Mary Ann Weathers wrote the essay "An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force," "one of the pioneering texts" of

Black feminism Black feminism is a philosophy that centers on the idea that "Black women are inherently valuable, that lack women'sliberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's but because our need as human persons for autonomy." Race, gen ...

. In it she "challenges the black liberation movement to embrace women's liberation which she hopes would be responsive to the needs of all oppressed people." She highlights ways that improving conditions for women would help all: if buses were safer for women to ride on, free of harassment, for example, men and children would be safer too. Likewise, better employment, desegregated schools, and improved public spaces were all examples of women’s interests that would serve everyone in the community, not only at the present moment but also for future generations. Weathers rejected the notion that “black women’s liberation is ..antimale; any such sentiment or interpretation as such cannot be tolerated. It must be taken clearly for what it is—pro-human for all peoples.” The essay was published in Cell 16's ''No Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation'' in 1969 as well as in Leslie Tanner's 1970 ''Voices for Female Liberation'', circulated among consciousness-raising groups in New York City in the 1970s, and in other anthologies in the following decades. Weathers was a member of the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segrega ...

's Black Women's Liberation Committee.

References

External links

“An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force”
at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weathers, Mary Ann 20th-century American essayists 20th-century American women writers American women essayists Black feminism Possibly living people Year of birth missing Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee American civil rights activists