the bible puts an end to this strife when it says: “There is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus.” Philip had four daughters that prophesied, or preached. Paul called Priscilla, as well as Aquila, his “helper,” or, as in the Greek, his ” fellow-laborer.” Rom. xv. 3; 2 Cor. viii. 23; Phil. ii. 5; 1 thess. iii. 2. The same word, which, in our common translation, is now rendered a “servant of the church,” in speaking of Phebe (Rom. xix. I.), is rendered “minister” when applied to Tychicus. Eph. vi. 21. When Paul said, “Help those women who labor with me in the Gospel,” he certainly meant that they did more than to pour out tea. In the eleventh chapter of First Corinthians Paul gives directions, to men and women, how they should appear when they prophesy or pray in public assemblies; and he defines prophesying to be speaking to edification, exhortation, and comfort.

I may further remark that the conduct of holy women is recorded in Scripture, as an example to others of their sex. And in the early ages of Christianity many women were happy and glorious in martyrdom. How nobly, how heroically, too, in later ages, have women suffered persecution and death for the name of the Lord Jesus.

In looking over these facts, I could see no miracle wrought for those women more than in myself.

Though opposed, I went forth laboring for God, and He owned and blessed my labors, and has done so wherever I have been until this day. And while I walk obediently, I know He will, though hell may rage and vent its spite.

G
ertrude Bustill Mossell, born in Philadelphia to a prominent free Quaker family, was an influential journalist and women's rights crusader. Her career as a journalist was influenced by her politically active abolitionist/feminist family which included Grace Bustill Douglass and her daughter Sarah Mapps Douglass, members of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. She was also the cousin of political activist Paul Robeson.

Her first column for T. Thomas Fortune's New York Freeman (December 1885) as editor of “Our Woman's Department” was “Woman's Suffrage” in which she indicated she would “promote true womanhood, especially that of the African race.” She is best known for
The Work of the Afro-American Woman
(1894), which she wrote out of a desire to correct glaring omissions in American women's history and to affirm the noble womanhood of black women who were excluded from racist and classist concepts of “true women.” This pioneering feminist history text also chronicled the achievements of black women in the professions (medicine, business, religion, education, and journalism), exposed black male sexism and white female racism, particularly their ostracism of black feminists, and celebrated black women writers.

“The Opposite Point of View” is a critique of traditional notions of marriage, which demand that wives be passive and submissive to their husbands. The best marriages, from her progressive vantage point, are ones in which wives possess a mind of their own and are equal partners. Joanne Braxton's assessment of this essay as “a radical statement on family life and marital relations,” as well as a “valuable document of the sexual politics of black America” (Gates,
Schomburg Library
, xxxvi) locates Mossell within a clearly black feminist tradition. “A Lofty Study” called for women writers to have “a room of their own” long before the publication of Virginia Woolf's classic feminist essay, “A Room of One's Own” (1930). For an excellent discussion of Mossell, see Claudia Tate's
Domestic Allegories of Political Desire
(1992).

H
ome is undoubtedly the cornerstone of our beloved Republic. Deepplanted in the heart of civilized humanity is the desire for a resting place that may be called by this name, around which may cluster life-long memories. Each member of a family after a place is secured, helps to contribute to the formation of the real and ideal home. Men's and women's desires concerning what shall constitute a home differ largely, sex counting for much, past environment for more. Man desires a place of rest from the cares and vexations of life, where peace and love shall abide, where he shall be greeted by the face of one willing to conform to his wishes and provide for his comfort and convenience—where little ones shall sweeten the struggle for existence and make the future full of bright dreams.

Woman desires to carry into effect the hopes that have grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength from childhood days until maturity; love has made the path of life blend easily with the task that duty has marked out....

Many wonder that so many people separate, my wonder is that so many remain together. Born in different places, reared differently, with different religious and political opinions, differing in temperament, in educational views, at every point, what wonder strife ensues. But we will consider in this paper the life of those who elect to remain together whether life is a flowery path or overgrown with briers and thorns. Now, first, here I must explain that I am about to look at the opposite side of a much-discussed question. The pendulum will swing in this paper in the opposite direction to the one generally taken.

The conservatives can take the median line with the pendulum at a standstill if they so desire. For several years, every paper or magazine that has fallen into our hands gave some such teaching as this: “The wife must always meet her husband with a smile.” She must continue in the present and future married life to do a host of things for his comfort and convenience; the sure fate awaiting her failure to follow this advice being the loss
of the husband's affection and the mortification of seeing it transferred to the keeping of a rival. She must stay at home, keep the house clean, prepare food properly, and care for her children, or he will frequent the saloon, go out at night, and spend his time unwisely at the least. These articles may be written by men or by women, but the moral is invariably pointed for the benefit of women; one rarely appearing by either sex for the benefit of men. This fact must certainly lead both men and women to suppose that women need this teaching most; now I differ from this view of the subject. In a life of some length and of close observation, having been since womanhood a part of professional life, both in teaching, preaching, and otherwise, where one receives the confidences of others, I have come to the conclusion that women need these teachings least.