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Liberia resistance to imperialism
Liberia resistance to imperialism
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“When you’ve lived true fear for so long, you have nothing to be afraid of. I tell people I was 17 when the war started in Liberia. I was 31 when we started protesting. I have taken enough dosage of fear that I have gotten immune to fear.” Leymah Gbowee is a strong woman that believes that peace is for everyone and to bring true peace one must be strong enough to forgive their enemies. Leymah witness true violence while the war went on and still held faith in peace. She risked her life in order to bring about this peace and united two groups of women that believed in two different religions but knew they were all mothers of Liberia that wanted to end the war. Like other great leaders of movements Leymah Gbowee was well educated and believed …show more content…
Without Leymah movement for peace, Liberia would not have seen their first female president. She trained as a social worker and trauma counselor, worked with ex-child soldiers. She shows that for peace to come after war, one has to forgive their enemies. Leymah believe that it was a women's responsibility to the future generation to work protectively to restore peace and funded the Women in Peace building Network (WIPNET) of the West Africa Network for Peace building (WANEP). Leymah's drive came from a dream she had and having strong faith, she organized Christian women to mobilize for peace; later on she incorporated Muslim women. Leymah was appointed by the members of the WIPNET to be the spokesperson because they knew that it will take a person with true faith to fight for peace with no violence protest. Leymah led the women of Liberia mass action for peace in public protests that made President Charles Taylor to meet with them and agree to take part in peace talks in ACCRA, Ghana. This only occurred after several days …show more content…
Today we shall reverse the order and use our vagina to play the role of husband.” They chased him out of the house, condemning him to exile on threats of castration. This event resulted in the king’s abdication. Ransome-Kuti`s also co-founded the West African Student’s Union (WASU), which provided support for West African students studying in London in 1925; WASU also promoted nationalist and anti-colonial movements in British West Africa. The WASU gave West Africa several leaders and activists like Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief H O Davies, Aliyi Ekineh, H A Korsah of Gold Coast, Dr Taylor-Cummings of Sierra Leone, the Alake of Abeokuta, Emir of Kano and Asantehene of Ghana. WASU played a huge role in many West African students and played a major part in the independence movements of West African countries. Funmilayo Ransome Kuti and her husband acted as agents in Nigeria raising funds and handing out pamphlets for the union. Anikulapo-Kuti embraced her Yoruba heritage and worked to restoring pride back to the colonized, telling that children at her school to registered with their African names, instead of their European names. She stopped wearing her Western style of dress and started to use the traditional wrapped cloth of the lower classed market traders. She also oversaw the successful abolishing of separate tax rates for
Have you ever wondered how women helped our country? There was and still are women who changed or change the world today. Like Shirley Muldowney,and Rose Will Monroe, or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, maybe Hillary Clinton. Some of these women changed little things and some changed big things, but they all made a difference in their own way.
The history of The Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States is a fascinating account of a group of human beings, forcibly taken from their homeland, brought to a strange new continent, and forced to endure countless inhuman atrocities. Forced into a life of involuntary servitude to white slave owners, African Americans were to face an uphill battle for many years to come. Who would face that battle? To say the fight for black civil rights "was a grassroots movement of ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary things" would be an understatement. Countless people made it their life's work to see the progression of civil rights in America. People like W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A Phillip Randolph, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others contributed to the fight although it would take ordinary people as well to lead the way in the fight for civil rights. This paper will focus on two people whose intelligence and bravery influenced future generations of civil rights organizers and crusaders. Ida B.Wells and Mary Mcleod Bethune were two African American women whose tenacity and influence would define the term "ordinary to extraordinary".
...nspired to make a change that she knew that nothing could stop her, not even her family. In a way, she seemed to want to prove that she could rise above the rest. She refused to let fear eat at her and inflict in her the weakness that poisoned her family. As a child she was a witness to too much violence and pain and much too often she could feel the hopelessness that many African Americans felt. She was set in her beliefs to make choices freely and help others like herself do so as well.
...eenth century's most important woman's rights advocates, antislavery leaders, and feminist thinkers (Lerner). "Whatever is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights - I know nothing of men's rights and women's rights; for in Christ Jesus, there is neither male nor female" (Grimke, Angelina). "Here then I plant myself. God created us equal;- he created us free agents; - he is our Lawgiver, our King, and our Judge, and to him alone is woman bound to be in subjection, and to him alone is she accountable for the use of those talents with which Her Heavenly Father has entrusted her. One is her Master even Christ" (Grimke, Sarah). As women who spoke publicly against slavery and for women's rights, they continued to inspire female activists to not give up and keep fighting for all human beings to be equal.
Her parents nurtured the background of this crusader to make her a great spokesperson. She also held positions throughout her life that allowed her to learn a lot about lynching. She was fueled by her natural drive to search for the truth.
