A group of women, under a “Women’s Liberation” banner, march in support of the Black Panther Party, New Haven, Connecticut, November 1969. (Photo: David Fenton / Getty Images)
Doug Jones in Alabama. Ralph Northam and Justin Fairfax in Virginia, Phil Murphy and Sheila Oliver in New Jersey: All Democratic wins made possible by Black women’s historical capacity for building organizational and structural power. This power — which was originally cultivated to protect and preserve Black bodies, to protect and preserve Black life — has commanded victories for the Democratic Party in 2017 and is poised to influence the midterms in 2018.
A timeline of current events centering white women would seem to light the path to these victories: Hillary Clinton’s defeat on November 8, 2016. Global resistance that demonstrated the will of pink-capped women on January 21, 2017. Alyssa Milano’s #MeToo tweet. But more than half of white women in Alabama, Virginia and New Jersey voted for the Republican, while Black women’s votes ushered in the Democratic winners at rates above 90 percent. It is Black women walking the path for the Democratic Party, yet the light continues to shine on white women who are on — or off — that road. Indeed, none of these current events centering white women make visible the African American women who paved the road in the first place: African American women like Mary Church Terrell, Frances E.W. Harper and Fannie Lou Hamer. Women who are the foremothers of #MeToo founder Tarana Burke. There are more, millions more. These millions are the Black women who strategized, founded and have maintained, for over a century, institutions that edify the Black community.
Informal networks maintained by enslaved African women kept Black people alive, literally and figuratively.
These institutions are civic, social, business and political. They are even athletic. They are diverse. They are Black Lives Matter and Zeta Phi Beta. They are Black Women’s Network and