Stories From The Empty Space
"Special shout out to Black women. I've often been credited with having these grand ideas. People say, 'Oh Trevor, you're so smart.' I'm like, 'Who do you think teaches me? Who do you think shaped me, nourished me and formed me? From my mom, my grand, my aunt, all these Black women in my life, but in America as well. I tell people if you want to truly learn about America, talk to Black women cause, unlike everybody else, Black women can't afford to f--- around and find out."
- Trevor Noah
Recently, on a work trip to Philly, I found myself with some free time and grew curious about what I could see in the city. My fifth-grade self raised her hand and astutely reminded my curious adult self that Philly was the home of the Liberty Bell. My heart leaped with excitement. I Google mapped it to determine if it was worth the trip from my Airbnb in Fishtown. It wasn’t far at all. I packed my bag, ordered a Lyft, and waited with fifth-grade field trip anticipation in the lobby. Halfway there, not to be ignored, the Afropessimist that I have become mocked my wide-eyed joy at seeing this historical artifact, this symbol of democracy, knowing full well that my own ancestors were enslaved in the South when the bell toll of freedom first rang. Even still, when I entered the gallery, my heart was filled by the sight. I took pictures just in case one day my mind could no longer hold the image. My double consciousness engaged in a ferocious battle at that moment. How could I love and honor these historical symbols of freedom while knowing that neither I nor my ancestors were considered in “all men are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights”?
The entire Liberty Bell exhibit leads visitors through a hall, journeying alongside the Bell as it traveled through the country, breathing life into William Penn’s vision of rights and freedoms throughout the land. One of the exhibits demonstrates how the symbolism of the Liberty Bell was used in movements spanning from women’s suffrage to Civil Rights; on the left, a portrait and biography of Katherine Wentworth Ruschenberger, a member of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, on the right, a picture of Dr. King hanging a wreath next to the Bell. Above both, hovers a quote from Ruschenberger proclaiming, “The original Liberty Bell announced the creation of democracy; the Women’s Liberty Bell will announce the completion of democracy.” As I looked from Katherine to King, I became aware of the space between both portraits, and a realization occurred in my mind, “That’s where the Black women are, in that space. That’s the intersection.” Frances E. W. Harper, a suffragist, and an abolitionist, stood in that space, a free Black woman, knowing that her liberation could not be split in parts, doubly oppressed by race and gender, fighting for both causes, but her historical imprint represented only by an empty space.
Intersectionality, as defined for us by Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw, is this vacuum that is created when race and gender oppression overlap. This is the abyss in which the experiences and contributions of Black women in shaping historical narratives and movements are cast in an effort to erase the impact of her story. This significant gap in representation and recognition results in Black women being looked at, but never seen, doing the work to demand dignity for all, but never receiving an equal portion for herself. When you ask Black women about America, she will tell you a story of disdain, discrimination and inequity.
“I will tell you, when you look at the Declaration of Independence, it was that ‘men are created equal’ with unalienable rights, right? That is what we all knew. But what I look at it as, is I was a brown girl that grew up in a small rural town. We had plenty of racism that we had to deal with. But my parents never said we lived in a racist country. And I’m so thankful that they didn’t.
— Nikki Haley, Republican Presidential Candidate
“Slavery is dead, but the spirit which animated it still lives.”
— Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Poet, Suffragist, Abolitionist
UBUNTU Research and Evaluation offers facilitation of learning opportunities to organizations that are seeking to build individual and collective capacity to be anti-racist and accountable to creating equity. To be clear, we are not DEIA consultants. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility has yet to challenge the systems of racism in this country. It has yet to provide an account of the wrongs of this country’s past and how the spirit of racism and white supremacy are still evident in most organizations to this day. It does not challenge how Harper could be a forthright advocate for women’s suffrage but denied access by Susan B. Anthony because she was Black. DEI efforts are surface-level at best, sharing stories of oppressed people’s experiences without holding the listener accountable to the change necessary to ensure such injustices never happen again. To be crystal clear, our work as facilitators, evaluators, and strategists, is to stand in the empty space between oppression and liberation, between acts and action, restoration and transformation. As Afrofuturists, we partner with organizations that are committed to change. They hire us because they want to be the change, but they don’t know how to get there, how to bridge the gap. As Black women, as undisciplined strategists, we submit ourselves to the process of being a story, story listeners, and storytellers for the sole purpose of standing with the global majority to bring about a liberated future for all. This is not a 21-day equity challenge!
One very effective tool in our work is storytelling evaluation. The purpose of this is to assess the effectiveness and/or impact of a program based on the stories of the people who participated in that program. If we think of the United States as the great experiment, as a program, we might be better able to determine its ability to be the land of free, endowing all participants with certain inalienable rights, if we collect, analyze, then code the stories from the empty space. Below follows two stories of Black women who were enslaved in this country. Their stories demonstrate four aspects of systemic racism.
Harriet Jacobs
Harriet Jacobs was born in 1813, in North Carolina and into slavery. She witnessed and experienced many tragedies in her life, oppressed by white enslavers and a system whose laws permitted inhumane treatment of people who were enslaved because of their color of their skin. Despite the threats to her humanity, she seized upon her right to liberation when she escaped to New York in 1842. She published her autobiography in 1861 under the pseudonym, Linda Brent.
