Their battles laid the groundwork for Black women and women of color to push toward a space of equity. In this new world that I doubt Anna or Sojourner would have been able to imagine, we have an equity mirror. The election of the first Black and woman president makes us believe it is possible for people with disabilities, different sexual orientations or religious beliefs to also lead the world’s most powerful nation. This is a challenge to systems of power. That is for a leader to reflect none of the values power deems necessary to lead particularly as the president of the United States.

Examining the recent tradition of women’s leadership in global governance, we will not only be able to challenge inequity, but demonstrate that communities with women leaders excel. And perhaps there is an opportunity a catalyst even to create policies that reverberate kindness and encourage equity in a new way.

Women Running the World

Rwanda, leads the world at 61.3% with Cuba at 56% of women in leadership positions. The United States is 66^th, with only 35% of women serving in leadership in local government. In 2011, I was one of them. I served on my local city council for four years, and during that time, I established a youth council, served on the finance committee, helped the city avoid receivership, and ensured it maintained a healthy fund balance. We were one of the only minority-led, predominately Black city governments in Michigan without an emergency financial manager when cities like Flint and Detroit entered receivership. Those four years on the city council are often reflected on as one of the best governing bodies in recent memory.

Women’s leadership is critical to the success of governing bodies. In June 2024, there were 15 heads of government. Women hold the highest positions of power in nations such as France, Iceland, Italy, Bangladesh, and until recently, New Zealand. Jacinda Arden, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, was internationally recognized for her Go Hard, Go Early strategy, which saved countless lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. In stark contrast, New Zealand saw 25 COVID-related deaths, whereas the U.S. saw 350,000 between March and December. Additionally, Arden instituted a wellbeing budget in 2019, a clear example of a holistic policy approach. This initiative considered quality of life metrics such as mental health, child poverty, environmental sustainability, and social inequality over inflation and GDP. Germany’s Angela Merkel is equally credited with stabilizing her country’s economy after the 2008 financial crisis with a focus on fiscal discipline. She, too, managed the COVID-19 pandemic well and introduced social policies that improved gender equity and healthcare reform. Quality of life is a central metric for global governance under women-led nations. These women have given the United States an example on how to safeguard human needs over the human ego. However, the first Black woman president may experience more significant challenges because of the systems of power in which her identity is undermined.

 A Black Woman’s Leadership

Whether we know it or not, everything we think about power and leadership will now be challenged —opening an opportunity to overthrow all forms of inequality. Time will tell whether Kamala Harris turns out to be one of the best presidents we’ve experienced; regardless, all eyes will be on the choices she makes. I’m hopeful that her intentions around an opportunity economy and reproductive rights take root during her term. Like Obama’s presidency, there is something to be said for the hope that precedes such a historical appointment.

With hope in mind, let’s reconsider the hegemonic view of leadership, which is that good leaders are male, white, and have access to wealth. I want to frame leadership in terms of nurture and suggesting that prescribed ideals of womanhood also suggest a different type of leadership. I challenge those who would claim we shouldn’t equate woman’s leadership to the attributes of gender-prescribed feminine norms. To that, I say: Femininity is leadership.

This is the equity mirror — a reflection of power that doesn’t resemble what this country has seen in the last two centuries as strong and powerful leadership. We will now see a woman lead with the authority and power only 46 men before her have wielded. How can that not also hold more space for women to assume more leadership roles in their communities, homes, and board rooms. Even more so, can we also see a variety of diverse leadership based on an array of social identities.

Black women, in particular, navigate society as leaders despite the social contract’s exclusion on race and gender. This philosophical concept explores how society legitimized government as individuals agree to form a society in exchange for certain protections that overall benefit living in a community. Early philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau — white men — introduced this concept. In turn, they facilitated thoughts that primarily benefited the perspective of their race and gender. Later philosophers noted that a social contract had limitations for women. We could only participate through patriarchal connections and sexual transactions like marriage, Carol Pateman wrote in her 1988 book “The Sexual Contract”. Further, in “The Racial Contract” by Charles Mills, he upends the social contract by settling the notion that white supremacy as a social-political system limited participation for Black men.

