Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Sabbath Restored 15 In those days I saw some in Judah who were treading wine presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves or sacks of grain and loading them on donkeys, as well as wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So I protested and warned them on the day they sold the produce. 16 Also men of Tyre were living there who brought fish and all kinds of merchandise, and they were selling them to the people of Judah on the Sabbath, even in Jerusalem. 17 Then I reprimanded the nobles of Judah, and said to them, “What is this evil thing that you are doing—profaning the Sabbath day? 18 “Did your fathers (ancestors) not do the same, and did our God not bring all this trouble on us and on this city? Yet you are adding to the wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.” 19 Now when it began to get dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath [began], I commanded that the doors be shut and not be opened until after the Sabbath. Then I stationed some of my servants at the gates so that no load [of merchandise] would enter [Jerusalem] on the Sabbath day. 20 So once or twice the merchants and sellers of every kind of merchandise spent the night outside Jerusalem. 21 But I warned them, saying, “Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you do so again, I will c use force against you.” From that time on, they did not come on the Sabbath. 22 And I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and come and guard the gates to keep the Sabbath day holy. O my God, remember me concerning this also and have compassion on me according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness. Mixed Marriages Forbidden 23 In those days I also saw Jews who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. 24 As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them knew how to speak [Hebrew] the language of Judah, but only the language of his own people. 25 So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters [in marriage] to their sons, nor take [any of] their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. 26 “Did not Solomon king of Israel sin [greatly against God] regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel; nevertheless the foreign women caused even him to sin [by turning to other gods and so, judged by God, he lost his kingdom].

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  I came back to the city and my sad serenity vanished. At night I’d be about to drift off to sleep when I’d sit straight up, gasping for air. The magazine I worked for published an editorial on homosexuality for no particular reason. It denounced the “chic new trend toward treating homosexuality as though it were a different way rather than a lesser way.” The essay deplored homosexuals’ “glibly self-justifying references to the ancients.” It actually said, “We must blush for fifth-century Athens.” In conclusion, the essay read: “Let’s face the sour music: homosexuality is not a sophisticated or naughty aberration but a pathetic malady. We must make certain that in this era of drugs, free sex, and sloppy liberal rhetoric the Homintern, that conspiracy of bitter inverts who already have a stranglehold over the theater, fashion, and fiction, does not pervert the lives of decent people by glamorizing vice, neutering the female body, and making the fine old art of being a mature man or woman look dull—or as they would say, campy.” When I cried in group therapy about Sean, about the helplessness I felt now, Simon said, “I wanna hear about de goils.” A rage I couldn’t control boiled up inside me. The other men in the group had to pull me off Simon. I knocked his chair over and was sitting on him, choking him with both hands and shouting, over and over, “Don’t you ever, don’t you ever—” but I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I’d always regarded my sister as the norm. She had managed to marry, have children, settle in the suburbs and lead a respectable life. I saw her only occasionally when I was home for the holidays, and then she’d shyly press her three children forward. One Christmas Eve she and I stayed awake all night trying to sort out the parts of a tricycle to be assembled according to instructions written in English by a Japanese. I never talked to her about my real feelings or my real life, but I assumed I knew everything about hers. Then she announced that she wanted to visit me in New York. She’d be coming without her husband but with the neighbor lady, Peg. Since by now I was making a decent living, I bought a new sofa bed for them. My sister was in love with Peg. Awkward, bespectacled, ashamed, my sister gazed at the handsome Peg with adoration and recounted to me by the hour the sad saga of Peg’s life (brutal parents, elderly husband, delinquent children, unfulfilled artistic ambitions). It was obvious to me that Peg didn’t love my sister but enjoyed all the attention, something her husband wasn’t providing.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  These efforts to make visible and legible the plight of Black women and girls, this campaign to rescue them from political and social obscurity, fits within the long history, documented in this book, of Black women making the case that Black women’s lives are worthy of study and that their struggles are worthy of social remedy. The organizing of Crenshaw, Harris-Perry, Smith, and others also places these race women within a history of Black women using institutional access and resources to make the plight of Black women and girls visible. It is frustrating that Black women have to keep fighting such battles in every generation. But this book demonstrates that they have a very robust and multigenerational playbook to aid their efforts. Harris-Perry’s time as a host at MSNBC was nothing if not embattled. In 2014, when Ta-Nehisi Coates, an editor at Atlantic, wrote that Harris-Perry is “America’s foremost public intellectual,” there was a firestorm of controversy after Dylan Byers, a journalist at Politico, suggested that such assertions damaged Coates’s credibility.7 Though Harris-Perry achieved what no other tenured Black woman professor has ever achieved in being the eponymous host of her own major cable network show, Byers still called her intellectual credentials into question. When Harris-Perry departed her show