The founding mother of black feminism

The founding mother of black feminism
The founding mother of black feminism

Anna Julia Cooper: born August 10, 1858, died Feb. 27, 1964
When people hear the words “feminism” or “feminist movement,” far too often they visualize only the struggles of white women. For those who study feminism as a series of waves, there has been a strong push to make inroads on the erasure of black women and other women of color from earlier segments of feminist history. As a black feminist for over 50 years, I have always pushed back against our exclusion from the historical academic canon, and have practiced and written about what we now define as “intersectional” feminism—in particular, the deadly double impact of race and gender on my sisters. 

Many are informed about and aware of pioneers like Audre Lorde, who stated that “black feminism is not white feminism in blackface.” Terms like “intersectionality” or “identity politics” are now common in our political discourse, but far too often people—including politicians—know little to nothing of the deeper historical roots that made these later concepts possible.  

Over the last month, I’ve examined the lives and contributions of black women who have lifted us as we’ve climbed: We stand on the shoulders of women like Maria Louise Baldwin, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Mary Church Terrell. Today, it is fitting that I close the month with Anna Julia Cooper, who in her 105 years of life never gave up the fight for her sisters, and who many scholars have named “the mother of black feminism.”  

“Only the BLACK WOMAN can say ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.”’  ~ Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South
 
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Denise Oliver Velez for Community Contributors Team
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For The 1st Time, Architecture's Most Prestigious Prize Is Awarded To 2 Women

For The 1st Time, Architecture's Most Prestigious Prize Is Awarded To 2 Women
For The 1st Time, Architecture's Most Prestigious Prize Is Awarded To 2 Women

Pritzker Prize.com Laureates 2020
Yvonne Farrell (1951) and Shelley McNamara (1952) met during their collegiate studies at the School of Architecture at University College Dublin (UCD). They studied under rationalist architects who had newly arrived to challenge the preexisting thought and culture of the institution. Upon graduating in 1976, they were each offered the unique opportunity to teach at UCD, where they continued to educate until 2006, and were appointed as adjunct professors in 2015. “Teaching for us has always been a parallel reality,” comments Farrell. “And it’s a way of trying to distill our experience and gift it to other generations coming along so that they actually play a role in the growing of that culture. So it’s a two way thing, we learn from students and hopefully students learn from us.”

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara
Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell while students at UCD, 1974

In 1978, Farrell and McNamara, along with three others, established Grafton Architects, named after the street of their original office to prioritize the existence of place, rather than individuals. Significant projects have included North King Street Housing (Dublin, Ireland 2000); Urban Institute of Ireland, University College Dublin (Dublin, Ireland 2002); Solstice Arts Centre (Navan, Ireland 2007); Loreto Community School (Milford, Ireland 2006); Offices for the Department of Finance (Dublin, Ireland 2009); and Medical School, University of Limerick (Limerick, Ireland 2012).

Reflecting on their childhoods, McNamara recalls, “My awakening to the experience of architecture was a visit as a child to an enormous 18th-century house on the beautiful main street of the city of Limerick where my aunt lived. Her husband had a beautiful mahogany lined pharmacy shop on the ground floor, and she ran a little Montessori school in a room over the entrance hall. This aroused a sense of wonder as to what a house could be and I remember vividly the sensation of space and light, which was an absolute revelation to me.”

Medical School, University of Limerick
Medical School, University of Limerick, photo courtesy of Dennis Gilbert

 

Institut Mines Télécom
Institut Mines Télécom, photo courtesy of Alexandre Soria

Farrell shares, “One of my earliest memories is of lying on my back on a cushion on the floor underneath the baby grand piano we had at home. While my mother played the piano above me, I remember being aware of the wonderful space filled with music under that walnut instrument. I grew up in Tullamore, Co. Offaly, Ireland—a town of streets and squares, stone warehouses, crafted houses and a canal that cut a wonderful line into the landscape. An oak forest at the edge of the town had a carpet of bluebells every spring. Nature felt very close.”

Of the five original partners, only Farrell and McNamara stayed. Their first international commission away from their native Ireland transpired 25 years later, with Universita Luigi Bocconi in Milan (Milan, Italy 2008), which was awarded World Building of the Year at the 2008 inaugural World Architectural Festival in Barcelona. Other international projects have since followed, with tantamount acclamation from the architectural community. University Campus UTEC Lima (Lima, Peru 2015) was awarded the inaugural RIBA International Prize 2016 by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Institut Mines Télécom (Paris, France 2019) and Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, School of Economics (Toulouse, France 2019) were recently completed.

