Monday, January 18, 2016: Black women at the forefront of feminism

How Black Women Led Birth of N.O.W.

Daisy Bates speaks during the Aug. 23, 1963, March on Washington. Bates, mentor to the Little Rock Nine, was the only woman to speak at the event 50 years ago in which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. Source Times Record: Online Edition

In the first part of our show today we’ll listen to a fascinating history put together by Fran Luck of WBAI’s Joy of Resistance for Sprouts, a national weekly program.  Luck tells the story of how black women activists, frustrated by being shut out of the 1963 March on Washington, led the charge to form the National Organization for Women.

Then Dr. Marcia Chatelain, author of South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration, discusses the construction of Black girlhood in Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century, and what it tells us about the intersections of race and gender.  She also talks about Black Lives Matter, why it’s rewriting 2016 and why it’s important that so many of its leaders are women.

Listen now. 59:50 min.