She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power – 1619 to 1969

Here is an author interview for #28DaysofBWS with Gloria J. Browne-Marshall. Browne-Marshall is the author of the criminology and justice studies book, She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power – 1619 to 1969. Buy your copy of She Took Justice here! This interview has been edited for clarity.

[Chiante Perges] So, let’s go ahead and get started with She Took Justice. Oh, my goodness! Amazing! I'd have to say, that is so amazing, that you're able to write a book that covers such an extensive period of time. So, I was really wowed and amazed by that. So definitely, I wanted to just let you know that off the bat. I'm also a new independent scholar. So, I’m so excited. The first thing that I did want to know was what was your inspiration for She Took Justice?  

[Gloria Browne-Marshall] Well, first, thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it. This is one of my first interviews on She Took Justice. So, this will be one that I will remember for a very long time. And She Took Justice began because I wrote a book prior to this, Race, Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present. And when I wrote that book, I saw all these Black women that I'm looking at from 1600s, up to the present. And I said I am going to write another book that's going to just focus on these Black women I found during my research on my book titled, Race, Law, and American Society. Then I also saw this overlap of other people, and I said, “Oh, my goodness, there are so many other books in here that I can write about.” So, I write about legal history and racial justice. And so, looking at these Black  women, I said, “They are so powerful, they are so fierce.” And so, in this time period of struggling to get this book done, other books came up, I'm also a playwright, and so other plays came up and other things.  These fierce women kept tapping me on my shoulder going, “Excuse me, I think my name needs to be in people's minds and on their lips. So, therefore do not forget me.” So, I'm talking about not just a labor of love, but part of it was a labor of fear because these Black women wanted their stories told. They stayed on me, they stayed in my mind. They said, “you're going to write about us people need to know about us.” And not just that, not just because their fears and their histories have not been told in full, but because there are so many other women just like them. And there's so many women today that need to connect with the women in She Took Justice, to understand that we didn't become what we are today. We were always this. And that's why I begin with Queen Nzinga.

 CP: Yes!

GBM: People need to know we were always this. So that you know you have it in your DNA, to do and be the things you have, to be and do, and stop playing around. As Sojourner Truth tells us, “Go ahead and get to work.”

 CP: And that is so amazing. Like you said, I noticed that you are also a playwright, as well as legal and all these great roles that you have. And I selfishly thought of myself, because I started off as a creative writer. And then I fell into Black women's Studies, and the reason was [that], I started to write essays and I’m researching. I'm like, “Where is everybody? We're here, I'm here. Where is everyone?” And that just had me to keep going and keep going. And so, integrating creative with the academic is something that I'm always like, [When] someone says, pick this [or] pick that.” No, I’m everything. So, I do love that you touched on that point because I feel that that is something that as Black women, you feel like, “What? Where are we? We're here.”

 GBM: In so many women in the 1800s, we're also poets and public speakers, and they were writers of nonfiction, and they were writers of their own stories. And so, we've always been this. That's why Phyllis Wheatley is in my book because the law played such an intricate and important role in the tools of oppression. And then, but we've always from the 1600s also used the law to try to fight against oppression. That's not new either. So, when we start thinking about all we came to the table with in the 21st century, there is a reason why we can have a Kamala Harris, that we can have a Michelle Obama, and so many other leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus. And in industry, so many Black female mayors, and the heads of corporations, we can have all that as presidents of colleges and universities, and as athletes, and spokespeople. We can have all of this because we were always this. And that's why She Took Justice, because the opportunities weren't handed to us. We banged on the door, kicked the door, found the back screen was unlocked, did whatever we had to do to get to where the opportunities were. And that's the only major difference between those women who were working from can't see to can't see; they had all the same intellect as they were being raped and bred. All the same passions, all the same creativity we have today. So, I want you to always make sure that you follow not just your intellectual, but your creative in the mixture of those two. And we can talk about more of that later. Because there's always somebody telling you that you have to choose between the two.

 CP: And I can’t.

 GBM: You can’t!

 CP: It's me. It's who I am. It's interesting that you brought up Phyllis Wheatley. I started off as a poet. So, studying her was one of the first things that I did on my own, and which was kind of not all that great [that it wasn’t studied]. But what were some other women that you included in She Took Justice that you were particularly excited about to write about?

