Historians have systematically omitted black women from accounts of feminist history

Evidence

Sojourner Truth was not the only black woman to advocate social equality for women. Her eagerness to speak publicly in favor of women’s rights despite public disapproval and resistance paved the way for other politically-minded black women to express their views. Sexism and racism have so informed the perspective of American historiographers that they have tended to overlook and exclude the effort of black women in discussions of the American women’s rights movement. White female scholars who support feminist ideology have also ignored the contribution of black women. In contemporary works, like The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism by Barbara Berg, Herstory by June Sochen, Hidden from History by Sheila Rowbothan, The Women’s Movement by Barbara Deckard, to name a few, the role black women played as advocates for women’s rights in the 19th century is never mentioned. Eleanor Flexner’s Century of Struggle, which was first published in 1959, remains one of the very few book-length historical works on the women’s rights movement that documents the participation of black women. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 463

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the historiographical erasure claim central to hooks’s argument.
• XREF: connects to: Feminist historians show male prowess shaped archival production and excluded women’s histories; Historians have excluded black women from accounts of the women’s rights movement; Black women’s experiences were ignored and ridiculed as unworthy of study (+7 more)

Related

• Historians have excluded black women from accounts of the women’s rights movement (similarity 0.90)
• Feminist historians show male prowess shaped archival production and excluded women’s histories (similarity 0.90)
• Scarcity of evidence on African women philosophers reflects neglect, not absence of contribution (similarity 0.88)
• The women’s movement failed to analyze black women’s sexist oppression (similarity 0.85)
• Scholars frame black women’s organizing as anti-racist, not feminist (similarity 0.83)
• Generic terms in suffrage histories suppress the exclusion of black women. (similarity 0.83)
• Sojourner Truth argued sexist oppression threatened black women as much as racial oppression (similarity 0.81)
• Black women needed a separate feminist intellectual tradition (similarity 0.81)
• The women-and-blacks analogy erased black women by equating women with whites (similarity 0.81)
• Women’s failed bid to be included in the black suffrage amendment forged American feminisms (similarity 0.80)
• White feminists excluded black women by analogy rather than overt discrimination (similarity 0.79)
• Black women rejected the movement’s execution, not feminism’s ideology. (similarity 0.79)
• Standard reasons for black women’s nonparticipation fail historical scrutiny. (similarity 0.79)
• Early black feminists were isolated from both black communities and the white feminist movement (similarity 0.78)
• Black women’s experiences were ignored and ridiculed as unworthy of study (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Historians have excluded black women from accounts of the women’s rights movement #corroborates (0.90)
• The women’s movement failed to analyze black women’s sexist oppression #corroborates (0.75) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 45
• Black women’s experiences were ignored and ridiculed as unworthy of study #corroborates (0.70)
• The women-and-blacks analogy erased black women by equating women with whites #expands (0.65)
• Black women needed a separate feminist intellectual tradition #expands (0.60)
• Generic terms in suffrage histories suppress the exclusion of black women. #qualifies (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 36
• Academic historians led the reactionary assault on Reconstruction and Black history #complicates (0.55)
• Early Black historiography negated national myths while mirroring their form #exemplifies (0.50)