Fannie Lou Hamer in 1963 after being beaten in jail at

Parchman Penitentiary

“You got the right to be mad, but when you carry it alone you find it only getting in the
way”. In her 2016 song Mad, Solange Knowles highlights the right black people in America
have to be upset with the ways in which America and its values have treated us. She uses the
song as a form of protest against former narratives of the “angry black woman” but notes that
when you are mad consciously and collectively, you can make positive change. Through a
dialogue of personal conversations with another woman within her lyrics, Solange highlights the
very taxing process of repeatedly pushing back against these narratives. She gives voice to the
fact that it is draining to repeatedly explain how and why systematic inequalities plague black
women without being taken seriously. The silencing of black women does not just take the
ability to vocalize away from this community, but it also makes it harder for these women to
make social change. Because of this, the silencing of black women is a repetitive and systematic
injustice that must be addressed in order to become more harmonious as a society.
Too often, women of color are silenced by the dominant narratives that hinder us.
Through individual acts of resistance, black women have broken through the narratives that both
silence us, and prevent us from being equitable members of American society. In this way, black
women have pushed movements forward by rejecting standards set by political agendas,
bridging gaps between movements of resistance , and have completely reimagined life outside of
the American quotidian that sustains our silencing and injustice.
Since the very beginnings of America, black people were displaced and forced to
do inhumane labor for European people who were displacing land that was never theirs to begin
with. Black people were never humanized, especially black women. We were seen as being
animalistic, as having no voice because there was no human value applied to African life,
although African people brought many aspects of their rich culture to America.
We were especially not granted any sort of autonomy, as a body physically female, but
also physically black. Because of this, black women were only seen as tool of reproduction, as
well as a vehicle for sexualization and labor (Jennifer L. Morgan, “Some Could Suckle over
Their Shoulder”: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology). In
addition to the animalistic and inhumane ways in which black women were brought to and
treated in America, another example of the silencing of black women is in antebellum slavery.
Women were not only expected to respond to every need of their masters, but they were also did
the same for their own families, and were expected to, much like the mammy stereotype of black
mothers born from Antebellum slavery. Too often, black women are forced to care for their
families by themselves, and when we asking for help, we are accused of “mooching” off the
American system, and are marked off as “Welfare Queens” or prostitutes. During this era of
slavery, black people sang secular folk music in order to share emotions without doing it in a
way that exposed them to their master. Through this secret expression of emotion, women were
able to share their voice through song, although she was rarely understood by those in power.
This was positive characteristic for many enslaved black people during this time, but it was
especially important for black women, as they were still held to common motherly standards of
cooking and cleaning for her own family after doing the work that comes with being enslaved.
This blatant silencing and fatal disregard of black women is rooted in the foundation of
this country, and continues to trickle into today through public heath issues like Flint’s water
crisis and through other worldly instances like the kidnapping of young black girls in Africa, and
the lack of conversation around their disappearance. Through the act of musical protest,
contemporary artists like Jamila Woods, Janelle Monet, and Noname highlight aspects of
injustice throughout American history, from loud acts of resistance against systematic injustice,
to simply celebrating the beauty in blackness; in her song “Very Blk”, Jamlila Woods highlights
her own pride in being black, while also paying close attention lyrically to the issue of police
brutality in America: “If I say I can’t breathe, will I become a chalkline?”
 Throughout history, black women have been silenced greatly due to the white reception
and application of our bodies. From the erasure of Native American life from the land through
the use of African people as sources of labor, to the use of black women as tools of reproduction
and sexual release for white men, whiten narratives of people of color have dominated the
quotidian discourse surrounding these communities. In order to restore a sense of humanity for
themselves and those that surround them, black women, in the words of Beyonce, “have spun
gold out of this hard life”, using the power of music to move from silence to singing.