 GBM: Well, as I told you, Queen Nzinga was someone who entranced me so much that I went to Angola in 2019, to follow her trail to study her more. There is a huge statue of Queen Nzinga, that I have in my book. I'm standing in front of it, and you see how small I am, and I'm a tall person. And she was just a diplomat, a warrior queen, she was a leader. She was also suspected of murdering her brother who was not up to the task of negotiating with the Portuguese. She was a leader of men and women, a guerrilla fighter, she was so feared by the Portuguese that when they said her name, they would run. And she took no prisoners, meaning that she killed for her freedom. And people need to know that there were people in Africa who fought the Europeans to stop the slave trade, and she was one of them. She also, in 1622, negotiated a peace treaty with the governor who was sent to govern Angola. Yes, she negotiated a peace treaty. And this is how fierce she was, when she arrived to negotiate that peace treaty in Luanda, Angola, they didn't give her a chair. So, we have the governor there. We have his followers, and his, you know, go-to man, his lieutenants seated, and she stands there with her entourage of her servants, who are women. And there's no chair, there's a mat on the floor for her to sit on because they don't think she's worthy of being seated. And so, she goes, [hand clap] and with the clap of her hand, her servant girls come and know exactly what to do. They kneel down on all fours, and her chair becomes their backs. And she sits there on those [women’s] backs and negotiates that treaty with dignity. And so, we're talking about 1622. Fierce. We talk about 1619, and the African women who were on the ship that arrived in August of 1619, into the Virginia colony, that becomes a cornerstone of America. And that's in August, but that month before in July, is when the House of Burgesses forms the first legal representative group. So, in that one summer of 1619, you have the perfect storm of law and the arrival of Africans into a colony that was just formed in 1607. So, it hasn't even been 20 years that they formed the colony. When we talk about diversity in this country, how dare they say “we're working on diversity;” we had diversity then. We had the English, the Irish, the Scottish, the Dutch, the Native American, and the African all in one place, in 1619, which was a year before the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts. Yes, we were here before the Mayflower. So, when we start thinking about all of this history, we realize that's just the beginning point. And from there, we had to navigate language, the economy, the culture, the temperatures, the labor, intellectual as well as physical labor. And yet, we still had Mary and Anthony Johnson, the first married African couple there in the colony, with servants of their own African and white servants of their own in the 1600’s, in Virginia. All of this is happening, that’s part of American history, and in this country that commits and omits African history, we see that is done so in such a horrific and brutal way to omit all of that happening. That we survived being kidnapped, twice, taken to the English colony, learning all those things, navigating all those things, and then owning land, and having farms and having servants just to be run out of the colony by these laws. And that's why I tell the story of these Black women through the prism of law, because law has been the most heinous tool used outside of violence. So, law and violence together, have undermined Black progress from the very beginning, and these women despite all of that continue to fight.

CP: That is so amazing, and so, so true. I believe about two years ago; I took a course on the BLM movement. I was interested; I wanted to see what the course is about. It was amazing. And what struck me the most was law, the legality, and how the course didn't--it only went so far back, but it kept me reeling and wondering, how far back does this go with Black women and law and activism? And this book is right on time for the climate that we're experiencing now, which we've all experienced, actually. But it's right on time. Speaking for myself, when it comes to law---I'm here and there, but at the same time, I also have a broad scope of it. But there's so many of my peers and associates who, when it comes to our rights and our law, and things that are for us, and how it was used against us, it's-- just the knowledge is just not there. It's just not something that most Black women or Black people that I've been around actually go into really, law and the political sciences. It's mostly just they just kind of step away from it. And I'm not sure as to why. So, I believe that this book will be definitely something that is needed, it's needed.

