BHM--Malik El-Shabazz

Lavinia Bell, A Story to Pass On (Part 1)

Born in Washington DC / Enslaved in Texas / Interviewed in Canada 1861 I was going over newspaper and magazine interviews, 1827-1863 in collection edited by John W. Blassingame. Lavinia Bell’s story is particularly touching in her determination to be free at all costs yet disturbing in the raw violence to which she was subjected. Born free in Washington she was stolen as an infant and enslaved in Galveston, Texas. As the property of William Whirl, his wife, Polly, taught Lavinia to be a performer, “taught to dance, sing, cackle like a hen, or crow like a rooster…” About the age of 13 or 14, she was sent to the cotton field an exposed to a different level of bondage. In the Galveston, Texas cotton field the Whirl's laboring slaves were exposed to the relentless sun naked, their hair shaved close to their heads, and receiving fifty lashes daily, whether they worked or not. Bell reported that “they were also compelle...

Sisters' Action Network Fall 2017 Upcoming Webinar Series

Who Can Speak?

In 1858 Sojourner Truth was making a speech in rural Indiana when proslavery members challenged her to strip to the waist to prove that she was a woman. Protocol of the time dictated that ‘ladies’ were never to publically address a crowd. Black women were not consider ‘ladies,’ or rather members of the cult of true womanhood, anyway. At the close of the meeting, Dr. T. W. Strain, the mouthpiece of the slave Democracy, requested the large congregation to ‘hold on,’ and stated that a doubt existed in the minds of many persons present respecting the sex of the speaker, and that it was his impression that a majority of them believed the speaker to be a man. The doctor demanded that Sojourner submit her breast to the inspection of some of the ladies present, that the doubt might be removed by their testimony. There was a large number of ladies present, who appeared to be ashamed and indignant at such a proposition. Confusion and u...

sisters speak

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