Hood Today

As a part of Hood's commitment to celebrating diversity, Dr. Sharon Harley, a renowned African-American Studies historian, gave a lecture on January 28 entitled "Race Women, Race Man: Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Gloria Richardson, and Martin Luther King, Jr." The event included the lecture and a dinner beforehand which was attended by a variety of student leaders from the Hood community.

Meeting Dr. Harley at the dinner was an interesting experience. She is an amazingly intelligent woman, who seems to know about every facet of the field she studies. She writes books and gives lectures on black women's labor history and radical black women's politics. Her newest book is about gender roles in the African American community. She says, "It focuses on the dignity of labor and the damnation of women."

Dr. Harley introduced herself, telling the students about how her life led to becoming a historian and professor. She attended a Catholic high school, where she was one of only thirteen African American students in the school - the only one in her graduating class. She was an exceptional student, and she became involved in radical politics at that age. When she graduated, she tells everyone, she wore a Black Panther button on her robe - much to the chagrin of her parents!

She continued her education at Howard College, a historically black school, where she went to obtain her Ph.D. During her time there, Dr. Harley attended many women's history conferences and quickly realized that African American women's experiences were absent from the field's literature. However, Dr. Harley is the kind of person who strives to fill those gaps in history. After seeing the need, Dr. Harley published the first collection of essays on black women's history in America.

This innovative spirit stretches to all parts of Dr. Harley's career. She is the chair of the African American studies department at the University of Maryland College Park. When she came to the school, the department was barely started; now, it is a well-established institution, largely thanks to her work. Dr. Harley says of her profession, "I love teaching, especially a large lecture course. I love the discussion." She says she tells her students that she expects them all to go on to obtain Ph.D's, because she believes every one of them is capable of doing so. She also mentions an experience she had during her own undergraduate years, when a professor asked her "What do Negroes think?" about a topic. She cheekily replied, "I don't know any Negroes, I only know black people. And I didn't poll them all, so I don't know."

One activity that Dr. Harley seems very proud of is the Saturday Freedom School that she and her colleagues have implemented at the College Park campus. Every spring, the school operates for 6-8 weeks, bringing in underprivileged youth for tutoring and support. "Being an academic goes beyond the intellectual exchange," says Dr. Harley. "Academia is such a privileged life; we should share whatever we have." The students in the Society of African American Studies (which Dr. Harley founded) run the Saturday Freedom School. The idea for the school came from a similar institution run by Dr. King during the civil rights movement.

The lecture followed the dinner, continuing the discourse on civil rights and women's history in greater detail. Dr. Harley began by explaining the meaning of the term "race women." A race woman or man is someone who has racial pride and engages in racial uplift, to help and promote the racial community. Dr. Harley emphasizes that race women and men do not have to have a certain phenotype. She gives examples of race men and women who have very different skin tones, but all worked equally hard to promote racial equality, such as Walter White and Mary Church Terrell.

Mary Church Terrell was a very wealthy woman whose father was one of the first black millionaires. Her mother was a white woman, and her grandparents were slaves. She experienced discrimination throughout her life; although she could pass for white, she chose not to. She is most known for speaking out against Booker T. Washington. Dr. Harley says of Terrell, "She was very genteel, but I had to make her militant." Dr. Harley herself personifies this description; she is very soft-spoken, so her radical leanings come as a pleasant surprise.

Dr. Harley also discusses other well-known race women and men such as Shirley Graham DuBois, W.E.B. DuBois, and Billie Holliday. Billie Holliday became a race woman after experiencing discrimination while traveling in the segregated South. She performed a song, "Strange Fruit," about lynching, to speak out about the injustice against her race. Shirley Graham DuBois, who was very radical and militant, was a member of the Socialist party and was often blamed for her husband's radical leanings.

The main focus of Dr. Harley's lecture was two race women from the Maryland area, Juanita Mitchell and Gloria Richardson. Juanita Mitchell moved to Baltimore from the South to escape discrimination, but found that she could not avoid it. Gloria Richardson was the president of the Cambridge Non-Violent Action Committee, although she did not strictly believe in non-violence. She supported blacks' right to retaliate when attacked by whites. She worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was one of the first people in the civil rights movement to bring to light issues of economic injustice against blacks and poor whites. She also believed the movement needed to be an interracial one to really achieve their goals of equality, and that it needed to involve all classes of people (not just the middle class.)

Dr. Harley uses many visual aids throughout the lecture, including photographs of all of the men and women she describes. She shows the most iconic photo of Gloria Richardson from the civil rights movement, a photo of her facing off with the National Guard during a protest. Gloria Richardson was on the front pages of newspapers worldwide for months during her most active years; she was even featured in Ebony magazine, which gave her the sexist nickname "The Lady General of the Civil Rights Movement."

Toward the end of the lecture, Dr. Harley talks about Dr. King. She focuses on his later years, when he became more radical. He became affiliated with Malcolm X, who held more radical views than those usually associated with Dr. King. Dr. Harley explains that King was deeply troubled by extreme poverty and the Vietnam War, and said he 'respected Malcolm X but disagreed with some of his ideas.' Gloria Richardson's views were more closely aligned with those of Malcolm X than were King's. However, by the time King an Malcolm X died, their views had converged so that they were hardly very different. King was very critical of the U.S. government in his later years, especially on the topic of social and economic decline in urban areas.

Dr. Harley shows deep respect for the people and the organizations she discusses, such as the NAACP. The NAACP, she says, has remained a very progressive organization throughout the years - people were even fired for their involvement in it, during the height of the movement. She also exhibits a passionate interest in what many consider the minutae of history, such as the fascinating letters sent by these heroes. She is most fervent when discussing the politics of erasure, saying, "How is it possible for women to have been political activists and there's nothing written about them?" Gloria Richardson was one of the most famous faces of the movement when it was happening, and yet there is hardly any literature written about her. There is a gap in literature where working class, poor, black women should be - and Dr. Harley's mission is to correct those years of overlooking so many people.

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