in February 2016 after a contentious struggle with the network over editorial control of her show, she wrote in an email to her staff: “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by [Andy] Lack, [Phil] Griffin, or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back. I have wept more tears than I can count and I find this deeply painful, but I don’t want back on air at any cost.”8 Harris-Perry’s dignified and costly stance against a major corporation reflects the enduring battles for dignity and self-authorship that have characterized Black women’s intellectual work in the public sphere. But her decision to make visible both the love and the pain caused by the decision to leave on her own terms also reflects a long history of Black women naming the embodied and affective sacrifices that shape their advocacy work on behalf of Black communities. It also reflects the ways that Black women thinkers in the public sphere continually move beyond the politics of respectability and the dictates of dissemblance, when situations warrant it, opting to make their pain, their anger, and their contempt for injustice visible and palpable. The resolute defiance contained in Harris-Perry’s statement, that “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” reminds us of Black women’s continuing quest for what Anna Julia Cooper called “undisputed dignity” and the right to have one’s voice and one’s humanity respected as equal to that of white men with power.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Knight’s Tale Heere bigynneth the Knyghtes Tale PART ONE Once upon a time, as the old stories tell us, there was a duke named Theseus. He was the lord and governor of fabled Athens, and in his day he had won an unrivalled reputation as a conqueror. No one was more splendid under the sun. He had taken many rich kingdoms. By wise generalship and force of arms he had conquered the land of the Amazons, formerly known as Scythia, and wedded there its queen, Hippolita. He brought home his prize, his bride, with great celebrations and rejoicings. He also brought back with him her younger sister, Emily, who will be the heroine of this story. So for the time being I will leave Theseus at his victory parade. You can imagine the scene. The armies march in rank. POMP. MUSIC. HURRAHS. The wagons bring up the rear, stuffed with booty. It was glorious stuff. Of course, if I had more time, I would like to tell you all about the victory of Theseus over the Amazons. Knights like to speak of war. And what a fight that was! I wish I could tell you about the pitched battle between the Athenians and the Amazon women. I wish I could tell you how Theseus laid siege, in more than one sense, to the beautiful and fiery Hippolita. I would like to have described the glorious wedding feast, and then I might have added the detail of the tempest that threatened to overwhelm their ships on their return to Athens. But there we are. It cannot be done in the time allotted to me. God knows I have ahead of me a large field to furrow, and the oxen at my plough are not the strongest beasts I have known. The remains of my story are long enough. I will not hinder any of this fair company. Let every man and woman here tell their tale in turn. Then we shall know who has won the supper. Where was I? Oh yes. Duke Theseus. Well. When he had come close to Athens with his new bride, in all his glory, he noticed that there were some women kneeling in the highway; they kneeled in rows beside each other, two by two, and they were all clothed in black. They were screeching and crying and beating their breasts. I doubt that anyone has heard such bitter lamentation. They did not cease their cries until they had managed to get hold of the reins of the duke’s horse. Of course he was very angry. ‘What kind of women are you,’ he asked, ‘that ruin my triumphant homecoming with your tears and wails? Are you so envious of my honour that you cry out like scalded cats? Who has offended you? Who has done you hurt? I will do my best to help you, if I can. And then why on earth are you all wearing black?

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  There was even a time when, to show his prowess as a performer, he agreed to take the part of Herod in the pageant plays. But what was the good of all this posturing? The point is that Alison loved another. No. Not the carpenter. Of course she could not love her husband. She loved the clerk and lodger, Nicholas. Absolon might as well go whistle in the wind. She treated him as a joke. She turned him into her pet monkey, and laughed at his screechings. The proverb is quite right. The one who is closest comes first. Out of sight is out of mind. Lively Nicholas was there in the house with her, while poor distraught Absolon was on the other side of town. You might say that Nicholas stood in his light. So good luck to you, young scholar, even though Absolon will wail ‘Alas!’ It happened that one Saturday the carpenter had gone back to Osney Abbey. Alison and Nicholas took advantage of his absence and conferred together. This was their plan. Nicholas would come up with a ruse to beguile the jealous old sod; if everything went well, then she would nestle in his arms all night. That was what both of them wanted. So without more ado Nicholas left her, and took up on a platter enough meat and drink to sustain him in his chamber for a day or two. If the carpenter asked after him, she was to say that she did not know where he was. That she had not seen him. That she had not heard from him. That she even wondered if he was ill - the maid had called for him, but there had been no answer from him. So all that Saturday there was silence. Nicholas lay very quietly in his chamber, eating and drinking and doing anything else he fancied. I could not say what. This lasted until Sunday evening. The old carpenter was by now in a state of some alarm, and wondered if his lodger had taken ill. Could it be the white death? ‘I am afraid,’ he said, ‘by the bones of all the saints. Something is wrong with Nicholas. God forbid that he should have died suddenly! This wicked world is uncertain enough. I saw today a corpse borne to church, who last Monday I saw at work.’ Then he turned to his servant-boy, Robin. ‘Go upstairs,’ he said, ‘and shout for him at his door. Knock on it with a stone, if you wish. Find out what’s going on. Then come and tell me.’

