African American Women in the Twenty-First Century

African American women have been rendered invisible for much of history. Although they have held the torch for movements including black empowerment and women empowerment, they have been scarcely acknowledged, and often deliberately suppressed. “Who will speak for us, if we do not speak for ourselves?”, asks Angela Davis in this powerful 1989 talk to African American college students. She discusses how African American women’s unique positionality in history and in society enables them to speak up and speak out against many different forms of oppression, and that they ought to take a leading role in social justice movements from abortion to gay rights. However they also need to be critical and make sure their own voices aren’t being suppressed in the process.