addresses issues of law and justice nationally and internationally. she's been to god and rwanda and and england and wales and canada and south africa and before the united nations in geneva. she has addressed issues of law and justice. all of that gives her the credibility to write the books that she writes and speak on the topics that she speaks on. so, thank you. thank you, gloria. as an attorney as a professor as a playwright as an author. for being here thank you. and that long introduction makes me feel tired, but i want to make you feel tag as you did all that but i but it's to god be the glory and i i disappreciate the opportunity to use the skills as we've done throughout all of our legacy and history the user skills. we have to to take our community forward. so i want to know what is it like being you? you know surrounded by the incidents of race and law and justice. i mean, what does that feel like on a regular basis? um, i'm just a normal person who early on decided through my own experiences. i was bust across town. and i was busted when at the end of of mandatory segregation when it was ending in people were still being bust in but having lawsuits forcing it to happen. so brown versus board of education was 1954, but bussing really to certain places like my hometown didn't happen until the 70s and 80s. and so yes, so that that was the problem in a way my parents were like, oh we want a better education. we're gonna send you across town and they don't know they made me into an activist by sending me across town. that's i think that had a lot to do with it when i saw the disparities and treatment when i you know, it wasn't so much i suffered physical abuse. it was just the emotional, you know sense of place and so it gave me more of a purpose. i won't say that instantly. i know i was a civil rights attorney because i always wanted to be a writer. and so i was right plays and write stories even as a child and one of those big old fashioned heavy typewriters they had back then. yeah, i love it or whatever was going. so so i wanted to do all these things, but i didn't know i you know that the world allowed you to do more than one thing. and so when i found out i could do more than one thing at the same time then it's like that's great now because let me get started. i really want to dig into this book. because it's really important. i just don't think we get the depth of or understand really what women have done. in this society, it's really hard to read the book and not be moved by the stories of these amazing these extraordinary these black women who fought against prejudice fought against racial oppression, you know fought against racial laws and racist laws. i mean it it does give you pause to think that they lived through it not all of them did but you know lived lived a life that that gave us what we have now, and i know we still struggling we are we still trying to figure it out a month goodness the contributions that they made and are making you know is is worth telling the story for sure. tell me why this book needed to be. with well back when i was a civil rights attorney, and i was in these little towns in alabama and georgia that you know, basically there was nothing to do after i finished working on my case and meeting with the parents and i would be in these motels not hotel motels and as i'm sitting in these motels and there's nothing else to do except watch television. i would ask myself. how long have we been doing this? how long have activists been coming together trying to fight for our rights using law and so i decided since there's nothing else for me to do except work on my case and write and i always wanted to be a writer i said, i'm gonna write a book about this. so i started writing race law on american society and as i wrote and researched that book i saw these women. and so once i finish my race law on american society book 1607 to present i went back and said i'm going to go back and i'm gonna focus just on these women because it's like why haven't i heard of this even sojourner truth? i've heard us adjourner truth, but i didn't know she brought four lawsuits. right. nobody knows that until we read we don't know that in the 1800s and one every one of them. so it just every time i go back another century to the 1700s then i found myself in a 1600s and one thing i didn't want to do. i did not want to start in slavery. so i said we're gonna start in africa and that's what i began the book with queen and zynga, you know, so that people would know that these skills we have today. we've always had these skills. they didn't, you know become part of who we are over the because of the civil rights movement or because of integrated education. we always have this in our dna yeah, and i'm with you i'm with you. absolutely i i'm glad that you didn't start so much it took us so long to start with slavery. so now we do talk about slavery, but they're so little about the queens that were brought here, you know, the queens that were sacrificed to be enslaved here. so i'm glad you started there. tell me. some of the stories i mean we how you started. but tell me some of the other women's stories that we we should be aware of some of them. we know their names, but it's amazing how history gets written. sometimes that it it overlooks. sometimes some of the most important parts of the lives that we should know. so, what was your favorite? hmm i kind of go back to i like starting with mary and anthony johnson in the 1600s because here we have this black woman. who is the only woman on this farm and so she has a pick of all the men and she's african has come over in the middle passage. so she survived being stolen kidnapped forced on a slave ship here. she is working in virginia. she learns a language. she learns the culture everything gets her husband and she and her husband work together. so