If Not Me then Who? The Identity and Activism of Black Women during Jim Crow and Apartheid in the United States and South Africa
- 1 History and Political Science Department, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, Alabama, USA
Abstract
Jim Crow and apartheid are two examples of systems that have extensively propagated differential oppression among the echelons of humanity. Apartheid laws in South Africa and Jim Crow laws in the United States assigned black people to subordinate social, economic and political positions to whites while simultaneously incorporating the repression of women’s rights. Moreover, feminist issues faced by black women were inherently different from those of white women because of the legacy of slavery. This placed black women in the difficult position of having to overcome both racism and sexism as imposed by both systems. While many black women have championed the causes of conventional movements for liberation and equality, they have found those crusades to be lacking in a commitment to addressing the unique race, gender, and class concerns related to black womanhood. This article delineates that the interwoven discrimination of sexism and racism manifested by Jim Crow and apartheid resulted in black women forming autonomous liberation movements from those of black men and white women in the United States and South Africa.
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