by Jacqui Germain

Zora Neale Hurston’s birthday was on January 7. Writers all over celebrated the 125th anniversary with favorite Hurston quotes and thoughtful commentary on the legacy of her writing. She’s most well-known for the seminal 1937 text, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in addition to authoring numerous other equally brave books, plays, short stories, poems, and essays. Their Eyes Were Watching God has been translated to the stage and the silver screen, and sits proudly on many bookshelves both in and outside of the academy. Today, few would dispute the book’s significance, or the gravity of its author’s wisdom and craft, but as is often true with artists of color, Hurston’s posthumous fame dwarfs the recognition she received while she was alive.


Few know that Hurston died in a Welfare Home, and was buried in an unmarked grave in 1960. Few know that her work went largely unread for years afterwards. In fact, Their Eyes Were Watching God was almost lost in its obscurity, as were her other works, and even the location of her remains. But do you know who looked for her? Do you know who found her and pushed her writing back into the literary light? Do you know who, with help from a friend, paid to have a headstone made 13 years after Hurston’s death? Alice Walker, another black woman writer, with her own impressive resume of work, most well-known for her 1982 novel, The Color Purple.

“We’re us with all of our parts…We have our Langston, we have our Dubois, we have our Zora, we have our Nella, you know—it’s a very good medicine, it’s a very good way to be—whole. We want to be whole.” – Alice Walker, from her 2003 lecture at Barnard College

But then, isn’t that how it’s always been? Black women are the ones who look for and find each other. We’re the first and sometimes only ones to notice our absence at all, to feel the void when one of us goes missing, is erased or shut out, is ignored or dismissed. Aren’t we so often our own search parties? The guardians of each other’s bones and legacy? Isn’t it always up to us to find each other? To say to one another, I see you. You are here—and mark the Earth with a rock or a hashtag in service of memory. Isn’t it always up to us to find each other?

The past couple weeks (the last few months, I mean, year and a half / couple years / decade(s) / so long for so many of our foremothers) have been especially rough for black women in this movement. Sometimes it’s white supremacy, and sometimes it’s patriarchy; many times, it’s both. Sometimes it’s neither.



Lately though, I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of aggressive, violent misogyny being hurled at black women by not all, but still too many black men. Their brazen homophobia and transphobia is standard; their casual—even criminal—attitudes toward gender-based and sexual violence are regularly displayed. In too many of these cases, the violence and aggression comes from black men who claim some sort of pro-black posturing. The same black male comrades we black women have linked arms and blocked highways with. The same black comrades we’ve grieved for and with, exposing ourselves to all manner of gendered bigotry, harassment and targeting—all in service of a movement built to support and fight for collective liberation. And still, so often black women freedom fighters are met with violence from the very people we’re fighting for freedom with.

The relentlessness of this aggression wears on black women and can produce a kind of exhaustion that threatens to engulf and swallow. It’s an exhaustion that can weigh down our tongues and take up so much space, we nearly disappear—and all our work, wisdom and voice along with us. So in resistance to that, let the following letter be me mounting a virtual search party. Let it be a floodlight and smoke signals all at once. Let it be two warm hands cupping your face, holding your cheeks saying, I see you. You’re here. Let it be the thing that lets you feel found, if you need it, and encourages you to look for and find others. Ashe:

Letter to black women freedom fighters, the black women movement-building and resisting in all the ways we’ve come to understand resistance:

I know you’re tired. We’re all tired of this shit. Of hearing it, of experiencing it, of being asked to prove it, of fighting against it, of dying from it. Of dying from it. We remember the casual sexism in movement meetings, the homophobic slurs tossed around at protests, being cat-called in the middle of an intersection while facing off with rows of riot police. We see the black men who make light of inter-personal violence, even suggest it as a viable option, but mask it as a joke so they can name our frustration something else. We see all of it and we remember all of it. Many of us understand this violence intimately, tangibly. And by many of us, I mostly mean all of us, though I don’t have the numbers to back that up, aside from the knowledge of this world being what it is for black women.

