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Davis chapter 3

Chapter 3 of Angela Davis’ Women,Race & Class gave great insight on the origin of the women’s rights movement, and shows us how intertwined it was with the abolitionist movement. Davis references Sojourner Truth and her poem, “Ain’t I a Woman”, to show that even within a marginalized group, there is a hierarchy that is put in place due to your gender, race and class.

The term “double oppression” was used in reference to the women who worked, and had to deal with the hardships of being a woman and a worker. Triple oppression is a more suitable term to describe Truth’s predicament. Truth being a black woman who was a former slave puts her in the marginalized sections of gender, race and class. Davis emphasized that these groups we are placed in impacts our perception of issues and the motives behind our fight against it. Black women were excluded from the discussion on women’s rights. They were not mentioned at the Seneca Falls meeting at all. Sojourner’s voice was needed in order to show how women who share her identities as poor and black experience oppression. In Truth’s poem she speaks on how women are physically stronger than they are credited for, and she goes against the notion that male supremacy was apart of the Christian faith. These arguments are due to her identity as a woman. She then goes on to condemn the white women who excluded the black woman’s narrative from this movement. She does this because of her more specific identity as a black woman. She reminds everyone that black women are women too, and deserve to be apart of the discussion and fight. Charlotte Woodward who was a working class white woman got involved in this movement because of her identity as a lower class white woman looking for better work conditions. Though Truth and Woodward are both women, they experienced womanhood differently. A principal who was an abolitionist and a woman didn’t want black girls attending her school. Though she shared the same sex as these girls, there was a difference between them. There was a classification within a classification that couldn’t be ignored. Davis’ reference to Truth highlights this.