i like that story of family that even despite all of these things. we still created family and that she and her husband had european and african servants of their own. they had land of their own so she was like the very beginning you start to start thinking of it of that middle upper class black that we have today. they can find trace their roots all the way back to marion anthony johnson and mary johnson. i i like elizabeth mom bet. you know here we have mum bet who brings a lawsuit her evil mistress tries to attack her little sister. mom beck puts out her arm and this hot iron strikes down as they say to the white meat and so here mom bet then the second was infection and she starts getting better. her arm is god. does this huge ugly scar on it, but she's still talking about serving food like mistress like serve the food at the table. so here she's serving the food. she takes off the bandage. so everybody at the table can see this gash in her arm and her mistress is like no cover that up. nobody wants to see that she says or mistress. no, they're all gonna see what you did. this is the same woman mum beck this enslaved woman. who's here's them talking about the massachusetts constitution at 1781 walks into a lawyer's office and hires a lawyer to bring a lawsuit in 1781. so here we have her bring this lawsuit and wins and she changes her name after she wins to elizabeth freeman and says if there's only one minute she could spend as a free person and she would die. she would have taken that one minute. so these are the types of women are celia who killed her master in 1850s beat them to death with a log cut up his dead body and burned it and hid it in the back, you know buried it in a hole and they caught her later because the guy she was interested in on the plantation sold her out. and she was heartbroken and confessed with the crimes. they didn't have a body confess to the crime. so they they now i'm arrest her for murder. hmm. he had been so this slave master this 70 something year old man, and she was like 16. you know had been assaulting her she had given birth to his children and he had come to her cabin one time too many and she told him no and beat him with that log. she tried to tell her story in court. no person of color could testify in any case against the white person? no, asian, no black person. no latino the native american no one so they were the only ones who could tell their side of the story and ended up of course convicting her of murder and hanging her. when i think about the fact we her last words were i didn't want to kill him. i just wanted it to stop. so when you start thinking about what these women did and the reason why these stories are true, and we know about them. it's because they write law down. and because they write it down i'm able to go to these archives and these libraries and a lot of things are digitized now and gain these stories and there are there are thousands more. so i was picking and choosing and trying to let people see you know, what we've been through and how we've fought back when the odds were against us. you know, i think what resonates so much with with getting so deep in into your book. is the truth telling you know, we at the national civil rights museum say if you don't want a truth don't hang with us if you don't want to be surrounded by it and understand and and get some some truth be told don't hang with us because we really do want to know and share the truth. and i i think that's what what this book does bring us a little closer to we we've gone through. you know, what anybody a little close. let's get to the 1700s and the 1800s what anybody in there that we need to know something about i mean, i think it would be very interesting when we look at ida b wells barnett, of course, you know when you think about ida b wells barnett and and memphis and and what she did as far as starting off as a school teacher and getting on a first class train seat and buying a first class ticket, but being treated like a third class citizen dragged off the train, it just goes to the tensions between white women and black women that exists today those tensions began in the 1800s, you know as we probably before that because of slavery, but also in 1800s when we had black free women like sojourner truth like ida b wells barnett fighting for the right to vote that was gained in 1920. here's the problem. the white women did not want to fight alongside of the black women and as a matter of fact when ida b wells barnett and her had three of her friends male friends lynched because they owned a store that was competing with the white store. and so now she had to be well, types this report that most of these lynchings are of black women and children and men that have nothing to do with a white woman. and so this whole point of the tensions we have today between white women and black women. even the white feminists in the black feminists and it's based in the fact that you know, we act black women actually are the the realization of equality. we are iconic figures whose carved out our own place in the world not based on what our men do and this is what white women claim they want that's what they claim. they wanted in the 1800s 1900s and 21st century and we are that we're the living embodiment of that and yet just like in 1800s they want to deny our power and make us want to or have to bend to their will and so the the issues that make us clash today when you think about 56% of white female voters voted for donald trump. and you know in the 98% of black female voters voted for joe biden you can see the ongoing political tensions that started off in the 1800s during the suffragists movement and are still alive today. interesting now, you know my my favorite and i and all these stories. but i wouldn't looking for a fannie lou hammond. i i went looking for her in here. and here