But I see you. You’re here. You exist. Even in spite of the world being what it is for black women. The black men who are sick of your resistance and leadership, who might wish you elsewhere, and who perhaps embody that wish with their harassment and vitriol, want you to disappear. And if you have disappeared, it’s okay. Our bodies, despite what they’d have us believe, are made to survive, and sometimes survival means shrinking, and folding into ourselves for a kind of conditional safety. We mustn’t be angry with our bodies for how they’ve learned to survive, but we should teach our bodies how to survive better.




For such lessons on survival, I turn to our history. Our foremothers left us these gifts. Our struggle is part of a long, winding legacy of continuously fighting this shit. Whether they talk about it in the documentary or not. Whether there’s a chapter in the book on us or not. We know this already. We’ve been experiencing violence and oppression from our black male comrades for generations in the midst of participating in collective movement work and building our own resistance spaces. The exhaustion that wears us thin is not new. We come from a long line of black women freedom fighters who’ve been erased from the history of black resistance and survival. But we also come from a long lineage of black women search parties. We’ve been looking for and finding each other for decades, even across time and space, even across languages. We find each other.

This is how we survive—by black women persistently looking for and finding each other. Since August of 2014, I’ve relied heavily on this to survive. Time and time again, other black women have found me, made me feel seen, and encouraged me to look for other black women who had been pushed into the void. Being lost and found again and again teaches me how be braver with love; all the most successful search parties are drenched in it. Being lost and found again and again is also a lesson in collectivism. After all, we have to be willing to look for each other. Continuing this sort of legacy isn’t inherent; it requires that we work to continue it until, hopefully, we don’t have to anymore.

But in the meantime, take comfort in the fact that some of us are actually invested in learning how to love all of us better. We’re queering our search parties. Becoming brighter flood lamps. Excavating our own histories to make sure all our foremothers have headstones. This is the work of continuing legacy. “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond,” declares another foremother, the inimitable Gwendolyn Brooks.

And indeed, we are.

by Juhanna Rogers


Dominant historical accounts say that Europeans brought Africans to the New World as slaves. However, history often leaves out that these “slaves” brought with them the knowledge they had from their previous lives. It’s no secret that Africans had pioneered advancements in agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering hundreds of years before being brought to the Americas. And we used these skills to help build new nations.

Today, there is a stereotype that Black children—specifically Black girls—are unable to excel in areas like mathematics and science, because the concepts are too difficult. This could not be further from the truth.

I am not a scientist, nor was I ever really interested in science. However, I have met a number of mentors and colleagues during my time in the academy who are leaders within the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. I wonder if I had met them earlier in my life, maybe I would have had a greater interest. Nonetheless, I think it is important now as an educator that I expose my students to Black women who are scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and leaders within these and other related fields.

Here are nine Black women who have or who currently are changing the world of STEM and serve as motivation for other Black and Brown girls to pursue their interests in the same fields.

Mae C. Jemison, M.D.

Dr. Mae Jemison was born in Alabama and raised in Chicago. Growing up, her parents made her spend many hours in the library reading about the sciences, which sparked her passion for STEM. The history-maker attended Stanford University, where she earned a degree in chemical engineering. Jemison would then go on to earn a medical degree from Cornell University. She worked as a physician in California for a few years after finishing medical school, before joining the Peace Corps to serve as a researcher and physician in Liberia and Sierra Leone. After returning to the United States, she decided to apply to NASA for its astronaut training program in 1987. In 1992, Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman to ever go to space with the Endeavour mission.

Alexa Canady, M.D.

Dr. Alexa Canady grew up in Michigan. Her father was a dentist and her mother an educator. Dr. Canady’s interest in science grew more intense after she participated in a pre-college program at the University of Michigan. She later went on to earn a degree in zoology and attended medical school at the University of Michigan. In 1980, she became the first African-American neurosurgeon and dedicated her career to pediatric patients in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Michigan. In 1987, she became Chief of Neurosurgery at the Michigan’s Children Hospital until she retired in 2001. Dr. Canady returned to practice medicine part-time after learning her new community in Florida did not have a practicing African-American surgeon in pediatrics.

Marie M. Daly, Ph.D.

