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In Europe during the Middle Ages Mary had been incredibly powerful as a symbol, as channel to the Archimage, who was not entirely concealed—or con-sealed. Indeed, one could say that this image was powerful to an insufferable degree within a phallic society. Most of the major cathedrals were built to the "Mother of God," the Source who gave birth to god. No matter how lengthily the theologians protested, or how subtle their droning distinctions and discussions, it is obvious that she outranked male images of divinity. Instead of functioning to conceal the Background memory of the Archimage, she was at times translucent, transparent, functioning to dis-close this Archaic Active Potency in women and nature.

A study of theology, piety, art shows that indeed the Archimage was shining through this attempt at manipulation and concealment. To describe this phenomenon I have invented the word Arch-Image to Name the Mary image. The Archimage threatened to explode through the Arch-Image, and indeed volcanic eruptions of consciousness/memory in women did take place. In short, Mary malfunctioned as an archetype; the situation was intolerable to the mind-molders.

The protestant solution was substitution. Androgynous, sweet Jesus, the misbegotten and transsexed parthenogenetic daughter who incorporated both masculine and feminine roles, being lord, savior, and sacrificial victim, was the logical surrogate for the female principle. Being plastic, Jesus was pliable enough to serve as stop-gap, filling the molds required for phallic anthropomorphic symbolization.

The catholic solution to the impending threat of explosion has been the retention of Mary, who was required by popular demand, while dogmatically draining this symbol of her residual vibrancy, slowly remolding and re-finishing her back into archetypal shape. The project of the papal puppeteers has been to make this fembot function as a decoy, distracting those who sense the Presence of the Archimage—in their Selves, in their sisters, and in all Elemental reality. Thus catholicism worked on the symbolic level in a drawn-out process of psychic manipulation which has never been completely explored. During the centuries following the Witchcraze it has strived to drain, contain, pervert, and freeze this Arch-Image—the one who has been troublesomely translucent, dis-closing rays of Elemental Be-ing, casting shadows and reflecting shimmerings of the Archimage.

This slow vampirism is a tactic which complements the protestant total erasure of the Arch-Image. This dual strategy on the symbolic level mirrors the "real" political double strategy, employed by both sides of christianity, of murdering some women while maintaining others in the state of living death which is patriarchal womanhood.

-Mary Daly, Pure Lust

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Your emotional reaction to an injustice is not the criterion you should be looking at to determine whether you are living up to your values, or the values you'd like to hold.

Your actual response, in words and in actions, and how that response impacts others, is what you should be evaluating.

Having a strong emotional reaction to injustice isn't a guarantee that you'll actually do anything about it. Sometimes people, distressed by their emotional response, choose not to see injustice so they don't have to feel that way. Sometimes people focus so much on their emotional response that Feeling Things is the extent of their interaction with that form of injustice.

Having a calm and rational-feeling reaction to something isn't a guarantee that you're actually seeing The Bigger Picture. It can just mean you aren't having a big emotional reaction; it doesn't mean you're actually being logical or that you're well-informed about a situation.

Sometimes people assume that their emotional reaction is enough to tell them what would help, and their completely uninformed attempts to help can make the situation worse. Finding out what would actually help takes work. Feelings can't do that work for you.

Having All The Right Feelings about something isn't activism, and not feeling an emotional connection to an injustice doesn't automatically mean you can't or won't contribute meaningfully to addressing or alleviating it.

Your feelings are only relevant to injustice if they help you to actually do something constructive, or if they get in the way of you doing anything constructive.

In and of themselves, they're just feelings. There's no moral or ethical aspect to them, any more than there is to hunger pangs or an itch. You don't need to feel guilty based on feelings alone, and you have no right to self righteousness based on feelings alone.

Your feelings don't help or hurt anyone; your words and actions do.

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To be fair, who isn’t obsessed with it

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Paracelsus links magic (which he writes in the feminine form, Magica) with the Magus (masculine form, meaning sorcerer). To decipher his tale of magic, then, Weavers will begin by unsnarling it. The feminine form for magic suggests that this is an instrument of the male sorcerer (Magus). This is particularly perverse, since he knew very well, from his countless conversations with healers, that most of the sorcerers/healers were women. That is, they were Witches. Bearing this distortion in mind, it is possible to dis-close some insights in his theory.