 GBM: Well, I thank you, because that's one of the things that I really push. I teach constitutional law. I really enjoy teaching constitutional law and I teach race and law. And once you see that we live in the most litigious nation on the planet, seriously. We have more lawyers, more laws, more lawsuits, more judges than any other country. We have a Constitution that we export around the world that we refer to all the time, our Constitution is what the President swears that he will protect-- it’s the US Constitution. That is the inauguration; the lines are in the Constitution itself. And so, to have all of that around law, and yet have a country where people really don't read the Constitution at all. Even the lawyers don't read the whole Constitution, they just read certain sections from it. Yes, you can go all the way through law school and never read the entire constitution, and it's not that long a document. So, to have law and violence play such a brutal role and have such power in our lives. Yet, we ignore the power of violence and we don't study law. You don't have to be a lawyer to see how law affects our lives. That's why when I wrote my first book, Race, Law and American Society: 1607 to Present, I wanted people to actually read the laws. Many people, you know, said, “Oh, you just have a lot of laws here.” I was like, “No, I have it very excessively written as is this book.” Once people look at law itself, not the way that somebody wants to interpret it, I said, “No, you read the laws that were created.” Because a lot of these laws against Black women and against Black people, you know, generally were written in a way that are so blatant, and so horrific, and just sadistic that it was thought that no one would ever read them again. They passed such horrific laws. It was thought we would never read as Black people, so they didn't care what we thought. And so, when you read laws, about 1669, that said, it would not be a felony to kill an African. [In] 1669, that's how early they started killing us without having any criminal consequence, and so that's why it can be so easily done now because it started so early. When you look at 1680, the law in Virginia stated that there is no right of self-defense for an African. That you are not even allowed to raise your hand to a white person, or it's thirty lashes on the bareback, well laid-on. And if they resist, you know, the work that you're being forced to do, they could be killed. Where did they put this? They posted it on the front door of the church because people also don't look at the role religion played in this. Religion played a role from the very beginning in the 1400s and 1500s--that's what the impetus of the Portuguese was like, “Okay, we're going to go explore.” So, when you look at Angola, you see, you have Brazil on one side that the Portuguese had already taken over, you go straight across the Atlantic, and you find and Angola. It's like they sat across right across the Atlantic, went to Africa, and then they went back. The first time they went just like, “Oh, we're trying to figure out what's going on.” The second time is because the Pope said that you can denounce, demean, and control into servants, anyone who is a heathen, and then use what you gain from them for the building of the Empires. And so that's why when the church gave the green light, to go into Africa, you know, Portuguese, you know, the Netherlands, Spain, France, and then England--all swept in there with the idea of profit and greed. So, when I teach about slavery, I teach slavery as greed. Because once you teach it as greed, and that the law is used, in order to allow this greed, then people who were resistant were murdered, and then violence is used to uphold the greed, and you see what's still going on today. And once you teach it as greed people better understand it.

 CP: That's very true. Very true. And that's a great point that you brought up about law and religion. I've always--the laws I've read, the things I've came across, there were always to me, I felt the mix of the language. I felt at the time, and I'm younger, so “Am I, the person that realizes that this is almost one and two together? And do people even realize this?” And so, I've always figured that that was just a way to just further greed, control or anything else that the law was written for during that time.

 GBM: Yes, and the first laws in the colony were laws based in religion. So, the first laws that people knew they were based in religion, and it was the way in which people could control others because it took a very long time, before King James. That's the king who founded, in the name of King James, the Virginia colony and that's why it's the James River, and Jamestown is the settlement in Virginia— the idea that King James would allow the King James Version of the Bible, that is the same King James. And so, then you'd see that same King James is the one that gave the charter to allow slavery to go, you know, deeply into Africa. So, so you see, now it's like they read the Bible, they study the Bible, and yet, there's something also called the slaveholder’s Bible. And this is a Bible which they've taken out all the places within the Bible itself that speak to, you know, throwing off the shackles. Anything that speaks to rising up that questions bondage, they took out of the Bible and created a slaveholders Bible. So, you see the role that religion plays, and that's another book I really want to work on. If I was going to study something else, just to go into a deep, deep-dive study of it, it would be race, law, and religion.

 CP: Yes! I think the first book that really got me into the history part of us, and me saying, “Hey, I think I'm a historian now,” I actually found this book in a thrift store. And it was African American Religion, like the history of the entire thing. And it was written very, just very factual, like it is what it is. And I'm just like, “This is crazy! First, it's in the thrift store, for $1. And just know how that funnels, that's like the kick start to everything I feel [connects] with Black women and men, just our people in general. Like religion, to me, it's just where it all just kind of becomes muddled some way. I also noticed that you spoke [of] gender. And that's what I study as Black women’s sexuality and gender. I was wondering, with the legality concerning Black women and gender and the things going on in the trans community, which are so awful, I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Are there any places in the book that particularly speak upon Black women and gender?