Black women were excluded. We couldn’t participate because we were women and because we were Black. In the words of Ntozake Shange, “Being COLORED and a WOMAN is a metaphysical dilemma I have not been able to conquer yet.” Nevertheless, Black women still make magic happen – 44,000 Black women hopped on a Zoom call just hours before Kamala Harris was named the presumed Democratic nominee. Their efforts sparked several other calls like Win With White Women and With Black Men. I likened this agency to gendered double consciousness, a twist on Du Bois’s earlier concept with insight to a woman’s experience. Essentially, Black women can create self-agency despite the systemic barriers in society. We often do so for others more than ourselves, triggering a somewhat exciting convergence.

What we saw this election cycle is not new. Mary Church Terrell argued that Black women had to do more and that “we must go out into the nation and change it.” The numbers speak for themselves: Black women continue to uphold democracy at the ballot box, with 91% voting for Biden in 2020 and 94% voting for Clinton in 2016.

It is for this reason, with consideration to social contract theory, that the first Black and female president challenges the concepts of inequity, and my hope is that it is challenged not solely around inequity around race or gender but in all forms. Her existence is an equity mirror, and when we glance at this new idea of power, it can challenge patriarchy and racism as the dominant social structure in society. 

To be clear, I recognize that gender and race can be subject to the cultural domination of white supremacy. Actors in that system can be of any race or gender. However, I believe that Vice President Harris, as a woman leader, would lean in the way other woman leaders have demonstrated with human-centered resounding policies.

Nurturing the Country

I recommend that the woman-led United States consider creating policy from a holistic perspective. How can we view the economy, education, and our environment in a way that puts people first, with consideration for uplifting the very least of us? All of these factors intersect, and how do we build governing laws that consider the entire human being—our emotions, our psyche, our bodies, and our ability to live abundant lives?

We could build an educational system that allows our children to live and compete globally, ultimately safeguarding our strength as a country. Enacting justice for the land that we live on must be a priority, and doing so includes cutting our carbon footprint and making access to safer uses of energy available to all people. A holistic policy perspective ensures all people have what they need to thrive. Is it possible to do so and equip people with access to safe housing, a robust and rigorous education, safe and clean drinking water, and healthy food? Can we provide people with access to lead joy-filled lives? This speaks to the ability to nurture the country; a great division has occurred, and now what better time for nurture. To bring us together in a spirit of joy and contend that people deserve to live and pursue their happiness. Can we now, in the words of Sojourner Truth, gather the women, be led by a woman, and turn the world back upright again?

Snyder enabled the emergency financial manager policy even after voters declined the dictator version of Public Act 4 (PA 4 – Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act) in 2012. According to records obtained during my study, the policy (PA 436 – Local Financial Stability and Choice Act) intends to safeguard and assure the financial accountability of school districts; however, after my investigation, I found that it left school districts fiscally and academically unstable, disempowered local leaders, and repressed cultural identity.

Moreover, and what is most egregious, this policy for both school districts and municipalities was racially biased. Although 18 state-identified financial emergencies existed, over 70% of the Black population in Michigan lived under state control via emergency financial management. Michigan is not alone in these types of policies; however, it was controversial on account of suspending local control for a single state-appointed manager with the ability to make solitary decisions on behalf of a community. The racial disparity prompted the late Rep. John Conyers to write then-Attorney General Eric Holder, stating, “While the law itself may be facially neutral, it would seem that it is being applied in a discriminatory fashion as the impacted jurisdictions have a very high proportion of African Americans.” Across the state, Detroit, Muskegon Heights, Benton Harbor, and Pontiac, Black communities existed in what one leader would call a “disruption of democracy.” Emergency management, in many respects, led to the Flint water crisis due to the governor’s very technocratic way of leading. We are familiar with Flint. However, what many people don’t realize is the impact emergency financial management had on public schools.

In Color of Emergency, I evaluate the emergency management policy and its impact on predominately Black schools and their leaders. Three of the districts I consider in my study recently received over 53.4 million dollars in debt elimination. I think this is cause for celebration and is a reconciliation from the political trauma of the racially biased emergency financial management policy.

Considering the historical context of Michigan Public Education, we ranked 48 out of 50 in public school funding during Snyder’s tenure. School districts in receivership from 2011 – 2019 (Highland Park, Detroit, Benton Harbor, Muskegon Heights, and Pontiac) served students who were 83.8% African American and 87.3% economically disadvantaged. The average allowance per student was $7,638 in 2018. Michigan’s educational policies, such as school of choice and a centralized funding structure (Proposal A), significantly undermined the financial solvency and academic achievement of these school districts. This makes me ask the question: should we have fixed the way we funded and supported school districts rather than initiated a band-aid with grave consequences that unfairly targeted Black schools?