Paracelsus observed that what the saint is in the "Realm of God," the "Magus" [read: Witch] is in the "Realm of Nature," for the saint works through God, the "Magus" through Nature. Deciphered, the essential point here is the distinction between the Witches and the christian "saints." The Witch exercises Active Potency in the Realm of Nature. Her Powers are natural.

One quality of this Active Potency is conveyed by Paracelsus when he explains that the "Magus" brings celestial forces to earth. Gyn/Ecologically speaking, this means that insofar as we are Witches, women are in harmony with the rhythms of the universe.

-Mary Daly, Pure Lust

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The woman's rights leaders who had put away their cause for the duration of the Civil War believed that, when peace came, a grateful country would reward them, spurred on by the Republican party. They were still so inexperienced in politics that they failed to estimate the extent and complexity of the forces arrayed against them. While they were used to the lamentations of conservatives who foresaw the downfall of home, church, and state if women should get the vote, they were totally unprepared for the opposition of the Republican politicians. The latter had their eyes fixed on a windfall of 2,000,000 potential male Negro voters in the South, which they had no intention of jeopardizing by stirring up an unnecessary tempest over woman suffrage. Nor did the women reckon on desertion of their cause by the abolitionists; long their staunch allies, but now convinced that this was "the Negro's hour" and that nothing must be allowed to interfere with it.

The first inkling of what was in store came in the wording of a proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution, which was introduced into Congress in the early summer of 1866. The difficulty lay in the second section, which was designed to insure the new freedmen the vote and other rights:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors of President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial Officers of a State or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion or any other crime, the basis of proportion therein shall be reduced, in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Women with the acumen of Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, and Mrs. Stone were naturally appalled at the appearance, for the first time, of the word "male" in the Constitution. Its three-fold use in the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, always in connection with the term "citizen," raised the issue of whether women were actually citizens of the United States.

Previously the question of whether or not they might vote had been regarded as a state matter, along with their property rights, marriage and divorce status, and legal position. In the early years after the American Revolution, the right of women to vote had been specifically denied only with the adoption of state constitutions limiting the franchise to white male voters in certain property categories (previous to such action in New Jersey, women had actually voted in some parts of the state). The franchise had been gradually broadened state by state to include, first, white males over the age of twenty-one, then (in the North and West) all males. Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment would require another constitutional amendment to give women the vote in federal elections. An appalling vista of herculean labor opened up before the women leaders; Mrs. Stanton was of the opinion that woman suffrage would be set back a full century if the proposed amendment were adopted. (She was not far wrong; it took sixty years, instead of a hundred.)

Her indignation and that of Miss Anthony knew no bounds. The latter made the pledge that "I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman." Mrs. Stanton made derogatory references to "Sambo," and the enfranchisement of "Africans, Chinese, and all the ignorant foreigners the moment they touch our shores." She warned that the Republicans' advocacy of manhood suffrage "creates an antagonism between black men and all women that will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the southern states."

-Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States

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[Note: This is an excerpt of a speech Atkinson gave in 1971 at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. It was a highly charged scene and one woman slapped or attempted to slap Atkinson during the speech.]

I, Ti-Grace Atkinson, in the name of all women, most especially the deceased victims of the accused, charge the Catholic Church, its government, and all its subsidiaries and members such as Catholic University with murder in the first degree, premeditated and willful.

In the name of all women, I charge the Catholic Church with conspiracy to corrupt the democratic process, by blackmailing the major parties and their candidates, against the interests of women.

In the name of all women, I charge the Catholic Church with conspiracy to imprison and enslave the women of the world, through coercion into such institutions as marriage and the family.

In the name of all women, I charge the Catholic Church with forcing many of our class into prostitution, through the financial greed of the Church.

In the name of all women, I charge the Catholic Church with inciting rape against women, by its degrading and sadistic propaganda against women.

In the name of all women, I charge the Catholic Church with constituting, by its very existence, an obscenity on the face of the earth.

On the charge of murder. Guilty!

On the charge of political conspiracy. Guilty!

On the charge of enslavement. Guilty!

On the charge of prostitution. Guilty!