Dr. Marie Daly was born in 1921 to a family who was dedicated to her education. After her father had to leave Cornell University due to the steep tuition, he was determined to make sure his daughter was a success. Daly studied at Queens College and New York University, before becoming the first African-American to earn a doctorate degree in chemistry (from Columbia University). As a graduate student at Columbia, Daly studied under Dr. Mary L. Caldwell. Afterwards she continued to conduct research and teach at universities throughout New York City. Dr. Daly spent many years as faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University. As a faculty member and researcher, she championed the need to support students of color interested in pursuing physics and chemistry at Queens College by establishing a scholarship fund in memory of her father.

Majorie Lee Browne, Ph.D.

In 1949, Dr. Marjorie Browne was the third African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. During her time at the University of Michigan, she was a teaching assistant in her field, which was also a major accomplishment in the early 1940s. As a scholar, Dr. Browne received numerous prestigious awards and grants that helped to advance her research—including a grant from the Ford Foundation and funding from technology giant IBM. With the IBM funds, she became one of the first scientists to set up an electronic computer lab at a historically Black college in 1960—at what was then known North Carolina College (or North Carolina A&T University today).

Norma Sklarek

Norma Sklarek was born in Harlem, New York and was a graduate of Columbia University. Ms. Sklarek was the first African-American woman to earn an architect’s license in the state of New York. Not only did she build a lasting career in a field dominated by White men, but she was also an advocate for more women in the field. Later in her career, she started her own all-women architect firm. Norma Sklarek’s spirit and work left an imprint on the world as her work can still be seen nationally and internationally. For example, two of her most well-known projects are the American Embassy in Tokyo and Fox Plaza in San Francisco.

Aprille J. Ericsson-Jackson, Ph.D.

Aprille Ericsson-Jackson is a native of Brooklyn, New York. She attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology before attending graduate school at Howard University. She was the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Howard University and the first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in Engineering at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. As she continues her career at NASA, Dr. Ericsson-Jackson is also committed to educating and inspiring more African-American students to pursue careers in STEM.

Ashanti Johnson, Ph.D.

Dr. Johnson is the first African-American woman to graduate with a doctorate in oceanography from Texas A&M University. Dr. Johnson has taught at several universities across the country and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Institute for Broadening Participation and as the Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Recruitment within the Division of Faculty Affairs at the University of Texas in Arlington. In January 2010, she received a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring at the White House, in recognition of her professional achievements and diversity-related activities.

Lisette Titre

Lisette Titre is a video game designer and education curriculum consultant with over 13 years of experience. Lisette graduated magna cum laude from Miami International University for Art and Design with a degree in computer animation. As a consultant for gaming companies she has left her mark on EA Sports and other major companies. Lisette has graced the cover of Black Enterprise magazine due to her entrepreneurial efforts. Recently, she partnered with Soledad O’Brien to encourage more young girls to consider education and jobs in STEM. Lisette is also a member of Blacks in Gaming, which seeks to get more African-Americans involved in the game design world.

Aletha Maybank, M.D.

Dr. Aletha Maybank is a young, highly respected physician. Her medical interests and areas of expertise include preventive medicine; nutrition and fitness; maternal and child health; cancer; HIV/AIDS; community health; and health inequities. Dr. Maybank focuses on creatively using her medical degree to make changes in the quality of healthcare nationally and internationally; therefore, instead of practicing in a hospital, she is making strides in the political arena. Dr. Maybank launched a campaign to bring the faces of real life African-American doctors to the popular children’s animated series, Doc McStuffins, in order to inspire young Black girls to pursue medical professions. Dr. Maybank also serves as Assistant Commissioner of Health for the New York City Department of Health.

Black women are phenomenal. We are the most resilient beings on the planet. We combat the numerous “-isms” thrown our way on a daily basis, and in spite of it all, still manage to get things done. Our faith and strength cover us in ways that sometimes defy logic. Through spiritual connection and self-preservation, we are ever-changing chameleons who rise to the occasion, time after time.

I was raised by my great-grandmother—a self-proclaimed strong Black women who ain’t need no man. Winnie was independent. She may have enjoyed my great-grandfather’s attention, but she never coveted it. Her self-esteem was not based in what others, or society at-large, thought of her.

by Angela Moore

The death of Dr. Maya Angelou has me thinking a lot about life. As I read through my timeline on facebook and glanced through Twitter and Instagram over and over there was a resounding theme concerning Dr. Angelou. She left a legacy that can not be denied.