We Keep Saying Her Name: Breonna Taylor

It has been a year ago this week since the murder of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, KY. It has been a year since she was murdered in her house, after …

BLACK. WOMEN. MAKE. HISTORY.

Torches, this is part one of two. The other part (BLACK. MEN. MAKE. HISTORY.) in June. “Black women take care of Black women.”– Ashley Yates, writer In the land where …

Black History Needs Black Women. Protect Them. Protect Us.

When I was younger, my Mom always told me never go anywhere alone: there’s strength in numbers. I knew better than to leave my drink alone at a party–years before …

When Black Girl Magic Gets Another Mascot: The Artistry Of Pat McGrath

I started wearing makeup at 15. When I started wearing makeup, there weren’t alot of makeup lines for Black women. The faithful few (worn by my mother) were Flori Roberts …

The Divine Feminine

“If the black woman wasn’t made, she would have to be invented.”

-Nikki Giovanni

Black women are saged. There is no way around that or to explain it. There is an air to us that is no short than mystic, mythic and amazing. What we do, how we move, how we can be everything all at once keeps us formidable and the phenomenal women which Maya Angelou told us we were.

In this move towards the celebrating of women, especially during Women’s History Month, there can be no celebration of all women until all women are seen. Especially women of color! For the better part of the history of this nation, there have been women of color in the background, in the forefront, and on the sidelines of every major movement which has defined this nation. From Deborah Simpson in the Revolutionary War, to Harriet Tubman  whom was a Union army spy and nurse (when she wasn’t being a superhero!), to Mary Cady Shadd whom helped Susan B. Anthony argue the cause for women’s sufferage, to Mary McCleod-Bethune whom founded what is now known as Bethune-Cookman College in Florida.

Black women, women of color, are no stranger to adversity and making a way out of it. We does these things, ma’am and sir. We are experts in making out of whole cloth, and making the cloth when none is available.

I honor the black women in life, sung and unsung. I honor the women in my life and line that loved, lived and imparted to the next woman whom would be a grandmother to my grandmother whose shoulders I stand. I honor them. I remember them. I write for them, and the ones to come behind me.

I am a black woman, beautiful and unapologetic. I am here to take over.