she is. and i think you know, we we know so much about fanny lou and how she fought to vote and how she lost everything to vote. but i don't think many people really understand how she was impacted as a woman, you know, and being with four sterilization. i don't think a lot of people have any idea of just how much this woman went through, you know, yes the political side aside, you know the political side aside. and and she was she was a warrior there. um, but that that piece about the sterilization really does hit you in a different place. can you talk a little bit about then? i think the part that's so sad about the sterilization is she didn't know. right. he didn't she didn't know they used to um, you know, call it a mississippi appendectomy that you would go into the doctor's office. they would put you under and you didn't know the doctor these white doctors was giving black women sterilization or being sterilized and here's the part. that's just during the time period of enslavement. the black female body was used to produce the labor force. so they wanted black women to have babies and then slavery ends in 1865 and they're like, we don't want any more black people anymore to maintain a white nation. and so they started sterilizing black women's experimenting on black women's bodies. all of these things were going on, but they were going on with other women of color but primarily for us and so um, unfortunately to this day we're finding out there at four sterilizations going on right now. of women who are caught on the border, so that's how these things work together. you start to see history repeating itself. so fannie lou hamer is trying to have children. and she's thinking it's distress of the civil rights movement. she's thinking it's because she's not spending enough quality time with her husband all these things. it's not until later. she finds out she's been sterilized. and it in the devastation kind of just imagine the devastation of that that she never knew. she thought it was something wrong with her all this time and to find out that she was and he didn't stop serializing people in this country until the 1970s late 1970s. they were still doing it in north carolina. and so, you know it is is she's a when i choose these women i try to get people who are indicative of a particular era or an issue, but also they represent so many others. fine, we know about fenny lou hamer, but i want to see the other side like you said the woman side because it is she took justice the black woman lauren power and i use a black woman as a collective to show our journey and that's why capitalized the black woman to show us as a collective group in our journey. in 1964. what a fanny lewis say i am tired. i'm so sick and tired of being here. well, it's 2021. yeah, i am so it can tired of being sick and tired. and there's a lot to say breaks over here. there's a lot to to consider. with what black women have gone through in history it is it is american history though. i know it's absolutely african-american black history. it is absolutely that but you know the point of it is also that this is the history of this country. and to include that as a part of it and own it and claim it is is something that we we need to push push more and talk more about because it's i don't want it to be excluded as if it's something totally separate and didn't happen here. it happened. it's it happened here. and i think that's the the ish that they don't want their own relatives to be part of it when i see the lynchings and there have been in i named the women not all yeah number of women black women who were lynched in in my book and and i don't want people to think because it involves law that is hard to read. it's very accessible these stories that are being told and i try to tell the story in a storytelling fashion, but in between the stories, i put the names of the black women who were lynched that year. you know and you and you look at this and go well if this is all they say all about black man after a white woman then why are you here? lynching a black woman? you know, so i i think about going up until the 1960s i think about gloria richardson. she's one of my favorites now. she's in cambridge, maryland and she represents as so many of these women do history that they're foisted into your mind and your own black woman business. and then something comes up and pushes you into history and black women have had to say like everybody else. we just want to go home. we just want to work our jobs. we just want to have fun. we just want to be with our loved ones and history will stop at your doorstep and say no we choose you and black women have stood up. we've stepped up and we've made it happen. and gloria richardson was one of those people she got involved in history because the segregation and in maryland you think of maryland being segregated that way in 1960s and here she is that famous picture of her moving up a bayonet that's pointed with his giant, you know knife on it moving that away from her face as these national guardsmen are standing there looking like they're about to attack the black people who are protesting and then she becomes rising up as a black woman the leader of this group. and sitting down with bobby kennedy negotiating the peace treaty of cambridge. that's what it was called. so we're going all the way back from queen and zynga. here. we are again negotiating a peace treaty in the midst of our own country. a peace treaty and that's what it was what bobby kennedy at the table? so i had a chance and these are some of the beautiful moments to send her an inquiry. would you please you know, give me some information look over my chapter make sure it's accurate. she changed the spelling of one word. one word. that is you. can you imagine the joy i would have is the right. i was so nervous. she changed the spelling