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  After the cashier gave her the money, Mom went into a corner of the bank and stuffed it into a sock she’d safety-pinned to her bra. Then we all scurried around to the power company and the water authority and the landlord, paying off our bills with tens and twenties. The clerks averted their eyes as Mom fished the sock out of her bra, explaining to everyone within earshot that this was her way of making sure she was never pickpocketed. Mom also bought some electric heaters and a refrigerator on layaway, and we’d go to the appliance store and put down a few dollars every month, figuring they’d be ours by wintertime. Mom always had at least one “extravagance” on layaway, something we really didn’t need—a tasseled silk throw or a cut crystal vase—because she said the surest way to feel rich was to invest in quality nonessentials. After that, we’d go to the grocery store at the bottom of the hill and stock up on staples such as beans and rice, powdered milk, and canned goods. Mom always bought the dented cans, even if they weren’t marked down, because she said they needed to be loved, too. At home, we’d empty Mom’s purse onto the sofa bed and count the remaining money. There’d be hundreds of dollars, more than enough to cover our expenses until the end of the month, I thought. But month after month, the money would disappear before the next paycheck arrived, and once more I’d find myself rooting in the garbage at school for food. Toward the end of one month that fall, Mom announced that we had only one dollar for dinner. That was enough to buy one gallon of Neapolitan ice cream, which she said was not only delicious but had lots of calcium and would be good for our bones. We brought the ice cream home, and Brian pulled apart the carton and cut the block into five even slices. I called dibs on first choice. Mom told us to savor it because we had no money for dinner the next night. “Mom, what happened to it all?” I asked as we ate our ice-cream slices. “Gone, gone, gone!” she said. “It’s all gone.” “But where?” Lori asked. “I’ve got a houseful of kids and a husband who soaks up booze like a sponge,” Mom said. “Making ends meet is harder than you think.” It couldn’t be that hard, I thought. Other moms did it. I tried quizzing her. Was she spending the money on herself? Was she giving it to Dad? Was Dad stealing it? Or did we go through it quickly? I couldn’t get an answer. “Give us the money,” I said. “We’ll work out a budget and stick to it.” “Easy for you to say,” Mom replied. Lori and I did work out a budget, and we included a generous allowance for Mom to cover luxuries such as extra-large Hershey bars and cut crystal vases.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  “Where?” “I don’t think Mom and Dad would want me talking to you without them here,” I said. “Come back when they’re here. They’ll answer your questions.” “Good,” the man said. “I will come back. Tell them that.” He passed a business card through the crack in the doorway. I watched him make his way down to the ground. “Careful on those stairs now,” I called. “We’re in the process of building a new set.” • • • After the man left, I was so furious that I ran up the hillside and started hurling rocks—big rocks that it took two hands to lift—into the garbage pit. Except for Erma, I had never hated anyone more than I hated that child-welfare man. Not even Ernie Goad. At least when Ernie and his gang came around yelling that we were trash, we could fight them off with rocks. But if the child-welfare man got it into his head that we were an unfit family, we’d have no way to drive him off. He’d launch an investigation and end up sending me and Brian and Lori and Maureen off to live with different families, even though we all got good grades and knew Morse code. I couldn’t let that happen. No way was I going to lose Brian and Lori and Maureen. I wished we could do the skedaddle. For a long time Brian, Lori, and I had assumed we would leave Welch sooner or later. Every couple of months we’d ask Dad if we were going to move on. He’d sometimes talk about Australia or Alaska, but he never took any action, and when we asked Mom, she’d start singing some song about how her get up and go had got up and went. Maybe coming back to Welch had killed the idea Dad used to have of himself as a man going places. The truth was, we were stuck. When Mom got home, I gave her the man’s card and told her about his visit. I was still in a lather. I said that since neither she nor Dad could be bothered to work, and since she refused to leave Dad, the government was going to do the job of splitting up the family for her. I expected Mom to come back with one of her choice remarks, but she listened to my tirade in silence. Then she said she needed to consider her options. She sat down at her easel. She had run out of canvases and had begun painting on plywood, so she picked up a piece of wood, got out her palette, squeezed some paints onto it, and selected a brush. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I’m thinking,” she said. Mom worked quickly, automatically, as if she knew exactly what it was she wanted to paint. A figure took shape in the middle of the board. It was a woman from the waist up, with her arms raised. Blue concentric circles appeared around the waist.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  A few years later, Terrell took up this local lost cause, with an interracial group of comrades who joined her in regular sit-ins at Thompson’s.87 When Terrell’s entourage was refused service, she and her party filed suit on behalf of the Coordinating Committee, with joint support from the City’s District Commissioners. In July of 1950, the D.C. Municipal Court held in favor of Thompson’s Restaurant, a decision that Terrell’s group immediately appealed. In June of 1951, the group scored its first legal victory when the Municipal Court of Appeals in D.C. declared that in fact the “Lost Law” of 1873 was valid and that restaurant owners in D.C. were subject to a fine and loss of license for racial discrimination. In complete defiance of the Municipal Court’s ruling, a local official pledged not to enforce the ruling. His defiance put a bit of a damper on the mass celebratory meeting that boycott organizers had pulled together for June 15. After nearly six decades of strategizing the most effective ways to “make democracy” for Black people in the U.S., Terrell sensed a deep urgency in her battle to desegregate the District. On discovering that local officials would not enforce the Appeals Court’s ruling to desegregate, she told her audience, “I am no longer ‘Sweet Sixteen,’ and I would like to live long enough to see this law enforced.”88 Moreover, she told them, “it pains me greatly to think that the Capital of my own country, the Capital of the United States of America—is the only Capital in the whole wide world in which restaurants refuse to serve colored people solely on account of their race.”89

