More Than A Magazine, A Movement
At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer gave an impassioned account of the violence she and others suffered while attempting to register to vote.
In August, 60 years after Hamer’s famous appeal, the delegates assembled will vote and name Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president. Harris will be standing on Hamer’s shoulders.
There’s a reason Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign is working hard to evoke nostalgia: People who are nostalgic—meaning, people who long for America’s “good old days”—were more likely to vote for Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.
Trump’s nostalgia is more than simple retrospection. Trump’s appeal isn’t just about a better economic past or a more stable society. It serves as an evocation of a time in America when women and minorities had less power.
In the fall, the Department of Education will mark 45 years since its inception, but that anniversary could be its last if Donald Trump gets his way. The federal agency is one of several he’s vowed to slash if reelected president.
Project 2025, a set of policy recommendations for a second Trump term released by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, not only supports eliminating the agency and removing LGBTQ+ protections and diversity curricula from schools but also privatizing education.
The late Faith Ringgold was a feminist, an activist, a teacher, a mother and an artist known for her innovative use of mediums, ranging from the more traditional oil on canvas, murals and mosaics, to story quilts, protest posters and soft sculptures.
(This article originally appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)
It is only fitting that Netflix chose Juneteenth to debut the Shondaland-produced documentary film, Black Barbie. The film tells the story of Black women who worked at Mattel and gave us the titular doll, showcasing the joy of freedom through play. And yet, while the film shows that today’s Black children may no longer have feelings of being “ugly” or “bad,” as demonstrated during Clark’s doll experiment, they clearly understood Black Barbie wasn’t the “real Barbie,” wasn’t the “hero” of her own story.
To that end, are we needing to ask a similar question about other fantasies: “Ain’t I a princess?”
It is not enough for Black women and girls to enter fantasy and play as “corrective” heroes. While we are as indebted to the Black women imagineers who worked on the new Disney ride, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, as we are to the Black women at Mattel for giving us Black Barbie, we are equally in need of imaginations that transcend our limited realities and revel in our most whimsical dreams.
This weekend, thousands of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) delegates will assemble in Indianapolis, and one of the most misogynistic gatherings in all of Christendom will be on display. With 13 million members, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant faith group in the country. Considered as a bellwether for white evangelicals, and enmeshed with the Republican Party, the SBC carries an outsized influence disproportionate to its numbers.
When you combine the SBC’s misogynistic, authoritarian theology, which relegates females to second-class status, with an institutional structure lacking in effective accountability systems, you wind up with an institution in which abuse can run rampant.
From the November/December 1990 issue of Ms. magazine: “What won’t subvert rap’s sexism is the actions of men; what will is women speaking in their own voice.”
(For more ground-breaking stories like this, order 50 YEARS OF Ms.: THE BEST OF THE PATHFINDING MAGAZINE THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION, Alfred A. Knopf—a collection of the most audacious, norm-breaking coverage Ms. has published.)
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine that allowed public schools to segregate students by race in 1954, it opened the possibility of radical change. But 70 years later, the promise of Brown v. Topeka Board of Education has yet to be realized.
Psychologist Margaret Beale Spencer and attorney Nancy E. Dowd, authors of Radical Brown: Keeping the Promise to America’s Children, interrogate why progress has been slow and uneven.
In Haiti, there are high rates of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality.
Founded in 2014, the Foundation for Advancement of Haitian Midwives (FAHM) partners with and supports Haitian midwives through education and outreach. Their work is urgent today while Haiti is in political turmoil, and unrelenting assaults by paramilitary groups have led to severe insecurity in the capital.
“Most people who are drawn to this want to produce safe competent, evidence-based care and to respect people’s voices, preserving the honor and dignity of every human being.”
Ahead of Beyoncé’s release of Cowboy Carter, we spoke to Black women and girls making waves in rodeo.
When Beyoncé announced the ode to her country and Southern roots, it sent some fans and naysayers into a social media frenzy. But for real-life cowgirls and rodeo veterans, it was a time to feel nothing but pride. Their wish for all the Beyoncé uproar? Those folks will finally recognize that Black women and girls reign supreme at the rodeo.