Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the great civil rights and human rights leader, once urged activists to stay encouraged through both victories and setbacks. He famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Dr. King understood that this arc does not move in a straight line. Often, it lies invisible beneath the surface of despair—until, through resilience and action, it breaks into the light at pivotal moments.
But the arc won’t bend on its own. It is only bent through the tireless courage and determination of leaders and ordinary people who keep pressing forward, even in the face of profound disappointment.
It is with this perspective that I choose to view the May 7, 2025 not guilty verdicts in the state criminal case in Memphis, Tennessee against the former police officers who so brutally beat Tyre Nichols, ultimately causing his death. While these verdicts are deeply painful, I urge Memphians and others to use this moment not to give in to despair — or fall into fear — but to strengthen their resolve and join the ongoing struggle for justice.
As my mother, Fayette County civil rights activist Viola McFerren, often said, “What’s right for minority people is right for majority people.” Protecting the rights of marginalized communities ensures the protection of rights for all. This principle is echoed through generations—by the slavery abolitionists of the 1800s, the civil rights leaders of the 1960s, and today’s advocates working for justice, equality, and human dignity.
Social justice is not without heartbreak. There are days of deep disappointment, like May 7th, followed by moments of renewal that nourish our souls for the road ahead.
This verdict will take time for Memphis—and the nation—to process. And there must be space to mourn. But after mourning, I urge all of us to rise with renewed spirit and courage, to put our backs and hands once more against the arc, helping to bend it toward justice for African Americans, the poor, and all people of color.
Because truly, “what’s right for minority people is right for majority people.”
Daphene R. McFerren
Executive Director
The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change
May is AAPI Heritage Month, a time meant to celebrate the richness, resilience, and range of Asian American and Pacific Islander identities. And yet, for those of us who live in the liminal spaces between categories, who carry blended lineages and complex migrations, this month often arrives with both pride and a quiet ache.
As an Afro-Filipino scholar, I exist in what feels like an intentional blind spot, too often rendered invisible in both Black and AAPI discourses. I am not a bridge between communities; I am the community. I am what it looks like when the maps are redrawn and the memory refuses to separate. My body is a geography of empire, survival, and cultural convergence.
I carry my father’s melanin and my mother’s Tagalog lullabies. I grew up with lumpia on the plate and Marvin Gaye in the background. I have watched Filipino elder’s light candles for their ancestors, and I have danced at cookouts to Frankie Beverly featuring Maze, and The Electric Slide, while uncles told stories about Malcolm, Martin, and Motown. I have been called “other” in both Asian and Black spaces, and I have learned to name myself when others refuse to.
The Philippines is often treated as an outlier in the AAPI narrative, tropical, colonized, Catholic, too American to be Asian, too Asian to be seen. And when you’re Black and Filipino? That tension doubles. You become something people want to admire but not engage. Curiosity without conversation. Celebration without understanding.
And yet… we are not new.
We are the legacy of migration and militarization.
We are the children of nurses and navymen.
We are the kids who knew José Rizal and James Baldwin in the same breath.
We are the spiritual descendants of both baybayin scripts and hip-hop cipher circles.
We are the in-between, and that in-between is sacred.
Reclaiming a Heritage That Remembers
To understand Afro-Filipino identity is to contend with colonial scars and spiritual survival. It is to carry Spain, America, and the Pacific in your bloodstream while searching for stories that look like your own.
That’s why I honor José Rizal, not just as a Filipino hero, but as a model for what it means to be dangerous with a pen. Rizal was a scholar, doctor, poet, and revolutionary whose words helped ignite a nation’s fight for freedom. He did not wage war with weapons, he used stories. His novel Noli Me Tangere pulled back the curtain on Spanish colonial violence in the Philippines. His follow-up, El Filibusterismo, was a slow-burn call for justice written by a man who knew he might die for telling the truth. And he did.
As a writer and scholar today, I hold Rizal’s legacy close, not as someone who lived in a time far removed from mine, but as someone who walked a similar terrain: empire, expectation, erasure. Rizal dared to imagine a freer world for his people. And I, too, write toward that imagining, not just for Filipinos, but for every blended Black and Brown child who has been told to pick a side when their soul knows it is whole.
What This Month Means to Me
AAPI Heritage Month should include us not as footnotes but as full chapters. We are not just here to add complexity to demographic data. We are here because our lives offer insight into how colonization, racialization, and diaspora have always been intertwined.
To be Afro-Filipino is to understand that identity is not static. It is not a box to be checked on a form it is a narrative you are constantly rewriting against silence. It is hearing your grandmother say “anak” and feeling your mother braid your hair while Stevie Wonder plays on the radio. It is knowing the smell of sinigang and soul food and understanding both are rituals.