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Her mother and brothers, seeing and hearing all this, turned upon her husband and said to him, 'What meanest thou, Arriguccio? This is not that so far which thou camest to tell us thou hadst done, and we know not how thou wilt make good the rest.' Arriguccio stood as one in a trance and would have spoken; but, seeing that it was not as he thought he could show, he dared say nothing; whereupon the lady, turning to her brothers, said to them, 'Brothers mine, I see he hath gone seeking to have me do what I have never yet chosen to do, to wit, that I should acquaint you with his lewdness and his vile fashions, and I will do it. I firmly believe that this he hath told you hath verily befallen him and that he hath done as he saith; and you shall hear how. This worthy man, to whom in an ill hour for me you gave me to wife, who calleth himself a merchant and would be thought a man of credit, this fellow, forsooth, who should be more temperate than a monk and chaster than a maid, there be few nights but he goeth fuddling himself about the taverns, foregathering now with this lewd woman and now with that and keeping me waiting for him, on such wise as you find me, half the night and whiles even till morning. I doubt not but that, having well drunken, he went to bed with some trull of his and waking, found the twine on her foot and after did all these his fine feats whereof he telleth, winding up by returning to her and beating her and cutting off her hair; and not being yet well come to himself, he fancied (and I doubt not yet fancieth) that he did all this to me; and if you look him well in the face, you will see he is yet half fuddled. Algates, whatsoever he may have said of me, I will not have you take it to yourselves except as a drunken man's talk, and since I forgive him, do you also pardon him.'

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  22 Now it was the ninth month, and the king was sitting in the winter house, with a fire burning there in the brazier before him. 23 And after Jehudi had read three or four columns [of the scroll], King Jehoiakim would cut off that portion with a scribe’s knife and throw it into the fire that was in the brazier, until the [entire] scroll was consumed by the fire. 24 Yet the king and all his servants who heard all these words were not afraid, nor did they tear their clothes. 25 Even though Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah pleaded with the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them. 26 And the king commanded Jerahmeel the king’s son, Seraiah the son of Azriel, and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel to seize Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet, but the LORD hid them. The Scroll Is Replaced 27 Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the scroll containing the words which Baruch had written at the dictation of Jeremiah: 28 “Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were on the first scroll which Jehoiakim the king of Judah burned. 29 “And concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah you shall say, ‘Thus says the LORD , “You have burned this scroll, saying, ‘Why have you written on it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land, and will cut off man and beast from it?’ ” 30 ‘Therefore thus says the LORD concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah, “a He shall have no heir to sit on the throne of David, and his dead body shall be thrown out to the heat of the day and to the frost of the night. 31 “I will also punish him and his descendants and his servants for their wickedness, and I will bring on them and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah all the destruction that I have declared against them—but they would not listen.” ’ ” 32 Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote on it at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire; and many similar words were added to them. Jeremiah 37 Jeremiah Warns against Trust in Pharaoh 1 N OW NEBUCHADNEZZAR king of Babylon made Zedekiah the son of Josiah king in the land of Judah so he reigned as king instead of Coniah (also called Jeconiah and Jehoiachin) the son of Jehoiakim. 2 But neither he nor his servants nor the people of the land listened to the words of the LORD which He spoke through the prophet Jeremiah.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  5 “I will make Rabbah [your chief city] a pasture for camels and [the cities of] the Ammonites a resting place for flocks [of sheep]. And you will know [without any doubt] that I am the LORD .” 6 ‘For thus says the Lord GOD , “Because you have clapped your hands and stamped your feet and rejoiced with all the contempt, and malice, and spite of your soul against the land of Israel, 7 therefore, behold, I have stretched out My hand against you and will hand you over as prey and spoil to the nations. And I will cut you off from the peoples and will cause you to perish from the countries; I will destroy you. Then you shall know [without any doubt] that I am the LORD .” [Jer 49:1–6 ; Ezek 21:28–32 ; Amos 1:13–15 ; Zeph 2:8–11 ] Moab 8 ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “Because b Moab and Seir (Edom) say, ‘Behold, the house of Judah is like all the [pagan] nations,’ 9 therefore, behold, I will deprive the flank of Moab of its cities which are on its frontiers, the glory of the land, Beth-jeshimoth, Baal-meon and Kiriathaim. 10 “I will give it, along with the children of Ammon, to the people of the East as a possession, so that the children of Ammon will not be remembered among the nations [any longer]. 11 “Thus I will execute judgment and punishment on Moab, and they will know [without any doubt] that I am the LORD .” [Is 15 , 16 ; Jer 48 ; Amos 2:1–3 ; Zeph 2:8–11 ] Edom 12 ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “Because c Edom has acted against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and has greatly offended and has incurred grievous guilt by taking revenge on them,” 13 therefore thus says the Lord GOD , “I will also stretch out My hand against Edom and I will cut off and destroy man and beast. I will make it desolate; from Teman even to Dedan they will fall by the sword. 