of one word and said everything else was fine and accurate and that is how it happened. so that's what i want people to get from this that these women the ones who are still alive. are human beings and that the next generation can do this work, too? and that their stories need to be told, you know, there's an awful lot of women in this book that nobody knows anything about an awful lot of them and awful lot of them. there were many of them that i learned about that feel that we need to highlight a whole lot more in some of the programming because we are, you know, always pushing out, you know significant stories, so that folks have a real understanding of what's going on. help us understand why we deal with what we're dealing with what they dealt with even before. we you know think that our lives are so tough right now and to see what through history, you know, these women have done to even get us to where we are now. surely chisholm so, you know i have before there was a you know, kamala harris. it was a shirley chisholm for sure. and was always interested in shirley chisholm story and how she pushed forward and you know how people treated and thought about her in the positions that she was was working toward and that's how she got to be the first congress because she got out there and she took that she took it didn't she you know, she showed that you don't have a whole lot more choice than to give me because i'm ready for this. um, what about showages? well, i'm going to tell a story that people know and people don't know. there you go. let's do one. yes one shirley chisholm the first black us representative if you think about brooklyn had the largest black population in the united states and no representation in congress because they would change the districts around so they would always end up a way in which they could dilute the black vote and so my mentor who's gone on now the story you don't know is her name was jocelyn clapton cooper and so the first case to redistrict brooklyn was cooper versus power and power was the name of the election official and so my mentor and her husband and a group of others sued the election officials in order to redistrict brooklyn and so that case power brooklyn of cooper versus power became the first case and then another case expanded beyond that and from that case rose shirley chisholm to become the first black. email us representative, but we also need to understand this about shirley chisholm. she began as a school teacher. and her people were originally from barbados. and so when people hear about a school teacher you could think about wow, you know school teachers used to be politicians. she was part of the first congressional black caucus. we think about congressional black hawkins, like is always been there. it wasn't the congressional experience we know about now grew out of this sense of the 1965 voting rights act that needed to happen. we think about aurelia browder and and people used to say a really browder always said we stand on your shoulders and she really browder who'd be passed on was nearly a hundred years old. if not older said get off my shoulders and get to work. and so when you think about these women who have done so much to make our foundation stronger, we have to realize that shirley chisholm couldn't have been surely chisholm. if there hadn't been other black women in politics rising up each one only getting so far because then shirley chisholm goes on to run for president the united states. yes. yes and unbought and unboxed. it's like those are the you know, think about a black woman saying they're unbought none bossed. i mean that is just something only we could really say and mean it and people know when we say it that we mean it so i i think that that was just a fantastic way of looking at it and so many of these women in these and have such they drove me crazy. i'm gonna say this one that yeah. yes. i'm gonna tell you because i wrote another book in a play in the time it took me to write this one. because every time i would put the book down and i would get frustrated because i would presented to publishers and i was told oh nobody to read about them. nobody nobody cares about that. i was told of this again and again and these and i would just get frustrated i go work on another project and these women would say you've got to pick this up. wait a minute. i mean, they would boss me around the characters and subjects in this book would come to my mind saying queen on zinga saying, excuse me, you know, it's like we finished this book, you know, so these women have even to this day very strong personalities so you can imagine how they were back then, you know, the stronger the personality but not only did we have to attack law because law has been a weapon of oppression more than it's ever been a tool of liberation. so when black women not only brought these lawsuits in the 1600s. oh i one other two quick stories one. we were in a salem witch trials. that's another thing people don't know that there were three black women in the salem witch trials to tuba candy black and mary in the way. they survived they five to salem witch trials when other black men and women are white men and women were being hanged as witches. they said oh you cannot allow a witch to live and so they would i have actual testimony trials transcript testimony from the hearing when they were questioned as witches. and they realize in order to live they had to admit they were witches. because if they were if they deny they were witches only a witch would deny. she's a witch. however if she claims she is a witch and then can be saved her christian. soul can be saved then she could live so these black women. how do we navigate to this day? we have to figure out what are we dealing with if they're killing white women who say they're not witches. and so they said they were