As a scholar, I bring this duality into the classroom and into my research. My students don’t just get curriculum, they get culture, reflection, and refusal. I want them to see that knowledge is not neutral. That Blackness and Asianness are not binaries but rhythms that shape how we survive and how we speak. I want my students, especially those who exist at the intersections, to know that they do not have to shrink or fragment themselves to be legible. They already belong.
This month, I honor my Filipino lineage not as an accessory to my Blackness, but as part of the divine complexity that makes me whole. I celebrate not because the world has made space for me, but because I have learned to take up space anyway.
And I write this for every Afro-Asian student still searching for mirrors. For every child of two worlds who was told they had to choose. For every scholar who had to defend their existence before they could even begin their research.
We Are the Continuation, Not the Disruption
Afro-Filipino identity is not a deviation. It is a continuation of centuries of migration, love, resistance, and memory. We are what happens when colonization fails to erase, and when global Blackness reclaims what empire tried to divide.
We are not fragments.
We are full stories.
And this month, we remember that we belong, not because someone included us,
but because we have always been here.
A Final Word for the In-Between
I am the ocean between islands, the bridge between names. What they tried to divide, I carry as one. They told me to choose a side. I chose to belong to myself. My blood speaks in blended tongues, history, harmony, and the hush of what survived. This is not confusion. It is convergence. I am the echo of a mother’s prayer and a grandfather’s fight. I am their unfinished sentence, still writing.
Curtis Ladrillo Chamblee M.A. is an Afro-Filipino scholar and doctoral candidate in Communication & Film at the University of Memphis. His work explores Black masculinity, media representation, and the power of place, bridging ancestral memory with cultural critique. As a co-editor of UpRooted: Autoethnographies of Belonging and Place and co-author on rhetorical fractals and examined Tupac Lyrics using an Afrocentric Lens, Curtis elevates voices across diaspora, legacy, and liberation.
On April 4, 1968, on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee in front of room 306, an assassin shot and killed the nation’s prophet of non-violence. The previous night, King delivered his infamous I’ve Been to the Mountain Top speech. In the speech, he called his audience to stand firm under the oppressive tactics of the Henry Loeb administration. He also called for them to turn up the pressure in their non-violence resistance. This meant massive economic boycotts.
We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.
But on the next day, King lay dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Earlier that day he had worked on his sermon for Sunday, April 7. Though he lay dead, his associates found in his pocket the sermon notes he would have preached that Sunday if he had lived. The sermon title: “Why America May Go to Hell.”
Preaching economic boycotts and reflecting on why America may go to hell, may surprise admirers of King. While King today is largely considered one of the greatest Americans to ever
live, during his lifetime—and especially near the end of his life—King was one of the
most hated men in America. In a 1966 Gallop Poll, almost two-thirds of Americans had
an unfavorable opinion of King and the FBI named King “the most dangerous Negro in
America.
One reason for King’s declining popularity was his rhetoric on race. When examining King’s rhetoric, especially during the last year of his life, one would note that several of his speeches highlighted King’s growing understanding of race and racism. During the last year of his life, King’s confidence in American institutions or the American people living up to the ideas and ideals set forth in its sacred documents began to wane.
For instance, in his The Other America speech delivered at Stanford University on April 14, 1967, King called on his audience to see that the movement was heading towards another stage. King grounded this newfound insight on an understanding of racism that had eluded him in the past. He proclaimed, “Now the other thing that we’ve gotta come to see now that many of us didn’t see too well during the last ten years — that is that racism is still alive in American society and much more widespread than we realized. And we must see racism for what it is… It is still deeply rooted in the North, and it’s still deeply rooted in the South.” He closed this part of the speech by lamenting that
What it is necessary to see is that there has never been a single solid monistic determined commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans on the whole question of Civil Rights and on the whole question of racial equality. This is something that truth impels all men of goodwill to admit.
King’s position on race and racism would become even more pronounced in his speech America’s Chief Moral Dilemma, delivered May 10, 1967, to the Hungry Club. He starts by stating that “racism is still alive all over America. Racial injustice is still the Negro’s burden and America’s shame. And we must face the hard fact that many Americans would like to have a nation which is a democracy for white Americans, but simultaneously a dictatorship for Black Americans. We must face the fact that we have much to do in the area of race relations.”
King continued to address race and racism in his August 31, 1967 speech, the Three Evils of Society. In the speech, King revisited his arguments of racism and the prevailing white backlash. He argued that the “white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the Black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.” While not implying that “all white Americans are racist,” he did critique the dominant idea that “racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.” For King, racism may well be the “corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on Western civilization” and warned that if “America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.”
Leading up to the end of his life, King argued that what held America from becoming great was its racism. He further maintained that the movement had to face a resistance grounded in the nation’s racist heritage. Led by conservatives all across the country, the white backlash led King to realize that even with the earlier victories, a majority of white people still were not on board. He began to understand at a deeper level that the principles of the country he lauded and lifted in the past were mythic constructions. Therefore, he called for a moral revolution—challenging the nation’s long-held beliefs of freedom, democracy, justice, capitalism, and fairness.
