These Are the Women of Color Who Fought Both Sexism and the Racism of White Feminists

By Anne Branigin via https://www.theroot.com

For Women’s History Month, Jezebel and The Root are partnering for JezeRoot, a series that focuses on women of color, domestic workers and sex workers.

In December of last year, Gloria Steinem, a woman whose name and face has come to symbolize the feminist movement of the ’60s and ’70s, spoke before the Massachusetts Women’s Conference about the #MeToo movement and the importance of defining sexual harassment.

“The problem, and what [many feminists today] are not saying,” Steinem told the crowd, “is that women of color in general—and especially black women—have always been more likely to be feminist than white women.”

If it is an astonishing statement, particularly coming from a white woman, it is also a true one.

Black women and women of color have actively fought for the rights and livelihoods of women for more than two centuries, yet their stories and contributions are often sidelined in the mainstream narrative of the feminist movement.

They did so at a greater risk of violence, and they did so even as white suffragettes actively rallied against civil rights for black Americans, as Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, did when she argued that black women “have put the ballot …

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