Removing the debt is a great relief. However, what my research found was that policies like emergency management and the result created racial realism – a Critical Race Theory term coined by the late Derrick Bell. Essentially, emergency management left many of these school communities worse off. Its implementation for one particular school district further deteriorated the financial health of the school, almost doubling its deficit. Additionally, the school district had several different charter school contractors sorely undermining academic achievement for children within this district. Thus, from a critical race theory perspective, racial realism adequately expresses the condition of many schools that experienced emergency financial management, noting that racism is a permanent and indestructible component of this society. Essentially, here lies a cycle: Black schools weren’t funded equitably in the first place, and rather than restructuring our funding model to adequately support our children, we instituted a racially bias policy that didn’t improve school conditions. It left them worse off.

The racial realist perspective acknowledges the material impact of racism and how it affects the everyday lives of people. In the case of the public schools in Michigan, policy change can mean justice and a tad bit of hope, but we should all know hope is not a strategy.

The strategy is eliminating the debt, which rights the decades of poor policy choices regarding urban schools in the state, and justice is a continued investment in technology, resources, wrap-around services, and educator development. A complete restoration of our schools must be inclusive of a few things: the continued equitable per pupil funding for schools, a focus on community-centered engagement, schools should not be in isolation from the community and vice versa, globalization of education that leans toward STEM, preparing students for the world of tomorrow,  providing them the capacity to compete globally, and giving teachers and administrators the technical and cultural support necessary to engage a new generation of learners.

But forgiving $114 Million is a great start.

Although my eyes were bright-eyed, I did have business to attend to. I was speaking on How to Make Innovative Technology Work for Women and Girls, a side event of the Commission, and had no idea what to expect. With me, were five girls from the program I lent my brain power to – I’d rather say with me was my inspiration for the day. I needed to convince this global community that technology needed Black girls and that Black girls needed technology. The students who joined me were proof of a growing pipeline of leaders ready to make tech an equitable solution. With a hush over the room, I shared that technology is simply the creative avenue for social justice.

I was a part of the colorful dialogue in this space. There were women from Cameroon that majestically towered over me in beautiful yellow dresses sprinkled with red and the sassy walk I was trying to obtain with the heels I tucked away earlier. A bold woman from Beirut was discussing her e-library, and the elegant lady in the far back side of the room was adamant about technology access in South Africa. One might think the space was overwhelming, but to me, it was energetic, with a distinct air of passion from voices with various tones and accents you don’t hear often. Like, a rare sound that was yet still familiar. This room is what I would hope for our world.

I learned from the women in the room that they were all on a mission, speaking into microphones elegantly placed in our faces that took a minute to figure out how to use; they hailed from various places like London, East Asia, Ghana, and Thailand. The atmosphere was much different than your everyday networking, connecting space. These women were holding up warfare banners not for themselves but for the communities they came to New York City to represent. Taking up space for the basic needs that even technology could lend a hand to. After the talk, there was this push and pull to amplify resources and be clear about solutions while owning responsibility to ensure that things just got done. That energy was different. It was an elegant fire, serious, direct, and yet reflective of humanity across all experiences.

It represented a connection between bell hooks’ thoughts in Ain’t I A Woman and the modern bold take of Mikki Kendall in Hood Feminism.

hooks notes that most liberation efforts don’t consider the intersections of oppression. In particular for Black women, the natural design of race and sexism cannot be separated. Might I also add, classism. To deny either of these elements is to deny the basic human identity of oneself. Struggling to fight toward racial justice absent of gender equity is to not fully show up, whole, as one’s full self. Sprinkling in class is my way of inviting Kendalls’ Hood Feminism to which she argues that basic access to the right to life, housing, education, clean water, and technological advancement should be without question.

The women who joined our conversation at CSW67 and the reflections they displayed make me curious about what today’s leaders should look like. Throwing away theories of old, but upholding a human-centered space with a fiery indignation. This banner of leadership contends that people in every corner of the earth should be able to stand in who they are and be given access to resources that enable them to live boundlessly.

