Say their names

Dear reader,

I wrote To 'Joy my Freedom because I wanted to counteract a trend that is still happening today. I wanted to say the names of women who lived in the time of slavery and reconstruction, who were attacked, exploited, and ignored by society. Although some may know, or think they know the story, it is not complete to tell the story of black women in this time without acknowledging individuality, and the agency that these women were able to create despite so much adversity. I want to say their names because we know Frederick Douglass and Booker T., but most people forget about the average working women who are often set behind the figures of these men who are supposed to represent black people in that time period. But what about Aggie Crawford, who made huge sacrifices to steal newspapers and inform those enslaved about what was happening. With information about the war, enslaved people were empowered to resist or run away in some cases. Instead of the northern abolitionists, it was people like Aggie who made direct impacts on the lives and futures of families. I also can't just say the names of those like Aggie, who found ways of resistance and had some success in their aims. There are also women like Ellen Campbell who were brutally attacked because of their identity and vulnerability, that we can not forget. What is tragic is that saying the names of some women will never make up for the horrors of the past, and we can never say all of their names, or learn all of their stories. The erasure is so strong that it took so much to find the stories in the book, to not just make broad generalizations, and force the reader to think about real lives that people were living. Now, in the time when many female identifying bodies, whether cis or trans, are people murdered from state violence, the issue is still focused onto men. As Kimberly Crenshaw showed us, we don't know the names of the women like we do of the men. The same ignorance and disregard cannot continue. In the past it was peoples great great grandmothers and aunts, some of whom we don't know their name. Today, it is our sisters, mothers, daughters, and ourselves, who we must remember and celebrate so there will not just be much too many stories to ever fit in books.

-Terra Hunter