QUOTATION:

It is not the intelligent woman v. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman v. the black, the brown, and the red, it is not even the cause of woman v. man. Nay, tis womans' strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.


-Anna Julia Cooper (1859-1964), African American educator and feminist. A Voice from the South, part 1 (1892)


GOD AND THE RACE

..both in Church and in State,--and with sincere esteem for his unselfish espousal of the cause of the Black Woman and of every human interest that lacks a Voice and needs a Defender, this, the primary utterance of my heart and pen...

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.


PART FIRST
SOPRANO OBLIGATO

OUR RAISON D'ÊTRE.

IN the clash and clatter of our American Conflict, it has been said that the South remains Silent. Like the Sphinx she inspires vociferous disputation, but herself takes little part in the noisy controversy. One muffled strain in the Silent South, a jarring chord and a vague and uncomprehended cadenza has been and still is the Negro. And of that muffled chord, the one mute and voiceless note has been the sadly expectant Black Woman,....


An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light;
And with no language--but a cry.


The colored man's inheritance and apportionment is still the sombre crux, the perplexing cul de sac of the nation,--the dumb skeleton in the closet provoking ceaseless harangues, indeed, but little understood and seldom consulted. Attorneys for the plaintiff and attorneys