Ava DuVernay Presents The 25 Women Directors Who Have Helmed QUEEN SUGAR

"Here are the 25 women directors who have helmed QUEEN SUGAR over our past three seasons. For 21 of them, it was their first episode of television. 

They’ve since gone on to direct for many other shows:

• American Crime. 

• Underground. 

• Scandal. 

• Grey’s Anatomy. 

• Power. 

• Ozark. 

• Transparent. 

• 13 Reasons Why. 

• Insecure. 

• Luke Cage. 

• Greenleaf. 

• Dear White People. 

• Black Lightening. 

• Love Is. 

• Agents of SHIELD. 

• Survivors Remorse. 

• Star. 

• Chicago Med. 

• The Fosters. 

• Claws. 

• The Chi. 

The list goes on.

These women just needed a first YES.

To my fellow Executive Producers, to the studio execs, to the network decision makers, as you staff up for fall, consider saying: YES"

~Ava DuVernay

(facebook post)

The black female images we're seeing on television and in the movies is the result of black women pulling other black women up.

The result has been that other groups see our stories as worth telling. HIDDEN FIGURES might not have gotten made if shows like Scandal hadn't proven a show with a black female lead couldn't capture and hold an audience for years -- maybe if Shonda Rhimes hadn't taken over an entire night of television on ABC for a few years.



Ava DuVernay, Shonda Rhimes and Mara Brock Akil have all put black women in front of the camera and behind the camera. They are giving black female life to Hollywood. 

We as black women are the sheroes we've been waiting for. 

And we are putting positive black female images on television and in the movies that black girls will be able to value and emulate and dream about from now on.



QUEEN SUGAR is on Oprah Winfey's OWN on Wednesday Nights This Summer

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FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER

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Frances E.W. Harper was a Black poet, writer, and lecturer, as well as an anti-slavery, women's rights, and temperance activist.

Harper was from Baltimore, MD., where she attended Baltimore's Academy for Negro Youth school. There she studied Greek, Latin, and the Bible. Writing poetry as a teenager, she started her career as a writer in 1845 by publishing the poetry collection, "Forest Leaves."

Her second career, as an activist, began almost a decade later. Harper taught school for several years at Union Seminary in Ohio, and later in Pennsylvania. But in 1853, when Maryland began prohibiting free Blacks from entering its borders, Frances Ellen Harper was moved to action. The next year, moving to Philadelphia, she became active in the anti-slavery movement. Soon, Harper became one of the few Black women to go on the anti-slavery lecture circuit. She proved to be such a popular speaker that over the next six years, the Maine and Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Societies sent her throughout New England, Ohio, and New York, and as far away as Detroit and Canada.

Harper often quoted original poetry in her lectures, and consequently her reputation as a poet spread as far as her speaking tours. Her second volume of poetry, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, sold 10,000 copies and was then enlarged and reprinted. Harper published several more volumes of poetry and reprinted new editions of her poems many times. In the process, she became the most famous Black poet of her time.

During the next few decades, she began to focus on racial uplift, moral reform, temperance, and women's rights. Many of Harper's lectures were to women's clubs and associations, and some of her most popular speeches were on the rights and roles of women in general, and Black women in particular. Harper was also active in the temperance movement. She lectured widely on the evils of alcohol, directed the Northern United States Temperance Union, and became the first Black woman to be recognized on the Red Letter Calendar of the World Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which honored prominent temperance activists.

Here again, Harper tailored her activism to reach the Black community. She directed what were then called the colored branches of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and in 1883, became national superintendent of temperance work among Blacks.

Throughout all of her political activism, Frances Harper continued to write, and in the 20th century, she is best remembered as one of the earliest Black women writers.

Harper's best-known work, is the 1892 novel Iola Leroy. Many reviewers called Iola Leroy the crowning effort of Harper's life. She continued writing until a few years before her death in 1911.

Harper provided a model for the best of what any 19th-century woman could be as a Black woman. In making a point of

writing about and speaking to other Black women, she set a high standard for a generation of Black women's activism.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/gary.perkins.7/posts/10204697435033261?

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JOAN MORGAN ON SPREADING THE F-WORD

I came out of the womb a feminist. It is my natural state. Racism made me fully aware that I'd have to demand partnership, parity, and respect from everyone, including males without having to be the same as a male. 

In other words, I expect to have to work for equality without sameness in regards to race and gender both. 

I raised myself up in a feminist mindset because of the failures I saw too close to home and inside my home.

And I became an even stronger feminist, at college, when I realized how women weren't telling their own stories, their own history -- not even within black history.  