King determined that the nation was sick and wondered aloud if things could get better. In his last sermon, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, delivered on March 31, 1968, at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC., King told the congregation that it is an “unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic.” For King, he realized that it was racism grounded in racist ideas and policies that hindered America from achieving its greatness.
While we do well to celebrate and commemorate the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., let us remember his challenge to us today. Let us remember that right before his death in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. attempted to dismantle racism; believing that America may just go to hell on
his way to becoming one of the most hated men in America.
Andre E. Johnson is the Scholar in Residence at the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change and Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies at the University of Memphis.
Editor’s Note: This is a re-posting of an original forum essay first published on January 17, 2022. Adapted from The Most Dangerous Negro in America: Rhetoric, Race, and the Prophetic Pessimism of Martin Luther King Jr. by Drs. Andre E. Johnson and Anthony J. Stone Jr. This essay invites readers to revisit Dr. King’s final year and his urgent, often overlooked warnings about racism, economic injustice, and America’s moral crisis.
Madison Givens M.A. Bio:
Madison Givens is a current PhD student whose research explores the intersections of 20th-century African American history, classical studies, and gender, with a focus on how social movements and revolutions shape collective memory across generations. With a deep commitment to examining the enduring impact of generational trauma, Givens’s work bridges historical scholarship and cultural analysis to better understand the roles of women, resistance, and legacy in shaping Black life and liberation struggles.
“The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.”- bell hooks
Socialization and indoctrination are two of the greatest enemies that the world has ever seen. Why? When a person or group of people have an agenda that he/she/they desire to teach, disseminate, and engrave interpersonally and/or hegemonically, socialization and indoctrination become the tools. They are the tools of our wounding, our oppression, domination, and debilitation. They become the exacto knife, etching a premeditated agenda into the minds and hearts of people, creating the “wounded child” who is taught to deny themselves and the truth. For women in general, gendered thinking and expectations dictate every aspect of women’s lives and experiences, engendering the “wounded child.” For Black women, specifically, race and gender collide to teach us who we are, what we are, and why we are (exist). Effectively, we are taught to denounce our true feelings and identities from early childhood onward to stunt our growth into healthy, self-actualized adults. We are taught to be “palatable.” Then once wounded, we remain trapped and unable to see the path that leads to our transition from “wounded childhood” to “healing adulthood.” We also become blind to supporting members of our community finding their pathway to healing.
According to the late, renowned scholar bell hooks, “attracting and pleasing others,” denying our true feelings, becomes the crux upon which many girls and women build their whole identities and personalities. For Black women, who are treated as threats to the agenda of oppression and domination, our intersectional socialization and indoctrination requires the premeditated murder of our self-determinism and love. Therefore, we are socialized and indoctrinated to believe we are valueless until we seek our value through others’ expectations, we are given “value” based on others’ expectations of us, and we perform others’ expectations of us to their standards. This is the first stage of our wounding, being taught the lie of our “inferiority” and “dispensability” until we become “palatable,” then perform our palatability well. The second stage comes from us believing the lie, and the third is how we put the lie into action. Stages 1-3 are palatability politics. We are taught to debilitate ourselves; debilitation is most effective when we support our own demise. Then our personal debilitation blocks our work for communal-determinism and love, because we are vital parts of our communities. We are taught to distort, silence, and incapacitate ourselves, other Black women, and by extension our communities. We are socialized and indoctrinated to do the job of our enemies and keep our enemies and their ill-gotten, hegemonic power secure.
Wounding can be premeditated, constant, sporadic, circumstantial, or unintentional. But the results are the same. Our wounding rots us from the inside out. We become unable to transcend our Achilles heel, our need to be palatable to appeal to the supposed “superiors,” the people whose “value” is unquestioned or less questioned. By practicing palatability politics, we become the mammies, who support the white supremacist agenda, which includes racism, sexism, classism, and a plethora of other socio-cultural issues. We practice anti-Blackness, anti- womanness, and other harmful ways of thinking to be acceptable to the white and/or male gaze.
We say things like, “that’s ghetto,” “she/you sound uneducated,” “you’re too loud and aggressive,” “you ain’t going to catch a man looking like that,” “women/girls don’t act like [insert gendered thought here],” “you look better/professional when your hair is [insert imposed comment here], “if you dressed up and wore a little makeup, you could [insert “possibility” here], or “you make us look bad; who is going to respect us if you, [insert complaint here].” We create an intra-communal “they not like us” mentality, ostracizing Black women who are not “palatable.” We implicitly and explicitly demonstrate that going outside of white and/or male prescribed expectations is detrimental to us, instead of seeing the toxicity of that mentality. Our socialization and indoctrination distances us from constructively using our anger to question why palatability politics exist and how and why we must challenge, then kill the “need” to be accepted and validated for our healing. By killing palatability politics, we stop debilitating ourselves and our communities when we internalize and disseminate white supremacy.
