J.D. ‘Okhai Okeikere, Untitled, 1970s
//salome
Women Who Inspire: Majora Carter
In celebration of Women’s History Month, I wanted to share a little inspiration. Majora Carter has been a major force in progressive economic redevelopment and environmental activism for years.
Her work spearheading the creation of the Hunts Point Riverside Park and advocating for other green spaces in her community was the first spark in a “larger strategy to move under-performing communities into a healthy and productive economic conditions” In 2001 she founded the environmental justice organization Sustainable South Bronx and in 2008 the Majora Cater Group LLC. She was featured in a recent 2-part interview on the Laundromat Project’s blog, where she shared insight about her early days doing arts organizing and her experience as a film major at Wesleyan University.
You can read the interviews here and here.
And be sure to check out the Laundromat Project, “a community-based non-profit arts organization committed to the well-being of people of color living on low incomes. Understanding that creativity is a central component of healthy human beings, vibrant neighborhoods, and thriving economies, we bring art programs to where our neighbors already are: the local laundromat. In this way, we aim to raise the quality of life in New York City for people whose incomes do not guarantee broad access to mainstream arts and cultural facilities.”
-sonia
Queen Latifah
Order in the Court
21 Mayo 1980
Dear mujeres de color, companions in writing -
I sit here naked in the sun, typewriter against my knee trying to visualize you. Black woman huddles over a desk in the fifth floor of some New York tenement. Sitting on a porch in south Texas, a Chicana fanning away mosquitos and the…
*give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.* ~ Warsan Shire
Warsan Shire
“For Women Who Are Difficult To Love”
For my anime girls, here is Miyuki Ayukawa from Basquash!
(via latoyapeterson)
Pat Cleveland
Paris Vogue, 1990
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
Identity Could be a Tragedy,1995
Crown Heights, Brooklyn native Susan Smith McKinney Steward was the first African American woman to earn a medical doctorate in New York, and the third in the United States. She ran a private practice, co-founded the Brooklyn Women’s Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary, and presented her paper “Colored American Women” at the 1911 Universal Races Conference in London. Looking back, one could say this conference was an early attempt at practicing anti-racism, yet it’s amazing to even scan the table of contents and preface of the published papers presented at the conference. While it is difficult to get past the idea that these discussions were steeped in a general knowledge and acceptance that race was a scientific phenomenon rather than a social construct, the members of the congress intended to solve their “issues” and strive for equality regardless. I’m still not convinced that this conference is something to celebrate (afterall, who organized it and who benefited from it truly in the end?), but these organizing efforts also inspire and require self-reflection, particularly when we tend to practice organizing tactics in our own silos and in the cyber-sphere.
Still it remains, Susan was awesome, and we love her :)
Leila