Universita Luigi Bocconi
Universita Luigi Bocconi, photo courtesy of Alexandre Soria

They are Fellows of The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland and International Honorary Fellows of RIBA. They have previously held the Kenzo Tange chair at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2010) and the Louis Kahn chair at Yale University (2011) and have taught at institutions including École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, and lectured internationally.

Grafton Architects was the recipient of the 2012 Biennale di Venezia Silver Lion Award for the exhibition, Architecture as New Geography. Farrell and McNamara were appointed as 2018 co-curators for the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia, with the theme FREESPACE. They were awarded the RIAI James Gandon Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Architecture by the RIAI in 2019 and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2020.

The first woman allowed to argue Supreme Court cases

The first woman allowed to argue Supreme Court cases
The first woman allowed to argue Supreme Court cases

On February 15, 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a new law that would admit women as members of the Supreme Court bar and allow them to submit and argue cases at the high court.

Suffragette, teacher, lawyer and presidential candidate Belva Lockwood championed that cause with Congress after the Supreme Court ruled that women – and specifically Lockwood – could not practice law before it. In November 1876, Chief Justice Morrison Waite curtly replied to Lockwood’s request to be admitted to the Supreme Court bar. “By the uniform practice of the Court from its organization to the present time, and by the fair construction of its rules, none but men are permitted to practice before it as attorneys and counselors,” Waite said. The Chief Justice added the Court wouldn’t change its mind unless “required by statute.”

In most cases, state courts also didn’t allow women as lawyers to argue cases at the state-court level. The Supreme Court in an 1872 opinion in Bradwell vs. Illinois confirmed the ability of Illinois to block women from its state bar. Myra Bradwell, a recent law school graduate, asked the Supreme Court to intervene, citing the 14th Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause.

Justice Samuel Miller, citing the recent Slaughterhouse Cases, said the clause didn’t apply to the ability of a state to regulate its own conduct. “The right to control and regulate the granting of license to practice law in the courts of a state is one of those powers which are not transferred for its protection to the federal government,” Miller said.

Justice Joseph Bradley’s concurring opinion went much farther, stating that women weren’t fit to argue Supreme Court cases or even become lawyers. “Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life,” Story said. “The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.”

Undaunted, Lockwood spent three years after her 1874 rejection lobbying Congress and former President Ulysses Grant (who had presented Lockwood with her law degree) for a law that would force the Supreme Court to recognize the right of women to appear before it. President Hayes signed “An act to relieve certain legal disabilities of women,” which read that “any woman who shall have been a member of the bar of the highest court of any State or Territory or of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia for the space of three years, and shall have maintained a good standing before such court, and who shall be a person of good moral character, shall, on motion, and the production of such record, be admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Lockwood had been practicing law in the District of Columbia and qualified as the first female attorney to appear before the Court, in the 1880 case Kaiser v. Stickney. Lockwood spoke for about 20 minutes in court. Lockwood didn’t prevail in that case but won her second and final case at the Supreme Court in 1906. (She also ran for president twice on the National Equal Rights Party ticket.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
The Constitution Daily
February 15, 2020 by Scott Bomboy
Editor in chief of the National Constitution Center


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Meet the First and Only Black Queen of England

Meet the First and Only Black Queen of England
Meet the First and Only Black Queen of England

Meghan Markle made international headlines when she married Prince Harry of the British royal family and became a Duchess. Millions tuned into watch the 3-hour ceremony. But Meghan is not the first Black woman to live in the Royal Palace. In 1761, Sophie Charlotte married King George III and became the first ever Black Queen of England.

But Queen Sophia Charlotte, a descendent of a Black Portuguese family that lived in Germany, wasn’t just the Queen of England; She was also the Queen of Ireland as well. Even more interesting, they got married at the age of 17 and they went on to have 15 children. She was the queen for 57 years.

According to Gabriel Scott, historian and author of The Chosen Ones: Perception of Malcolm and Martin, people have tried to discredit and whitewash the significance of her history and contributions to England for many years. However, the truth can not be denied.

A very unique and intelligent woman

Queen Sophia Charlotte spoke several languages including English, German and French. She was good friends with accomplished classical composer, Johann Bach and his wife. And she once received a composition in her honor from Wolfgang Mozart.

In addition, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina in the United States is named after her in her honor.

But most notably, history confirms that she was, in fact, the great-great-great grandmother of the current queen, Queen Elizabeth. Wow! Who would’ve ever thought that the royal family had Black ancestry in their lineage?

(C) https://www.blackhistory.com/2018/06/first-black-queen-england-sophie-charlotte-meghan-markle-royal-family.html