But there was a time when I moved away from the word "feminist" because I simply stopped thinking about it in my day to day life. And the f-word was so despised in the black community that I deliberately let the f-word drift away even further when various things came up. I don't think I ever got as far as denying my feminism out loud, as Toni Morrison has. But I was very silent.  

Then Joan Morgan published a little book called "When The Chickenheads Come Home To Roost" and it brought me all the way back to my sisters for good.

JOAN MORGAN SAID:

"When I wrote 'Chickenheads...' The vast majority of my black girlfriends did not identify as feminists. A few worried that anyone would read a book about hip-hop and feminism since, as I wrote back then most Sistas I knew weren't [screwing] with the F-word.

All of them were happy for me but truth be told, many of them didn't read the book until many years later. Some of them still haven't read it.

But I must say that it gives me great joy to watch their daughters identify proudly, unabashedly, unequivocally as Black and Brown Feminists across multiple platforms in social media.

It amazes me to no end that some of them have superstar pop icons that also identify as Black Feminist. This feminist journey was slow and often hard and sometimes lonely but I am humbled and heartened by the company I keep. Y'all might not have been feminists (I think you were, you just didn't know it) but y'all raised some mighty ones. "

#LetsHearItForTheWork

https://www.facebook.com/Joan-Morgan-Writer-72604480788/?fref=nf

MY...OH MY...
HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED OVER THE CENTURIES

ALICIA GARZA  (BLACK LIVES MATTER CREATOR)  

PATRISSE CULLORS, (BLACK LIVES MATTER CREATOR)

OPAL TOMETI (BLACK LIVES MATTER CREATOR)

Aisha Tyler
KIMBERLE CRENSHAW (INTERSECTIONALITY SOCIOLOGIST)

J K Rowling,  (HARRY POTTER)

Maria W Stewart,

Gabrielle Union,

PAULI MURRAY,

Ruth Bader Ginsberg,  (SUPREME COURT JUSTICE)

Diane Nash, (CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER)

ANNA ARNOLD HEDGEMAN,  (CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER, N.O.W. FOUNDING MEMBER)

Zora Neale Hurston 
Septima Clarke (CIVIL RIGHTS TEACHER)
Aja Monet (POET, SAY HER NAME ACTIVIST)

Sonia Sotomayor, (SUPREME COURT JUSTICE)

TYRA BANKS

Salma Hayek,

Alicia Keys

Shonda Rhimes (WRITER/PRODUCER BROWNING HOLLYWOOD ONE ACTOR/ACTRESS/MUSIC ROYALTY AT A TIME 

Kerry Washington,

Viola Davis,

Margaret Cho

Tracee Ellis,

Gina Prince Bythewood (DIRECTOR)

Angela Bassett,

BARBARA SMITH,

ANNA JULIA COOPER,

Ferdinand Barnett

Jada Pinkett-Smith,

IDA B WELLS  (JOURNALIST, FIRST ANTI-LYNCHING RESEARCHING SOCIOLOGIST, NAACP FOUNDING MEMBER)

JOAN MORGAN (“WHEN THE CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST)

bell hooks

MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY

Malaya Yousafzai, 

Beyonce,

Don McPherson, 

DELORES HUERTA,

ANGELA DAVIS,

Daisy Bates (?)

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE (WRITER)

Coretta Scott-King  (?)

DELORES C TUCKER, 

Ava DuVernay (DIRECTOR - Selma, Queen Sugar)
India Arie (MUSICIAN)

BEVERLY BOND (BLACK GIRLS ROCK CREATOR)
Jessica R Williams (Daily Show Comedian) John Legend (Pop Music, Producer of “Underground”)

Eva Longoria,  (Television Actor)

Maya Angelou,

AUDRE LORDE,

ALICE WALKER,

SONIA SHAH

HILLARY CLINTON,

PATRICIA HILL-COLLINS,

GLORIA STEINHEM,

DOROTHY PITTMAN HUGHES,
GLORIA ANZALDUA

SOJOURNER TRUTH
FREDERICK DOUGLASS

HARRIET TUBMAN

Ava DuVernay To Direct DC Comic's NEW GODS

     Ava DuVernay has lined up her directorial follow-up to Disney's A Wrinkle in Time.

