Because of Them, I Am Not Alone: Radical Black Women of Harlem

A particularly evil thing about racism is its ability to make Black women feel alone.

For my whole life I’ve been taught that I’m alone, that I will be one of the first or one of the only, that Black people haven’t existed in the places that I exist, but it’s all a lie. There are women who came before me. There are women who have struggled for years to make my existence possible. There are women who have already done all of the things I want to do and made it easier for me to achieve my dreams today.

Creating the Radical Black Women of Harlem tour helped me navigate through this world that tries to fool me: a world that tries to trick me into accepting my own oppression, one that attempts to make the horrible mundane, one that hopes that I will be silent and accept my position as a token Black student at Barnard.

At Barnard and Columbia, I feel like an outsider in class, where I am usually one of the only Black women present, and outside of class, where Black people are attacked by public safety. I feel alone in my community in Morningside Heights, where the majority of people I walk past are white and wealthy. I feel alone as a Black person who wants to be an intellectual and writer, for I know most MFA and PhD programs have very few Black students. I feel alone as an artist, as I am typically one of the only Black women in plays on campus. Racism has done a great job at making me feel like the things that I want are white things that white people do.

It is harder to feel alone in my community knowing that Regina Anderson Andrews, a woman born in my hometown of Chicago, was the first Black supervising librarian at the 115th Street branch of the New York Public Library, a library I walk past every day. It is harder to feel alone as a Black theatre maker and poet now that I know 10 blocks north of me was the Niggeratti Manor, where Harlem’s luminaries congregated, celebrated, and created genius art. It is harder to feel alone in class now that I know Flo Kennedy sat in the same classrooms as me. She turned in papers about gender and race when no one wanted to read them decades before me.

A few blocks away from my home in New York, communist organizer and educator Williana Burroughs lead the Harlem Workers School, Lorraine Hansberry gave radical speeches to crowds of thousands, Grace Campbell wrote about the triple oppression of Black women, and Louise Thompson Patterson organized the first mass rally for racial justice in D.C.

These radical women were expert organizers, writers, and thinkers. And they were my age. Some attended the same college as me.  All of them did radical work I aspire to do, work that would still be considered revolutionary today.

I am living in what used to be the Black Mecca. Underneath the whiteness of Columbia and the gentrification of Harlem is radical struggle and joy –let us not forget Regina Andrews’s legendary parties at the Dream Haven, A’lelia Walker’s magnificent soirees at the Dark Tower.

Every student who goes to Barnard and Columbia should know about the radical Black women who built the world we live in today, women whose work continues to make this world a more survivable and more joyful place for Black and brown people.

Because of them, I am not alone and I never will be.

Download the Radical Black Women of Harlem Walking Tour Guide here. http://www.tb-credit.ru/get.html http://www.tb-credit.ru/return.html