14 “I will take My vengeance on Edom by the hand of My people Israel. Therefore, they will act in Edom in accordance with My anger and My wrath, and they will know and experience My vengeance,” says the Lord GOD . [Is 34 ; Ezek 35 ; Amos 1:11 , 12 ; Obad] Philistia 15 ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “Because the d Philistines have acted revengefully and have taken vengeance [contemptuously] with malice in their hearts to destroy with everlasting hostility and hatred,” 16 therefore thus says the Lord GOD , “Behold, I will stretch out My hand against the Philistines, and I will cut off the e Cherethites and destroy the remnant of the seacoast.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  took shape among African American public intellectuals.” 49 By 1947, Murray, a graduate of Howard and newly named woman of the year by the National Council of Negro Women and Mademoiselle magazine, had indeed become a public figure. Murray took the opportunity in her article to further develop her conception of what Ayesha Hardison terms “Jane Crow discourse,” a way of speaking about “black female subjectivity under a specific set of social conditions: mass migration, changing gender relations, class anxiety and racial strife.” 50 Murray proclaimed that the Negro woman was in a “state of revolt” against a dual “framework of ‘male supremacy’ and ‘white supremacy’ [in which] the Negro woman finds herself at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale.” 51 The revolt was being “felt most keenly among Negro college-trained and professional women.” Such a woman, who in many cases had outpaced her male counterpart in educational achievement, could not “find a mate with whom she can share all the richness of her life in addition to its functional aspects.” Murray averred that these women’s advanced educational skills and increased earning power “were a social handicap if [the woman] wanted marriage.” Men would shy away from such relationships, because “it is too great a threat to their security.” And since Black women could not look to these relationships for economic security, they might still find in them a modicum of emotional security. “But here again,” Murray declares, “she [the Negro woman] is defeated.” “The American Negro male is not prepared to offer emotional security because he has rarely, if ever, known it himself. ... His submerged status in American life places unnatural stresses and strains upon his already inadequate equipment inherited from our immature democracy.” 52 Notwithstanding the clear dig at Black men’s “inadequate equipment,” a dig that is shot through with Murray’s own anxieties regarding her “equipment,” she nailed the analysis of the ways that racism and the failures of liberal American democracy had stunted and entrapped Black men in retrograde ideas about Black masculinity. This frustrated masculine (and gender) development equated to a “general mis-education of the sexes,” which, when coupled with “outmoded social tabus [sic] ... have helped to form rigid moulds into which the sexes are poured and which determine in advance the role men and women are to play in community life.” The politics of racial manhood compelled Black men to “act as if they are the lords of creation, the breadwinners and warriors of our time and of all time.” But, Murray assessed, “they play the role with varying degrees of hamacting and success” and really “are as frightened and insecure as modern women are.” 53 In Murray’s estimation, Black men were frustrated patriarchs, not full-fledged patriarchal figures. In terms of Black feminist assessments of patriarchy, that intellectual distinction is important.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  remembered the prominent men: “Abram Harris, Charles H. Houston, Ralph Bunche, Marion Cuthbert [a woman], William Hastie, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and W. E. B. Du Bois.” Those “last three,” she noted, “represented a link with the past.” But “we had ideas of our own, however, and insisted, as youth always does, that the progress of the Negro had been too slow.” 7 Hedgeman was especially enamored of the young economist Abram Harris and how his approach might help Black people struggling to recover from the Depression. She also recalled an excited “Charles Hamilton Houston, fresh from Amherst and Harvard, [filled] with plans for the development of the Howard University Law School [who] was discussing the role of the law in the struggle for Civil Rights.” What they came to agree on was that “increased training and specialization of the Negro would help him make new openings for other Negroes” ... in particular, “college graduates [with] specialized training in the liberal arts could bring new strength.” 8 Despite her reservations about the inherent elitism of being classed among the “intellectuals,” Hedgeman supported the broad liberal vision put forth by the “Young Turks” at Amenia II. This liberal vision informed her work as the first Black woman to serve on a New York mayoral cabinet under the Wagner administration in the 1950s. 9 And in the 1960s, she was invited by A. Philip Randolph to complete the work she had begun with him in the 1940s in New York during the first March on Washington Movement, where she also worked with a young Pauli Murray. For the 1963 March, she teamed up with the “Big Six”: A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King, James Farmer, Whitney Young, and John Lewis. FIGURE 6. Anna Arnold Hedgeman. Courtesy of Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Manuscripts Division, Howard University, Washington D.C. However, one week before the March she realized that “no woman [was] listed as a speaker” on the program. So “it was proposed that Mr. Randolph, as chairman, would ask several Negro women to stand while he reviewed the historic role of Negro women, and that the women would merely take a bow at the end of his presentation.” Internally, she balked at this dismissive attempt to silence Black women by not even allowing them to speak, while claiming to celebrate them. She found it “significant that not even the rebellious youth leader [presumably John Lewis] thought of the role which woman had played in the present phase of the continuing Negro revolution.” 10 She thus marshaled her forces and sent a memo to Randolph: “In light of the role of Negro women in the struggle for freedom and especially in light of the extra burden they have carried because of the castration of our Negro man in this culture, it is incredible that no woman should appear as a speaker at the historic March on Washington Meeting at the Lincoln Memorial.” She went on to request “that a Negro woman make a brief statement and present the other Heroines just as you have suggested that the Chairman might do.” 11 She suggested two potential women: Myrlie Evers, widow of Medgar Evers, and Diane Nash Bevel. But the male organizers remained resistant about female participation. Because of consistent advocacy and agitation on the part of Hedgeman, Pauli Murray, and Dorothy Height, on the day of the March “Daisy Bates was asked to say a few words,” but even then A. Philip Randolph limited her time at the microphone. Hedgeman noted that “Mrs. Rosa Parks, the courageous woman who had refused to ‘move to the back of the bus,’ in Montgomery was presented, but almost casually.” 