The reason for our wounding was for our oppressors to oppress and dominate us as Black women. Our socialization and indoctrination was never meant for our betterment. To seek actual betterment for ourselves and our communities, we must learn to love ourselves, without seeking others’ acceptance and validation. To bell hooks, the appropriate response to our wounding is not “to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget,” but instead we must love ourselves and our people enough to practice a “healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse” by “putting ourselves out of harm’s way.” We must commit to a life-long journey and practice of genuine love for ourselves by not allowing anyone to invalidate us (including ourselves), by knowing our worth and exhibiting our greatness. Despite their attempts to devalue us and make us feel as if we must seek their validation or perish, our oppressors know we are great. We are indispensable and valuable beyond measure. Otherwise, as the late, great Cicely Tyson once said people who demean you would not “bother to beat you down if you were not a threat.” Black women, we don’t owe anyone anything. Oppressors, we owe you nothing. Black women, other people’s perception of us is not our problem. Oppressors, your perception of us is not our problem. It is a you problem; it has nothing to do with us. Black women, we do not have to seek or use a toxic “remedy” (palatability politics) to address a non-existent “problem” that delusionally exist within the minds of people who seek our destruction. Let’s genuinely love ourselves and heal the “wounded child” within.
Love,
Chelsea Buggs
Dr. Chelsea Buggs
Bio: Dr. Chelsea Buggs is a recent graduate of the University of Memphis’s history department. She is also a recipient of the 2023-2024 Dr. William and Helen Lucille Gillaspie Scholarship, among several other awards. Dr. Buggs’s current research interests include: Black women, intersectionality, positionally, and self- and communal-determinism, identity formation and demonstration, Black women’s intellectual-activism, Black women’s agency and autonomy, the connections between white supremacy and Black equality strategies, and her concepts of the “Moral Matron” and “place” identities (not related to geography but socio-racial hierarchy).
It shouldn’t have been hard for me to write a love letter to the strong, Black women in my life.
It shouldn’t have been hard to write a love letter to a woman like my mother, whose quiet spirit showed me how to love through actions and not just words. My mother encouraged my every interest by shuttling me to various practices and enduring every performance with a smile and a hug.
It shouldn’t have been hard to write a love letter to a woman like my mom’s mom, whose proud spirit showed me how to fight against injustice and animosity every day. My granny served as a Black principal in a white city, and she used her interminable strength to fight injustices for her students and eventually for her community as a county commissioner.
It shouldn’t have been hard to write a love letter to a woman like my dad’s mom, whose powerful spirit made her seem so much bigger than her small stature. My grandmother was a feisty woman with a large heart, and she spoiled her grandkids as much as possible.
It shouldn’t have been hard for me to sing the praises of the community of women who poured into me with love, courage, determination, and (when necessary) discipline to make sure I had everything I needed to succeed in a hostile world.
When I was in middle school, I remember one of my teachers telling me, “You have two strikes against you in society – you’re Black, and you’re a woman.” At the time, I had no clue what she meant. But as I got older, I realized she was telling me this to prepare me for the road ahead. Black is beautiful. Black is powerful. Black women are magical. But when the default is set to white and male, anything that deviates from the default is considered imperfect.
So, this love letter is dedicated to all the Black women who taught me how to walk the tightrope of being a Black woman in a world that despises my existence.
The world may not acknowledge the battles you faced and the struggles you endured, but I did, and I still do. As I watched you move through spaces that didn’t welcome you, I learned how to navigate this world as a strong, confident, unapologetically Black, Black woman. Through each of you, I learned how to hold my head high with grace and dignity. I learned how to love myself, with that love sometimes being an act of resistance against the world around me. I learned that I had the love and support of the women around me and protection from God and the ancestors guiding me every single day. And I learned how to share that love with those who needed it the most.
To me, these words I write don’t do justice to the things I learned from you, the love I received from you, and the support I feel from you even if you’re no longer here with me.
To my mom, my grandmothers, my aunts, my cousins, my play moms, and everyone else who laid a foundation for your children to build on, I love you. I am me because you were you. You are love, strength, and beauty. You are wit, grit, and determination. You are hope, healing, and peace. You are sass and class. You are sanctuary and solace. And I pray that my girls see the same things in me that I saw in each of you. Thank you.
Bio: Natonya Listach, Ph.D. Is an Assistant Professor at Middle Tennessee State University and the Assistant Director of their award-winning Speech and Debate Team. Her research interests focus on rhetoric, race, religion, and gender. In her free time (HA!), she enjoys practicing new ways to rest and relax.
