Black-Eyed Blues Connections: Teaching Black Women

This is the first in a series of three segments in which this article will appear. The second half of the text will appear in the Winter 1977 issue and thlJ accompanying bibliography in the Spring 1977 issue.] In Detroit, I am at the Downtown YWCA. Rooms on the upper floors are used by Wayne County Community College as learning centers. It is 10 a.m. and I am convening an introductory black studies class for women on Community and Identity. The 22 women who appear are all on their way from somewhere to something. This is a breather in their day. They range in age from 19 to 55. They all have been pregnant more than once and have made various decisions about abortion, adoption, monogamy, custody and sterilization. Some are great-grandmothers. A few have their children along. They are a cross-section of hundreds of black women I have known and learned from in the past 15 years, inside the movement and outside of it