that's how they lived. so there are so many ways in which a lot of these women did not live but so many others figured out how they could and then others like cilia sacrificed their lives and said, you know what? i know i'm gonna live i'm gonna die. i'm not probably not gonna live through this but i'm gonna say what i have to say and you have women who you know just said, they're gonna kill me. they're gonna kill me with dignity. i'm not gonna cry. i'm not gonna beg them from my life. i am just going to take the punishment. they're giving me knowing that they'll get there, you know come up with later on in another world, but you know so many these women sacrificed themselves and we have to realize that as well. yeah, and you know, i want everybody to know that they can get your book, you know on our website civil rights museum.org, you know, get the book so you can understand these stories that we're talking about civil rights museum dot or will also put it in the chat the link in the chat. so folks can go directly to our store. um, you know what i'd like to do is bring it even more forward, you know after, you know spending some time with the stories of these women and when i say spending time, it's hard to just do a quick read. although is an easy read. it's an easy like you didn't become a lawyer on us. you know, we we understood everything that you said didn't have to go get a glossary and i mean you told the stories in a way that were effective for any reader and i appreciate that because i love to read and i don't feel like dissecting all the time. i want to just get to the meet of the store and you did that throughout and telling the story of these women the most important part of it is that you gave us what was most important that we should know about each one of them. so what is it about of knowing about these women and they kind of own so much of different things that we've been exposed to. what is it that that we as as today's, you know, black women, you know, what it what do we need to do? and and should we be inspired? i mean we still just air ordinary women trying to do something. but what is it about what we read here that that should us so much. that these are ordinary women, too. yeah, present it with extraordinary circumstances. and either choosing to or being forced into taking a stand. my favorite is daisy bates. mmm. and here we have your daisy base little rock arkansas whose mother was killed fending off white rapists. and that's something we don't talk about because we didn't get this shade by accident. and for the longest time the failure of prosecutors to this day to prosecute it's been ongoing this country has a criminal justice system that was rooted in slavery and putting down native american uprisings knight riders bounty hunters that became our police department, but on the other side the prosecutor's office were the ones to prosecute people of color, especially african-american and not prosecute the whites who harmed us. that's what we still have today. so when you have black women being presented with what they know is a crooked criminal justice system. and to side they're going to decide to say i know that the the fates in the forces aren't with me. but god is and i am going to go do what i need to do and so you have daisy bates who help those children integrate central high school in little rock, arkansas. she was sued the case went up to the us supreme court and they wanted to have the list of all the names of people who belong to the naacp now, you know what they were going to do with those names that they got them right you hit squad and so, you know the fact that she refused to give those names. she ended up losing her business. they had they had a newspaper business. no one no white people would take any ads she ended up losing her business and almost lost her house. so when you think about harry and harriet more in florida? blown up in their own homes on christmas day you think about the activists who have sacrificed and i say they were just regular people and we're just regular people. what separates most people from those people in this book? courage hmm encourage is not something that have to buy or sell. courage is doing something you really don't want to do and you don't have to do it fearlessly. you can have fear and i'm sure they did too. you can be that harriet tubman just decide that it's worth it and use the courage that we all have innately inside of us and it's not courageous though. not the lack of fear. courage is having that fear and doing it anyway, and these are the women who had the fear that we have as regular people, but they decided to do it anyway to step forward anyway to take on the challenge even though they know that the issues that the law and society were against them, but that's how they became worthy and we're not trying to say that everybody has to be a warrior. i even say people can be weakened warriors. keep that day job. we need people with money keep that day job in those bills, but on the weekends use that skill gained by the what you do every day and use it on the weekend and that's what people in the civil rights movement did a lot of them were if they couldn't participate themselves and they wrote a check. you know, they help hand out flyers. they participate in any way they could and i think that's what these women are telling us. that there are things that we can do beyond what we're doing and we just have to decide to step out and do it. one of the things that we talk about a lot at the national civil rights museum, is that every exhibit that we have has a modern-day counterpart these issues that we talked about in the 50s and 60s, you know the historic civil rights movement. we're still dealing with so much of that in this book. do you see the what still going on now? that is talked about with the lives of the women in the