SANKOFA: Honoring Our Black Feminist Pioneers
Black Women Radicals’ Blog, “Voices in Movement,” welcomes you to engage with our March 2020 theme, Sankofa: Honoring Our Black Feminist Pioneers.
The word, Sankofa, is derived from the Akan peoples of West Africa and is specifically derived from the words: SAN (return), KO (go), FA (look, seek, and take). The word literally translates to “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” The visual symbol of Sankofa is usually shown as a bird with its head turned backward, looking as if it is taking an egg from its back. Here, this shows the critical need and importance of acknowledging and reflecting on the past and going back to our roots, so that we can fully and clearly bring the knowledge of those who came before us to the present; with hope that in the future, a better world––a liberated world––will be.
Even with so much of our history having been overlooked, lost, forgotten, and revised by the global white supremacist power structure, Sankofa urges and forces us to name, reclaim, resist, research, and uncover what was stolen (and also the things they could not steal us) and continue in the collective fight of standing in the power of our history and our truths so that we may see the expected end, for which we are struggling for.
Ultimately, Sankofa teaches us that we must look back to move forward.
This month’s theme reflects and interrogates the power and the daily call-to-action that is Sankofa by honoring our Black feminist pioneers and elders who have laid the foundation and where we build and continue to expand our praxis, politic, and political frameworks from. In reverence, in community, in truth, and in remembering, this month and every month we honor and recognize the sacrifices, the blood, the lives lost, the sweat, the tears, the hopes, the dreams, the mistakes, the leadership, the activism, and the humanity of Black women elders who have toiled and continue to toil and fight for us so we can rage on in the struggle to get free.
As we navigate political terrains, challenge and work to dismantle oppressive systems, and imagine, dream, and organize for the transformation of this world, at times, we forget those Black feminist pioneers who have come before us and are still with us. What are ways that we can continually give our flowers of thankfulness and gratitude to our Black feminist pioneers? What are ways that we can invoke, honor, and center their teachings, their works, their wisdom, their lives, and their praxis not only as political activists and leaders but beyond it––as human beings? How are we honoring our mothers, aunties, other-mothers, and the Black women and gender non-conforming and non-binary elders and pioneers who are in our biological and chosen families and friends? In such a fast-paced, technologically advanced world, how can we patiently listen, spend time, learn, know, and share their stories and carry their words, perspectives, thoughts, and even their chastisement with us? What are ways that we can truly exemplify the praxis of Sankofa––of going back and getting––by truly reverencing our Black feminist pioneers for the work they have done so we can be the Black feminists, Womanists, radicals, and the people we are today?
Throughout the month of March, Black Women Radicals will be sharing interviews with some amazing Black feminist pioneers. We thank you for engaging with us and we kindly ask you to reflect and interrogate Sankofa and think, call, listen to, and love on the Black feminist pioneers and elders in your lives.