     The filmmaker will take on Warner Bros. and DC's The New Gods, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. The property is a creation of the late and legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby, co-creator of Captain America, X-Men and other iconic heroes... 
     In the comics, The New Gods is part of the so-called “Fourth World Saga,” a series of four interconnected comic book series written and drawn by Kirby when he arrived at DC from rival Marvel in the early 1970s. Mixing social commentary, mythology and science fiction, it sees a war between two alien planets — New Genesis and Apokolips — arrive on Earth when the ruler of the dystopian Apokolips, Darkseid, discovers that humanity holds the key to the Anti-Life Equation, which allows its user to control all living beings in existence...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ava-duvernay-direct-dcs-new-gods-1094878

WHAT MY WOMANISM LOOKS LIKE by TINA B MARIE

A comparative-type definition

"WOMANISM IS TO FEMINISM 

as 

PURPLE IS TO LAVENDER" 

~Alice Walker~

Read More on the subject here: http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2015/05/womanism-is-to-feminism-as-purple-is-to.html


LISTEN!

STACEY ABRAMS RESPONDS TO TRUMP'S STATE OF THE UNION

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"Stacey Abrams, the rising political star who marshaled the power of black women voters but narrowly lost the Georgia governor’s race, will deliver the Democratic response to President Donald

Trump’s 2019 State of the Union address, congressional Democrats said Tuesday. The choice elevates Abrams in Democratic politics as the party looks to keep core supporters, such as black women who anchor the base, energized ahead of the 2020 congressional and presidential elections. It also sets up an implicit contrast with Trump, who has a history of questioning the intellect and integrity of nonwhite politicians. "

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Halle Amor Moore Publishes Book Of Feminist Poetry At 9 Years Old

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     THE PAGES OF LIFE book about a year to conceive. Being a poet is just one of her many dreams. According to her site, Halle hopes to go to law school and help shape public policy. She is an activist, a speaker and high achiever...
     Ultimately, she wants to inspire others to make their dreams come true. "Unlock the great power within you and not only will your heart be set free," she believes, "but your mind will too."

~Blavity

Read More: 

https://blavity.com/at-only-9-years-old-maryland-girl-publishes-feminist-book-of-poetry?

Buy it here: https://www.amazon.com/Pages-Life-compilation-stories-speeches/dp/179306749X

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KERRY WASHINGTON ON CELEBRITY AND ACTIVISM

feeling rebloggy

AS: Your activism is really inspiring. As a talented and hugely successful actress, do you feel that you have a certain role or responsibility in the movement for social justice? 

KW: No. I always say to people I don’t participate in the political process as a “celebrity” or person in the public eye. I come from a political family. Talking politics and social issues, it was at the dinner table. It was a part of how I was raised. Giving back and participating in our democracy is part of how I was raised. When I became of the age to vote, it was like a big rite of passage party. My parents took me out to dinner, we talked about who I was going to vote for, and how I was going to decide. I participate in my democracy because I feel really lucky to live in a representational democracy where my leaders only know how to lead if I’m in communication with them. I know how many people have died for me to have this right. I know that the original Constitution of the United States, according to that document, I would be 3/5 of a person, as a person of African-American descent. I know that women went to prison in petticoats for me as a woman to have the right to vote. I don’t take my identity as an American, as a member of this democracy, lightly. I feel that we should all be participating. I don’t feel a responsibility as a celebrity, I feel a responsibility as an American, as a person of color, as a woman. 

AS: What is your favorite thing about being feminist?KW: The term feminist is so inclusive now. There isn’t one way to be a feminist or to practice feminism, to exercise feminism. You can be feminist in lots of different ways because the point is freedom of choice.
I also want to say that I very much identify with the term womanist, but I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. I also identify as a humanist. I don’t think that either of those terms are mutually exclusive. 

AS: Who are your favorite fictional heroines, and who are your heroines in real life?KW:  Well my mom is one of my heroines in real life…Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Diahann Carroll. Oh god, there’s so many. You know, my grandmother...  

Oh, you know what, I have to say that one of my real life heroines is Barbra Streisand. I just think she’s never accepted anybody else’s limitations or definitions. She is such a hero of mine. She worked on stage, on film. She’s been an actor, a singer, a director. She’s written books. She’s so politically active. She has a family. She was told she doesn’t fit within stereotypical ideas of beauty at the time and it didn’t matter. She didn’t change...

Read More: http://feministing.com/2012/06/02/the-feministing-five-kerry-washington/

Kerry Washington is one of the black feminists that stood up to be counted for the #MuteRKelly section of the #MeToo & #TimesUp movements.

Happy 42nd Birthday To Her!

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OPRAH WINFREY ON AUTHENTIC POWER AND THE SCHOOL SHE BUILT FOR GIRLS

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"Oprah Winfrey, recognized for her charity work with the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation, was the only one to receive a standing ovation at Variety’s Power of Women luncheon presented by Lifetime."

