00:00You saw that last episode of The Over-Explainer, right?
00:03Because I shared a little something something about black women in history who fearlessly disrupt.
00:08Go watch it. I'm gonna go write captions for Beyonce while I wait.
00:14Whew, so hard to get the phone from Blue Ivy.
00:16But now that I'm back, how excited are you about seeing more black women disruptors? Let's go.
00:24Ida B. Wells is a black woman who lived her life to disrupt the system.
00:29We all know her name.
00:31Wells is a black journalist whose writing tackled racism so fiercely that she was paid for her words all over the world.
00:37But that changed once the U.S. government labeled her a race agitator and denied her passport. Haters.
00:45Let's think about that. Ida was a journalist in the 1890s.
00:49Ooh, in a 90s kind of world, I'm glad I got this girl.
00:55It wasn't enough for Ida to be an editor at Memphis' Free Speech.
00:58She had ambitions to co-own the paper.
01:01Back then, she made history as the only black woman on record to be an editor-in-chief and part owner of a major city newspaper.
01:09Wells' words mobilized people.
01:12She wrote about the brutal racism that left the black people of Memphis unprotected and unjustly served in court.
01:18And she urged them to leave.
01:20It's been reported that about 6,000 black folks packed up and did just that.
01:266,000.
01:27Ida was the first iteration of Black Lives Matter as she documented and shined a journalistic light on the widespread terror of lynching in the South in order to put a stop to the horrific practice.
01:38Ida was also one of the first black women, if not the first black woman, to live the concept of having it all.
01:45She married, had four children, and was even nursing as she traveled for her anti-lynching campaign.
01:51Just a boss.
01:52Oh, and one more thing about Miss Ida.
01:54If Susan B. Anthony was the problematic mother of women's suffrage, then Ida B. Wells was the mother of black women's suffrage.
02:01As she founded the Alpha Suffrage Club for black women in Illinois in 1913, she boldly criticized Susan B. Anthony for omitting black women and made sure we were included by joining and integrating the march in Washington, D.C. later that year.
02:14Don't wanna let us join?
02:16Well, we gon' march.
02:17And it was just announced that Ida B. Wells became the first black woman with a street named after her in Chicago.
02:23Now, Chicago, all them black people and she's the first.
02:26On to another disrupter, the incredible Fannie Lou Hamer.
02:30Fannie Lou is widely known and widely quoted for saying that she's sick and tired of being sick and tired.
02:37Girl, I feel you.
02:38So much violence took place during Hamer's life in the South before she became the activist she's remembered for.
02:43In 1961, she was given a hysterectomy by a doctor without her knowledge and consent because Mississippi had a big plan to reduce the black population.
02:54A year later, she and a group of ambitious black people attempted to register to vote.
02:59The authorities forced her to withdraw her application and she wouldn't.
03:03And that refusal cost Hamer her job on the plantation where she'd worked for almost 20 years.
03:09Equality cost Hamer her livelihood.
03:11Imagine fighting for something that means so much to your people as a whole, but it costs you everything.
03:17Would you still do it?
03:18While Hamer was traveling as a black votes organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or the SNCC,
03:24cops stopped her and the activists she was with, took them to Montgomery jail, and beat them without mercy.
03:31Just because.
03:32Kind of like how they do today.
03:34By 1964, Fannie Lou had seen so many of her fellow civil rights volunteers murdered in cold blood.
03:40She co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, basically a Democratic Party that allowed black participation to ensure that black people had a seat at the table.
03:49Or at least a voice.
03:50But like, let's be real.
03:51They didn't.
03:521964 was also the year that led a weary Hamer to the National Democratic Convention to utter these words.
03:59We are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
04:02This sentence disrupted the world and allowed everyone to bear witness to the extreme violence that black people were met with on a daily basis.
04:10In 1968, Hamer shifted her focus in gaining racial equality to financial gain for black people.
04:16Fannie Lou is known for a lot of dope stuff, but this might be the dopest.
04:20She launched the Freedom Farm Cooperative, which is a collective that purchased 640 acres of land so that black people could own and farm it.
04:29And with this bomb business, Hamer also launched a co-op store, a boutique, and a sewing business.
04:34Love and hip hop could never.
04:36Hamer even made sure that 200 low-income houses were built.
04:39Your government could never.
04:40Beyond racial equality, Hamer was all about black folks securing that bag.
04:45Another black woman who shook all the tables was Marsha P. Johnson.
04:50She was black, queer, poor, and fabulous.
04:54Darling, I want my gay rights now!
04:56As a drag queen, actress, model for Warhol, and trans activist, Marsha lived her short life out loud.
05:03Nothing comes easy for a black transgender pioneer.
05:06Johnson's life was an uphill climb of unfortunate circumstances.
05:09And despite being homeless, Marsha fought for the rights of the LGBTQ community without fear.
05:15She was at the helm of the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 when people in the LGBT community were targeted, harassed, arrested by the police.
05:24And they even faced questionable charges because police ain't have nothing on them people except the fact that they were gay.
05:30The LGBTQ community was simply tired of struggling with the police for their dignity and freedom.
05:35LGBTQ activism became a bigger movement, but white cisgender men and women were placed at the head of it, pushing the queer people of color to the margins.
05:45But Marsha didn't let this erasure stop her fight.
05:48She teamed up with her friend Sylvia Rivera, and they co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionary, or STAR.
05:55And before y'all get all crazy, transvestite was a term that Marsha and her friend used to describe themselves before transgender happened.
06:02Marsha and her friend provided services for the homeless LGBTQ communities in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
06:09Sadly, Marsha's life ended in a violent mystery. She was found in the Hudson River in 1992.
06:15And while it was labeled as suicide, Johnson supporters knew better than that.
06:19It's hard for me to believe that she would commit suicide.
06:22Marsha died a martyr of the LGBTQ community, and her legacy of disruption serves as a reminder that even if you have nothing, you have something to fight for.
06:32Not all disruptors come from a sepia-filtered photograph of the past. Some walk amongst us right now.
06:38One of those disruptors is Tarana Burke. We love Tarana Burke.
06:42The Me Too movement was designed to help underprivileged women of color dealing with rape and sexual violence.
06:48And the movement started over 10 years ago.
06:50Burke was almost erased from her own movement when Alyssa Milano shared a tweet that used Me Too to urge survivors to share their truth.
06:58But Tarana didn't let that stop her. In fact, it gave her more steam.
07:01Burke's Me Too movement has pushed a conversation around sexual assault and rape, something that's usually not even had.
07:07To something that survivors are empowered enough to confront.
07:11For her work toward this freedom, Burke has faced everything from insults to death threats.
07:15But that's proved that nothing will stop her from championing survivors.
07:19Tarana continues to serve young women of color as the senior director of Girls for Gender Equity, a youth leadership development organization working to make racial and gender justice a reality.
07:30Black women, am I right?
07:31For a Black person in America, showing anger is the quickest way to get censured, ignored, punished, or killed.
07:38And we know anger is often at the root of disruption, right alongside being sick and tired.
07:43Black women have done so much to shape this country into a place where we can all be equal.
07:48And it's the work of pioneers like these that must be lifted up to help inspire the current and the next generation to continue the Black woman's legacy of disrupting.
07:58Now let me go check and see what Blue Ivy's up to.
08:00Blue Ivy is a lot.
08:07Blue Ivy from the House.
08:12Blue Ivy by the White Ivy.
08:15Blue Ivy from the White Ivy.
08:19Blue Ivy by the White Ivy.
08:22Blue Ivy is a greatทằng for the Black woman's disability.
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