book. oh, definitely. i mean you think about the fact that kamala harris is our black female vice president and that um when you think about the fact that it's not coincidence. she's a lawyer. it's not a coincidence. michelle. obama is a lawyer because once we begin to see that we could take this tool of oppression and make it a tool of liberation this tool called law because the law is what has been oppressing people. there are two ways. oppression works in america law and violence. and what we saw in on january 6th that lynch mob. those are the lynch mobs that used to come throughout the american history thousands of people going from one person in their house dragging them out and hurting them. that is today. we saw it right in front of our eyes. they had a gallows set up on capitol hill. the other is law. we have the power of law black women in my book. i talk about how black women had organizing skills back in the 1800s. so they took those organizing skills, and that's why black women are so organized politically today because we have been organizing since the 1800s when white women didn't let us into their groups. we started our own group. i'd be wells barnett started her own group. and so we took those organizing skills. what happened after women gain the right to vote 1920 a backlash against black women. so what we need to learn, is this the same way we had barack obama then we have donald trump. we need to understand we have kamala harris look for the backlash. we saw the black political power that took place that put joe biden in office. what are we seeing now the use of law to have voter suppression to fill all those holes that gave rise to that black political power. same thing happened in 1800s of black men men gained the right to vote black men did in 1870 they we had black us senators black us representatives. we had all the power by 1890. they had a literacy test grandfather clause and poll tax. so what we need to gain from history. we need to be prepared for the backlash the backlash of violence and the backlash of law. and so this is what this book tells you. if you follow it, you see two steps forward one step back. are we prepared for the backlash that these women are basically telling us that this is what's going to happen or we're going to sit back and react to it and go. oh my god, i can't believe this happened. so history has told us to gain plan. are we gonna step up with the courage to be a part of our protection and the solution so we can do more than these women did because they had far less. so we need to stop moaning and complaining and realize if these women could do what they did with far less than as a whole lot more we need to do. i need you to say something again that you said that this backlash the backlash. say it again. the backlash is coming each time. there's progress going forward. there's a backlash two steps forward and one step back and history has shown us this backlash is real when when you see african-american power as you saw in this put this election and the political power each time. you see that power look for the backlash. the the backlash of violence violence in law and law you see both of them. we see we've seen both of them this year. we're gonna see see it focus more on us. we saw the backlash of violence and law when president obama. rose to office the backlash of police attacks on black people and right now you're seeing long around us where the state houses conservatives are trying to pass these voter suppression laws. you're going to see the backlash in violence because we don't know what police officers to trust once again a police department that was created as slave catchers bounty hunters night riders and now prosecutors who turned their back and did not even do anything to protect us. we still have that that's still our criminal justice system. so to whom do we trust? we are still trying to get. anti-linching laws passed we're still trying to. get these symbols of race and hate out of our constitution. we're still trying to get slavery. out of the constitution i think people think all that they like what that's not that's not still written anywhere. that's not still anything that somebody. can pull we can you know, we we can't be ignorant of this? we cannot we got it. we have to to absorb as much as we can and then see kind of where we find ourselves in, right? yes. oh, definitely. i mean there are a lot of stories of success. um black women who sued to stop poll taxes black women who sued to stop literacy tests one of the things i like i have to say my little cousin seat. i like a timeline. i like for us to look at even just to look at the timeline and see how things go up and down up and down is not straight across so people shouldn't rest on the laurels and think. oh, wow, we have this and we'll look for the backlash. are we prepared for the backlash? and so when i think about the harriet tubman. not not just harriet tubman the other here we have as many harrison here. we think about harriet tubman and harriet tubman. i visited her house. i visited her grave site, you know, i tried as often as i could to put myself in the shoes of where these people walked. and so when i visited you see how humble they they lived. i mean how humble her place was, you know, and i and i think about she used to not only was she's a spy was she there, you know conductor the underground railroad. she also had a home for enslaved people who were had no place to go. they were homeless, so you talk about a homeless shelter today. she had a homeless shelter back in the 1800s where she used to help people you think about the fact that you had so many of these women who thought about reparations cali house. for example, kelly house was working on reparations in the 1890s. she had an organization called the national ex slave mutual relief bounty and pension fund. so we