This picture is one of the more impactful of Civil Rights photos I have ever seen. Look at that glare, that “don’t mess with me” visage. She clearly means business.
Can you believe that this woman had the microphone taken away from her at the March on Washington in 1963 before she could even speak? You might ask why, but I think we’re all pretty familiar with the history equality movements have with the lack of intersectionality. Feminism and the LGBT movement has done it too. It has been a pretty prevalent practice amongst these groups to exclude people who don’t fit the image of the movement from the dialogue, even though they play a crucial role in it.
Take Rosa Parks for example. I doubt any of us would have known who she even was or that she existed if not for her part in introducing Martin Luther King Jr to the stage. Even so, she’s talked about more like a mythological figure rather than a person. In school, I learned about Rosa Parks as I would an archetype or a metaphor, and I didn’t know until a couple of years ago about Rosa Parks’ long history of activism, even before the bus incident. She was not new to civil disobedience, but because of her new link with Martin Luther King Jr, suddenly her efforts were notable.
Parks and Richardson were not really recognized for their efforts, and when they were, those efforts were usually talked about in third person by a man. Their identities as women almost overrode their identities as black activists, and that was why they could have used intersectionality between feminism and civil rights back then.
That’s why we still need it today. When I’m only now hearing about Gloria Richardson, we haven’t fixed the problem. It’s still there, and it’s making it hard to acheive equality on all levels with all people. When we’re still thinking about oppression in terms of who’s facing what because of which characteristics, we’re pigeonholing ourselves right into ineffectual extinction.
Only once we realize that the same forces are at work in all oppression, whether you’re black, a woman, or both, can we really take off toward true equality.
entropistanon 