Sexual Exploitation and Harassment
“For my master, whose restless, craving, vicious nature roved about day and night, seeking whom to devour, had just left me, with stinging, scorching words; words that scathed ear and brain like fire. O, how I despised him! I thought how glad I should be, if some day when he walked the earth, it would open and swallow him up, and disencumber the world of a plague.
When he told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had my puny arm felt half so strong.”
Family Separation
“On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was bought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, “Gone! all gone! Why don’t God kill me?” I had no words wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of daily, yea, of hourly occurrence.”
Physical and Psychological Abuse
“You may believe what I say; for I write only that whereof I know. I was twenty-one years in that cage of obscene birds. I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.
Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the wide-spread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops–not of the blight on their children’s souls.
If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. There will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.”
–Harriet Jacobs, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”
Ona Judge enslaved by President George Washington
I had only come to the square with seeing the Liberty Bell in mind, and so I stumbled upon the President’s House that stood just as proudly beside it. This was the home of our nation’s first president, George Washington, and the ten people that he enslaved there during his presidency from 1789-1797. There, in direct contrast, lay the complexity, and dare I say, the double-mindedness of the history of the United States. This is America, the history that is often denied, the racist history that inscribes the Liberty Bell with bible scriptures: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof," from Leviticus 25:10, while also enslaving certain inhabitants thereof based solely on their African origin. It may be important to note, that in 1780, Pennsylvania passed the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 which allowed for the eventual release of enslaved Africans held in Pennsylvania. Despite being a proponent of this Act, Washington was judged and found guilty of being an ally in word only when he worked to evade the requirements of this Act. While president of the United States, he denied the enslaved Africans that he held captive the opportunity to be liberated by exchanging those in Mt. Vernon with those in Philadelphia every six months so that they could never meet the residency requirement. One of those enslaved in Philly was Ona Judge.
Ona Judge was placed in the role of maid servant at the age of ten, charged with combing the hair, mending the clothes, and bathing Martha Washington. At fifteen, she and eight other enslaved Africans were moved from New York to Philadelphia to serve the President. Afraid of being a wedding gift to the president’s daughter who was prone to mean streaks and violence, as well as encouraged to seize her liberation by the large community of free Blacks in Philadelphia, Ona Judge ran away in 1796 at the age of twenty-two. Unfortunately, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 required local governments to arrest and return Black people believed to have runaway from their enslavers and imposed penalties for anyone who may support their attempts at freedom. Washington spent the rest of his life, seven years, trying to recapture Ona. History proves that there were at least three attempts to return her to bondage but she evaded each one.
Legal Constraints and Lack of Rights
“When asked if she was sorry to have left the Washingtons, particularly because her life had been so difficult and sorrow-filled since she'd escaped to New Hampshire, she replied with strength and the calm wisdom of a woman who'd had the courage to do what was morally right: "No, I am free, and have, I trust, been made a child of God by the means.”
― Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington's Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away; Young Readers Edition
What is clear from these two stories alone is that the root of America’s history is so deeply racist that it is still bearing the fruit of discrimination, systemic oppression, and inequity throughout the land. Unlike the individual denial of racism by the political pundent, these stories once cast into an abyss, collective are a mountain, filled to the sky with stories from the empty space; stories from Black women who never had the privilege nor the opportunity to fuck around and find out, stories that prove that America has never been the land of the free. If you want to learn about America, talk to Black women. There is opportunity when you listen; a choice to be made to continue in feigned ignorance or to transform. Transformation is upheaval. It is identifying the problem and digging the rotten roots of the dying tree. It is upending practices that no longer serve the community nor the organization’s effort to become anti-racist.
If you and your organization truly want to transform, to end harmful exclusionary White supremacist practices in your work, then you must commit to doing the work. You must create the container to hold the knowledge, the truth and the stories of Black women and many other oppressed folks. The measure of your organization's equity and anti-racism practices will be determined by the responses to the amplified voices of Black women, existing in the empty spaces that still exist, that still need to be addressed and filled. This, too, was Harriet Jacob’s recommendation; a hope that by knowing her story, it would inspire people to act on behalf of the dignity of her people and by doing so, lay claim to their own humanity as well.
“I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to myself; on the contrary, it would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own history. Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings. But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse. I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is. Only by experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations. May the blessing of God rest on this imperfect effort in behalf of my persecuted people!”
–Harriet Jacobs, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”
References
Armstrong Dunbar, E. (2019). Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge. Aladdin.
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2023, December 4). Fugitive Slave Acts. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Fugitive-Slave-Acts.
Coaston, J. (2019, May 28). The intersectionality wars. Vox. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination
Jacobs, Harriet. (1861). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Thayer & Eldridge.
Ona Judge: A Woman Who Escaped Slavery & the Washingtons. (n.d.). Www.youtube.com. Retrieved February 7, 2024, from https://youtu.be/O9qf6WWc6QU?si=SiUh4cBgtcoZeUnZ
The Liberty Bell. (2020). Ushistory.org. https://www.ushistory.org/libertybell/