didn't just start this today. all these things are rooted somewhere previous to this and i just really think it's fantastic that these women have to have shown themselves that we don't have to start from scratch. they've shown us that there's something that we can build on that's more powerful for than any of us individually that we have a collective spirit and a collective knowledge and a collective history and that's why it's called the black women black women law and power because it's about the collective of black women in the power that's in that it has been. such a delight to talk to you and to dig deep into what the black woman law and power is all about you talk about it from 1619 to 1969. we went a little past 1969 because we know that power is still happening in their so many lives that we need to reflect on and see how they fit. with what we're seeing today. it really does serve us well to understand what this is it serves as well to really dig deep into it and and and know you know, there's somebody in there. that's that's faith morris says, you know i can see myself in so many of them i can see myself and i think many of us with see ourselves in those stories just based on what it is that we're trying to do to live better lives to make some kind of contribution to this nation. is there is there any final word that you want to give us before we let folks rest well i started writing. she took justice. i changed the subtitle many times, but she took justice was the title and i knew that this was the book. i was supposed to write and this was supposed to be the title when i was researching one of the lawsuits brought by sojourner truth. she brought a four different lawsuits. and she says in this one quote and i quote her in a book. if women want more rights than they got. then they need to just take them and not be talking about it. so i'd like to leave people with that thought is that an actual quote? that's it and we go we need to use that quote yeah. okay. i love i'm gonna write it down that's gonna say as per yes. i'm absolutely yes, but now that's that's what i really want. i mean, she's the one they say, oh you escaped from from slavery. no, she's quoted as saying i didn't escape i left in broad daylight. i didn't escape from slavery i left so when you the the power and the courage and and just the beauty of these women something that i wanted to capture in this book, and i'm glad that you gave me an opportunity to talk about them because they are extraordinary and they're so many i didn't talk about it so many that didn't make it into the book, but there will be a book too. well, i would hope so. i would hope so because because the story keeps going. yes, you know the the story of black women and the impact that black women have had, you know everywhere everywhere. we are we just happen to be talking about what's happening here and what happened prior to us happening here, but you know everywhere we've been we have made such a tremendous mark and thank thank god for us. honestly think you know for the strength and the power and the energy and the tenacity and the that we took it i love that they will get tired of me saying that okay. i'm just taking yeah, i'm not gonna put me out. i'm leaving. yes, probably. yeah, right. yes in broad daylight and probably like exactly about queen and zynga died in her sleep at 80 years old having spent her life adult life as a warrior attacking the portuguese who had invaded her country who stole us and were the 20 and odd africans arriving in jamestown in 1619. so when you think about the fact that she was so feared as a warrior and so respected as a diplomat that the portuguese actually have artistic freezes of her that i had a chance to look at. really? yes that they created because of that respect they had for her as a warrior as an adversary and as a diplomat and that's queen and zynga in the 1600s. she negotiated that peace treaty in 1622. so when we think about our intellectual gifts think about our gifts of creativity, and of course grip gifts of the hand we have done so much for ourselves. and for this this country in our community and we still have so much more to give we do well, but we have it to give. and that's that's what's so wonderful about us, you know women period but black women, okay. yes, yes. thank you so much. gloria browne-marshall for what you've done not just with this book. actually. i mean your story is is pretty interesting, too. and that you have surrounded yourself. with the impact of law and justice and women and the role that they had in it, but you know this whole gender and justice and evidence and race. i mean you could just go on and on and on and it's it's all something that we're very interested in here at the national civil rights museum and the folks that follow us aren't interested in it, too. so, thank you so much for sharing. encourage everybody to get this book it's a wonderful read. helen folks go to pay six hundred go to page 22 go to page go to you know, because every time i see something i tell somebody to go look for it. and we'll use it, you know as a as a reference as a resource frankly for folks to just be more knowledgeable about what black women in america, you know would what really has happened with us what we've done and what we've achieved and how we've created this road for where we are now. thank movement in america. all right, welcome everyone like we were talking about last class. we are now shifting a little bit into a conversation and discussion about some of these i would say these essential themes of 18th century america. we've spent the last what couple months talking about, you know these regions, you know, and how the colonies developed how those colonies became integrated into the mercantile empire right if the british empire the cultural empire today, we want to start with our first major