Creating Community: Life and Learning at Alabama State University

5 / Living a Womanist Legacy

“When Martin Luther King started the Montgomery Bus Boycott—” “What?” I interrupted, as if to stop a crime. “King didn’t start the boycott ,” I explained. “The Women’s Political Council did!” The student in my Alabama State University World History class nodded acquiescence as he went on to laud King’s leadership in the 1955–56 boycott. This seemingly insigni¤cant exchange reminded me of comments made about seventy-¤ve years ago by legendary educator-activist Mary McLeod Bethune. “The work of men is heralded and adorned, while that of women is given last place or entirely overlooked,” she observed. Nonetheless, Bethune encouraged women onward: “We must go to the front and take our rightful place; ¤ght our battles and claim our victories” (Smith 149). Much has changed in the status of African American women since both Bethune’s day and the Montgomery bus boycott. A few years ago U.S. Senator Carol Mosely Braun, an Illinois Democrat, symbolized the heights now accessible to black women. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, and Oprah Winfrey, corporate institution and talk-show diva, do the same today. While such advances are encouraging, the truth in an old adage should be acknowledged: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” African American women suffer still from discrimination stemming primarily from a duality of sources—gender and race. A useful term subsuming both is womanism, as opposed to the more singularly focused “femi5 / Living a Womanist Legacy Elaine M. Smith nism.” Womanism carries the idea of black women grappling with both female and race problems and their derivatives, while not automatically castigating black men. Certainly in Alabama, women must traverse a great distance to gain equality. Among all the states, it has the highest percentage of women who have not completed high school; the highest wage differential between men and women; and the lowest percentage of women in a state legislature. Additionally, its Congressional delegation is devoid of women. Routinely, I witness women’s less-than-equal status in voluntary associations , particularly the black church. In 2001, for example, when St. John’s Working Club celebrated “A Century of Service,” marking its ¤rst hundred years as an auxiliary in St. John’s (the most prominent African Methodist Episcopal [AME] Church in Montgomery), local civil rights legend, wellknown ASU professor-emeritus, and club president Thelma Glass presented to the church a plaque with the name of every woman in the club during its hundred-year history. She did so “as an inspiration and motivation [to others ] to do God’s work” (“Special Presentations”). The cooperative and gracious pastor accepted the plaque—and promptly consigned it to a basement room rarely visited. I have not seen it since and hardly anybody else has either. The point is that although black women contribute mightily to community institutions, their efforts are often forgotten, ignored, or devalued. It is frequently true in narratives of male-female institutions. For example, the of¤cial historical sketch of St. John’s Church at one hundred thirty years was essentially the parade of pastors, all male, who have occupied the pulpit. In this and other ways that usually cause scant re®ection, black women endure gender bias. Concurrently they confront race too, as my Montgomery experiences illustrate. Twenty-some years ago, my family lived in a middle-income, ninety-¤ve percent white neighborhood. While we are still in the same house, the neighborhood is now ninety-¤ve percent black. Emblematic of our original neighbors’ attitude toward us was their children’s refusal to play with our son. A more immediate illustration, however, involves my workplace, ASU, a historically black university originating during the Reconstruction Era. The local media and the corporate and governmental establishment , along with white Alabama, favor and grant disproportionate support to Auburn University-Montgomery, created in the 1960s under Governor George Wallace to duplicate ASU offerings and located on the other side of Montgomery. Seemingly, the powers that be continue to disLiving a Womanist Legacy / 71 trust the ability of African Americans to operate quality programs. Not all historically black colleges and universities exist in somewhat hostile cities, but then few other cities can claim historic civil rights symbolism on par with the Montgomery bus boycott and the Selma-to-Montgomery march. While living with imposed race-gender biases, I have held membership in broad local and state organizations of...