Women Rock!

 My mom and sister Dorothy!

Reading this blog, it will seem as if I watch The Oprah Network quite often. I know that I refer to things that I have seen on her show quite often. But, actually, I rarely watch TV, and when I do, I really want to watch things that may add positively to my life. To this end, I will switch over to OWN, and it seems like I always end up watching something that makes me ponder.

A few weeks ago I was randomly changing channels, and Oprah was doing an interview with Gloria Steinem. I love Gloria Steinem!

Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem is a name that is closely related to the Women's movement. Being a woman of color, I have wondered over and over, did women of color really have a place in The Women's Movement? All of the women that I know worked. My mother never worked outside of the home, but she worked in our acre garden just as much as my father. And, she went a step further than he did, she not only picked the food, but she canned food, cooked, washed, pressed hair etc. 

However, after watching Gloria's interview with Oprah, I had that light bulb moment. Gloria's movement seem to not be about women just working, but about women having the right to enjoy many things that just were not afforded to women such as the right to compete in marathons, to bike competitively, to play tennis professionally etc. I love to bike and run, and I like to do these things with women and men, and the thought that there were women who were not allowed to do these things along side other women and men really baffles me. I wonder if the suppressors used the same logic to suppress women that they used to suppress African Americas? Hmmmmmmmm

Today, on Mother's Day, I am writing this post to celebrate women and choices. The choice to have children, to not have children, to get married, to not get married, to be an Olympic athletic, to bike, to run, to laugh, to dance, to get a driver's licenses without her husband's signature, buy a house in her own name, to be damn happy, to throw up the middle finger at anyone who dares to say "Women shouldn't be doing that?"

Today, I am paying homage to my mother who decided at 76 years old to buy a house in her own name; my sister, Dr. Dorothy Reed, who decided to "take the road less traveled" and attend and graduate from Tuskegee Institute, sparking a family tradition of college educated women; my sister, Tracy, who had the audacity to decide that she would start and pastor a church in the South; Zora Neale Hurston who decided that she would abruptly leave the man whom she loved in order to pursue her writing passion; Billy Jean King who was determined to play tennis competitively; Hillary Clinton who decided that a woman can be taken seriously and even one day be The President of the United States; Sojourner Truth who had the courage to stand before a whole lot of men and boldly state "Ain't I a Woman." 

Today, I want to send a special shoutout to two of my co-workers, Erica and Angie, and the countless other women who made the choice to spend the morning biking, with me, along side of many men, women, and children of all different backgrounds on Mother's Day.

The official ride logo!

In front of The White House!

In Front of the Air Force Memorial!


Terria: soror, friend, and biking buddy made the decision to do the ride today!

We ran into another co-worker and his girlfriend at the end of the ride!

Women, we don't have to wait to be celebrated; we can celebrate ourselves!

Women Rock!

Happy Mother's Day!

Superwomen

"Faster than a speeding bullet.
More powerful than a locomotive.
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Look! Up in the sky!
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Superman!

Yes, it's Superman - strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman - who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights the never ending battle for Truth, Justice and the American Way".

If I have heard this quote once, I must have heard it at least a hundred times. When I think of this quote, however, Kent Clark as Superman does not come to my mind. What comes to my mind are three incredible women who were able to help change the course of  women's history, help bend the pendulum of literature from White men, and birth and raise nine women in the "dirty South" and I mean the DIRTY Jim Crow South. All three women fought for "the never ending battle for Truth, Justice and the American way", doing this all while being mild mannered, very much like Kent Clark. Let's briefly discuss Sojourner Truth, Toni Morrison, and my momma: Nettie Armstead Stallworth.

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, whose given name was Isabella Baumfree, was born a slave and was bilingual. Image a slave being bilingual. Well, she was! She spoke Dutch and English. She luckily ended up in the state of New York, and New York began the gradual abolition of slavery in 1799.  Sojourner's master promised to free her, but he reneged on that promise. REALLY!!! So, "Superwoman Sojourner" decided to run away, or as she put it, walk away.  As time went on, I am cutting her story a little short, she decided to become a traveling preacher. Now, anyone who knows anything about "religious people" know that being a woman preacher has been frowned upon for years, but to try  and be one in 1843 and make money doing it, truly makes Sojourner a "Superwoman."  She also had the audacity, being an ex-slave, to stand at the Ohio's Woman's Right Convention in the year of  18 and  50 and say "I can work as much and eat as much as man, when I could get it, and bear the lash as well -- and ain't I a woman" in her famous "Ain't I a Woman Speech."  This sho nuff makes Sojourner Truth a "Superwoman". "She didn't leap tall buildings in a single bound" like Superman, but she did help to start changing the way that African American women were viewed, and that definitely puts her in the "Superwoman" category.

Toni Morrison

Now, my all time favorite who made my vision board, Toni Morrison, definitely qualifies to be in the category with "Superman."  I am really pondering which one of her writings put her in this category: Sula, The Bluest Eye, Love, or my all time favorite Song of Solomon. Okay, I'm being bias, but really, everything that she has written puts her in the "Superwoman" category.

Please allow me a few minutes to digress and talk about Song of Solomon.  I taught this novel for the first time this year, and I must say that I had a ball.  My students and I dissected this novel the same way that a scientist dissects a rat. One of my students, in her digital portfolio, stated that "this was an awakening experience, not that I didn't not know that my people (African Americans) were capable of writing scholarly novels, my previous teachers just never embraced the novels as Ms. Stallworth did."  Another student stated that "I got more out of Song of Solomon, than I have out of any other book I have read."

Back to my point! Historically, schools have mainly focused on White male writers: William Faulkner, William Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald, just to name a few.  Don't get me wrong, I love these guys and their writings, but I know that there are some women writers who deserve to be in the ranks with these men: Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Wolfe, Tananarive Due, and of course, Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison, has firmly established herself in the rank with these men and has started the literary pendulum to shift towards women.  Her works are studied in Colleges, Universities, and High Schools across this country, and she has even made the AP English exam. So, I don't have to say much more about why she is a "Superwoman."  She may not be "faster than a speeding bullet," but when a  person can began to shift the literary pendulum, that definitely puts a person in the "Superwoman" category.




My momma, Nettie Armstead Stallworth


Now, my momma, Nettie Armstead Stallworth, name is not in any history books, and she may never be talked about on television or the Internet, except in this blog, but she definitely qualifies to be a "Superwoman."  Raised in the rural South, she met my daddy, LJ Stallworth, and they went on to have nine girls.  That was not a typo, they had nine girls and no boys.  My momma would clean the house, wash and fold clothes, and cook breakfast and dinner, we ate lunch at school, without a single complaint. Now, only a "Superwoman" could do this. She would press our hair, pick vegetables from a mile long garden, and can the vegetables, without saying a "murmuring word."  Now, doing all these tasks definitely makes my momma a "Superwoman."

After my daddy died, my momma made the decision to leave the house that we were raised in despite what anyone thought.  Not only did she leave our childhood house, she left the state and moved to Georgia. This women had the audacity to leave all that she knew and start a new life in her 70s, she even briefly, had a boyfriend. Now, that's a whole 'nother blog that I may get to later. She is not "more powerful than a locomotive," but she did successfully raise nine strong girls with my Daddy, and this definitely puts her in the category of "Superwoman."

So, I can't take anything away from Superman; he really was Super. However, there are other Superheros, some are known and others are unknown, but their imprints will be left on the world forever.