I wanted to emulate that reality but recognized that I could only do little, even with my knowledge and the resources I was prepared to share. Because outside that room, we step back into spaces that undermine our reproductive rights, pay us less than our male counterparts, reprimand our bold leadership, and tell our girls they can compete for men but not for jobs.

Here’s my ask, are we cultivating spaces for these women to show up, their voices to be heard, disbursing resources to honor their community’s needs, and executing policies that lead to the next generation of women not having to fight the exact same battles?

What I need and hope for is that the world will see the women in the room.

*This article is also posted with the Michigan Chronicle.

President Biden, this is the civil rights issue of the day.

“The Color of Emergency,” my doctoral research on state takeovers of urban schools, explored how systemic oppression undermined public education in Michigan. I found that Michigan education finance policies such as Proposal A in 1994 were written with the vague intention to fund schools adequately. Yet evidence demonstrates that districts such as Detroit, Highland Park, Muskegon Heights, and Benton Harbor have been gravely underfunded for decades. Based on these districts’ financial struggles, policymakers suggested putting a Band-Aid on open wounds that state and federal policies created.

What I discovered during this study, surprisingly, is that emergency managers caused communal social and emotional trauma and disrupted long-standing traditions in schools that were not just places of learning but cultural vessels of pride. It’s important to note that before the management change these culturally rich, community-based schools enhanced student learning.

Almost 90 percent of schools taken over by states served Black and Brown children. In the name of reform, policymakers allowed charter school systems to infiltrate the public schools’ spaces. These charter school “districts” were more interested in profit than purpose. The outcome of policies like Emergency Financial Management, particularly for African American schools, included further financial stress, and left schools vulnerable with increasing uncertainty and local leadership’s severe disempowerment. Furthermore, the district that was the focus of my study experienced cultural and social repression that undermined student academic growth and development.

For decades, the American educational system has been riddled with savage inequalities that denied Black Americans the very right to a quality education. In 2020, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee ruled that children have the right to literacy and that these states must meet school-quality standards. My friend, educational policies in our country are inherently racist when we must conclude in the 21st century that all children have the right to read.

It’s time to reinvent education in America.

President Biden, you have the opportunity to overhaul this system in a manner that not only enriches our children but builds up and strengthens our communities—creating unified spaces for ingenuity, economic empowerment, cultural traditions, and safety.

Your team will follow Cruella De Vil (Betsy DeVos), who rolled back guidance on discriminatory practices and civil rights functions in the Department of Education. During her tenure, the “education debt” described by author Gloria Ladson-Billing, the cumulative cost and harm of denied opportunities and resources for students of color, has continued to grow. Our country has not honored the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Reinventing education today with a community focus is for the country’s good. The question of equitable education is an emergency; it is the opportunity to ensure that all children have access to the dream.

Therefore, like Diana Ross spinning through an old warehouse in the fantastical movie musical “The Wiz,” it’s a brand-new day. Can’t you feel it? With this sense of a Novo Lenio, we get the opportunity to dream. There’s no better place to dream than America. Many of us experience the nightmare beforehand, yet America offers a sense of hope.

Brand New Day: As you re-envision the plan for America’s educational system, President Biden, center children and their communities.

It’s not enough for our policies to focus on restructuring schools to improve standardized test scores or to put the burden on such schools to race to the top. Schools must also be co-learning, communal spaces for belonging. In communities across the country, I’d like to believe that there are schools that were just like those of my childhood: cultural centers, laced in traditions, with teachers who were “dream keepers” (Ladson-Billings, 1994), places where children felt a sense of pride, belonging, and safety.

In a world where children are viewed as at-risk, vulnerable, of color, and otherwise not humanized, here is an opportunity for us to consider children in terms of their aspirations. The schools should serve as anchors in Black and Brown communities. Learning institutions aren’t just about the MME scores, merit-based testing, and the Pledge of Allegiance on Monday mornings. These are centers of cultural and social pride.

One of my research participants said it best:

“Carter G. Woodson Schools was family. It was love, it was community, it was happy days, it was sad days, but it was happy and sad days together. Carter Woodson, and it still is to a certain point, a community of dedicated people that care about one another. Now we have our own issues. But at the end of the day, it was fun. It was enjoyable to go to school. It was fun knowing that you would see the student body. It was fun knowing that this kid or that kid was getting a scholarship to go here and to go there. Now, it’s an illusion. I’m not happy with how things are now. I’m not happy with it. It’s not about love. It’s not about families, not about community building. It’s not about helping our children to be able to adapt to society and to become gainful and profitable citizens. It’s not about that.”

