Women in Public Life, (18 July 1960) Accra, Ghana

Speech Text

[1] Mrs. Doku has been trying to educate me in the word that means Welcome, and I have lost it already!

[2] Distinguished guests from other nations who are on this platform, members of the Convention Peoples Party, all African women, women of African descent, and friends of African women and women of African descent, I feel very welcome. That’s why I wanted to learn the word first—I practised it a bit and then lost it again—but if you know that I have it in my heart, that is, perhaps, what counts most. This is for me perhaps the most exciting moment of my life. I never would have dreamed that I would have the opportunity to follow your President. It is also a very dangerous moment, for what can one say to African women and women of African descent after they’ve heard such a magnificent message this morning?

[3] I have been asked to talk about women in public life. It occurs to me that women have always been in public life, but the men have not always known it. I recall that through the ages we have sown seeds and through the ages we have reaped harvest and through all the ages we have tended babies, taken care of the home, tried to make a place for ourselves and those we love. This, too, is public life. I said to someone here in Ghana ‘What is it that you do? Are you working?’ She said ‘No—I’m just a housewife’ and I was immediately at home, because of course, in the United States, people say to me over and over again, when I say ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m just a housewife’. What is more important in the world that a housewife? Perhaps—I think I’d like a hand on that, if you don’t mind! It is the housewife who carries the major responsibility for what happens to all of us. She may come in tired from her work, from the fields, come in tired from the factory in the great industrial nations, come in weary from long travel on buses and subways, but she always comes back to the necessity of building a home, and therefore it is no accident that your leaders here in Ghana—your women leaders who have planned this conference—have talked about—are beginning to talk about, in the discussion groups that will follow this morning’s session, some of the major problems that concern the home, the family and the community.

[4] We will be talking about the legal status of women, about marriage and property, sufferage and inheritance. We will be talking about civic life and business life. We will be talking about education, and not only education for a few people, but education for everybody. We will be talking about vocational education, and we will be talking all the time, too, about health and all the problems of health. We will be talking about the things we have to do as women if all of these things are to happen, and we are going to be trying to tell each other how we can help with these matters. I think it might be exciting for us to recall at this moment that the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations met from 28th March to 14th April, discussing these same problems. Africa is in tune with the world!

[5] In addition to 18 nations, observers from some 32 national and international organisations across the world spent this time together and one sentence stands out which ought to give you great pride this morning, and which I know is inspiring to the President of this Republic. One sentence stands out— “We note with great interest the emergence of independent states in Africa. We hope they will be asking to join this Commission on the Status of Women.” This could not have happened if every one of you had not begun to do the jobs which must be done. I should like swiftly to say, that it occurs to me that a long time ago a bit of me left this coast—a bit of all American women of African descent, left this coast, taking with us the richness of Africa and bringing in to a new nation that richness. I cannot report to you that that richness was always appreciated. I can report to you that it was used. I can also report to you that in addition to the fact that it was used, deep in the hearts of those people was always the determination to be free.

[6] I am proud this morning, to tell you that I do not have to apologise to my beloved Africa for Americans of African descent of my beloved America. They, too, have been on the way to victory. Harriet Tubman comes to mind almost instantly—a slave. You see, you have an advantage—you’re in your own country—your own culture—your own land—your own resources. We were in an alien culture and even there Harriet Tubman said we must be free, and she established an underground railroad to carry women and men out of slavery into freedom. I could go on endlessly. I could mention Mary McLeod Bethune which some of you knew. She used to stand back on her heels and say, ‘The ground on which I stand is holy ground—I make it so!’ I could tell you the story of Mary Church Terrell, who at eighty-some years went on the picket line to develop freedom in the great city of Washington, our nation’s capital. I could tell you the story of endless women, but I prefer, at this particular moment, to tell you the story of the one who inspired me most, because I think, perhaps, she carried in her very being a message for this moment. She was a little old lady—I was young and very very green and very important. I’d just finished college—and not too many women were finishing college when I finished. I’m older, I hope, than I look! I was teaching in Mississippi, and the red soil out here brought tears to my eyes, because I remembered how difficult that experience was. This little old lady came up on the campus on Commencement Day, and she said to me ‘Honey, I want to see the President’. Well, I looked at her, her hands were twisted from hard work, her clothes did not look clean—I didn’t know then, you see—I thought of her in India, by the way, when somebody said to me ‘Aren’t these Indian women dirty?’ I said ‘Oh, no, they’re not dirty, they wash oftener than we do—they just don’t have New Tide with Extra Cleaning Power’!

