As we commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery, we recognize that Black women were central to advancing this critical moment in the civil rights movement, just as we see today. Yet even now, their leadership is not always centralized in our collective interpretations of history. Our inability to understand the breadth and depth of Black women’s contributions to the movement is not only detrimental to the honoring of their legacies, but also narrows our approach to building a movement that addresses the ways in which systems of racism intersect with other systems of class and gender oppression and the various types of leadership that are necessary to advance broad sweeping change.

AAPF will host a conversation at the Selma 50th Anniversary Commemoration to discuss the role of patriarchy in our movement’s leadership and in the way we often approach the issue of state violence, calling for the inclusion of all Black people at every level of the movement. Through presenting our forthcoming research brief and organizing tool on building a gender-inclusive approach to fighting racialized state violence, this conversation will fill a critical gap in the framing of state violence as a risk only faced by men of color. We will uplift the cases of Black women who have been killed by the police, while also expanding our understanding of racial violence to include sexual assault, incarceration and other inequities that Black women experience. Through elevating these stories, and building a frame to understand how Black women are perpetual targets of violence, we hope to build a more inclusive and comprehensive racial justice movement.

Through participant dialogue, we hope to challenge our understanding of leadership within the movement, and the damaging role of patriarchy, through building cross-generational partnerships to advance an inclusive approach to racial justice.  Many of the challenges facing Black leadership have been codified as generational issues, in which millennials and older generations have differing opinions in how to approach this work. In reality, women and men of older generations are dealing with the same challenges and have been for years. We hope to leverage the principles of Black feminist leadership, which glean to the values of grassroots voices, non-hierarchical structures, and dialogues inclusive of those at the margins to build a cross-generational commitment to developing and advancing a shared vision for the movement that has a place for all of us.

Through engaging you in dialogue, we hope to discuss the following:

 What are the current framings of state violence that the movement and the media have been operating with and how can we counter this gender-exclusive discourse to include the experiences of Black women who have been killed, such as Aura Rosser, Tanisha Anderson and Michelle Cusseaux?
 

What are the various circumstances under which Black women are killed by the police? How do we build a gender-inclusive approach to fighting racial violence?

  How do we expand our conception of what constitutes state violence? Black women face violence at the hands of law enforcement in a myriad of ways beyond killing alone. This includes sexual violence, rape, and tacitly furthering/allowing domestic violence to continue unimpeded.
 

What does it look like to place state violence against Black women in a historical context? This includes the long history of rape and sexual violence white men and agents of the state have perpetrated against Black women, lynching of Black women, and how this has led to the violence Black women face today.

How does our leadership sometimes perpetuate patriarchy and how does this damage the movement? How do we advance an organizing model rooted in Black feminist ideals?  



COMING SOON FROM AAPF...
SAY HER NAME: TOWARDS A GENDER INCLUSIVE ANALYSIS OF RACIALIZED STATE VIOLENCE
A Research Brief and Organizing Tool for Advancing Gender Inclusion in the Movement