Women, who made things possible for the African American after the Civil War, were Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. They both were born into slavery. Harriet Tubman was also called Moses, because of her good deeds. She helped free hundreds of slaves using the underground railroads, and she helped them join the Union Army. She helped nurse the wounded soldiers during the war, as well as worked as a spy. She was the first African American to win a court case and one of the first to end segregation. Tubman was famous for her bravery. Sojourner Truth is known for her famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman”. She spoke out about the rights women should be allowed to have, and that no matter the race or gender, everybody was equal. Those women made things possible for the black people during that time. They were the reason many slaves were set free when the Civil War ended.
Susan B. anthony wasn’t as big as Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Lincoln but she nothing short of inspiring. One of her greatest speeches was Women's Rights to Suffrage in 1873. She was an agent for the Anti-Slavery Society and collected petitions when she was only 17. She was also president of the Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage Organization (CUWO). She also helped with Fredrick Douglas and his situation.
Sojourner set out on her mission, to educate all people on the subject of slavery, and became a very powerful speaker. She became an influential speaker for women’s rights, as well for the abolishment of slavery all over the country. She became famous for being the first black women to speak out against slavery.
Susan Brownell Anthony was considered one of the first women activist. She fought for the abolition of slavery, African American rights, labor rights and women’s rights. Susan Anthony fought for women’s rights by speaking up and campaigning for women and serval others around the United States. She devoted her time and attention on the needs of women. Ms. Anthony helped reform the law to benefit women and improve our conditions, and encouraged the eliminations of laws that only benefited the men of our country. Susan B. Anthony helped change the life of African Americans and women in the United States with her morals and influential beliefs in equality.
In that time the women were expected to “act as peacemakers, using their influence to promote social consensus and conservative principles,” (Karen Fisher 247). This plays an interesting position to the treatment of women in Liberia. According to the Philadelphia’s Ladies ' Liberia School Association and the Rise and Decline of Northern Female Colonization Support article about how women in Liberia, “aimed to bring education to become a bigger social issue as they also stayed in domestic and private lifestyle. They set the idea of education being an important as a worldwide agreeance to be taught not only to both genders,” not only does this give women in Liberia a better opportunity but shakes the stereotype of having no political or social point unless they were backed by their husband (Karen Fisher 250). The sexism emplaced by centuries of patriarchy women had to hold behind their husbands as they were seen as submissive gave way when women begin finding ways to hold up the colonization of Liberia by supporting education. The sexism the women of Liberia faced began to shift in political and social positions as, “The Philadelphia Ladies’ Liberia School Association leaders pointed with pride to their impartiality regarding slavery and how their efforts fit unequivocally within the “separate spheres” ideology that defined a woman’s role as being domestic and private, separate from the public sphere”. (Karen Fisher 248). Women in the 19th century found it difficult to have a political stand point in society let alone to be colored, to which the need of teachers for schools in Liberia allowed women to find a foothold in bigger social issues. With the teachings of Christianity as a way
Slave Rebellions were becoming common and one of the most famous was Nat Turner’s Rebellion. Led by slave preacher Nat Turner, who “became convinced that he had been chosen by God to lead his people to freedom”, a group of almost 80 slaves murdered over 60 white men, women, and children (Slave Rebellions). Maria Stewart was the first black women reported to have delivered a public speech (Coddon). She wrote a manuscript to a black audience that encouraged them not to “kill, burn, or destroy”, but rather “improve your talents… show forth your powers of mind (Coddon).” She wanted black people to know that both God and our founding documents affirmed them as equal with other men (Coddon). Being a black woman herself, she addressed other black women stating “ O, ye daughters of Africa, awake! Awake! Arise! No longer sleep nor slumber, but distinguish yourselves. Show forth the world that ye are endowed with noble and exalted faculties (Coddon).” Stewart believed that the world wasn 't going to change for the blacks, that the blacks had to change for the world, but by changes she meant show the world their worthiness and fight for their equality. Another woman fighting for equality was Sojourner Truth. Truth, formerly known as Isabella and former slave, was singer and public speaker against slavery (Coddon). SHe was the only black delegate at the Worcester, Massachusetts women’s rights convention in 1850 (Coddon).
Harriet Tubman is a lady of belief and dignity, who saved a great number of African American males and females through her determination and love for God. People might think that what would motivate anyone to take all that pain and misery to one’s self in order to help other people. Harriet Tubman was an African American lady that took upon several roles throughout her lifetime just like a protester, philanthropist, and a Union Spy in the time of the American civil war. Her actions, not just saved many lives during these horrible time’s but at the same time gave other African Americans the confidence and courage to get up for what they have faith in and accomplish same human rights for males and females in all over the world, regardless of what their skin color or sex was.
...also were not represented, and made women understand that this inferiority dilemma that was going on every day had to stop, and that they had to revolt and fight for their own rights. Her influence combined with other women fighting and the spirit of rebellion already set in men spiked women's interests in their rights and made them want to struggle for their privileges.
... others to do what she needed them to do. Her subjects listed to what she had to say and were encouraged enough by her words not to give up and to continue their journey to freedom.