On the charge of incitement to rape. Guilty!

On the charge of constituting an obscenity. Guilty!

There is no "justice" for oppressed people. I came tonight, as a woman, symbolically for all women, to confront the Church in all its despicable hypocrisy, and to cry out in public so that all women might hear: "Motherfuckers! We have heard your answer to my appeal for reason at Notre Dame. And you are right. The struggle, between the liberation of women and the Catholic Church, is a struggle to the death! So be it."

-Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey

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I enjoyed Matrix by Lauren Groff. Historical fiction with virtually all female characters in a medieval abbey setting.

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Every christmas season christians sing about and erect images of the Magi, understood to be three wise men from the East who, according to the gospel of Matthew, paid homage to the infant Jesus. They are often popularly described as "kings." These three wise men are described as following their star to the crib of the newborn Jesus. Christian preachers have interpreted the story to signify the universality of the kingdom of Jesus. (There is often a token Black in popular depictions and crèches.) Indeed, this message seems to be conveyed in christian music and art depicting the wise men as kneeling before the baby Jesus and offering him gifts.*

Among the popular descriptions of the three "kings" are some depicting them as throwing down their crowns before the infant. Such embellishments reinforce the popular image of the renunciation of power by these wise and powerful rulers before the baby-god.

Nag-Gnostic star-gazers have reason to be fascinated by this story. One Nagging question that often re-occurs is "Why are there three?" Since we are by now familiar with innumerable myths of the Triple Goddess, many of which originated in the Middle East, the thought that in a religion of reversals the Triple Goddess would be presented disguised as three wise kings is indeed a Nagging thought. Also interesting is the fact that stars are closely associated with the Goddess. As Cooper points out:

Stars are attributes of all Queens of Heaven, who are often star-crowned. The star is pre-eminently the symbol of Ishtar, or Venus, as morning and evening star.

All of this suggests that if the subliminal message in the story is that the Goddess was brought to her knees before Jesus, the implications are indeed vast. If, symbolically speaking, Goddesses and no mere kings were throwing down their crowns, then star-crowns were thrown down, indicating a surrender of the whole cosmos. Even if the more conservative image of these dignitaries as merely kneeling and bowing their crowned heads is retained, the symbolism is essentially the same. Moreover, in traditional symbolism: "The radiate crown represents the energy and power contained in the head, which was regarded as the seat of the life-soul." The message of surrender of mind/spirit to the incarnate boygod is obvious. **

Gnawing through the surface level of the "three king" symbol to the subliminal suggestion of the Triple Goddess surrendering to patriarchal religion, Nags note that the story thus unraveled is indeed an eye-opener. That is, it is an epiphany, in the sense of "sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something . . . an intuitive grasp of reality through something usually simple and striking."

The spectacle of the patriarchal symbolic conquest of Female/ Elemental divinity is perceptible here, as in other patriarchal myth, and it is "simple and striking." Shrewd Shrews will be interested in finding further clues, however. These are to be found, of course, in words. As we have seen, the word Magi is derived from the Indo-European root magh-, meaning "to be able, to have power." Clearly, the empowering act for women will be to stop kneeling, collect our star-crowns and gold, and resume the Journey. This is, of course, a journey of star-lust.

* The story of the "three kings" so obviously belongs to the realm of popular legend that it has been something of an embarrassment to biblical scholars and theologians. The point is that it continues to function as an integral part of the imagery of the christmas story for hundreds of millions of people, and the symbol is embedded in the imaginations of believers (and nonbelievers).

** Perhaps the three royal visitors were hoping to have the last laugh. At any rate, the symbolic significance of their gifts would seem to suggest a rather morbid attitude toward a baby shower. Myrrh, for example, signifies suffering and sorrow. See J. C. Cooper, An illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), P. 110. Frankincense was used not only in worship but also for embalming and fumigation.

-Mary Daly, Pure Lust

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Contrary to the belief of many people, the current usage of Miss and Mrs is relatively recent, for until the beginning of the nineteenth century the title Miss was usually reserved for young females while Mrs designated mature women. Marital status played no role in the use of these terms. How and why this usage changed is a matter of some speculation,* but there is nothing speculative about the ends that it serves.