 GBM: Well, what I try to do is to touch on different women in history, who then will allow us to see how we can better empower ourselves wherever we stand. Because there's so many different types of Black women, there are so many different positions, so many different issues that have been given to us that we're wrestling with. Everything from the education and whether or not once one gets educated, that makes them better than her sister, or the criminal justice system. How the criminal justice system has been there is undermining our progress the whole time. Our reproductive health, and how it was called, you know, a “Mississippi Appendectomy” in which Black women… even someone as fierce as Fannie Lou Hamer, the voting rights advocate, who was beaten in jail because she was registering people to vote in Mississippi. She found out later when she tried so hard to have children that she had been given a hysterectomy and didn't even know it. You know, there are so many things that deal with our gender. I mean, Henrietta Lacks whose cancer cells were being used and replicated again and again, their family didn't even know it. They'd gone all the way to the moon and back, and they had no idea that her body had been violated in this way. So, when you're we're thinking about whether or not a person is trans or whether or not a woman is trying to escape sexual abuse. I mean, Ruby McCollom is another person in my book. In Florida, Ruby McCollom walked into a white doctor's office one day and shoots him dead. This Black woman shoots him dead. Yes, in Live Oak, Florida. Later on, there's a trial, come to find out this whole issue of the concubine, how the Black woman who was enslaved was being bred, raped repeatedly, and had no right of self-defense, and that's the Celia case, of course. Celia is the case many people should know in the 1850s because she beat her white slaveholder to death with a log in his cabin. Then chopped his body up, burned the pieces, and buried them and got away with murder until we find out the real story. So from the slaveholder’s standpoint, “how dare this Black woman kill a white man?” From the slave woman standpoint, this enslaved girl at fourteen had been purchased to be a concubine. So she was taken to this Missouri farm and she was raped on the way there just in case she didn't know what she was there for. So now think about this. The Black woman is being worked all day long, and at night she's being raped, having this man's baby like so many others did, and you know, without any right of self-defense. So, Celia falls in love with one of the Black men who's enslaved on that farm and in Missouri, and the Black man says, “it's either him or me.” Everybody knows what this man is doing, and probably, that these slaveholders’ two daughters know as well, but it’s an open secret. And that's what concubines become; he has built her a little cabin in the back that he can sneak off to at night. So that was the night he sneaked off and that was also the night she decided to tell him no. Celia picks up that log on the fireplace and hits him again and again and again when he comes to rape her. She said, “I'm just tired. I told him no.” She told her side of the story, but back then, no person of color had a right to testify in court. So, Celia had no right to tell her story on the witness stand when they tried her for murder. She had no right to self-defense; a white woman would have had a right to self-defense, but Celia didn't. When you start thinking about concubinage, and the fact that they hanged her for his murder. Then, we get to Ruby McCollom, in the 1950s. She shoots dead this white doctor who’s also a politician, because he had been using her as a concubine. Even though she was a Black woman who was married to a Black man, but back then no Black men really stood up or could stand up, because he would be murdered himself. So, she ends up giving birth to this baby of his, and everyone can see that's not their child. And so, there's now another trial, she's not allowed to testify. Now what has happened in 100 years, nothing.

 GBM: Slavery has ended, yes, but the concubinage continues. And so that's why when you start to read these stories, and you see the body of the Black woman has rarely been her own. You can connect that to what's going on today, with the failure of the medical system to actually care for pregnant Black women, and how we have this high mortality rate of Black women in childbirth and the children. And you see, once again, it carries over, and we learned these lessons. We also have of course, as I said before, North Carolina, where Black girls and women were being told if they didn't have a hysterectomy, then they couldn't get public services. So, whether or not it’s trans rights, abortion rights, reproductive rights, maternity rights, there is this ongoing battle over the Black woman’s body. And it’s this idea that it’s not supposed to belong to her. It's supposed to belong to the world, because the Black woman’s body built this country. It was her children being born, forced and unforced, that built this country. And so that's why it's so important for us to read these stories and realize whether or not it's education or politics, or being a lawyer or a judge, trying to advance yourself in any way, that these stories are stories that can inspire but also enlighten us as to our path that's gotten us to this point.

 CP: Yes, I definitely agree. As you know, the BWSA, we are so new and it’s so exciting. It's a community, which was the main reason that drew me to the BWSA. Because as a college student from then to now, I always felt that it was hard to find that. But what I do like about the BWSA is just the promotion of Black Women’s Studies across the board. There is no, “oh, it's this or it’s that” because it all connects, it all intersects, as you were saying. So, as a new scholar, slash historian, slash all these other things that I am, what advice would you give to the new BWSA members, and to the ones that are still in grad school and just kind of picking their way, trying to figure out what kind of role they're going to take in the [field] of Black Women’s Studies.

