Black Feminism: Where Do We Go from Here? Section Overview
So far, you have been traveling in a circle around the central space. You can enter this area immediately to your left after exiting the last covered passageway. In this center space, you’ll find interactive and video experiences where you can reflect on the stories shared in Black Feminist DC and learn more from Black feminists today. On the floor below you is the exhibition logo. The text “We Who Believe in Freedom: Black Feminist DC” is overlayed on a stylized drawing of the outline of DC; the stylized design of the District is inspired by the cover of one of the manifestos in the exhibition.
As you leave the exhibition, you are encouraged to travel outside the covered passageways to experience large-scale images of Black feminists in their public lives. These large-scale images of their public appearances, combined with the intimate details, photos, and objects witnessed in the covered passageways, remind us of the complex, whole lives of those featured in the exhibition.
Finally, on the windows just past the edge of the exhibition facing the street, quotes from many of the Black feminists in the exhibition are printed on large, brightly colored decals. These quotes remind us to reflect on the experience as you leave the exhibition.
You can find more details about each interactive, video, image, and quote in this section below. Or you can go back to the landing page for the exhibition.
Video: Black Feminism: Where Do We Go from Here?
Description:
On the first wall to your right, as you enter this center space, is a large video screen featuring video and images and video recordings of current scholars, artists, and activists speaking about Black feminism today. Photos of current Black feminists scroll across the screen, and a button to the bottom left of the screen takes you to the recorded videos where you can listen to their thoughts on Black feminism today.
Interactive: We Who Believe in Freedom: A Manifesto
Description:
Directly across from the video on the opposite wall is a hands-on interactive where you can adjust words on adjustable rollers to create your own manifesto. Here is an opportunity for you to reflect upon We Who Believe in Freedom: Black Feminist DC. Manifestos have long been used to articulate a view of the past, a critique of the present, and a vision for the future. As you traveled through the history of Black feminism in DC, you read various Black feminist political platforms and calls to liberate not only Black women, but everyone.
Now it is your turn. Use the prompts below to create a statement of purpose and your own call to action. Multiple word options will be offered, and visitors are encouraged to complete each phrase that has a blank. Then use the Museum’s hashtag #BlackFeministDC and post to your favorite social media platform.
Interactive Sentences
We remember __________.
In Black feminist manifestos, there were sections that mentioned slavery, the repression of voting rights, rape—forms of oppression that have continuing consequences today.
Options:
- slavery
- segregation
- reproductive oppression
- sexual violence
We will not rest until ______ and ____ are destroyed.
Black feminist manifestos name the most serious causes of their own and others’ suffering.
Options:
- racial inequality
- discrimination
- economic inequality
- heterosexism
- gender inequality
- injustice
- transphobia
- imprisonment
We want ____ and ______.
We are inspired by the visions and activism of DC Black feminists to work and hope for these and other goals.
Options:
- freedom
- solidarity
- joy
- choice
- liberation
- love
- rest
- power
Image: Howard students and others during a commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, Washington, DC, 2013
Photograph by Soltan Frédéric/Corbis via Getty Images
Collage 1: Who Are Your People? The Roots and Branches of Black Feminist DC
Description:
On the wall to the right of the hands-on interactive is a collage of photographs and quotes from Black feminists describing their familial roots and experiences in the exhibition. A quote by Mary McLeod Bethune sets the stage for the collage at the very top:
“If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs.”
Civil rights leader Ella Baker often asked new organizers, “Who are your people?” to help her understand how they came to see their place in the Black freedom struggle. Many of the Black feminists featured in this exhibition came to DC hoping to build better lives for themselves and others, and they created organizations and movements here. On this journey, some carried old photographs, handwritten letters, and memories of their ancestors and extended families. Others reflected on how their familial roots and experiences shaped their commitment to Black feminism within and beyond DC.
These pictures and writings allow us to glimpse the familial influences that shaped DC’s Black feminists as they answered Baker’s important query, “Who are your people?
Portraits of family and friends of the Black feminists in the exhibition are set in illustrated frames from top to bottom of the collage. A copy of Pauli Murray’s Proud Shoes, a book she wrote about her maternal grandparents’ lives, is set in a case below the portraits.
You can find more details about each image and object in the collage below. Or you can move ahead to the Interactive: Roots and Branches.