My Students Refused to Let Me Cancel Class Last semester, in Fall 2024, I attempted to give students a “research day,” thinking they would appreciate the extra time to work independently. Instead of relief, my announcement was met with awkward hesitation. One student asked, “Can we still come to class if we want to?” Another added, “This is one of the few places where I actually get to talk to people. I’d rather still meet.” Their responses were a powerful reminder that, for many, the classroom is more than a space for lectures and exams—it’s a place of connection and community.
I quickly adjusted the plan, turning the day into an informal working session where students could brainstorm research ideas, ask questions, and collaborate in a low-pressure environment. The result was one of the most fulfilling sessions of the semester. Students worked in small groups, shared ideas, and were energized by simply being together. That day reinforced for me that teaching isn’t just about imparting knowledge; it’s about creating a space where students feel grounded, supported, and part of something larger than themselves. In a society increasingly defined by isolation, the classroom remains a vital place for human connection.
Storytelling Enriches Engagement
One of the most enriching pedagogical strategies I have embraced is storytelling. Storytelling offers students an opportunity to connect their personal experiences with course material, making learning more meaningful and relatable. For example, in my Gender and Society course, I ask students to reflect on at least three interesting concepts, ideas, or insights from the text and relate them to their own lives or something they’ve observed in society. One prompt invites students to recall specific incidents from their childhood or adolescence in which they learned what it meant to be masculine or feminine, a boy or a girl. They are encouraged to write a story or account of those moments, examining how they internalized gender roles. Another assignment asks students to analyze how gender is presented in popular media—like a movie, music video, or video game—and reflect on the gendered messages conveyed. These assignments are intentionally informal and unstructured to encourage freewriting and creativity.
In my Race and Ethnic Minorities course, I incorporate a photo essay assignment where students submit 3 to 5 original photos that reflect how their racial, ethnic, regional, national, and/or cultural identities are expressed in their daily lives. Each photo includes a brief caption (two to three sentences) explaining the image’s significance. As the first major assignment of the semester, this exercise is meant to encourage students to engage with the material in a deeply personal way. The goal is to foster self-reflection and help students make meaningful connections between their lived experiences and the concepts we explore in class.
Supporting Student Well-Being
Teaching with empathy in 2025 also means prioritizing student well-being in ways that go beyond academic achievement. The past few years have revealed the deep toll societal unrest, economic instability, and global crises have taken on students’ mental health. In response, I aim to cultivate a classroom culture that encourages self-care, compassion, and resilience. In practice, this involves offering flexible deadlines, allowing extensions when necessary, and providing mental health resources. I’ve also made mindfulness exercises a part of my teaching toolkit. This might include a brief moment of silence after an intense classroom discussion about the Battle of Wounded Knee or a freewriting exercise to help process lecture material on gentrification. These practices create space for students to engage with challenging topics without becoming overwhelmed.
I also integrate small group discussions to help encourage a sense of community and shared responsibility for learning. After a lecture, I often divide students into small groups to discuss and process key concepts, share their perspectives, and ask questions they might not feel comfortable posing in front of the whole class. For example, following a lecture on systemic racism, students might discuss in groups how historical inequalities manifest in their local communities or how these issues relate to the material covered. Overall, I aim to develop classroom practices that help students manage stress, regulate their emotions, and process the course content.
Communication as Connection
Finally, I cannot overstate the importance of clear and intentional communication in creating a stable classroom environment. Bi-weekly update emails act as consistent touchpoints, ensuring students have guidance on expectations, deadlines, and resources. In my online courses, I integrate “Reminders” pages at the start of each module to summarize essential tasks and deadlines. In my in-person classes, I display “Reminders” slides at the beginning of class. These practices help students manage their workload and hopefully reduce stress and anxiety.
Providing personalized feedback is central to my teaching philosophy, though it remains a challenge when teaching four or more classes with large enrollments. Fortunately, I have been able to rely on a graduate assistant to help alleviate the workload while still prioritizing my students’ growth. One student evaluation noted that I “do not just give feedback” but “engage with their thoughts,” adding that they “looked forward to writing papers” in my class. The student’s comment speaks to my efforts to demonstrate attentiveness to their ideas.
To Conclude…
Teaching with empathy in 2025 means fostering an environment where students feel seen, supported, and connected. My students have shown me that the classroom has the potential to be a sanctuary where a meaningful community can thrive. That “research day” I tried to cancel? It taught me that being present, offering support, and creating space for connection can be enough to foster learning. Those students turned out some phenomenal papers.
Bio
JoAnna Boudreaux is an Assistant Professor of Teaching and Internship Coordinator in the Department of Sociology at the University of Memphis. With a PhD in Communication Studies and a Master’s in Sociology, Dr. Boudreaux combines insights from both fields to develop her classroom strategies. Dr. Boudreaux is dedicated to promoting inclusive, supportive learning environments that encourage personal growth and meaningful academic inquiry. She teaches various courses including Race and Ethnic Minorities, Gender and Society, Marriage and Family, Medical Sociology, Social Theory, and Writing in Sociology.