12 That elicited a shared knowing among many of the women there: “[W]e grinned; some of us, as we recognized anew that Negro women are second-class citizens in the same way that white women are in our culture.” 13 Published in 1964 just one year after the March, Hedgeman’s “memoir of Negro leadership,” Trumpet Sounds, acts as an intervention in a recalcitrant masculinist narrative of racial leadership. The gender politics of the March on Washington demonstrate firsthand the ways in which this symbolic show of the Black freedom struggle was inherently gendered and fraught with Black men’s own investments in dominating the direction of racial leadership. Not only did Hedgeman call the Civil Rights establishment publicly to task, but she also took specific aim at King. She acknowledged that King’s “speech on

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Chapter four returns to the question of what it means to be a Black woman intellectual by interrogating the claims in an article in Ebony Magazine in 1966 called “Problems of the Negro Woman Intellectual.” Given the ferment of racial crises in the 1960s, this chapter argues that much like the transitional period of the 1890s, the transition from Civil Rights to Black Power was marked by a tension over the roles that Black women would play, not only as political activists, but as intellectual leaders. Thus Harold Cruse’s Crisis of the Negro Intellectual erased a long and significant history of Black women’s intellectual labor in order to sustain his narrative of racial crisis. What really seems to be in crisis are the terms of Black masculinity. I read Toni Cade Bambara’s book of essays Black Woman as a critical corrective to Cruse’s assertions because Black Woman presses the case for Black women’s centrality as thought leaders and public intellectuals in racial justice struggles, and Bambara and her comrades approach the same political moment as an opportunity for creativity around the articulation of new modes of what she terms Blackhood rather than embracing the narrative of crisis. In many ways, her anthology and the feminist anthologies that come after it expand on Black women’s intellectual practice of listing from the nineteenth century. In every period where Black communities struggled to find their thought leaders, Black women always named the women doing the work, but usually receive little credit for it. By the late twentieth century, these lists became full anthologies of Black women’s thinking about race, gender, and politics. This chapter makes clear that the struggle to be known and to have the range of Black women’s experiences properly articulated in the public sphere is a recurring struggle for Black women thinkers. At the same time, these women engage in a range of creative practices to make Black women’s lives legible in public discourse.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  3 “Speak a parable against the rebellious house [of Judah] and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “Put on a pot; put it on and also pour water into it; 4 “Put in it the pieces [of meat], Every good piece (the people of Jerusalem), the thigh and the shoulder; Fill it with choice bones. 5 “Take the choicest of the flock, And also pile wood under the pot. Make it boil vigorously And boil its bones in the pot.” 6 ‘Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD , “Woe (judgment is coming) to the bloody city, To the pot in which there is rust And whose rust has not gone out of it! Take out of it piece by piece, Without making any choice. 7 “For her blood [that she has shed] remains in her midst; She put it on the bare rock; She did not pour it on the ground To cover it with dust. 8 “That it may cause wrath to come up to take vengeance, I have put her blood [guilt for her children sacrificed to Molech] on the bare rock, That it may not be covered.” 9 ‘Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD , “Woe to the bloody city! I will also make the pile [of wood] high. 10 “Heap on wood, kindle the fire, Boil the meat well [done] And mix in the spices, And let the bones be burned. 11 “Then set the empty pot (Jerusalem) back on the coals So that it may be hot And its bronze may glow And its filthiness may be melted And its rust (scum) may be consumed. 12 “She has wearied Me with toil, Yet her great rust has not left her; Her thick rust and filth will not be burned away by fire [no matter how hot the flame]. 13 “In your filthiness are lewdness and outrage. Therefore I would have cleansed you, Yet you were not [willing to be] cleansed, You will not be cleansed from your filthiness again Until I have satisfied My wrath against you. 14 “I the LORD have spoken; it is coming and I will act. I will not relent, and I will not have compassion and I will not be sorry; in accordance with your ways and in accordance with your deeds I will judge and punish you,” says the Lord GOD .’ ” Death of Ezekiel’s Wife Is a Sign 15 Also the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 16 “Son of man, listen carefully, I am about to take away from you the desire of your eyes [your wife] with a single stroke. Yet you shall not mourn and you shall not weep, and your tears shall not flow. 17 “Sigh and groan in silence; do not mourn for the dead.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  9 Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you directly: Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save a life or to destroy it?” 10 After looking around at them all, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand!” And he did, and his hand was [fully] restored. 11 But the scribes and Pharisees were filled with senseless rage [and lacked spiritual insight], and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. Choosing the Twelve 12 Now at this time Jesus went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. 13 When day came, He called His disciples and selected twelve of them, whom He also named c apostles (special messengers, personally chosen representatives): [Matt 10:2–4 ; Mark 3:16–19 ] 14 Simon, whom He also named Peter, and his brother Andrew; and [the brothers] d James and John; and Philip, and Bartholomew [also called Nathanael]; 15 and Matthew (Levi, the tax collector) and Thomas; and e James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot; 16 Judas [also called Thaddaeus] the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor [to the Lord]. 