This participant reflected on the school district before a state takeover and after. He alludes to the idea of culturally rich community-based schools. Here, I propose that federal legislation support a community-based ecosystem that focuses on the whole child—inspires them to dream, create, and become global leaders.

I suggest that we center children and their communities as one tenet to establish equity in education. This may include positioning the school as a social broker in the community, linking school culture to community revitalization projects, and connecting instruction to community realities (Green, 2016). Other ways to install this equitable ecosystem: conduct community-based equity audits that consider disrupting deficit views about the community, understanding the shared community experience (Green, 2016b), enabling cultural traditions, and empowering local leadership. Legislation can create a collective effort of private, public, and grass-roots collaboration by incentive equity as delivered through communal schooling.

In Michigan, we must restore the identity and sense of pride that many schools lost during emergency management.

As you establish a new plan for America’s schools, President Biden, embrace the idea of communal education. It is necessary to ensure our national security, make good on our promise of civil rights, and continue to restore the American dream.

After all, we know what happens to a dream deferred.

Well, it’s not 1619, 1750, 1885, or 1968. It’s the start of the roaring 20’s, and black folks are carrying multiple burdens in the heat of the day.

COVID-19 has amplified social inequities that some of us knew were already there. Nevertheless, we are quietly living in spaces that now reflect the Great Depression-era realities: like staggering unemployment and food scarcity. In addition, and I’ll say this plainly with as much typing vengeance as possible, we have a racist, incompetent, ego-maniac residing on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who shreds the constitution almost daily. While this occurs, Ahmaud Arbrey is murdered (lynched), Breonna Taylor is murdered (lynched), and George Floyd is murdered (lynched). They join the cadres of black martyrs (say their names Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin) who spur our passion and internal plea for salvation and thank goodness for those who were pissed off enough to set fire.

Black people collectively are tired. We’ve been tired. I don’t think our white counterparts understand that we experience a communal trauma when shit like this happens. Yet, we show up in predominately white spaces, and well, “we wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, with torn and bleeding hearts we smile, why should the world be over-wise (Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1913)?” While white people are merely living (or weaponizing their privilege when it suits them – Hey, Amy Cooper).

I didn’t put pen to paper to write what many of you already know. I wanted to say, “Carry your burden in the heat of the day.” Although tired, pissed off, confused, heavy, and seeking justice, what we cannot continue to let happen is this cycle. Black bodies are treated as target practice in the American political social structure (otherwise called white supremacy), we raise social media hell, and then we phase back into attempting to live. This time might I suggest a few things;

Embrace Mental Wellness – Y’all see a licensed therapist. Embrace the fact that if your body feels ill, you go to the doctor or at least take your grandmama’s home remedy, perhaps even a Lil’ Vernors and a few crackers. The same should be considered for our mental well-being. We are not well mentally when we’ve collectively seen men and women who look like us shot dead. That is not normal. Finding ways to produce self-care and compassion in seasons like this is necessary. Find a therapist and begin seeing them regularly. 

Vote or Die But Prepare an Agenda: Man, you can’t tell me voting doesn’t matter, and to be honest, the most valuable army of voters is black folks! However, we’ve been seeing trash candidates and not fully engaging in the process. BMe has a robust Black Agenda that was vetted and prepared by grass-roots leaders. Also, with a critical election coming up, we have to pay attention to voter fraud and be clear about how we cast our vote and who we decide to cast our vote for. 

Accountability Matters See it Through: Beware of repression, that’s when the system throws you a bone, so it quells your appetite for a moment, but usually, the bones aren’t enough to cover a small fry and coke. We were so excited when Ahmaud Arbery’s murders were arrested, but let’s not forget that George Zimmerman is still out here acting a plum fool. We have to put our foot on their necks until they stop breathing. In other words, we need to see these things through, and it takes patience, time, and money.

Unbought & Unbossed – I finished reading Shirley Chisholm’s autobiography at the end of 2019, and Chisholm did not want to be bought or bossed around by the political, social structure that was in place. She made a choice to play by her own rules. Where are these types of leaders? We need to birth them, we need to support them, and we need to start now.

It’s hot outside. It could very well be the flames burning in Minneapolis and Los Angeles. Let it burn.