 GBM: Well, I remember when I first heard about this a few years ago, and I was like, “I really like this group, I want to join this group!” And if I didn't have so many things going on, I would probably become even more involved. I love the Wednesdays in which we just write during Wednesday afternoon from twelve to two, I really enjoy that as well. I like the openness that is about any aspects of Black Women's Studies. But I would also say for people who are new scholars, just starting that path is that one: publish, publish, publish. When I say publish, publish, publish, I remember when people said to me, “Oh, publish or perish” when I first started my academic life. But they said, “Oh, and you got to do it this way. You got to do it that way.” Then so many people got intimidated out of writing, because they felt the pressure that it had to be written a certain way, and it had to be in certain journals, and these journals had to be ranked. I say, you write what you like. Steve Biko said that, and I say it too, “write what you like.” Because if you get weighed down by the pressure of feeling like you have to write what somebody else is going to approve of— or as Tony Morrison used to say, “the white man on your shoulder looking over everything you say—” once you pop him off your shoulder, and you realize that you're going to write what you like with passion, you're going to even [write] when you have a cold, when you have cramps, when you don’t want to do this. Yes, because we are women, when you don't want to do this, you will continue to do it because you have a passion for the subject. So that passion then will push you forward. And here's the other thing that I did, I always kept my other life, my creative life. I always kept that going as an outlet for advocacy, for my creative thinking, for my creative thought. And so even when I first interviewed for my job, and they were saying, “Oh, you know, you're gonna have to publish this and do that.” I was like, “Okay, that's right.” And always make sure you find out what is it that you want? What is the expectation? Because that's what I needed to find out, what do you want me to do. And then of course, because we're Black women, we have to do twice as much, but at least you know what's being expected. So, you give them that, but you don't take away from yourself. Because that outlet that you have for creativity is going to keep you going. You don't want all that to build up inside and you feel resentment toward your education; that is not feeding your spirit. So, you keep that spirit fed, you continue to go into these different rooms, and that's what I do. You know, I continue to go into different rooms, I continue to work with different groups, and I continue my advocacy, I do my creativity. I mean, one of the poems that I wrote is “White Privilege,” because I was tired of people talking about white privilege, “excuse my white privilege, excuse my white privilege.” I was like, white privilege is murder. White privilege is based in murder. Nobody gave you privilege. White people got privilege, because they killed enough people to send a message that “if you didn't let me go first, I will kill you.” When I hear people talk about white privilege, it's like, let me just set you straight about your privilege. Your privilege is based in murder. Nobody acquiesced and gave you anything to put you ahead of somebody else. Nobody thinks you're smarter than they are. You know, you've killed enough people to make folks say you are, but that doesn't mean you are. So those levels of advocacy, figure out where you can put that advocacy as well. You know, so don't let yourself—I say that I'm a deeply rooted person and my roots have like an ongoing spread. Then it comes up into one trunk, and then goes into many limbs. So that could be poetry. It could be plays, screenplays, novels, my nonfiction books, it could be speaking, it could be my civil rights work. It could be my work in law. It could be anywhere, but it's all deeply rooted. And once you're deeply rooted as you are, you'll find that you can bend with the flow. But you know that there's more to you. There's below ground that people don't see, and you don't have to explain everything to anybody, anyway.

 CP: Great, wow! Yes, I say that now, but that last line you just said, it took me years to get to that point, like years. Way, way, past the regular adult age where you should come to that realization, but as Black women in academia, it's something you do have to deal with. And I do like the mirror of creativity, both of them meshing together. I believe the first book that I've ever read in grad school that impacted me greatly was Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. It was in my thesis, I've used it several times in several papers because I do feel that it's like you were saying— the roots and the gardens and everything— all that creativity is there. But we had to do other things, our ancestors, my great grandmothers, had to do other things. The gardening was there, the cooking was there. But that outlet was there because in addition to all the things that we're dealing with, it's that mental wellness that you have to keep together. So, I love that response. Thank you.

