Speaker praises strength of black women

By JOHN R. CRANE
Danville Register & Bee
Published: March 17, 2008

Frankie Bailey’s speech at Mill Creek Baptist Church was a coming home of sorts.

For the Danville native and African-American writer and professor, the description is apt. Her presentation before the church’s small gathering Sunday focused on how blacks - especially African-American women - have carried great burdens and drew from their cultural roots for strength.

“This is how we get by and how we’ll continue to get by,” said Bailey, a mystery/crime writer and associate professor at the University at Albany’s School of Criminal Justice in Albany, N.Y. She is the author of several crime books, including “Out of the Woodpile: Black Characters in Crime and Detective Fiction,” and several other works, including a mystery series.

Black women have been called many names throughout U.S. history, but no one has denied them their strength, Bailey said.

Bailey gave a crash course in African-American feminist history and cited numerous examples of black culture that have helped to relieve black women’s daily challenges - church, emphasis on family and community, gathering and talking at beauty salons and at the dinner table. Soul food, including sweet-potato pie, collard greens, chitterlings and okra, is especially symbolic of that culture, she said.

Bailey said she has researched hundreds of books by black writers as part of research for an upcoming project. A prominent running theme is food, as well as other aspects of black culture including jazz and the blues, she said.

Throughout history, before the Black Power movement of the 1960s, life was especially tough for African-American women, she said.

“Black women were doubly marginal - they were black and they were women,” Bailey said.

During slavery, blacks could not celebrate or draw from their culture. They were too busy working for others, surviving cruelty while forced to make sure whites were taken care of. Blacks, especially women, had to steal food to avoid starving, Bailey said.

“They have this tradition of survival,” she said.

Black women suffered rape, sexual abuse and their families uprooted by abandonment when members were sold into slavery, she said.

However, after the Civil War and the ending of slavery, blacks began trying to lift their status in society through seeking jobs. But for African-American women, there was the added burden of lifting up their communities, Bailey said. Pre-Civil War examples were Harriet Tubman and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. Later icons include Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a journalist who exposed widespread lynching, and Mary Church Terrell, both of whom would become founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Terrell participated in a march against segregation in 1953, when she was 90, Bailey said. Bailey also cited Rosa Parks, and 1960s’ Black Power activists Angela Davis and Elaine Brown as other examples of strong black women.

In the 1960s, many blacks moved north and they took their Southern food recipes with them, adding their own touch to make soul food, she said. The phrase originated from the north, she said.

“Soul food represented something that came from the heart,” Bailey said.

Though affirmative-action laws have helped African-American women, the percentage of them in high-ranking corporate positions is low, she said. In addition, the ones in those positions are not fully assimilated in those workplaces, and are called “affirmative-action babies,” Bailey said.

“They have to be better than everyone else to prove they’re good enough,” Bailey said.

For more information on Bailey, got to http://www.frankieybailey.com

Contact John R. Crane at or 434-791-7987