httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uon9CcoHgwA

On the last Friday of Women’s Her-story Month, I want to honor black women who are what I call “border-crossers.” Border crossing is centered in the margins and “what moves people” . . . the fluid transmissions and the mergers. It comes out of womanism and black feminism. It comes out the frustration with borders and boundaries. It comes out of the need to build sustained and people-centered movements.It comes out of collective and communal spiritual desperation. It comes out of the need to meet people where they are. It comes out the power of language to include or to exclude. It comes out the need to say that black women cross borders every day . . . from mother to wife to daughter to cook to lover to worker. It comes out the belief that cyber-space and new media can help with crossing borders. It comes out the power of interdependence.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNw-eUz51ek

It comes out the realization that without people of faith and justice all social movement work is in vain. It comes out the history of ancestral border crossers . . . Ella Baker . . . Sojourner Truth . . . Prathia Hall. It comes out the realization as Jacqui Alexander wrote that “crossings” are never final and that in of itself necessitates life.

Also, border-crossers know that the power of movements is not about telling people what should move them or what should move them to protest, but it is about them respecting and valuing where people are and creating a myriad of spaces where they can insert their lived experiences in order to build a “sustained” social movement demonstrating that the power of movements is about what moves people.

So, today on the last Friday of Women’s Her-story Month, I honor black women who are border-crossers. Do you know any black women who are border-crossers?