You knew what you were doing when you penned, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism” (1981).1 You wrote this piece knowing how virulent the anger of Black women could be if we did not constructively release it. After the national end of chattel slavery via the 13th amendment2, many Black women, especially middle-class Black women, practiced the “culture of dissemblance” to protect themselves, their identities, and their private lives from public scrutiny, due to a rampant rape culture perpetuated by white men and sanctioned by white women.3 White men and women absolved themselves of their misogynoir by victim blaming “lascivious” Black women for white sexual violence during and after slavery. The “culture of dissemblance” had roots in the Reconstruction Era, however this culture of secrecy for many Black women continued well into the 21st century.
Ms. Lorde, you went beyond this culture to reveal how constructively voicing one’s anger for all to see and hear could allow Black women to protect ourselves and our communities from intersectional oppression from the 20th century to now and beyond. To be clear, different historical contexts dictated the freedom strategies marginalized people employed. The late 19th century Black women who initiated the “culture of dissemblance” had to contend with the end of slavery and its modernized reinstatement via the nadir, Jim Crow Era. Their experiences led them down a road of further public stoicism. Many of our female ancestors were not silent on racism and sexism and/or elitism, yet their deeper feelings remained elusive in the public sphere for their protection. But the long civil rights movement and the radicalized mid-1960s and 70s that showcased a more militant Black Power and human rights approach to age-old Black issues inevitably shaped you. “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” became a mantra for the late 1960s into the 1970s. Thus, speaking truth to power loudly and proudly indubitably encouraged your thoughts. Fear riddled your thoughts as well; speaking up for yourself and others was always “fraught with danger.”4 Despite this, you recognized the need for full personhood for yourself and Black women. You understood that when we allowed fear-driven silence to reign, we diminished and denied ourselves and our deep-seated feelings, allowing them to fester until they exploded. Our anger needed to become palpable, seen, and heard, and correctly utilized for positive changes. Otherwise, we denied an avenue for personal and social healing. You knew public, anger-less stoicism would not address the incessant anger that swelled within Black women and our communities due to intersectional oppression. You knew why the “caged bird” had to sing, release its emotions, or let its song, its release and freedom, go perpetually deferred like an unrealized dream.
Ms. Lorde, your experiences taught you the myriads of ways in which Black women were/are used and abused without any regard for our humanity. My experiences taught me the same. We were/are considered the “mule of the world” with no recourse and barely a voice. Supposedly, our race and sex relegated us to “inferiority” from the start. Within the white supremacist, anti-Black power structure, we are the neglected, the obscured, the erased, and the silenced. You said, “[m]y response to racism is anger,” because “[my] fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.”5 This resonated with me. The “Angry Black Woman” and “Sapphire” stereotypes made me afraid of my anger. These stereotypes taught me that Black women were not supposed to practice direct, no-nonsense communication and boundary setting. These stereotypes placed me at odds with myself, as I struggled to find a balance between being matter of fact and “palatable” without being a so-called “overbearing, unreasonable Black woman.” Now I know that it did not matter how I spoke (with or without constructive anger). To my oppressors, I was a Black woman challenging racism, sexism, even elitism, so I had no right to speak at all.
Well, I did not ask for your permission to speak and act. I did not need permission to support my healing as I constructively used my anger to voice the truth, publicly and privately. I did not need anyone’s permission for self-actualization (full personhood). Like you, I realized dangerous, silencing campaigns lurked in the shadows. Oppressors and their institutions try to crucify, assassinate, and even silence and/or alienate dissenters, i.e. Jesus, MLK, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, you, etc. White women tears, white men sneers, and other marginalized people’s fears will try to play the sun to my Icarus. Still, I can effectively utilize my anger for protection and to teach people how to treat me with respect without remorse. I do not have to fear constructive use of my anger and its implications because I am a Black woman. I can unapologetically set my boundaries for all to hear and see, refusing to allow even a pinky toe to cross them.
Therefore, I will not delegitimize my anger. I will not “hold space” to make you comfortable and secure, at my detriment. I will not be the “palatable Black woman.” I will not be silent. However, I will be angry, Black, and woman! Why? “This is my healing, so I’ll voice my anger if I want to.” Thanks, Ms. Lorde.
With Love,
Chelsea Buggs
___________________
1 Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” in SisterOutsider (Berkley: Crossing Press, 2007).
2 The 13th amendment abolished slavery except as a punishment for crimes, hence disproportionate incarceration of Black people in an industrializing “New South” that needed their unfree labor.
3 To understand the “culture of dissemblance” review Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West,” Signs:JournalofWomeninCultureandSociety 14, no. 4 (1989): 912-920.
