Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement | 
pick“Bad ass women in history who deserve a million times more recognition than they got” is a genre I enjoy. Was fairly familiar w/a few of the women, only marginally so w/others, was great to learn about their work & activism. Much writing about CRM focuses on (a few of) the men, glad these women got this space. Did wish it was interview format to help w/clarity,& Diane Nash (my shero) should‘ve had a longer section. But a very valuable read! 4/5 ⭐️
Race is full of pretension. It‘s all this pretending, but then they believe it ... You can‘t go dig race up in the ground—you can find roots, you can find rocks, you can find dirt. You can go up in the moon & you can find dirt & rocks, but you can‘t find any race ... It‘s conceptual, that‘s what I mean. They‘ve attached that concept, because it didn‘t always exist. It‘s not a real thing, it‘s a conceptual thing, but you can‘t tell Americans that.
Do not depend on elected officials to make the necessary changes in society. I think if we had waited for elected officials to desegregate lunch counters and buses and get the right to vote in the South, now fifty years later, I think we‘d still be waiting ... I think one of the worst things that people have done is that they have begun to rely on elected officials to do what‘s necessary. And they‘re not gonna do it.
The Delta Sigma Theta and Alpha Kappa Alpha sororities at Howard marched in the first suffragist parade in Washington, D.C., in 1913. Nobody ever mentions black women marched in it in those days. In fact, most of the black woman had been told that they didn‘t want them to be in the parade. It was going to be done mostly by white women. But the black women said, “No way. We‘re going to be part of this,” and they marched.
Your work on Earth is what you do for other people.
[Leah Chase, quoting her mother]
Time to read about some bad ass women. (It‘s never NOT time to do so, of course...)