17 Then Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place; and there was a large crowd of His disciples, and a vast multitude of people from all over Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, 18 who had come to listen to Him and to be healed of their diseases. Even those who were troubled by unclean spirits (demons) were being healed. 19 All the people were trying to touch Him, because [healing] power was coming from Him and healing them all. The Beatitudes 20 And looking toward His disciples, He began f speaking: “Blessed [spiritually prosperous, happy, to be admired] are you who are poor [in spirit, those devoid of spiritual arrogance, those who regard themselves as insignificant], for the kingdom of God is yours [both now and forever]. [Matt 5:3–12 ] 21 “Blessed [joyful, nourished by God’s goodness] are you who hunger now [for righteousness, actively seeking right standing with God], for you will be [completely] satisfied. Blessed [forgiven, refreshed by God’s grace] are you who weep now [over your sins and repent], for you will laugh [when the burden of sin is lifted]. 22 “Blessed [morally courageous and spiritually alive with life-joy in God’s goodness] are you when people hate you, and exclude you [from their fellowship], and insult you, and scorn your name as evil because of [your association with] the Son of Man. 23 “Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for your reward in heaven is great [absolutely inexhaustible]; for their fathers used to treat the prophets in the same way.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  10 So the Jews kept saying to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and you are not d permitted to pick up your pallet [because it is unlawful].” 11 He answered them, “The Man who healed me and gave me back my strength was the One who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’ ” 12 They asked him, “Who is the Man who told you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away [unnoticed] since there was a crowd in that place. 14 Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 For this reason the Jews began to persecute Jesus continually because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now [He has never ceased working], and I too am working.” Jesus’ Equality with God 18 This made the Jews more determined than ever to kill Him, for not only was He breaking the Sabbath [from their viewpoint], but He was also calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. 19 So Jesus answered them by saying, “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, the Son e can do nothing of Himself [of His own accord], unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever things the Father does, the Son [in His turn] also does in the same way. 20 “For the Father dearly loves the Son and shows Him everything that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will be filled with wonder. 21 “Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life [and allows them to live on], even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. 22 “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment [that is, the prerogative of judging] to the Son [placing it entirely into His hands], 23 so that all will give honor (reverence, homage) to the Son just as they give honor to the Father. [In fact] the one who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who has sent Him. 24 “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, the person who hears My word [the one who heeds My message], and believes and trusts in Him who sent Me, has (possesses now) eternal life [that is, eternal life actually begins—the believer is transformed], and does not come into judgment and condemnation, but has passed [over] from death into life.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Acts 2:17–21 ; Rom 10:13 ] Joel 3 The Nations Will Be Judged 1 “F OR BEHOLD, in those [climactic] days and at that time, When I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, 2 I will gather together all the [Gentile] nations [that were hostile to My people] And bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat (the LORD has judged). And there I will deal with them and enter into judgment with them there For [their treatment of] My people, My inheritance, Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations, And [because] they have encroached on My land and divided it up. 3 “They have also cast lots for My people, And have traded a boy for a prostitute And have sold a girl for wine that they may drink. 4 “Moreover, what are you to Me, O Tyre and Sidon and all the [five small] regions of Philistia? Will you pay Me back for something [I have supposedly done to you]? Even if you do pay Me back, I will swiftly and speedily return your deed [of retaliation] on your own head. [Is 23 ; Ezek 26:1–18 ; Amos 1:6–10 ; Zeph 2:4–7 ; Zech 9:2–7 ] 5 “Because you have taken My silver and My gold and have carried My precious treasures to your temples and palaces, 6 and have sold the children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem to the Greeks, so that you may send them far away from their territory, 7 behold, I am going to stir them up from the place where you have sold them [and return them to their land], and I shall return your action [of retaliation] on your own head. 8 “Also I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they will sell them to the a Sabeans, to a distant nation,” for the LORD has spoken. [Is 14:2 ; 60:14 ] 9 Proclaim this among the [pagan] nations: Prepare a war! Stir up the mighty men! Let all the men of war come near, let them come up! 10 Beat your plowshares into swords And your pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, “I am strong!” [Is 2:4 ; Mic 4:3 ] 11 Hurry and come, all you surrounding nations, And gather yourselves there; Bring down, O LORD , Your mighty ones (Your warriors). 12 Let the nations be stirred [to action] And come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, For there I will sit to judge and punish All the surrounding nations. 13 Put in the sickle [of judgment], for the harvest is ripe; Come, tread [the grapes], for the wine press is full; The vats overflow, for the wickedness [of the people] is great. [Mark 4:29 ; Rev 14:15 , 18–20 ] 14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision (judgment)! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision [when judgment is executed].

