In celebration of African Heritage Month, for profiles in excellence, we honor thousands of Black women, many known and unknown who fought in the trenches for Black freedom, not only in the Civil Rights movement, but in the Black Liberation movement broadly as members and sometimes leaders of these movements.
Kathleen Neal Cleaver was a member of the Central Committee of the Black Panther Party, and wrote therefore from a position of deep knowledge when she noted the southern-based struggle to end segregation during the 1950s and 60s, which can be seen as a human rights movement, a struggle for community empowerment, or collective effort to expand democracy, was a woman’s movement.
Women flooded not just the bus boycotts or voting campaigns, but joined groups like SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, the Deacons for Defense, and the Republic of New Africa. Freedom was a women’s struggle.
For Hard Knock Radio and Prison Radio, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.