Beer Summit for Black Woman?

Will the Black woman who was removed from Claire McCaskill’s town hall meeting on health care get a “beer summit” at the White House? Turns out she was reacting after a white woman snatched a poster of Rosa Parks out of her hand. The white woman then ripped up the poster. After the Black woman reacted, she was quickly removed from the town hall meeting. According to MSNBC, the white woman was not. McCaskill tries to explain what happened to the crowd, but quickly aborts that attempt as boos erupt from the audience.

Here’s the video–notice the freeze frame of the “angry Black woman.”

Obama, hello?

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Black Women & the Radical Tradition-this Saturday!

If you’ll be in New York, or want a very good excuse to come to the City, check out the Brooklyn College for Worker Education sponsored conference on black women and radicalism. The registration fee is crazy, but I’m not convinced that one might not be able to tip in un-noticed—but you didn’t hear that from me.

Speakers include: Angela Davis, Manning Marable, Genna Rae McNeil, Leith Mullings, Erik McDuffie, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Gerald Horne, Frances Fox Piven, Mary Louise Patterson, Carole Boyce Davies, Ericka Huggins, Eileen Boris, Premilla Nadasen, Jeanne Theoharis. Black women’s activism, both historic and contemporary, in a range of movements will be discussed and debated. The site details and conference schedule are here.

I’ll be adding some trans-Atlanticness to the proceedings by presenting on Olive Morris. It’s the same plenary as Carole Boyce Davies’ work on the fabulosity that is Claudia Jones, as well Erik McDuffie who is doing great new work on black American Communist women.

Radical bookstore, Bluestockings will be on hand selling books after the conference. Credit crunch be damned! I’m glad to see a non-mainstream bookstore surviving and look forward to stocking up with them.

Move over Hillary & Barack: it’s Shirley!

If you’ve not seen the fab documentary Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed and you’re in London this Wednesday (29 October, 4pm), get thee to King’s College London. The American Studies Department is screening the film about Shirley Chisholm‘s 1972 presidential campaign.

The film is followed by  a discussion on race, gender and the presidential race. On hand will be Diane Abbott who is the first black woman member of the House of Commons. Who better to comment on the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress?

While Shirley wasn’t the first black woman to run for President (Charlene Mitchell ran for the Communist Party in ’64), she’s so sassum-frassum-awesome that we really should start a Shirley Chisholm Day!