Image: Eleanor Holmes Norton leaving a voting booth with her children, John, 3, and Katherine, 5, Harlem, New York City, 1975
Photograph by Edward A. Hausner/New York Times Co./Getty Images
Image: Relative of Mary Church Terrell, possibly her mother, undated
Photograph by Napoleon Sarony/Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Image: Mary Church Terrell, 1951
Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post
Image: Mary McLeod Bethune and family, 1940
Photograph by Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images
Image: Marie L. Fitzgerald Jeffers holding Pauli Murray, with William Murray seated on pedestal, 1911
Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute/© Estate of Pauli Murray, used herewith by permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
Image: Anna Julia Cooper, undated
Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post
Image: Loretta Ross on her great-grandmother’s porch, Temple, Texas, 1956
Loretta J. Ross papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass./courtesy of Loretta J. Ross
Image: Betty, Pauli Murray, and Alfred, Newport, 1937
Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute/© Estate of Pauli Murray, used herewith by permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
Image: Portrait of Pauli Murray Seated, 1927
Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute/© Estate of Pauli Murray, used herewith by permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
Image: Loretta Ross (front row, left) with her siblings and parents, San Antonio, Texas, 1980
Loretta J. Ross papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass./courtesy Loretta J. Ross
Image: Pauline Dame, left, with Pauli Murray, c. 1926
Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute/© Estate of Pauli Murray, used herewith by permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
Image: Mary Church Terrell, undated
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Image: Portrait of Pauli Murray c. 1932
Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute/© Estate of Pauli Murray, used herewith by permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
Image: Pauli Murray, left, with her brother William Murray, 1924
Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute/© Estate of Pauli Murray, used herewith by permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
Object: Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family by Pauli Murray, originally published 1956
Published by Beacon, 1999 edition
“While the story focuses on the racial conflict within which the family had to work out its destiny, it also frames portraits of several remarkably brave and independent women. They were not conscious feminists, but in coping with the intolerable tensions of their time they assumed responsibilities and performed actions which quietly defied convention and transcended ‘a woman’s place.’”
—Pauli Murray
Pauli Murray was born in Baltimore in 1910 to a nurse and a teacher. Orphaned as a child, Murray was sent to Durham, North Carolina, where aunts raised her and relayed many of their family stories. Murray’s Proud Shoes engages her forebears’ experiences of racial and sexual violence, as well as their powerful tradition of resistance.
Interactive: Roots and Branches
Description:
Directly across from the Roots and Branches of Black Feminist DC is a wall filled with the brightly colored image of a flowering cherry blossom tree in Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC. You are asked to name and honor someone who has inspired you or shaped your perspective. Visitors are encouraged to write their name on a card and place it on the tree while answering: Who is the person you wish to honor and why? Feel free to read and reflect upon the thoughts and memories of other visitors.
As You Leave: Large-scale Images and Window Quotes
Description:
As you leave the center area, you are encouraged to take in the large-scale images of Black feminists in action that span the outside walls of the covered passageways. These photographs, all black and white, are larger than life, with pops of bright color in the background of each image.
After finishing the last interactive, you can exit the center area to your right and make another right to end up between two large-scale images from the Civil Rights Movement. On your left, you’ll find Fannie Lou Hamer, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Ella Baker at a rally against a backdrop of mustard yellow, and on your right Coretta Scott King and Etta Horn at the Mother’s Day March with sea foam green filling the background. As you travel forward to the outermost ring of the exhibition, you’ll find a large-scale image on your right of picketers from the National Association of Colored Women set against a deep teal. As you turn to your left and make your way around the outside of the exhibition towards the west, you’ll find a large-scale image of Dorothy Height at the March on Washington against a sea of faces overlayed by a mustard yellow. Continuing to your left on the outside of ring of the exhibition is an image of Mary McLeod Bethune, Mary Church Terrell, and others seated for a portrait against pops of green-blue. And finally, directly ahead and slightly to the left on the outside of the first covered passageway is a photograph of Mary Treadwell and Marion Barry against a magenta background.
After this last image, you’ll find a small display with books that can be checked out from the library just to the east. As you leave the library, quotes on the windows outside the exhibition space remind you to reflect on Black Feminist DC and the impact of those in the exhibition.
You can find more details about each large-scale image and window quote below. Or you can return to the landing page for the exhibition.
Image: Left to right: Fannie Lou Hamer, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Ella Baker at a rally supporting the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party outside of the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1964
Photograph by George Ballis/© 1976, George Ballis/TakeStock
Image: Coretta Scott King speaking at the Mother’s Day March, Etta Horn sits at left, Washington, DC, May 12, 1968
AFP via Getty Images
Image: Picketers from the National Association of Colored Women protest the lynching of four Black people in Georgia, White House, Washington, DC, 1956
Image: Dorothy Height looks on from the right as Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963
AP Photo
Image: Mary McLeod Bethune, Mary Church Terrell, and others, 1947
Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images
Image: Mary Treadwell stands at the podium during a celebration for Marion Barry (center) after he won a seat on Washington, DC’s School Board, 1971.
Photograph by Ellsworth Davis/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Window Quote:
“Only the Black Woman can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.” Anna Julia Cooper, 1892
Window Quote:
“I will not shrink from undertaking what seems wise and good, because I labor under the double handicap of race and sex; but, striving to preserve a calm mind with a courageous, cheerful spirit, barring bitterness from my heart, I will struggle all the more earnestly to reach the goal.” Mary Church Terrell, c. 1915
Window Quote:
“When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.” Pauli Murray, 1945
Window Quote:
“If you were associated with civil rights and labor rights, the analogies are intellectually compelled. The transition to feminism is easy. What I don’t understand is why the transition doesn’t happen to everybody who was in the civil rights movement.” Eleanor Holmes Norton, 2003
Window Quote:
“We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” Sweet Honey in the Rock, 1988
Window Quote:
“I am a Black Feminist.” Loretta Ross, 1985
Window Quote:
“If a correlation were drawn between racism, classism, and sexism, similarities of character and nature would be evident. Each represents a form of oppression. . . Africans who happen to be women confront all three forms on a daily basis. Triple Oppression.” Nkenge Touré