I’m a daddy’s girl. Thanks to men like Robert Moore, Andrew Sims, and Rodney Savage. Neither of which is my biological father, but whenever I see them, I call them dad. Mr. Moore, in particular, my high school band director, who I spent most of my adolescence with, nurtured my innate leadership skills. In the early 2000s, female drum majors were far and in between. Today, they still are. Yet in our small, urban community, Mr. Moore would choose girls, like me, to be head drum majors. In some respect, I think he felt that we were better than the boys. When it came to competitions, he was right, because we were always winning championships, even with us girls in the middle, leading a band down the field, when that spot was oftentimes reserved for tall boys.

I’m a boss now, and as I think of it, most of the other girls Mr. Moore saw fit to make drum majors are also a bunch of bosses. A couple of doctorates, university officials, amazing mothers, you name it. The time I spent with Mr. Moore, he cultivated what later became a tenacious leadership style — that bold, don’t back down, be fearless, you belong here too, kind of attitude. I would argue that Kobe Bryant instilled the same fervor in his four daughters.

There is a clip that has made it’s social media rounds for the last several weeks of Kobe sharing insight with his beautiful daughter GiGi. Her face is understanding and confident as she nods, soaking in the Black Mamba’s pearls of wisdom, almost as though she has heard this particular message once before. We also notice that Kobe has a pleasant, proud demeanor when he knows that, she got it.

We know Kobe Bean Bryant to be a 5x NBA Champion, 2x Finals MVP, 18x All-Star, and one of the best basketball players in the world. Yet, what I am so enamored with, is him as a father of four girls. On the Jimmy Kimmel show, Kobe discusses fans and friends asking him about having a boy to carry out his legacy. His daughter GiGi confidently responds to these inquiries, and she says, “I got this, you don’t need no boy for that,” and Kobe reaffirms her, “yes, you do, you got this.” Kobe’s confidence and affirmation that his girls can fill his shoes and continue his legacy was noted in a few other conversations. In particular, Shannon Sharpe, on Undisputed, reflected on a text thread with Kobe, where he told the 5x Champion that a boy continues to escape him. He notes that Kobe’s response once more was, “my princesses are tough enough.”

Kobe leaned in as a man; his unwavering commitment to his daughter’s success speaks to how gender equity should be a championed cause for many men. The United Nations leadership discussed that there were two keys to achieving gender equality; first, the private sector’s support to scale up efforts and second that men and boys play a significant role.

The numbers don’t lie, and women and girls across the globe are still experiencing unequal and unfair conditions compared to men and boys. Women are paid less than men for work of equal value. There are 15 million girls worldwide who are not attending school compared to just 10 million boys. Furthermore, in a report by my forever president, Barack Obama, girls of color, experience disproportionately higher rates of school suspensions. Suspensions for Black girls are at 12% higher than white boys (6%) and girls of any other race or ethnicity. The Obama Administration called for the advancement of gender equity through the promotion of safe, inclusive, positive learning environments and integrating trauma-sensitive programmatic efforts.

At the current rate, it would take almost 100 more years to achieve gender equality (UN Women, 2020). If we are going to be champions of gender equity, we need men to be like Kobe and tell all our girls, naw’ you got it.

This afternoon, I chose to rummage through Charles Phillips’, 50 Leaders Who Changed History. MLK was on the cover, delivering what appeared to be his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. I was curious, how many women are counted in the 50? When I glanced the table of contents, I saw names like Queen Elizabeth, Mother Teresa, Queen Victoria, Queen Boudica (whoever this is), and to my not so surprise there were no Black women listed. Having just seen the movie Harriet I thought surely, Harriet Tubman could be listed. But no. Eva Peron, Margaret Thatcher were listed, but no Harriet or Rosa or Oprah even. And quite honestly, didn’t these women emerge as world changers? I write that last line in the same tone as Sojourner Truths, “Ain’t I a Woman.”

Perhaps, that is, in fact, the point. Black women, for centuries, have contributed to the rise of nations, people, communities, and families, all while being in the words of Malcolm X, the most disrespected and unprotected of the human race. Black women are seemingly invisible superheroes, gracing the globe with our presence, and yet never being recognized with the same enthusiasm as the non-Black women listed in Charles’ book. Our crowns are placed immaculately on our heads without the world’s acknowledgment, they still exist, and we seemingly still reign. What I want to make clear is that Black women lead under the gravest of conditions. One of the women who could’ve been listed in the 50, Shirley Chisholm, recognizes my point plainly in her 1974 speech as she notes,

“As a result of this historical circumstance (slavery and it’s never-ending impact), the black woman has developed perseverance; the black woman has developed strength; the black woman has developed tenacity of purpose and other attributes which today quite often are being looked upon negatively.”

