(WOMEN'S HISTORY.) A Call to Negro Women. 4 pages, 8½ x 5½ inches, on one folding sheet; uneven toning, moderate dampstaining. New York and [San Francisco]: Sojourn for Truth and Justice, 29 September 1951
This leaflet was addressed to "Dear Negro sisters everywhere in the United States," asking women to join a three-day Sojourn for Truth and Justice in Washington, with plans to "visit the President, the State and Justice Departments, the Senators and Congressman, to demand action NOW on our grievances." The 14-member Initiating Committee, from across the nation, included Eslanda Robeson, newspaper publisher and Progressive Party leader Charlotta Bass, playwright Alice Childress, Communist leader Shirley Graham (wife of W.E.B. Du Bois), labor leader Louise Patterson, and actresses Beulah Richardson and Frances Williams.
At the center is a two-page manifesto: "We die of poverty, loneliness, drudgery, and disease. We have watched our husbands and fathers burned, quartered, hanged and electrocuted by hooded and unhooded mobs. We have seen our brothers beaten, shot and stamped to death by police. . . . We have seen our daughters raped and degraded, and when one dares rise in defense of her honor she is jailed for life. . . . Dry your tears, and in the spirit of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, Arise." This has been widely anthologized over the past fifteen years, and hailed as "a (little-known) Black feminist manifesto." One copy traced in OCLC.
