As featured in April/May 1998
Stirring Things Up Just Like You
By Patricia Mackey
When March rolls around every year, national attention turns to women and their achievements. Focusing on even a fraction of what women have contributed to the world requires so much more than 31 days each year. Maybe, just maybe, a 14- or 15-month year full of celebration would do the trick.
Surely, in that time a larger number of well-known and expected tales of heroic women of different colors, cultures, classes and beliefs would find their way to readers and listeners. Most of them, however, would probably be celebrity focused. Yet, there would still be enough time to tell many more stories filled with all the dramas of life we have come to expect in a spellbinding tale — women: beating the odds, rising to the challenge, raising the bar, creating havoc and orchestrating peace. In brief, simply being women.
There is so much heroism in simply being a woman. If proof is needed, look around you. That’s what a group of women in Oakland, California, decided to do. The tales of love, encouragement, struggle and achievement they came up with has become a heartwarming collection of essays that go to the very core of African-American life. Each essay comes from a women who resembles you, or me, or your neighbor.
Back in 1985, a group black women decided to formalize their regular meetings into a discussion group. They adopted the name Black Women Stirring the Waters from the nineteenth century abolitionist, suffragette and former slave, Sojourner Truth. Lively discussion is the sole purpose of the group. These women gather to talk about myriad subjects. Their discussions embrace education, art, politics, genealogy, technology, foreign policy and numerous other topics.
The handsome black and white paperback book, Black Women Stirring the Waters, is the offspring of the group. Forty-six of the women, of varying ages, have filled an editorial canvas with the colors and textures of black life in the United States. Their vignettes tell of character building and life changing experiences that helped shape them into the women they are today.
Cornel West, a professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy of Religion at Harvard University, endorses the book. “Like my own mother, these dynamic women exemplify the best of the human spirit,” he says.
In her foreword, Valena Minor Williams, coordinator
of the book project, introduces the essays noting that: “Today’s television and press expand established stereotypes to include a range of notoriety and celebrity. Still largely ignored, however, is the courageous experience of everyday black women in the context of their families, their strengths and their complexity.”
Black Women Stirring the Waters, she continues, shares how these women “...Shape their lives with strong spiritual values and the support of their loved ones. While the perspectives vary, the results are remarkably consistent.” The following excerpts illustrate her point.
In “Soft Colors, Bold Statements,” Frances Dunham Catlett, a youthful great-grandmother, writes about the strong, stable family life that awaited her arrival into this world. The sister-in-law of Katherine Dunham and Elizabeth Catlett writes, “...Although I was born in 1908, I am still a member of my family’s first post slavery generation by virtue of being the last of my parent’s nine daughters and one son. As the only sibling left now, I proudly carry the legacy my parents passed onto us as they rose from their simple beginnings in Virginia to membership in the ‘mainstream’ of Hartford, Connecticut.
“...From the $30 a week he made as a shipping clerk for a printer, my father paid the mortgage, dressed his children (clothes were remodeled over and over) and sent several daughters away to normal school or college. ...The strength and stability of my family was the dominant influence in my life. When I came home from school, Mama was usually sitting by the window darning or sewing. Papa came home about six o’clock each night. My sisters in varying numbers were there and all the home activities that constituted our way of life awaited me.
“...After going to college, marrying twice and being tragically widowed twice, I raised two sons while pursuing a career as a social worker. ...I got a Master’s of Social Work from the University of California at Berkeley and become one of the first black social workers in San Francisco.”
Frances Catlett loves art. In the photograph that accompanies her essay she lovingly shows a piece of her work. “As a painter, I do not view the brush, palette knife and canvas as a camera. Rather, there is a magnificent mystery in the universe behind the recognizable and familiar patterns. In the unseen background is the pulsing of the energy released and forever coming from the original ‘Big Bang!’ To hint on canvas of this energy, to capture light and color and the myriad feelings racing back and forth between people, seems to be my involvement.
“...So from the early years of the Twentieth Century to nearly the dawn of the Twenty-first Century, from the youngest of ten children to being a great grandmother, from innocence to sophistication, through tragedies, joys and ‘amazing grace,’ I still travel on.”
Gaynelle Alexander, a semi-retired librarian, recounts in “The Twin Powers of Faith and Knowledge,” how close ties helped her family cope when her father died; how her parents encouraged education, faith and diverse perspectives.
“...It was through my mother, who was both well-read and had a deep abiding faith in God, that we learned about and developed an understanding of our own people’s history as well as the history of the people who lived around us. We learned about slavery and were also prepared to answer any young neighborhood bigot, reminding them of the conditions in the countries from which their parents had migrated, whether it be Ireland, and the potato famine that drove many of them to America, or the poor people and criminals in England who were deported to the colonies and Australia, or Italian and Portuguese peasants who came to America because they couldn’t make it in Europe. The Japanese nurserymen, a few blocks away, lost everything when they were sent away to internment camps in 1941.
“Above all, we learned not to empower whites by fearing or looking up to them, for that would have been idolatry. Our only allegiance was to God who loved all of His children unconditionally and to whom we were taught to pray. ...I learned that human hatred has no color or nationality.”
In the final excerpt, Celestine Bennett writes of “Overcoming Visible and Invisible Barriers.” The former teacher is currently a librarian at Columbia University in New York. “...Wherever I’ve traveled or worked, I’ve tried to keep in mind that things are not always what they appear to be on the surface. There will always be barriers to face in life — some clearly visible and others not so visible, some racial and some not. It is up to me to choose which barriers I can tolerate and which ones I must try to fight to remove.
“I have learned over the years that to become bitterly frustrated about any problem usually results in more self-inflicted damage than anything else. Thanks to my parents’ loving guidance and the unwavering support of my husband and family, I have developed confidence in my ability to compete in even the most rigorous arenas of life. Over the years I have been able to forge a path which for me has been both rewarding and fulfilling.”
How wonderful to focus on women. Heroic women, simple women, women of strength, integrity, dignity. Women like your mother; your sister, your aunt, your friend, your neighbor. Women just like you; black women stirring the waters.
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