From 2015

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ANGELA DAVIS ON OUR WEAKEST LINKS

WHITE WOMENAll you have to do is look at every single one supporting the GOP (Grand Ole Party) Take an especially hard look at the ones sitting behind Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court.

They support white male supremacy because they can marry into it's power.

Married white women have the secondary status assigned to them by their husbands. And the unmarried ones are too foolish to realize they don't have the same level of status as white men or married white women -- which is likely why a percentage of single white women like to call the police on black folks for stupid stuff -- so they can prove to themselves their whiteness is worth just as much as the next white person. 

At the very least, calling white cops on black people proves that they, as single white women, have higher status than black people. And this is very valuable to some white people. It must be. They've been seeking confirmation of white skin status for centuries. 

For example: Poor white people fought for slave owning whites for the very same reason -- to prove white skin status-- despite the fact that they were kinda fighting to slit their own throats. 

I mean, but for fighting to hold on to some kind of superiority, how hard is it to figure out that fighting for somebody else's right to have free labor is not good for you as a laborer or a farmer in competition?

BLACK MEN

This explains why so many black men (and the pick-me-s that follow them over any cliff) had a hard time seeing Killmonger as a villain in BLACK PANTHER.  Killmonger wasn't wrong on the facts. But he was dead wrong on the solution, which was rise up and take the white man's place as top oppressor.

A large percentage of non-feminist variety black men as well as the ashy-s and the hoteps, all of them want to replace the white man as top dog. 

And, lately, what that has meant is that they want the right to rape and pillage their own women....same as white men do; 

This is exactly what many black men mean to communicate to black women every single time we say #MuteRKelly and they respond by throwing some white man out in front of Kelly by saying something like, "What about Harvey Weinstein?"

And you know Kelly is being defended when they throw Weinstein's name out precisely because it's so lazy a choice. With all the white men who have skated on sex crimes, the black women and black men talking about "What about Weinstein?" have conveniently forgotten that this man has already lost his business and is being ground up (hopefully) by the justice system as we speak. 

Other than losing his record deal with SONY-RCA, R. Kelly is just walking around embarrassed -- instead of having a real chance at real prison time.

THE BLACK WOMEN 
WHO DEFEND BLACK MEN AT ANY COST

Actually, I'd make a correction to Angela's quote if I could. I'd say the weakest links in overcoming oppression in this country are white women, black men, and also black women who defend black men at any cost. 
Maybe Angela Davis would change this quote if she could too, especially now that she's seen the reaction to the SURVIVING R KELLY documentary. Black response to that television series has shown just how little black girls are seen --through the prisms of black patriarchy* and internalized-racism-- as over-sexed and lacking innocence by our own people, including black women.

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THE LIFE OF BESSIE COLEMAN

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        Bessie Coleman was born January 26, 1893, in Atlanta, Texas, one of thirteen children...    Just a few years later, December 1903, the Wright Brothers made the first sustained flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle at Kitty Hawk. Poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar was their friend and classmate. Their flight was to be a pivotal event in Coleman's life.      Because she was born with a drive to better herself, Coleman was an avid reader. Her mother ensured that the Coleman children made good use of the traveling library that came through two or three times a year.      Perhaps one of the books that inspired Coleman was “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, written in 1900 by Frank Baum. 

     ...In the summer of 1919, Chicago was pounded by the worst race riot in history.

     A black youth on a homemade raft drifted into an area of Lake Michigan used by whites. He fell into the water and drowned after being stoned by the whites. That same night, Chicago became the Wild West with black and whites fighting in the streets with guns and knives. It carried into the next day, when a gang of whites drug blacks off the streetcar and beat them.

      It took four days and the National Guard to restore order to the Chicago. Although Coleman and her family were unscathed, around her, there were 38 dead, 537 injured and over 1,000 people homeless. 

     Like Dorothy in Oz, Coleman had traveled the “yellow brick road” - a road that was full of conflict and difficulties. She established herself in Chicago, learned a trade, found a place to live, witnessed her brothers go to war overseas and then survived a race riot. Yet, she was unwavering in her quest to move forward, and she was firm about fighting against what she believed were the evils of racism, sexism, poverty, and ignorance.

     When pilots began to make headlines and pictures of WWI airplanes appeared regularly in magazines, Bessie toyed with the idea of flying as a way out for her and others like her. But when her brother John teasingly told her; “You n***er women ain’t never goin’ to fly, Not like those women I saw in France ” - she smiled at him and said; “That’s it - You just called it for me. 

     The captive audience at the barbershop witnessed that moment in time when Bessie Coleman decided to learn to fly. 

