Imagining Black Womanhood: The Negotiation of Power and Identity within the Girls Empowerment Project

1. Girls Empowerment Project

1 Girls Empowerment Project The potential of places like GEP . . . starting from when you’re a child, when you know that there are successful Black women . . . that we contributed so much . . . and not only that that we’re beautiful —that it’s alright for us to be different shapes and shades and our hair to be different textures. And that’s not what this society teaches. But if you have places like GEP where you see that, constantly see that and it’s not in a negative light or it’s not in something someone made up on television but it is something that is real. That’s showing much love to me. . . . Places like GEP are necessary , definitely necessary, to excise white supremacy. Definitely necessary! . . . If I had GEP when I was that age, Lord have Mercy, I don’t know where I would be right now. (Aisha, age twenty-four, program coordinator) Recognizing the daily assaults on Black girls, GEP was created to be a place where girls and staff could challenge and confront representations and practices that limited and degraded the aspirations and lives of low-income Black girls. It was designed to be a social space where women and girls could work on themselves outside the “gaze” of dominant and indigenous groups and “go about the business of fashioning themselves” (O’Neale 1986, 139, as quoted in Collins 1991, 95). In this chapter, I describe GEP and the community in which it was located. I also detail my own involvement with the organization and the research process. 17 In the spring of 1991, Melinda George, the cofounder of Bay City’s Women’s Building and the city’s first battered women’s shelter, created the Girls Leadership Project. At this time Melinda, a well-known White feminist organizer and successful nonprofit program developer within Bay City’s women’s and philanthropic communities, secured a $50,000 planning grant to investigate the needs as well as resources available in Bay City for girls. In this formative stage, Melinda teamed up with Chris, an African American community activist known for representing the interests of low-income public housing residents. During this initial period, both women met with staff at numerous public and private agencies to ascertain what services were available as well as what was needed for girls. They also interviewed fifty-five girls to get their perspectives on what kinds of programming they liked and wanted (GEP 1992b, 7). As part of this phase, the two women created an interim steering committee composed of a diverse group of community leaders, activists, youth workers, educators, social service providers, and public housing residents, who began to formulate plans for a leadership and self-esteem program for low-income girls. I was a part of this committee. We wrote: We, the Girls Leadership Project, are developing a program for girls designed to attract and reach girls where they are, and provide leadership , self-esteem, empowerment, and economic development skills. It will be located on-site in a public housing development in Bay City and shaped by girls themselves, by women who work with girls, and by residents of the community. Because of the demographics of who is poor and at the highest risk in the city, the first program will be targeted primarily to African American girls and developed within a context of Afrocentric cultural values. (Women’s Building 1992) This committee, composed of eight African American women and two White women, eventually became GEP’s Executive Management Committee . Over nine months, we met to create the Girls Empowerment Program (GEP): “A Program for Inner City Mothers of Tomorrow” (GEP 1992b, 1). It is hard to describe the excitement I felt as we worked to create GEP. I truly believed I was working to create deep change for and with women and girls I cared about. Once GEP opened, I transitioned into a member of the board of directors. In this role, I continued to work with other women to dream and envision an organization before heading off to graduate school. GEP’s first years were volatile. There were lawsuits, financial challenges, and struggles over space and the housing of the program, and within weeks of being hired, GEP’s first executive director was let go. Despite these chal18 IMAGINING BLACK WOMANHOOD lenges, the program kept its promise to serve the girls of Sun Valley. At the time...