*Miller and Swift (1976) suggest that the use of Miss and Mrs to designate marital status was a response to some of the pressures created by the industrial revolution, which disrupted the familiar patterns of small communities in which relationships were readily known. There was no need for this usage prior to the industrial revolution for a woman's marital status was already known in the community in which she lived, but with the migration of population that occurred at the onset of the revolution and with women's entry into the workforce outside the home or local community,

a simple means of distinguishing married from unmarried women was needed [for men] and it served a double purpose: it supplied at least a modicum of information about women's sexual availability, and it applied not so subtle pressure toward marriage by lumping single women with the young and inexperienced. Attached to anyone over the age of eighteen, Miss came in time to suggest the unattractive or socially undesirable qualities associated with such labels as old maid and spinster or that dreadful word barren. So the needs of patriarchy were served when a woman's availability for her primary role as helper and sexual partner was made an integral part of her identity - in effect, a part of her name (p. 99).

-Dale Spender, Man Made Language

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Words such as biddy and tart have shifted dramatically in meaning since they were first used positively as terms of endearment. Tart meant a small pie or pastry and its first metaphorical application was as a term of affection and warmth. Not surprisingly in a society where women are evaluated as sexual objects, the meaning shifted to that of a young woman who was sexually desirable, and then - of course - to a woman of careless morals. Finally and currently it refers to women of the street. Whore once meant a lover of either sex (and was not negative) and slut and slattern referred to 'a person who is negligent of his appearance' (Schulz, 1975a:68-9). Harlot was 'a fellow of either sex' and in Middle English the reference was more frequently to males, and wench was also a child of either sex' (p. 70). Be they affectionate - or even neutral terms such as child — the crucial factor in determining whether they represent positive or negative values is sex.

The semantic rule which has been responsible for the manifestation of sexism in the language can be simply stated: there are two fundamental categories, male and minus male. To be linked with male is to be linked to a range of meanings which are positive and good: to be linked to minus male is to be linked to the absence of those qualities, that is, to be decidedly negative and usually sexually debased (for further discussion see chapter 5). The semantic structure of the English language reveals a great deal about what it means to be female in a patriarchal order (note that female is not even an autonomous category but a derivation of the male: it is minus male) because by definition males are assigned the positive attributes.

Unless irony or insult is intended it is usually a violation of the semantic rule to refer to males with terms that are marked for minus males. There is a jarring of images if and when people make such a mistake. It is all right, for example, to call a mixed sex group 'guys' or 'men' but it is a mistake - and an insult - to refer to a group which contains even one male as 'gals' or 'women'. You 'may call a woman a bachelor without implying abuse', states Muriel Schulz, but do the opposite and 'call a man a spinster or an old maid' and you are violating the semantic rules - perhaps deliberately if you intend abuse - for you are saying that 'he is a prim, nervous person who frets over inconsequential details' (p. 65).

There are numerous examples of the way in which there is no loss of prestige when females are referred to in male terms but there is a loss of prestige when males are referred to in female terms. In a society where male primacy must be carefully cultivated, semantics makes a substantial and significant contribution in structuring this supremacy.

The semantic derogation of women fulfils a dual function: it helps to construct female inferiority and it also helps to confirm it. The process is not a simple, linear one, but a more complex, interactive and dialectical one. In a society where women are devalued the words which refer to them - not surprisingly - assume negative connotations. But because the options for defining women are confined to negative terms, because their meanings are primarily those of minus male, women continue to be devalued. By such an interrelated process is the subordination of women in part created and sustained. It is a semantic contradiction to formulate representations of women's autonomy or strength and so it remains unencoded and women are deprived of the opportunity to formulate positive representations of themselves.

It is unlikely that women were instrumental in achieving this end.

-Dale Spender, Man Made Language

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therapists and psychiatrists still take advantage of women and girls. they've successfully convinced all of you that you have bpd, you're depressed and anxious, you need to be medicated. none of them will tell you that you're having a normal reaction to your environment, the men you deal with, politics, your terrible work schedule, your annoying ass family, etc. you are not mentally ill, you're stressed and hopeless after seeing how men and boys treat us, you're overworked and underpaid, you're taught to take care of everyone but yourself, you barely sleep and try to make up for it by consuming too much caffeine, your diet is mostly plastic, you can't afford basic living necessities. you're not crazy, everything just keeps getting worse

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As we have seen, African attitudes toward sexuality and gender varied in precolonial culture and were greatly affected by the dictates of the colonial period. So where does this information take us today? How do we achieve balance, understanding, and mutually respectful behavior?