-Shirley Chisolm (The Black Woman in Contemporary America, June 1974)

Unlike any other, Black women face the intersectionality of both their race and their gender – the double jeopardy. And yet she, the original Queen Mother, has been able to navigate the world in such a way that she fiercely changes it. I would argue that black women will always have a sense of self-determination and agency that I describe as a gendered double consciousness, the black woman’s version of DuBois’s double consciousness. I so bravely wrote about this truth at 22 years old when my experience in the world had yet to begin. Ten years later, I realize that I was prescient.

An excerpt from that paper reads:

“It is evident that black women have historically been ostracized from the proponents of American civil livelihood. Their material realities illustrate the conditions of white supremacy and patriarchy as systemic. Black women counteracted their oppression with self-identification and racial uplift. Their philosophy contended that they lift their race while simultaneously promoting the cause of black womanhood. Understanding the dimensions of their oppression was critical to the strategic implications of community empowerment and self-help. Black women were conscious of their condition within American society. They chose to use their oppression as a tool to guide their work.”

Perhaps, the Black woman’s greatest strength is that she is underestimated because, despite the world’s inability to see her worth, she is quietly changing it. In that case, continue to underestimate us as we sprinkle Black Girl Magic around the globe, and watch it glisten in the sunlight that the African tundra drew upon our lips.

So, dear Charles, with all due respect, despite your many accomplishments, Oxford degree, and all, I’d like to offer you this, a list of 50 world changers, and they are all Black women.

 It is evident that black women have historically been ostracized from the proponents of American civil livelihood. Their material realities illustrate the conditions of white supremacy and patriarchy as systemic. Black women counteracted their oppression with self-identification and racial uplift. Their philosophy contended that they lift their race while simultaneously promoting the cause of black womanhood. Understanding the dimensions of their oppression was critical to strategic implications of community empowerment and self-help. Black women were conscious about their condition within American society and choose to use their oppression as a tool to guide their work.

The NACW (National Association of Colored Women) formed in 1896 presents a case study on the condition of black women during the Nadir period and their ability to navigate as black women amongst oppressive dimensions. The Nadir period is recorded by many historians as the most racially intense period since slavery. This period is categorized with profound acts of violence performed upon black bodies. This includes rape, lynchings, and other expressions of white supremacy. Out of these conditions the NACW profoundly incorporate their agency and navigate throughout an intense expulsion from democratic life.

The first president of the NACW was Ms. Mary Church Terrell, a daughter of former slaves and one of the first black women to receive a college degree. Terrell chartered the NACW and empowered many black women to contribute to its cause. In one of her speech’s she declared:

We have to do more than other women. Those of us fortunate enough to have education must share it with the less fortunate of our race. We must go into our communities and improve them; we must go out into the nation and change it. Above all, we must organize ourselves as Negro women and work together.

Terrell illustrated the start of the NACW by calling a white man James Jacks, president of the Missouri Press Association, a liar! According to Terrell, Jacks attempts to circumvent Ida B. Well’s anti-lynching movement claimed that all black women were prostitutes and thieves. (White, 23) Lastly, Terrell asked a lively group of black women, “who of you know how to carry your burden in the heat of the day?” (White, 23) Essentially, she eloquently asks the same question of this project. The statement corresponded with field slave labor. The idea to carry a burden, or sack of cotton on one’s back in scorching southern heat. During the Nadir period, where black people as a whole endured some form of disenfranchisement, and for black women the ultimate exclusion from social life; it meant conducting race work.  According to Deborah Gray White author of Too Heavy a Load, race work meant that collectively black women, “could change their image, and from their point of view, the uplift of women was the means of uplifting the race.” (White, 24) The NACW activated race work by the ideology of self-help. Club members focused on improving domestic life by educating mothers, assisting the poor, and increasing the skill sets of club women. Some clubs hosted jail visits to black men and boys providing them with clean clothes and food. The women of the NACW did several unique projects that aided the basic needs of black people and empowered their communities. (White, 28)

The women of the NACW pursued the issues of race, gender, and poverty holistically. They acknowledged that, “if they worked for the poor, they worked for black women, and if they worked for black women they worked for the race.” (White, 24) Ultimately, improving black women led to the overall improvement of the black race. The concerns of women were also the concerns of the black race which allowed the NACW to centre the issues of race upon the problems of women.

