Ruffin insisted Black women’s movement served all humanity while joining white women

Evidence

Our woman’s movement is a woman’s movement that is led and directed by women for the good of women and men, for the benefit of all humanity, which is more than any one branch or section of it. We want, we ask the active interest of our men, and, too, we are not drawing the color line; we are women, American women, as intensely interested in all that pertains to us as such as all other American women; we are not alienating or withdrawing, we are only coming to the front, willing to join any others in the same work and cordially inviting and welcoming any others to join us. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 474

Categorization

• XREF: Ruffin’s refusal to ‘draw the color line’ reframes early Black feminism as universalist rather than separatist.

Related

• All women share accountability for racism that divides feminist movement. (similarity 0.79)
• The women’s rights movement exposed white women’s refusal to surrender white supremacy. (similarity 0.79)
• Black women needed a separate feminist intellectual tradition (similarity 0.79)
• Black women faced pressure from both whites and blacks to separate racism from sexism (similarity 0.79)
• Standard reasons for black women’s nonparticipation fail historical scrutiny. (similarity 0.78)
• Most black women chose the black patriarchy over the feminist movement. (similarity 0.78)
• Scholars frame black women’s organizing as anti-racist, not feminist (similarity 0.78)