The History Lesson About Black Women That You Never Got

By Jenn M. Jackson via https://www.teenvogue.com

“There are countless unrespectable, unmarried, disruptive, queer, and trans black women whose path-breaking commitments to black liberation were truly historic.”

Speak On It is a Teen Vogue column by Jenn M. Jackson, whose queer black feminist perspective explores how today’s social and political life is influenced by generations of racial and gender (dis)order. In this piece, she explores the ways that history lessons too often leave out unrespectable black, queer, and trans people and how that needs to change.

March is Women’s History Month. It’s also the month of International Women’s Day, a day rooted in at least a century of struggling against misogyny and gender-based exploitation, especially for working-class women.

I didn’t learn about the importance of this month until well after college. When I think back on the women in history I did learn about, suffragists like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott, I am reminded how so much of what I remember is rooted in the …

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