 GBM: If you go into academia, if you don't, just remember these books or plays or songs are part of your legacy. It's never too soon to begin your legacy. And that's, that's something that's so very important, because the same way you were able to read her book, that book is part of her legacy now that lives in you and your work. And that's why this becomes so important for you to write what you write. And it always troubles my mind when I see scholars who don't get tenure or are frightened out of writing. Because they're like, they're so afraid that it's not going to be perfect. Only God, Allah, Buddha, whomever you want to say is your holiest of holy, is perfect. So, you write the best you can, and you get it done, and you don't let people intimidate you out of your writing. Because the one thing that happens, especially, and I've seen this happen so many times with scholars of color, they won't write it all. I've seen it happen. I've seen people graduate from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, yes, I've seen it happen, I know them. They are too afraid to write because they're afraid of being judged on what they write, and how well they write. Whether or not what they've written is going to be in a particular journal, and how people are going to judge it. Once your head starts going in those directions, then it's so difficult just to sit down and put words on a page, and you can't psych yourself out like that. So, there have been times in which, just like for this book, when I was finishing it, what I needed to do, I needed to listen to music from the ’70s. That's what I did. I listened to music from the ’70s. I had it on the entire time when I was studying for the bar, I listened to Ragtime because my uncle actually used to play music. And so, whatever it is that you need. When I was going through something, I ran the New York Marathon. I did that by actually listening to the music, the soundtrack from Hidden Figures. I must have watched the movie Hidden Figures probably about 40 times.

 CP: Wow, whatever you can do!

 GBM: Yes, whatever you can do. Especially Hidden Figures with the Black women, what they had to go through, and how brilliant they were in this time period. Whatever it takes: music, creativity, read a poem before you go to bed. It will open up that creative channel when you wake up the next morning. Have something on— if it’s gospel, I listen to Mahalia Jackson, I'm listening to Mary Mary, I will do whatever it takes to put myself in the right frame of mind to overcome all of this oppression that's out there. That's telling us all the time that we cannot. And even when they don't say the words out loud it’s unspoken, that you're in places you're not supposed to be, you're doing things you're not supposed to do. I mean, I actually go on CNBC.

 GBM: But, so many times I do interviews on the US Supreme Court, for MSNBC, for CNN, and even for French television— it's not in French, it’s in English— and other news networks. I'm doing this on the Supreme Court on constitutional law. And I think to myself, “who might be looking at me?” Some little girl, some little Black girl, may be looking at me saying, “I want to be able to do something like that in law or on the Constitution.” You know, somebody who's grown may be looking like “I never thought that a Black woman would be telling me about the US Constitution and about the Supreme Court.” So, what you put out there you never know, there might be a little you out there watching or reading that book like you read Alice Walker's book. So, I say to all young scholars and people who are new to the profession, or you know, independent scholars, or those attached to universities, please leave your mark.

CP: Yes!

 GBM: The reason why I was able to write about these women in my book is because they left a mark for me to follow.

 CP: Good! I like that. I keep that in mind, I will definitely keep that in mind. Make that mark, something. My first poetry book was in a set that my mother gave me, with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, all Maya Angelou’s books. And at the time, she knew I wrote, I was about eight. I was eight when I started. And she said, “Okay, well I’m just going to get her this.” And I still have those books. It was a mark that my mom gave me that I didn't even realize at the time, and I go back, and I will read a poem of hers or two, she has so many great ones. And it didn't even dawn on me when I got older. “Wow, I'm still going back to this old book that my mom gave me over 25 years ago.” I thank you so much for allowing us to interview you, and volunteering to give information on She Took Justice. I am grateful that you allowed us to speak with you today.

 GBM: Well, I thank you for having me. And She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power, I hope is a book that people will read that they'll see there are so many stories in there of Black women who have overcome. Black women, like Elizabeth Freeman, who was named Mum Bett, who walked into a lawyer's office in the 1780s and said, “I'm suing for my freedom.” And he was her lawyer, this white lawyer, and brought this lawsuit. That [was] 100 years before we had Brown v. Board of Education. We had Roberts v. Boston where a little Black girl and her father were represented by a Black lawyer in the 1850s. We need to know that the first Black woman lawyer was in 1872, who graduated from Howard Law School. We need, yes, we need to know about all these Black women who were suffragettes. And that Sojourner Truth said, and I start my book out with these words, “If a woman wants rights more than she got, then she needs to just take them and not be talking about it.”

 CP: That was so correct. That was the best line. Take it from the title itself, She Took Justice.

 GBM: Yes, She Took Justice.

 CP: She didn't wait on it, she took it! [laughter] And activism, and we all do have it in us whether we know it or not. So thank you so much. I am very grateful that you allowed us to speak with you today and gave some advice to our [upcoming] scholars.

 GBM: Whether or not they're young, young at heart, or young to the profession. I wish them all well. And you in particular.

 CP: Thank you so much. Thank you. It was great speaking to you.

GBM: Thank you.