Other than coronavirus, the biggest story this year
has been Black Lives Matter,
a movement fighting for equality and justice
and the reason so many of your favorite statues
are suddenly unemployed.
But as much as everyone has been talking about BLM,
there's one aspect that doesn't get talked about enough:
the role of black women in the movement.
National attention focused on police brutality of
and police killings of black men
is not extended to black women.
Often, black women, black trans women,
are left out of the conversation.
NEWSWOMAN: While the names most associated
with the Black Lives Matter movement are male,
black women and girls are regularly victim
to police brutality in the U.S.
NEWSWOMAN 2: Black women's experiences of police brutality
tend to receive far less media and political attention.
Dealing with this double layer of discrimination,
black women have often been at the heart
of key civil rights movements.
For example,
the Black Lives Matter movement,
founded by three women back in 2013.
Yeah, think about it.
There's this giant, historic movement
sweeping the country,
and 99% of us have never even heard
of the women who founded it, which is pretty egregious.
I mean, we all know who founded KFC,
and that's not even a movement for racial equality.
I mean, that's just a movement for destroying your bowels.
And, look, I'll be honest. I didn't know
black women started the Black Lives Matter movement
partly because Aunt Becky told me it was her daughter.
It was really convincing.
She had a résumé and everything.
But the unfortunate truth
is overlooking the role of black women
in leading movements of social justice
isn't anything new,
as we'll find out in another installment
of If You Don't Know, Now You Know.
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Although black women have been the pioneers
of so many movements that have changed the world,
the erasure of black women
from the story of these movements
is something we've seen many times
throughout American history, starting all the way back
with the women's suffrage movement.
WOMAN: African American women in particular
played a significant and sometimes overlooked role
in the suffrage movement.
WOMAN 2: There were African American women
fighting for suffrage from the beginning.
You know, Sojourner Truth in the time of the Civil War.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell.
WOMAN 3: They built a movement
that would grow to half a million,
but they would never find acceptance
among mainstream suffragists.
At that time, suffrage leaders
were actively wooing Southern white members.
To appease the Southerners,
white suffragists found it expedient
to abandon their black sisters.
MAN: They minimized
the presence of black women in that struggle.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton seized control of suffrage history
in this multivolume book that still dominates the history
and essentially wrote black women out of that.
That's right. Black suffragettes
were literally written out of the history books
by white women in the movement.
And just look at their faces.
It's like they had already seen the future, and they were like,
"Mm-hmm. I'm not gonna get credit for any of this, am I?"
Because the truth is certain white feminist heroes
were super problematic.
I mean, people remember them
like they were early versions of Wonder Woman
when in reality, they were more like the mom from Get Out.
Now, you may not be surprised that these 1920s Karens
were eager to accept black women's work
but give them none of the credit.
But what may surprise you
is that black men in the civil rights movement
were also happy to do a similar thing.
WOMAN: Most women who worked in the movement,
who were the actual backbone of the civil rights movement,
were not really known.
WOMAN 2: Media attention would always be drawn
to the men of the movement as they're doing work,
the Martin Luther Kings and others,
but would not necessarily go to women like Ella Baker,
who was a longtime activist who helped to nurture
and birth the student movement.
WOMAN 3: Diane Nash was the lead strategist
behind the sit-ins in Nashville and the Freedom Riders.
She played a critical role in organizing the Selma marches.
MAN: Dorothy Height was the godmother
of the civil rights movement,
but because she was a woman, she was often off to the side,
behind the podium, behind the scenes.
WOMAN 4: She was a guiding force at the table when the Big Six
planned the historic March on Washington in 1963,
the lone woman at a table full of men.
Yet, despite all her efforts, Height could not convince them
that a woman should be allowed to speak at the podium
the day of the march.
Come on, man. This is so messed up.
Black women were the lifeblood of the civil rights movement,
and still they got cockblocked by the dudes?
I mean, the reverend's got half a dozen microphones right there.
You can't break one of those off for my girl Dorothy?
She was a critical part of the group.
It's like if the Avengers were fighting Thanos
but they made Iron Man cheer from the stands.
And this just shows you that black women
don't just have to deal with racism from the world,
but oftentimes, they have to deal with the sexism
within their own communities and the world at large.
There's actually a term for it, "misogynoir,"
which means misogyny against black women.
And it also sounds like the title
of a really fancy French movie.
I would love to promote you, but unfortunately, I cannot,
because you are a black woman.
Oh! Boy, you're (bleep) with the wrong one today!
Garçon, bring me the Vaseline,
'cause somebody gonna get their ass kicked.
So throughout history,
black women have had their contributions
to groundbreaking movements minimized or erased,
whether it's women's suffrage or civil rights.
And the list goes on and on and on.
The role of black women in starting and founding
the women's movement and feminism altogether is
still not in the history books.
WOMAN: Many don't know this, but the #MeToo movement was started
by a black woman, Tarana Burke, 12 years ago,
to support victims and survivors of sexual violence.
In the modern-day calls for justice and equality,
there's an echo of another social movement
for LGBTQ+ rights,
a movement sparked and sustained by black trans women.
MAN: We never would have had a Stonewall
if it wasn't for a black trans woman saying "Enough,"
due to police brutality and police misconduct.
MAN 2: They fought back against the police that night,
uh, in particular Marsha P. Johnson,
Sylvia Rivera, as well as Miss Major.
In 2015,
when they did the Stonewall movie,
although we all knew
that these black transgender women started that, uh,
that-that riot that evening, they whitewashed it,
and they started it and replaced them
with white, queer characters as the leaders of that.
Damn. They pulled a reverse Hamilton
on the Stonewall movie.
You know what we need to do?
We need to add these women into the movie with CGI.
Yeah, George Lucas has the technology,
and he owes us reparations for Jar Jar Binks.
You know, when you think about it,
the gay rights movement was basically
like all cool slang on Twitter.
You thought it came from white gay men,
but they actually got it from a black women.
So the next time you march with Black Lives Matter,
or you exercise your right to vote,
or your dance moves go viral on TikTok,
don't forget that black women were a major part
of making that happen.
And if you don't know, now you know.