CGC Journal - March 2024
We're Building a Co-learning Community of Empathetic Societal Change Agents
MARCH 2024 | ISSUE 8
WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Current Events - Race in the news
Women’s History Month 2024.
Emily’s Corner - Emily’s reflections and insights
Birmingham!
Talking With Kids -
Keeping it Simple
Celebrating Change Agents -
Nominate an empathetic societal change agent for our monthly spotlight
Conversation Starter -
What can you do to help change the teaching paradigm around history, social studies and economics in your local K-12 schools?
Recommended Resources -
This month’s recommended resources
Community Corner -
We want to hear from you. We invite our community of co-learners to share with us what they are witnessing and experiencing in society where they live, work and play.
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Welcome to Women’s History Month, which officially began when President Jimmy Carter issued a formal proclamation in 1980 declaring March 2-8 as National Women’s History Week. In 1987, Congress passed a joint resolution known as Public Law 100-9 declaring the month of March to be Women’s History Month. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan issued the first presidential proclamation designating the entire month of March as Women’s History Month. Every president has done the same every year since.
Each year, our national lens focuses on the stories of incredible women throughout American history. This is a tremendous gift being passed down to each generation. We applaud this practice. Also, within this frame, there have been innumerable extraordinary achievements and contributions to this country by women whose history is little-known or erased. Some intentionally. At CGC, we struggle to understand why the truth is insufficient.
Exhibit A: Sojourner Truth.
The National Park Service tells the story of Isabella Baumfree, who was born into slavery in New York in 1797 and escaped in 1827. She became a Christian preacher in 1843 and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. From 1843 until her death in 1883, Sojourner Truth worked as a Christian Abolitionist and Women’s Rights Advocate, spreading the truth far and wide.
The National Park Service says this about her:
“At the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth delivered what is now recognized as one of the most famous abolitionist and women’s rights speeches in American history.”
The Anti-Slavery Bugle published Sojourner Truth’s speech in its entirety on June 21, 1851. It is titled: Ain’t I a Woman?
May I say a few words? I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?
I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now.
As for intellect, all I can say is, if women have a pint and man a quart - why can’t she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, for we can’t take more than our pint’ll hold.
The poor men seem to be all in confusion, and don’t know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won’t be so much trouble.
I can’t read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again.
The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept - and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part?
But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between-a hawk and a buzzard.
That’s Truth’s true speech. But that’s not the speech known far and wide. We know this from the Sojourner Truth Project, which exposes a national scam introduced by a White woman abolitionist in 1863 (12 years after Truth gave her speech). Her name is Frances Dana Barker Gage.
Gage reimagined Truth’s speech because she believed it would have more impact and gain wider acceptance among White people if they were presented with a version aligned with their stereotypical ideas of Black inferiority.
Gage was the president of the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention and on the scene when Sojourner Truth gave her speech in 1851. Yet, 12 years later, she redesigned and republished Truth’s speech based on what Gage believed would have greater appeal to a White audience (Compare the speeches).
Her calculation proved correct. In Gage’s much more famous (and false) version of Truth’s speech, she presents her with an imagined southern slave drawl (Truth was proud of her articulate Dutch New York accent), gives her 13 children (Truth had only 5 children) and fantasizes her way through a speech that has withstood the test of time. While she defends her act as well-meaning, Gage erased Truth and replaced her with a caricature.
Gage’s speech (masquerading as Truth’s), has been performed repeatedly by actors and entertainers in each generation. It has been reproduced in school textbooks that have been read by many millions of Americans in each generation.
But we owe a debt of enormous gratitude to researcher Nell Irvin Painter, a professor of History at Princeton University and author of, “The History of White People.” It was she who exposed the fraud and revealed the truth. It was her work that inspired the Sojourner Truth Project that is still trying to correct the record.
But even with the truth in hand, Gage’s speech (not Truth’s) is on display at the National Park Service, which the Park Service readily admits is a false narrative, a fraud and counterfeit. It even provides links to the truth, but continues to display only Gage’s false speech. Why? Is White America still unable to accept the truth?
This month, we celebrate Nell Irvin Painter. Thank you for providing America with the truth about Truth.
EMILY’S CORNER
Emily Corner is a place of honest sharing; of reflections and insights and experiences that are unfolding in my journey as a co-learner. I welcome you here, and would love to hear your thoughts and ideas - feel free to reply to this email. I will read all that you share.
Birmingham!
We just returned from an extraordinary trip to Birmingham.
Mike was invited to speak at a conference on black business, economics and entrepreneurship, and this was the second year the incredible hosts also included me on this invitation.
I was so excited!
Last year, though, as the conference approached, I began to ponder as I realized: I would likely be one of the few white people at this conference. I realized that I’ve rarely (ever?) been in the racial minority. I am almost always in spaces in which I don’t even think about race - because I fit right in.
As I processed some of my apprehension last year, I realized with a new understanding: this is my husband’s experience, every day of his nearly 20 years living in southern Oregon. He is always one of the only (usually, the only) people of color at every meeting, event, school, store, restaurant or gathering.
Wow.
Fast forward to our time in Birmingham last year, and it was incredible. My experience there entirely assuaged the wonderings and concerns I’d had before our trip.
As we walked through our hotel lobby this year, excitedly on our way to the second day of the conference, we talked about the apprehension I’d felt last year and the complete absence of it that I felt this year.
Here is what I realized, with deep clarity;
A sincere and true sense of welcome and embrace can ease the distance that can be felt with racial differences.
Mike shared how, in his travels to China, he was clearly “different” racially, yet he felt a warm and true welcome.
In contrast, in southern Oregon, he often doesn’t experience the warm and sincere welcome.
And it clicked in my mind: I felt warmly and deeply welcomed at this conference in Birmingham; there were racial differences between me and most of the attendees, but the deep sense of shared humanity, the embrace I continued to experience, melted away my feelings of discomfort.
In what ways may I pursue proximity and embody a warm and true welcome to those that may feel like outsiders?
(note: these interpersonal actions must be happening alongside essential systemic change).
TALKING WITH KIDS
Intro: Each month, we share a glimpse into a conversation that happened in our home with our children or with others in our community or network. These conversations will reflect our continued intention and effort as parents, to equip our children with a lens of Consideration (Kind, Generous and Sharing). During many of their earlier years, these conversations formed the basis for our workshop: “How to Talk to Kids About Race in America.” These days, the conversations include race as it comes up, and also the many ways and spaces that we can cultivate empathy in our children.
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
"Our society is based upon simple things,” I explained to Caleb. He was having a difficult time understanding a lesson, which he said was too hard. The study was on the U.S. Constitution.
“When something becomes too hard or complicated for you to understand, it's because at the beginning, you missed some simple things," I told Caleb. “These are the building blocks upon which you build your knowledge of a subject.”