4 Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” in SisterOutsider (Berkley: Crossing Press, 2007).
5 Lorde, “Uses of Anger.”
Dr. Chelsea Buggs
Bio: Dr. Chelsea Buggs is a recent graduate of the University of Memphis’s history department. She is also a recipient of the 2023-2024 Dr. William and Helen Lucille Gillaspie Scholarship, among several other awards. Dr. Buggs’s current research interests include: Black women, intersectionality, positionally, and self- and communal-determinism, identity formation and demonstration, Black women’s intellectual-activism, Black women’s agency and autonomy, the connections between white supremacy and Black equality strategies, and her concepts of the “Moral Matron” and “place” identities (not related to geography but socio-racial hierarchy).
I dedicate this love letter to you on Valentine’s Day. Why? Because it is time we start making Valentine’s cards for ourselves.
I want to recognize and appreciate how deeply we have loved—especially others in our lives. From the period of enslavement to the eras of emancipation, Black women have always loved fiercely. In Margaret Walker’s Jubilee, do you know why Vyry Brown refuses to leave her children behind to escape with Randall Ware? Because, like many Black women in both fiction and real life, she would rather endure the cruel punishments of slavery than be separated from her children.
Do you know why Sethe Suggs tries to kill all her children in Beloved? Paul D. calls it “thick love,” but Sethe knows that if her children return to Sweet Home, they will be violated just as she was under its cruel, hellish conditions. Similarly, in Sula, Eva Peace throws herself out of a window to receive disability money so she can care for her children.
Or consider how Nettie Johnson watches over her sister Celie’s children while on a mission trip to Africa in The Color Purple.
Also, the necessary love that Meridian shows Truman in Meridian when she repeatedly hits him with her bookbag after he tells her he wants her to have his Black babies.
We see Black women’s love in the form of sacrifice—hiding in an attic for seven years just for a chance at freedom. Harriet Jacobs’ slave narrative continues to impact us today, reminding us that while her time in that attic was traumatic, it was worth it. She and her children escaped to the North. Once freed, Jacobs took control of her own story, recorded it, and left behind one of the most powerful slave narratives of her time.
Historically, through both fiction and reality, Black women have not had the privilege or right to rest. Our bodies, spirits, and souls have always been at stake. We have also rarely been afforded the privilege of hiding. But now, as time moves forward, we find ourselves at a critical moment in U.S. history. It is our time to hide and rest.
After November 4th, many Black women began to see how our labor—our fight for voting rights, our commitment to democracy—has been exploited. So many others have relied on us to carry elections, to secure the win of the first Black and Indian female president. And, as always, when democracy stood at a precipice, threatening to shift in ways that would harm us most, we showed up in droves to vote for Kamala Harris.
But this time, the disappointment was different. This time, some of us realized—despite our love for this country, this country does not always love us back. When I saw the election results and the breakdown of which demographic voted for Harris the most, I decided it was time to convince more Black women to step back—to hide and to rest.
For so long, I believed I did not deserve rest. That my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being should be sacrificed—just as my foremothers, great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, and aunties had done—to not only preserve our culture but save it.
We cannot preserve or save our culture if we throttle full speed to the ground, accelerating our deaths.
Black women, I am not saying we should give up or surrender to oppression. What I am advocating for is a new renaissance. A renaissance that Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Adrienne Maree Brown, Tricia Hersey, and other Black women—including myself—see on the horizon.
We must break free from wake work by embracing rest work.
One cannot save even a part of the world if one is no longer in the world. I am proud of my fictive and real-life Black sisters for loving in the best ways they know how. Black women’s love should be recognized as sacred and honorable. And to keep it that way, we cannot allow those who are careless with our love to desecrate it—to exploit us for their privileges and power. We cannot build a true collective until we recognize that we, too, are deserving of self-love.
Ultimately, Black women, I see you. I love you—because I am you. Yes, we have a complicated past, a lot of challenges in the present, and uncertainties about the future. But what I hold onto is this: we are learning to recognize, realize, and reflect on the importance of loving ourselves and each other. We must all admit that all we got left is each other.
And maybe, that is what we always had. US.
Your Be Mine Valentine,
Sophia
Sophia Flemming is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies with an emphasis on rhetorical studies. Generally, Flemming studies African American public address, specifically focusing on Black feminist and Womanist rhetorics from the 18th to the 21st centuries. Her research examines the topics Black women communicate about, their communication styles, how voice manifests in their experiences and epistemologies, how they interact and engage within and outside their communities, and, most importantly, how they communicate interpersonally and in public spaces.
With the release of the Wicked movie in November 2024, it became one of the highest-grossing Broadway musical adaptations worldwide, drawing moviegoers from across the globe. What makes this adaptation stand out is not just its seamless transformation from a beloved Broadway play to the big screen but also its emotional depth and cultural significance.