As a case study the NACW helps uncover the conditions of black women during the Nadir period who regardless of intense racial and gender discrimination ultimately navigated through by strategically creating racial uplift. Through self help initiatives they furthered the cause of themselves as black women and the black community as a whole. This is significant because according to the proposed racia-sexual contract by Mills black women have no authority to agree within a functional democratic union. Indeed the women of the NACW were eliminated from American social life but managed to conduct themselves in a manner that produced empowerment for not only black women but their communities.

The women of NACW and other black women in a historical American framework subscribe to a gendered double consciousness; whereas they invoke the struggle of being black, woman, and what Du Bois announces as the “warring within self.”(Du Bois, 4) Additionally, however for black women is the self identification the necessity to define self and one’s community for the sake of lifting oppression as a woman. Du Bois presents double consciousness as a psychological idea that black people in America are two beings, black and American. For Du Bois, this consciousness acknowledges the ways in which the world views an individual and who the individual actually is. Thus in America for black people, there is a contention between obtaining humanness while experiencing oppression. Du Bois presents his philosophy as, “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; tow souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.” (Du Bois, 4)

A gendered double consciousness prescribes recognizing oppression not as the way the world views black women rather as a tool to emancipate one’s self from that view and enabling the true self to be realized. This is distinguishable with the NACW as they challenged James Jack’s letters. Recall that Jacks declared black women as prostitutes and thieves. Members of the NACW dismantled Jacks argument with a response of race work.

Gendered double consciousness is a rejection of hegemonic ideals of black womanhood and recognizes the causes of material conditions, that being patriarchy and white supremacy. Ultimately, black women contend the social contract by rejecting its major proponents of domination and exploring their particular womanness or racial identity to promote the ideas of social sustainability and progress.

So…what is stopping you? I challenge you to be limitless. If you have faith in God what could stop you? My latest book, Kingdom Perseverance, challenges believers to pursue their purpose with tenacity, not giving up, but reaching toward their destiny. There’s a story in Luke 5 where Jesus is in a house, “and the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick” (Luke 5:17). So the house was filled with people. A few men carrying a paralyzed man went to the house but couldn’t get through the crowds. The men then went up on the roof of the house and lowered the man into the home right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith – he forgave them of their sins and also healed the paralyzed man.

I like these guys. They didn’t see the crowd and think, “we’ll just have to catch Jesus later because we can’t get through.” They found another vantage point – their vision was without limits, and their faith caused them to move, to execute.

Limitless is defined as without end, limit, or boundary. It is also noted as, boundless, unlimited, or bottomless. Here are my top three tips for living a limitless life;

1. Know God – We have socially constructed God in a box, but God is without limits. If you fathom that God spoke our world into existence with His voice alone and that He laid the earth’s foundations, marked off its dimensions, shut up the sea, all while the morning stars sang (Job 38: 2-9) your faith should be without limits. It is our greatest joy to know God. I pray that God would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation that you might know Him (Ephesians 1:17).

2. Trust God – Now that you know how Mighty God is surely you should place all of your trust in Him. Trusting God dismantles fear and gives you peace that is indescribable (2 Samuel 7:28).

3. JUMP! – Here’s the point of it all…just jump. Take that leap, the risk, fly above the clouds, soar like an eagle. Jump with the courage that God gives you. Jump into purpose and reach your destiny.

Here is an excerpt from Kingdom Perseverance – the Limitless Prayer;

Father in the name of Jesus
I thank you for being limitless
Lord you are able to do immeasurably more than I can ask or think according to your power that is at work in me
God I declare that I am limitless
I will expand my thinking and set my vision according to what I know about your goodness
I will not be limited by resources or circumstances
I declare that my borders are expanding
My influence is expanding
I have a limitless supply of power because I am connected to You
Lord break the limitations off my mind
Destroy the barriers that hinder me from fulfilling my purpose in excellence
Cause my purpose to burst forth like the sea
Multiply my capacity and increase my greatness