Recent forces of change affecting radical black American women

Abstract

Radical Black American women are creations of a powerful heritage and the cataclysm of the sixties. From these forces a particular individual has emerged. Firstly being black and secondly a woman, she has historically been denied achievement of her full potential in U.S. society. A painful aftermath has been the result. Slavery sowed the seeds of the black woman's fundamental human problems: with the black man, the white woman and the media. A damaged socio-sexual and social relationship with her two respective counterparts and a denigrated popular image has been the twentieth century consequence. This was a situation which the furore of the last decade shook. Awareness and involvement characterized the sixties. Drawing on her poignantly cogent past and the revolutionary impetus of that era, the radical black woman embodied the tradition of the strong black female to whom she was fittingly indebted. Hers was a consciousness which was determined to be finally rid of a multi-oppressive mode which through racism,sexism and their subsequent factor poverty had made her the victim of social, economic and psychological American repression. The depths of her plight revealed, the activist has been spurred to reject the derogatory stereotypes of history. This she did in the spirit of a catalytic figure for both herself and black women collectively. In every field, politics, the arts, literature and the media, in the sphere of the academic and the organization the black feminist was apparent. Galvanized by the Civil Rights struggle and following Women's Liberation Movement and heartened by victories, the radical Black American woman was motivated to fight for true equality. This spirit produced an array of inspiring symbols for striving black womanhood. My thesis looks at the forces which created these particular women and their degree of success.