The film resonated deeply with audiences, particularly through the character of Elphaba—a green-skinned woman who faces prejudice and discrimination. Many connected with her because she was different, an outsider who defied society’s narrow definitions of beauty. But for Black women, Elphaba symbolized something even more powerful—representation.
Representation is more crucial than ever, especially as attacks on Black history and culture continue to rise. With Black British actress Cynthia Erivo portraying Elphaba, this film is more than just an adaptation—it is a celebration of Erivo’s artistry and her embodiment of Black womanhood in Wicked, marking a historic moment in both cinematic and theatrical storytelling.
Cynthia Erivo is no stranger to the acting world. She has starred in numerous films and television shows that highlight the depth and complexity of Black women. In 2019, she brought Harriet Tubman to life in Harriet, showing audiences that Tubman was more than just a heroic figure—she was a daughter, cousin, aunt, friend, and fierce resistance leader. Throughout her career, Erivo has taken on powerful roles that have shaped her journey as an actress. Her talent and dedication have earned her numerous accolades, solidifying her place as a force in the entertainment industry.
Beyond her acting, Erivo is also an extraordinary singer with a powerhouse voice that has captivated audiences worldwide. A Grammy and Tony Award winner, she has proven her versatility across stage, film, and music, continuously redefining representation. However, her journey with Wicked wasn’t without challenges. Before the film’s release, Erivo and her co-star Ariana Grande faced media scrutiny during their press tour, with some accusing them of being overly “sensitive” about the film’s significance. But after seeing the movie, perceptions shifted.
In Wicked, Erivo embodies Elphaba, a green-skinned woman who endures relentless prejudice and discrimination simply for being different. Her journey is one of rejection, resilience, and ultimately, self-acceptance. But through Erivo’s powerful performance, Elphaba becomes more than a misunderstood witch—she reflects the struggles of those who have been cast aside by society.
For Black women, Wicked was more than just a tale of overcoming obstacles. It was about recognition. It was about feeling seen. They understood what it meant to exist in spaces that disrespected them, overlooked them, and scrutinized the way they looked, dressed, or carried themselves. They knew all too well what it felt like to be labeled the “angry Black woman” simply for asserting their existence. Seeing Erivo as Elphaba wasn’t just about a great performance; it was about representation. It was about culture. It was about the power of finally seeing themselves in a story that had always been theirs, too.
While on a press tour, Cynthia Erivo delivered a powerful message to an audience filled with Black women. Speaking with Essence lifestyle editor Domonique Fluker, she shared her hope that Black women stay true to who they are, recognizing their own power.
This sentiment is especially reflected in her performance of Defying Gravity, where she belts:
“Nobody in all of Oz
No wizard that there is or was
Is ever gonna bring me down.
Cynthia Erivo embodied Blackness in its authenticity—she made sure that Elphaba was for Black women. She ensured that micro braids were incorporated into her character’s look to honor Black women and made certain that her image was portrayed accurately. Before the movie was even released, a so-called “fan” altered the movie poster, covering Erivo’s entire face while leaving Ariana Grande’s untouched. This blatant erasure was not just an act of disrespect but an attempt to obscure the fact that Elphaba was and is a Black woman in this portrayal.
At a time when Black women were cast in supporting roles, Erivo made sure that Elphaba’s representation was rooted in Black womanhood. Elphaba’s story, though wrapped in fantasy, is a powerful metaphor. She is green, yes, but that green skin and her identity as a witch make her a target of discrimination, much like how Black women are marginalized for their power, intelligence, and presence. She is both feared and exploited for her gifts—Mr. Oz manipulates her abilities against her and incites an insurrection, much like history has repeatedly shown how Black women’s brilliance is used while they are vilified.
For Black women, this narrative is all too familiar. Black women are often the first to call out injustice—whether it be racism, sexism, classism, or any form of discrimination. In Wicked, Elphaba is no different. When the animals in Oz are mistreated and marginalized, she is the first to recognize the injustice and fight against it. Just like in real life, Black women refuse to stay silent in the face of oppression.
The significance of Erivo’s casting speaks to the lived experiences of Black women who have long fought for recognition in spaces designed to overlook them. Through her unwavering commitment to authenticity, Erivo has redefined Elphaba and reinforced the power of storytelling as a tool for representation and social change.
Wicked is no longer just a story about an outsider seeking acceptance; it is a declaration that those who have been marginalized, silenced, or erased will no longer be ignored. And through Cynthia Erivo’s groundbreaking performance, Black women everywhere are reminded that they, too, have the power to defy gravity.
Aniya Gold is a Ph.D. student at the University of Memphis, specializing in African American history, with a focus on the lived experiences of Black women. As a public historian, she has curated exhibits that center Black narratives and works to amplify underrepresented voices in historical and cultural spaces.
