Year of the Black Woman

Floor Speech

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Ms. SEWELL of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the black women in our country who have, for decades, led this nation's fight for justice without the recognition they deserve.

Some are calling 2018 the year of the black woman. This year, black women are proving the strength of their voice at the ballot box, black women are running for office in record numbers, and black women are leading movements against sexual harassment and police violence. But I believe that 2018 is the year of the black woman because, after decades of activism and advocacy, this is our year to give black women the recognition they deserve.

As we celebrate women's history month, let's reflect on the fact that today's story of the suffrage movement so often imagines America's suffragettes as uniformly white. That was not the case. From Sojourner Truth to Nannie Helen Burroughs, we must remember the courageous black women who stood up for their right to vote.

Let us remember Ida B. Wells, who led the fight for women's rights but was asked to march at the back of the women's suffrage parade because she was black. She refused, she persisted, and she marched with her state's delegation for her right to vote.

Black women have not only led our nation's fight for justice for decades, but they have understood the true nature of injustice for just as long.

Today's social justice movements have taken ahold of the concept of intersectionality--the fact that race, class and gender, do not exist separately but create interwoven systems of discrimination.

It was a black woman--Kimberle Crenshaw--who originally coined the term ``intersectionality'' in 1989. But even before intersectionality was a word, it was black women who knew the truth about the injustices of discrimination in America.

It was 1893 when a black suffragette named Anna Julia Cooper said,

``The colored woman feels that woman's cause is one and universal; and that not till the image of God, whether in parian or ebony, is sacred and inviolable; not till race, color, sex, and condition are seen as the accidents, and not the substance of life; not till the universal title of humanity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is conceded to be inalienable to all; not till then is woman's lesson taught and woman's cause won.''

Generations of black women have fought, bled and died for their right to vote. And so many of these heroes are from my home state of Alabama. It was the death of four little black girls in the bombing of Birmingham's 16th St. Baptist Church that awakened our nation to the realities of violent racism. Heroes like Recy Taylor, Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin and Autherine Lucy Foster--to name only a few--stood up against brut violence to build a world where men and women of every race and class have the opportunities they deserve.

As we celebrate Women's History Month, we must not only remember the sacrifices they made, but the work that remains to be done in their fight for justice. These women passed onto us the rights and the opportunities that we enjoy today, but they also handed down a responsibility to carry on their work, fighting not just for women, not just for African Americans, but for all people, against all injustice.

Today, I'm proud to see so many black women leading that fight. From the Black Lives Matter movement to the Me Too movement, their contributions and their leadership are changing the way our society understands and addresses discrimination and injustice.

This Women's History Month, in the Year of the Black Woman, I want to use this moment to recognize the countless black women who have spent their lives fighting to make America live up to its ideals, as well as all those black women who are still alive today carrying on that fight.

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