I'd like to make a few offerings here: If you are the parents of a child who sees himself or herself as transgendered, please do not subject your child to any form of torture. The church tortures trans children by labeling them as demons who are condemned to live in hell. This is soul-wounding and incompatible with our original attitudes toward sexual diversity. Be aware that laws, such as the "bathroom bill" are being passed that will make it even easier to expose our children to pedophiles. The pressures of institutionalized racism, economic exploitation, and escalating police violence against black people greatly limits your ability to protect your children. And please do not hand your children over to the medical establishment with its history of experimenting on black bodies since the first ships landed on our shores.

The African indigenous response is the healthiest. Allow that child to be androgynous until age sixteen or older, observe their body and spirit, and provide some guidelines for behavior that maintains their place within the family. Be careful and compassionate, because there is a high percentage of self-harming among these youths. Also be patient because transgender identity (an estimated .2% to 3% of the population) does not continue to adulthood in the majority of cases.

Whatever you do, do not cast them into the street where they will be consumed by hyenas in the sex trade. Be brave and give yourselves the liberty to discuss this matter fully and honestly. This includes examining the hormones (such as Atrazine and Finasteride) in your food, and the medications you have been given for depression (especially during pregnancy). Diligently examine with a critical eye all the reports regarding tests, studies, and experiments. Ask who conducted them? Who were the test subjects? Where were they conducted? And most importantly, who invests and stand to gain financially from these activities?

It has been claimed that hormones in the womb matter more than rearing when determining sexual orientation. This tips the scale in the nature versus nurture debate. If transgenderism is truly "biologically based," then you do have a right to ask, "whose side of the family is it on?" just as you would any other biological trait. Further, it would be helpful to talk with trans adults who may be able to provide you with information and insights from their own experience.

For the transgendered adult: Chose your personal pronoun and remember that whichever one you choose, you'll be a BLACK one. So live your best life. Distinguish yourself from the trans-aggressives whose behavior will alienate you from your family and allies. If you are someone who feels they must have surgery, keep your eyes on the medical profession, and remember the Tuskegee Experiment.

-Luisah Teish, "Patriarchy in Drag: Sexual Imperialism in Africa, and Delusional Revisionism in the African-American Community" in Female Erasure

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The relationship between sex and semantics is not occasional; it is not confined to such blatant examples as that of spinster and bachelor but is all-pervasive, extending to all words that are marked female. To illustrate this point, Schulz takes the case of man and woman and says that no insult is implied if you refer to a female as an old man: it is inaccurate but the assumption is that there has been a mistake in identity. This is not the case if you call a male an old woman; it is also inaccurate but the assumption is that you intend insult. Woman does not share equal status with man (linguistically or otherwise) because, in accordance with the semantic rule, woman has become pejorated while man has remained pure and untainted, protected by its semantic association with the male.

Schulz makes use of many comparable terms to illustrate the working of this semantic rule. She investigates the use of titles and shows that while male titles have retained their original positive meanings, female titles have frequently undergone a dramatic 'downhill slide', ending more often than not with sexually debased meanings. It is by this process that more positive words are created for males.

Although Lord still preserves its initial meaning, Lady has undergone a process of 'democratic levelling' and is no longer reserved for women of high rank. (Robin Lakoff (1975) makes a case for lady having become a term of insult but her argument appears to be relevant only for American usage.) Baronet also functions in its original sense whereas its equivalent, Dame, has come to be used derogatively (again, particularly in American usage). There has been some pejoration of governor - in cockney usage for example - but it still serves in its original meaning whereas governess has come to be used almost exclusively in the context of young children and not in the context that Queen Elizabeth I used it to denote her own power and sovereignty.

