The virtual exhibit dedicated to the life of African-American women I found was on the website blackiowa.org and was titled ‘Unsung Heroines’. Even though I thought that I would find the exhibit in a matter of seconds after typing a few simple key word searches on Google, this turned out to not be the case. Finding a good virtual exhibit turned out to be quite a task and took up half an hour of my time and this is quite a long period considering that Google finds you millions of searches in just a matter of seconds. The exhibit I found is quite interesting and focuses on women that have had a part in helping build African-American communities and help them move forward.
The first person who was in the exhibit was Charlotta Pyles who was a slave in the 1850’s. Her life story is inspiring because she not only helped herself and her children gain freedom from slavery but she also later helped others to gain freedom. She raised $3000 in order to free the husbands of two of her daughters. It is worth mentioning that $3000 is an amount that is still considered to be a very hefty sum and in those days having to raise this kind of money was probably even more difficult. Nevertheless Charlotta Pyles did so, freed her daughter’s husbands and then went on to assist even more slaves. Like in the field of public service, African-American women shined in the field of academics too in spite of all the adversity they had to face being not only women, but black women at that. This simply meant that they were outcasts even in their own society because black society is notorious for being unkind to women. Lulu Johnson got her B.A. degree from the University of Iowa and she later did her Masters from the same place in the same year and also got her Ph.D. degree from the same university in 1941. Lulu was the first African- American woman in the country to receive a Ph.D. in history. Similarly, Gertrude Rush was the first black woman attorney in the USA, and the only one till the 1950’s. She paved the path and mentored plenty of other young African-American girls.
Other efforts by African-American women included setting up organizations for social work. Examples of these include Order of the Eastern Star in Madison during the 1950’s and Daughter of the Elks in Cedar Rapids during the same time. During the 1960’s, women like Aldeen Davis were taking up journalism and she contributed in the Muscatine newspaper and also was active in other community services.
The exhibit also shows how the African-American women are being honored now for example Viola Davis, a social activist has a park and a school named after her. It also shows how women from the African-American community are now stepping up in politics and social offices are being nominated to run them as well.
Another website that I found related to the African-Americans was the africanamericanhistorymonth.gov. Even the theme of this month this year is ‘African American Women’. I was a little shocked to find that when I looked for a virtual exhibit related to black women on this site I couldn’t find one. This goes on to show that how little proper care is being given to highlight the accolades and rewards given to and gained by women in the black community.
Even though America has seemingly come a long way in the battle of civil rights and now even has an African-American President, to me it still seems like there should be more importance given to the women within this community and that the strong patriarchal norms that are part of the black community need to be broken. The women too should be shining with the men. Even the exhibit which I was able to find from the internet from the blackiowa.org website focused only on women from the state of Iowa. There should have been more information about black women in general. Also the information that had been provided on the exhibit needs to be more detailed. It seemed to me that it only skimmed the surface of the lives of the women.
However, even though the information was a little less in depth than I thought it would be, there were striking similarities between the lives of all the women in the exhibit. All of them seemed to be the first of what they were doing in their respective fields. To find out more I had to research about them individually on the internet, however there was often very little additional information available there too that I was able to find.
Writing this paper I have learnt that there is still much more that needs to be done about highlighting the lives of the African-American women. There is less information than expected over the internet. All women were mentors and pioneers in their respective fields but more in depth information about their lives needs to be available. Other websites were available for information on the African-American woman but they were not fully dedicated to them. Only a portion of the website had information about the lives of the influential black women. Other influential women like the Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston too is often sidelined because of her status of first as a black and then a woman. Such marginalization takes place within the black community itself as well. Only now has she been given the status of a mainstream writer after so many years. Previously even her contribution to the Harlem Renaissance was sidelined because she toys with issues of gender and not only race.
Works Cited
Unsung Heroines. Blackiowa. 25 April 2012.
http://www.blackiowa.org/exhibits/virtual-tour/unsung-heroines/13/
February is African American History Month. Africanamericanhistorymonth. 25 April 2012. http://www.africanamericanhistorymonth.gov/about.html#theme
Notable African American Women. Womenshistory.about.com. 25 April 2012.
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/africanamerican/a/black_women.htm
Zora Neale Hurston. Womenshistory.about.com. 25 April 2012.
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/hurstonzoraneale/p/hurston_bio.htm
Black History and Women. Womenshistory.about.com. 25 April 2012.
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/afraamermore/u/black_history_women.htm