[7] Well, my little old lady didn’t have New Tide, and so she did not look so clean in looking her over. In my ignorance, I said ‘I’m sorry, the President is busy.’ What I really meant was ‘You don’t look like the kind of person who ought to get to see the President’. That is how ignorant I was. Then she said to me, ‘Honey, is you a teacher?’ I said ‘Yes, I’m a teacher’. She said ‘If you’s a teacher I’s gonna trust you!’ When anybody offers to trust me, it tears my heart out. I like to be trusted, and so I looked again at her, and she said, reaching down in the pockets of her big skirt—a skirt which peasant women—women who work across the world wear, bound around the waist so that their hands may be free to serve the rest of us who take that service too cheaply—she said, pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket, counted some money out in my hand—it was not much—I don’t even remember it now, but the words she said I shall never forget. She said ‘Listen, I want you to give this money to the President. I worked hard for it. I washed I ironed. I scrubbed for it. I want some kid—some child—to have the chance I ain’t never had.’

[8] We’ve had that quality of women at work in our beloved United States. Always they have understood and so along with our women like this, we have had also developing our teachers, our doctors, our lawyers, our nurses. We have also had developing our judges in courts of varying kinds and I am reminded that in Ghana today we have ten M.P.s. I know just how you must feel that we have them. Mrs. Doku promised that most of them would be here. Are they here? Those who are here, you don’t mind standing do you? These who are here have stood, and let us give them a big hand. Somebody else said proudly ‘In addition we have M.P.s—we have all sorts of people arriving’ and Sunday’s paper reports first, a District Commissioner.

[9] We, too, have these kinds of developments occurring continuously in our country. We have earned it, but we, too, have not finished. You might like to know that it seems to me that women of African descent have a very special message for this moment. Our job, it seems to me, is to translate all the beauty of Africa into our culture and we have done some of it, but we need it more at this moment, for if the world is to be peaceful and free (and they’re not to be separated)—if this world is to be peaceful and free it must be by the courageous activity of all kinds of women at work. You and I understand this necessity. We bring out of Africa the spirit of the slave who sang ‘We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.’ We bring out of Africa the spirit which sang ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child’, but we also bring the spirit which said ‘We ain’t gonna study war no more’ and the emphasis is on the word ‘study.’ We may have to fight—we’re glad Ghana is in Congo this morning—we may have to fight, but we ain’t going to study war, for this is not the thing which feeds babies and feeds the minds of men.

[10] Americans of African descent can help the rest of the world by saying over and over again ‘Look, we know, because life has been hard for us, because the way over which we have come has been the way of much slaughter and many tears.’ We know, that what the world wants is food, shelter, opportunity for kids, and for mothers and for fathers to do, to become, to be and we believe our task then may be in every way possible to push harder than we ever have before for the freedom of American men and women of African descent, at the same time knowing that our struggle is not just to free ourselves any longer—our struggle is to help free the rest of the world. So you see we take some of Africa with us. We take some of all those things in America with us, and we say, too, ‘look at us because we have been pioneers, because we have built a country too’—we say to you that if we meet this moment in history, we must meet it by giving our best—the best of everything we have—and helping them give their best, for many of the people who crucify us, have not had a chance to know us.

[11] You see, we are trying to get acquainted in our country—it is not easy—there are a lot of people who do not want to know me, but they will learn—I’m a very nice person and I’m going to belong somehow. You see, our job is to move out and when somebody says something about Africa that is not helpful, we will have to correct it, even as we battle in trade unions, in P.T.As., in every kind of organisation for our own continuing development to freedom. We have no apologies. We have made progress. We have not made enough.

[12] I am proud today to take back for the kids of America—white and black—who have not heard enough of you yet—my autographed picture, because they need to know and see for themselves all that this means, and so, I salute you women of Africa and of African descent, and friends of women of Africa, and African descent, and I pray sincerely that each one of us may know that as we talk about the simple problems we are going to face right after this session, that we talk about them remembering that everybody cannot be on the picket line—everybody cannot be an M.P.—everybody cannot be in the top power structure, but every woman can be, as she takes care for her children, as she inspires them, as my old lady in Mississippi did me, as she moves them along on all of the waves of life—we can be as much a part of this marching movement to victory as anybody else. This means that together, our trained people—and you have got a sentence in your paper today about this new District Commissioner—it says that when some people get educated they get ‘snobby’. Well, we have got to bring the ‘snobbies’ and the others altogether to do a job for all of us, using what they have, using it freely and honestly, and using the experience of every single woman, whether she be in a factory or back in the bush somewhere. This is our job.

[13] May we today achieve our goals by doing the little jobs which the Convention has assigned us.

‘God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way,
Keep us for ever, in Thy path, we pray,
Lest we stray from the places, Our God,
Where we met Thee.
Lest, drunk with the wine of the world,
We forget Thee.’

[14] Victory can be ours in ’60, even.