Little stigma seems to have become attached to courtier, while it is almost surprising to find that courtesan was once an equivalent term, so extensive are the sexual connotations it has acquired. Sir is still used as a title - and as a form of respect - and, unlike Madam, does not refer to someone who keeps a brothel. Master, too, has lost little of its force whereas Mistress has acquired almost exclusively sexual connotations and is no longer associated with the person who accepted responsibility and exercised control over the varied and essential tasks of a household. In drawing attention to the loss of parity between these terms, Robin Lakoff (1975) has pointed out that there is considerable discrepancy in meaning between an old master and an old mistress.

With these titles it can be argued that such terms did not have parity to begin with partly because females have always been inferior to males and therefore few insights can be gained from the documentation of contemporary asymmetry. Because of the historical subordination of women and the social (patriarchal) practice of inheriting through the male line, it was the Lord who inherited the title and who took his Lady. But leaving aside these considerations (and their ramifications for female family names), there are still instances - past and present - where it was the female who was the 'genuine' title-holder (usually in the absence of a male heir) and who conferred her status on her spouse. Elizabeth II is no less a 'genuine' monarch than her father, but whereas King retains its positive meanings, Queen has also developed debased sexual connotations.

-Dale Spender, Man Made Language

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Opportunities for women to teach advanced students while carrying on research themselves were largely limited, then as now, to women's and coeducational institutions. Having won the battle, albeit with difficulty, to go to college, they still encountered the same old obstacles to more advanced training. When M. Carey Thomas went abroad in 1879 to work for and win her doctorate in Germany, her mother wrote to her that family friends never mentioned her name, as she was felt to be a disgrace to her kin. The entire community considered plans for research and teaching as tantamount to relinquishing any hope of, or interest in, marriage; nor was there much possibility of advancing to the higher academic posts or being taken seriously as scholars and investigators.

-Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States

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Even in their relatively primitive state a hundred years ago, the professions required of a woman wishing to enter one of them that she be creative in more than the biological sense with capacities greater than those involved in "attending to the mechanism of a pudding," as Mrs. Murray put it. The idea that women might possess creative intellectual powers was an explosive one, and accounted for the reaction described by Jane Swisshelm with her usual verve:

It is well known that thousands, nay, millions of women in this country are condemned to the most menial drudgery, such as men would scorn to engage in, and that for one fourth the wages; that thousands of them toil at avocations which public opinion pretends to assign to men. They plough, harrow, reap, dig, make hay, rake, bind grain, thrash, chop wood, milk, churn, do anything that is hard work, physical labor, and who says anything against it? But let one presume to use her mental powers—let her aspire to turn editor, public speaker, doctor, lawyer—take up any profession or avocation which is deemed honorable and requires talent, and O! bring cologne, get a cambric kerchief and feather fan, unloose his corsets and take off his cravat! What a fainting fit Mr. Propriety has taken! Just to think that "one of the deah creatures"—the heavenly angels, should forsake the sphere woman's sphere to mix with the wicked strife of this wicked world!

-Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States

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The slave society was shattered by the war itself, the Emancipation Proclamation and the succeeding constitutional amendments. It took infinitely longer for the image of the "southern lady" to dissolve and for male attitudes toward women to change correspondingly. At a time when social and economic dislocations were shaking large numbers of white women from any illusory or nostalgic dependence on past circumstances, and they were beginning to turn their minds to jobs, education, even the vote, it seemed as if many southern men were trying to cling to the past through an image of "white womanhood" which had never really corresponded to reality, and was now increasingly at variance with it.

But if the southern white woman faced the future hobbled by her own past and the intransigency of male prejudices, the lot of the black woman was infinitely more difficult. The Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution had ended slavery; families could no longer be broken up by the slave traders. But how the newly freed slaves were to exist, become educated, make a living, and exercise the ordinary rights of an American citizen, what kind of freedom was to be the lot of the black American—these questions were left unanswered; few individuals even admitted their existence, much less addressed themselves to their solution. Meanwhile—black children were born, families had to be fed, homes provided. The mother of a family as well as its father were left facing an economic vacuum which suddenly came into existence when "Master" no longer had to feed his slaves and "Missus" look after their welfare. Once again, the black woman faced problems which set her apart from even the poorest white woman, South or North. Yet her chronicle remains part of the struggle for equal rights and opportunities for American women, and must be recorded, though the task is made difficult by lack of records during some of the most crucial years.

-Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States