By Mychal Denzel Smith • 10 years ago

Gloria Richardson, silenced no more, speaks on women and the 1963 March on Washington

“Fifty years ago this week, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, A Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and other civil rights leaders spoke at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But where were the female civil rights activists?” Amy Goodman asked and answered that question on this morning’s Democracy NOW! when she interviewed Gloria Richardson, Co-founder of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee in Maryland.

Richardson, now 91, was on the program to speak at the March, but after saying “hello” to the crowd, the microphone was taken away from her. From her interview with Goodman, it’s not hard to see why. Richardson isn’t one to hold her tongue, and included with her critiques of the original march, she has biting words ...

“Fifty years ago this week, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, A Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and other civil rights leaders spoke at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But where were the female civil ...
By Alexandra Brodsky • 10 years ago

Newsflash: Not all smart women on Twitter are white CEOs

There was no way writing an article called “25 of the Smartest Women on Twitter” was ever going to go well. What does that even mean? How do you measure intelligence from 140-character broadcasts? Why do we need this list when we would never compile a male equivalent (the closest we’d get would be a default all-male “25 of the Smartest People on Twitter”)? We hear this message all the time: You’re smart for a woman. You’re tough for a girl.

So, as I said, this was never going to go well. But my god. What a clusterfuck.

Ann Charles — the founder of BRANDfog.com and self-described “woman CEO who writes about women in leadership” — assembled the list of ...

There was no way writing an article called “25 of the Smartest Women on Twitter” was ever going to go well. What does that even mean? How do you measure intelligence from 140-character broadcasts? Why ...
By Syreeta McFadden • 10 years ago

Daisy Bates was a boss

Tomorrow marks the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. As Katie noted yesterday, there are quite a few details that are omitted in the retelling of this landmark, cultural, social, political shift of an event to our generation and younger. A significant omission is the erasure of Daisy Bates, the only female organizer who spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. As head of the NAACP in Arkansas, Bates led the effort to desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957.

Check out this trailer, below, from a feature length documentary on Bates.

The role of African American women in the civil ...

Tomorrow marks the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. As Katie noted yesterday, there are quite a few details that are omitted in the retelling of this landmark, ...
By Syreeta McFadden • 10 years ago

A not-so-tiny criticism of Miley’s huge cultural appropriation problem

So a couple of summers ago, while visiting family in my hometown, my little sister, now grown up, decided we should go bar hopping. She and her friends took me out to one of the bars downtown, and, to my surprise, Milwaukee did have a thriving nightlife. The crowd was majority white: we intrepid gaggle of a few men and women of color peppered the massive bar space with Nelly or Kanye or Jay or Big blaring a bit too loudly through the speakers drinking out of cups swaying to music. The bros sang on beat to every Jay lyric dropped on Give It To Me.

I caught the interest of one of the bros — a white dude in a ...

So a couple of summers ago, while visiting family in my hometown, my little sister, now grown up, decided we should go bar hopping. She and her friends took me out to one of the bars downtown, ...
By Maya Dusenbery • 10 years ago

Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet

Comic Matt Bors takes on the mental condition related to Chelsea Manning’s transition. The good news is there’s treatment! (See above.) And if you are offended by the term douche-bag, read this.

Happy Go Topless Day!

An educational video game asks players to navigate all the barriers to abortion access in Texas.

How Victorian architecture aimed to segregate and isolate certain emotional displays of women.

Autostraddle has a behind-the-scenes look at the early days at Bustle. Apparently, Bryan Goldberg decided to make a site for women because he’d signed a non-compete clause making the young male demographic off-limits, and he didn’t want too many “smart” writers.

Fornicating While Latina.

Like Jos, Anna Gunn has ...

Comic Matt Bors takes on the mental condition related to Chelsea Manning’s transition. The good news is there’s treatment! (See above.) And if you are offended by the term douche-bag, read this.

Happy Go ...
By Katie Halper • 10 years ago

The 10 demands from the March on Washington you probably never heard about

Tens of thousands of people gathered at The National Mall to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Saturday. Most people don’t know it was for “Jobs and Freedom.” Even fewer people know what the demands of the march were. Well, here are ten things the organizers, representing different organizations and ideologies, were able to agree on as demands.

Comprehensive and effective civil rights legislation from the present Congress — without compromise or filibuster — to guarantee all Americans:
Access to all public accommodations
Decent housing
Adequate and integrated education
The right to vote Withholding of Federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists. Desegregation of all school districts in 1963. Enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment — reducing Congressional representation ...

Tens of thousands of people gathered at The National Mall to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Saturday. Most people don’t know it was for “Jobs and Freedom.” ...
By Maya Dusenbery • 10 years ago

Happy Women’s Equality Day!

Women’s Equality Day was designated in 1971 to commemorate the day the 19th amendment was ratified. Check it out below. You’d never guess the decades of struggle–against absurd fears of “petticoat rule” and patronizing warnings about the “burden of politics”–it took to win the right encapsulated in this short document.

Click here for larger version. (Image via.)

Women’s Equality Day was designated in 1971 to commemorate the day the 19th amendment was ratified. Check it out below. You’d never guess the decades of struggle–against absurd fears of “petticoat rule” and patronizing ...
By Maya Dusenbery • 10 years ago

Chart of the Day: We’ve lost more than 50 abortion clinics in the last three years

According to a survey by the Huffington Post, at least 54 abortion clinics across 27 states have ended their abortion services or shut their doors entirely since 2010. The decline in abortion providers is nothing new; that’s been the trend since the number peaked in 1982. But this recent downturn is “so different from what’s happened in the past,” according to Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute. “This kind of change is incredibly dramatic.”

Check out the charts below to see how things look in your state.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that, like the TRAP law that recently forced a 40-year-old clinic to shut down in Virginia, many of the closings were ...

According to a survey by the Huffington Post, at least 54 abortion clinics across 27 states have ended their abortion services or shut their doors entirely since 2010. The decline in abortion providers is nothing ...

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