Early today I was out doing the things you do on a typical weekday morning when my buddy Charmaine (who's from the Caribbean) called me to wish me happy International Women's Day. Wasn't that sweet? All this gender stuff's come bubbling up with me lately but frankly I'd lost track of the fact today is March 8th. Anyway I suggested to Charmaine she check my 7 March blog entry. That would be the one on Black women's history, all those tens of thousands of white "daddies" and the whole Beijing+10 phenomenon. Lest any of us forget the fact remains the vast majority of the world's women were not in Beijing in 1995. I said that in 1995 and I repeat it here. Across the globe in 1995 women were in the places where they live, working to improve their lives and the lives of their communities/families, just like most of us are doing right now today wherever we are. In 1995 I took part in a Beijing-related conference sponsored by AWID and held at George Washington University here in Washington, DC. Now I'm going to do some thank-yous like at the Oscars. I want to thank my Mother, my two grandmothers and the only one of my greatgrandmothers I knew: Grandma [Mrs.] Viola Miller Nichols (1875-1968). My (great) Grandma Viola was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, USA just 10 years after Black enslavement was (forcibly) terminated in 1865 in the United States of America and, respectively, 11 years before it finally was halted in Cuba in 1886 and 13 years before the end came in Brasil in 1888 - only by order of a Brasilian princess while her daddy was away - and while at the same moment the Brasilian parliament was debating how to extend Black enslavement in Brasil another 50 years - i.e., into the 1930s. Which basically is yesterday. So... for anyone anywhere with the ability to read & comprehend this, and ears willing to hear and a brain willing to process the fact that these are events which occurred in the lifetime of my Grandfather's Mother (and the fact that she died only in 1968) these events explain why in the Americas gender is not separate from race. Most of all I want to thank my female ancestor Priscilla Shackelford. She's an ancestor on the same side of my family as my Grandma Viola. The little bit I know so far of Priscilla Shackelford I owe to what my maternal Grandfather told me, and the main thing I know up to now of her life is that she was enslaved. Here in the USA and most likely in Kentucky and/or in Missouri. I'd call those facts significant, wouldn't you? Priscilla Shackelford may be my female ancestor who was taken from Madagascar into enslavement, which then probably would have been done by the French. I thank Grandma Priscilla and all the women and the men like her in my family. This includes my African/Black American/Native American and certain European American ancestors - my white, Irish Protestant female ancestors Mary Ann Rice and her daughter Matilda Rice Gudger (buried side by side down in Tennessee). I thank Grandma Priscilla and those folks in my family for having made 'a way out of no way' and making a way for us all.
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