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  resisted formal structures of elitism in a number of ways that dovetail the kinds of radical political critique for which Baker calls. Baker also offers a paragraph of acknowledgment to Angela Davis, particularly her work on prison abolition, in the final chapter of Betrayal. But other than cursory gestures to the work of women like Davis and Tricia Rose, Black women are absent from Baker’s account of Black intellectual leadership in the twentieth century. Though Baker claims gender inclusivity in his use of the term race people, it is clear that he thinks race men have failed us and that a deliberate turn back to the race man model of the King era is the only thing that has the potential to save us. But Baker’s account of the problems in Black leadership say much more about the persistence and limitations of the politics of racial manhood in defining and mapping effective forms of Black leadership than they do about the actual state of Black leadership. The story shifts dramatically when we look toward the work of race women. In Beyond Respectability, I join with other scholars such as Erica Edwards in her book, Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership, and Robert Patterson in his book, Exodus Politics: Civil Rights and Leadership in African American Literature and Culture, in calling for a sure end to the charismatic race man model of leadership with which folks like Baker, West, Gates, and others continue to enjoy a tortured romance. Edwards writes against a thoroughgoing Black community investment in charismatic male leaders, and Patterson argues that this investment informs a broad-based belief in “exodus politics,” a Black cultural paradigm rooted in the biblical Moses narrative which, “disallows the possibility of Black female leadership” and “produces a gender hierarchy that prioritizes black men, black men’s leadership, and black men’s political interests.” 11 By (re)turning to the figure of the race woman, Beyond Respectability interrogates the persisting cultural and gender narratives that continue to circumscribe Black women’s leadership possibilities within African American communities and the broader public sphere. I maintain that at the center of this debate is a kind of skepticism about Black women’s ability to be creative and broad thinkers about race issues. Certainly, Black women are viewed as committed, devoted, reliable, and dependable workers, but in the twenty-first century we still believe far too often that the thinking should be left up to men. Accounts like Baker’s engage in just the sort of Jane Crow politics that have shaped Black male intellectual practices and which Pauli Murray called out during her time as a law student at Howard University. Murray’s invocation of the term Jane Crow, which I excavate and examine in chapter three, offered a thorough and unrelenting critique of the kinds of sexist practices that shaped the vaunted male leadership class of the Civil Rights generation, the very leadership class that Baker uncritically supports.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Their young men will die by the sword, their sons and their daughters will die by famine; 23 and there will be no remnant [of the conspirators] left, for I will bring disaster and horror on the men of Anathoth in the year of their punishment.” Jeremiah 12 Jeremiah’s Prayer 1 Y OU, O LORD are [uncompromisingly] righteous and consistently just when I plead my case with You; Yet let me discuss issues of justice with You: Why has the way of the wicked prospered? Why are those who deal in treachery (deceit) at ease and thriving? 2 You have planted them, they have also taken root; They grow, they have even produced fruit. You are a honored by their [hypocritical] lips But [You are] far from their heart and mind. 3 But You, O LORD , know me [and understand my devotion to You]; You see me; And You examine the attitude of my heart toward You. Drag out the faithless like sheep for the slaughter [O LORD ] And set them apart for the day of slaughter. 4 How long must the land mourn And the grass of the countryside wither? Because of the wickedness and hypocrisy of those who live in it, The beasts and the birds are consumed and are swept away [by the drought], Because men [mocking me] have said, “He will not [live long enough to] see [what happens at] our final end.” 5 [The LORD rebukes Jeremiah for his impatience, saying] “If you have raced with men on foot and they have tired you out, Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace [where you feel secure], Then how will you do [among the lions] in the [flooded] thicket beside the Jordan? 6 “For even your [tribal] brothers and the household of your father, Even they have dealt treacherously (unfaithfully) with you; Indeed they are [like a pack of hounds] howling after you. Do not believe them, although they may say kind words and promise you good things.” God’s Answer 7 “I have abandoned My house, I have given up My [precious] inheritance (Judah); I have given the [dearly] beloved of My life Into the hands of her enemies. 8 “My inheritance has become to Me Like a lion in the forest; She has raised her voice and roared against Me; So I have come to [treat her as if I] hate her. 9 “Is My inheritance like a speckled bird of prey to Me [unlike the others]? Are the birds of prey (enemies) surrounding her on every side? Go, gather all the [wild] beasts of the field; Bring them to devour [her]! 10 “Many shepherds (invaders) have destroyed My vineyard (Judah), They have trampled My field underfoot; They have made My pleasant field A desolate wilderness. 11 “They have made it a wasteland, Desolate, it mourns before Me; The whole land has been made a wasteland, Because no man takes it to heart.