By Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row
The 'other' Women's History Month
How many of us know of the food boycotts of
the early 1900s, when poor and working women organized tens of
thousands into mass demonstrations that rocked cities across
the nation? In 1910-era New York, Jewish women "declared war on
kosher butchers" because of high prices. In August 1914, over
1,000 Italian women in Providence, R.I., broke into
wholesalers' storage and threw macaroni into the streets
battling for lower pasta prices.
In 1929, the Women's Revolt took place in Nigeria, shaking
the colony to its foundations. These brave, radical women were
protesting an agricultural tax imposed by the British, through
the chiefs. The women seized colonial offices (and held some
for four days!), organized mass protests and mass community
meetings. Before it was over, over 50 women were killed, and at
least 50 wounded, by colonial military forces. However, the
women forced the British to revoke the tax.
Nor are women limited to mass actions of resistance, as
shown by the examples of some of the following: Sarah, Harriet
Ross, Mangobe, Jo Ann Robinson, and uncounted others.
Sarah was a captive in 1822-era Kentucky. One Kentucky
slaveowner described her as the "biggest devil that ever
lived." The fierce six-foot-tall Black woman poisoned her
owner's stud horse, set several stables afire, destroyed over
$1,500 worth of property, and *escaped five times*!
Mangobe was described by the late revolutionary historian
C.L.R. James as the "most revolutionary woman in the Congo,"
for her role in leading the popular religious movement of the
Prophet, Simon Kimbangu, which had a deep, anti-colonial
character. The imprisonment of Kimbangu and Mangobe sent the
Belgian colony into righteous and sustained revolt in 1921.
Harriet Ross thwarted the will of a slave trader who was
seeking her son, by barring the door and telling the man, "the
first man that comes into my house, I will split his head
open." When her (so-called) owner's son tried to beat her, she
grabbed a pole "and beat him nearly to death with it." Her
daughter stood by, watching and learning this tradition of
resistance.
Such a woman as this could truly be no man's slave, and
shortly thereafter Harriet Ross demonstrated as much by
mounting a cow and riding away from slavery and the plantation,
in broad daylight. Oh. Her daughter? She learned her lesson
well. You know of her by the name Harriet Tubman, a woman
revered as "Moses."
The American Civil Rights Movement made the great orator,
the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a household name. Almost
as well known is the sweet, quiet presence of Rosa Parks, the
proud woman who refused to relinquish her seat to a white man
on a bus.
But few recognize the name of Jo Ann Robinson. ... She was
the Chair of the Women's Political Council, a professional
women's group in Montgomery, Ala., the little known organizers
of the historic bus boycott. Robinson wrote the leaflet that
informed and energized thousands, and the WPC worked the phones
getting the word out.
The names of women warriors of Black Liberation, of those
who are still politically active, and of radicals of later
generations are known to us, perhaps, as contemporary visions
of resistance that continue to move us.
Column written March 6, 2001
Reprinted from the April 29, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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