Come Together or Come Apart

This is a paper I wrote for my Race and Social Change class. I think it makes one important point about the struggle for complete equality: we have to form coalitions. Unfortunately, in any given civil rights organization, there are several different groups that have other alterior goals. If we want to find an effective way to create a group large enough to affect socail change, we need to reconcile our various agendas.

Black Female Participation in the Fight for Civil Rights

Social identities do not exist in a vacuum. While individuals can share a characteristic that binds them to a common cause, the intersection of various socially constructed identities still dictates—and limits—how certain members of a group can participate. Such was the case with black female involvement in the fight for civil rights. While black women and men share their “blackness” and are thus exposed to many race issues that blanket both sexes, historically, black rights movements have adhered to the patriarchal tenets of dominant American culture that advocate strict limits on female participation. Robnet’s How long? How long? and Abu-Jamal’s A Life in the Party discuss black women’s roles in the Montgomery bus boycott and the Black Panther Party, respectively. In this paper, I will examine the different forms of restriction and limitation under which black women operated in each movement, using excerpts from each author to flesh out my analysis.

While Robnet’s article adequately chronicles the resourcefulness and determination of the black women involved in the Montgomery bus boycott, it also illustrates the crippling male-oriented bureaucracy in which the women operated. Even the inception of the boycott was strategically planned to foolproof it from attacks that utilized the power of male hierarchy. At least two women refused to give up their seats before Parks’ famous stand and went unsupported during their trials; one woman’s legitimacy as a symbol for integration would have been attacked by proponents of male hierarchy because she was not only “an immature teenager but pregnant as well” (Robnet, 217). Even with the struggle underway, women were no less subject to patriarchy. While women argued that it was “mostly women who were affected by the conditions on the buses” (Robnet, 219), they realized that they would not achieve enough support without the aide of some other “‘legitimate,’ well-respected leader in the black community” (Robnet, 218), such as male ministers or politicians. Robnet concludes that women were important “bridge” leaders, and that their leadership was no less responsible for the movement’s success than that of men. But while women may have performed aptly, they would not have been relegated to strictly secondary leadership roles without our society’s innate male-oriented bias.

While Robnet concedes that women did what they could for the Montgomery bus boycott while adhering to gender roles, Abu-Jamal’s article attempts to debunk the “supposedly” wide-ranging chauvinism that scholars (particularly Pearson) say women endured in the Black Panther Party. While actual physical abuse of women may have been rare, Abu-Jamal’s argument in regards to chauvinism seems tenuous; he is prone to misinterpreting primary sources to “debunk” the accusations of misogyny. For example, his iteration of Frankye Malika Adams’ assertion that “Women pretty much ran the BPP” fails to correctly analyze the quote in its context. Adams states that she believes women were integral to the implementation of street-level operations, such as “taking care of the sick and uh, so” (Abu-Jamal, 231). But she does not base her conclusion of female importance in the Party on women’s attainment of leadership positions. Abu-Jamal refuses to view the community leadership roles described by Adams in the same way that Robnet viewed similar roles held by women in Montgomery: crucial, but secondary. Male BPP leaders still made most of the decisions and represented the Party on a national level. Unlike Robnet’s conciliatory stance that women at least made an influence even with limitations, Abu-Jamal’s conclusion leads him to unrealistically claim that we should not seek to promote a “macrocosm” where groups with different interests, i.e. women, will always make organizations inherently fissiparous.

While Abu-Jamal’s article fails to legitimize the limited leadership mobility that plagued women in the BPP, championing Robnet’s ambivalent acceptance of the limited roles presented to women would also perpetuate the current patriarchal structure that plagues black rights movements. Abu-Jamal’s conclusion is inherently flawed in that it posits the incapability of people to completely unify under one cause. I believe that this argument seriously undermines the effort that would be needed to bargain for equal economic and educational rights by denying the importance of coalition. And while Robnet at least agrees that there are limited group roles given to women, she praises female resourcefulness despite women’s limited leadership instead of criticizing the patriarchal structure that keeps them in lower leadership positions. This passive acceptance is no less detrimental to progress of black equality—and ultimately, neither author discusses the gender inequality that must be bridged before black rights movements can move forward as a strengthened, unified front.