     So Coleman applied to almost every American flying school, but was quickly turned down. There were, of course, two reasons why Coleman couldn't find anyone to teach her to fly. Her brown skin was an obvious reason and her sex was another. The doors to the open skies over America were closed to young Bessie Coleman. But France was so different...

          It is important to note that the “Tulsa Race Riot” took place on June 1, 1921. 

     According to Bieke Gils, “this incident greatly affected and shaped African American’s perceptions of aviation.” After an unresolved lynching incident, six white pilots dropped bombs on the wealthy black Greenwood district of Tulsa, setting fire to the town and killing 75 Tulsans, two-thirds of whom were black.
    It was the first time in history that airplanes were used to attack an American community and this community was black. Marcus Garvey encouraged African Americans to become involved in aviation and to secure as many airplanes as possible in anticipation of a catastrophic race war. And most black newspapers promoted aviation in an effort to dispel stereotypes about African Americans being less intelligent, incompetent and lazy. Bessie Coleman was doing what everyone was talking about.

     After seven months of stringent training, and two weeks after the Tulsa Race Riot, Coleman was declared to be a qualified aviator on June 15, 1921, when she received her international pilot’s license No. 18.310. She was the first American of any race or gender to be directly awarded credential’s to pilot an airplane license from the Federation Aeronitique Internationale in France. To receive this license, she had to demonstrate high skill sets comprised of life-saving maneuvers including turning off the engine before touching down...     Bessie Coleman’s flight exhibitions were successful because she appealed to both black and white audiences. White audiences saw her as an attractive, petite uniqueness - a tiny beautiful woman piloting an airplane. Black audiences took pride in her courage as she symbolized hope that the African American community could participate in the skies [and she flat refused to perform in front where blacks were not allowed to enter] 

* * * * *

HOLLYWOOD 

     ...[It] was announced that she had agreed to star in a film “Shadow and Sunshine” to be produced by an African American-owned film company - Seminole. However, she failed to show up for the filming because she felt it degraded her race. She had gladly accepted the role hoping it would help advance her career and provide her with money to establish her own flying school. But when she learned the first scene required her to wear tattered clothes, with a walking stick and a pack on her back, she refused to proceed.

     ...Doris Rich, in her book on Bessie, said "as an aviator she was a threat to whites who cherished their racial superiority, and as a woman pilot she threatened the ego of black males."      Queen Bess - Daredevil Aviatrix was a true champion of her race.      She refused to appear in any air show that did not allow blacks to attend. Her motto was "No Uncle Tom stuff for me." She was determined to bolster black pride and refused to promote the stereotypical, derogatory image most whites had of blacks.

* * * * * 

      She especially appealed to African American women to take in interest in aviation and she began to lecture more with her 2,000 feet of film of her performances in Europe and the US. Besides, lectures brought in more income that would bring her closer to her dream of a flight school. But she never charged any admission to students - she knew that they were her inspiration to become future pilots...

http://www.bessiecoleman.org/bio-bessie-coleman.php  (No Link: Not A Secure Site)

     [Queen Bess wound up going to Europe more than once to hone her skills when she was not allowed into schools in the United States due to being black and/or female. ] In 1925, she moved to Houston and performed throughout the South, drawing multicultural crowds. She had nearly reached her goal of opening a school, when on April 30, 1926, she went up for a practice flight for a May Day celebration in Jacksonville, Fla. About 10 minutes into the flight, the Curtiss Jenny biplane, piloted by her mechanic and publicity agent, William Will, went into a nosedive and flipped.

https://insider.si.edu/2018/02/bessie-coleman-first-black-aviator/

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A MESSAGE FOR BOSSY GIRLS FROM MICHELLE OBAMA WITH LOVE ON HER BIRTHDAY

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     Michelle Obama doesn't care if you call her bossy. In fact, the former first lady encourages young women and girls to be proud of being labeled as such.

Last year in Madrid, during a tour to promote her Let Girls Learn initiative, Obama discussed the importance of breaking down gender norms.

"It means telling your sons that it's okay to cry, and your daughters that it's okay to be bossy," Obama said in the speech, as reported by Harper's Bazaar.

Obama dismissed the bossy stereotype again last year while discussing the obstacles she faced as a young girl, at a speech in Argentina for the same initiative.

In the speech, she said that she's dealt with "teachers who didn't think I was smart enough and would call on the boys instead of the girls, even though the girls had better grades."

As she got older, Obama said that she had to deal with being sexualized by men who would catcall her as if she were an object or a piece of property to be commented on. This, she said, led to self-doubt....

Read More: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/22/michelle-obama-to-young-women-its-okay-to-be-bossy.html

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