Aging has long been a topic of contention within society as it centers around the worth of older populations. While aging can be freeing for some population groups, marginalized groups, including women, often face growing restrictions regarding autonomy and often find their self worth and self determination minimized as they age. In addition, with the views around aging, there is a loss of activism, stories, and agency for older women, especially for older Black women. In my essay, I will analyze by Corinne T. Field’s, “Old-Age Justice and Black Feminist History: Sojourner Truth’s and Harriet Tubman’s Intersectional Legacies.” In addition, I will explore the erasure of old Black womanhood and link it to previous readings we have had in the course, specifically around activist mothering that is a dominant trait of Black communities and culture. In doing so, my essay will agree with Field that it is important to look at Black feminist history and how it is applied to old age justice for Black women.

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          To begin, Field’s essay explores the overall scholarship on the category of “old Black woman” and how we understand it on a larger scale. While there are contemporary issues that Black women face today as they age, Field delves into the history of how the category of old Black woman functioned differently than that of the category of old white woman. She further explores the work of many activists in the 19th century, centering the discussion predominantly around Harriet Tubman’s and Sojourner Truth’s work in providing support and justice for elderly Black men and women; however, the latter was an important part of both women’s focus. It should be noted that she applies her research to the “importance of old age as a critical framework through which these women [Truth and Tubman] approached what we would now call intersectionality” (Field 39).

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          Although Field’s work explores the work of both Truth and Tubman, it highlights a troubling discourse that is often seen throughout Black history through the erasure of Black bodies, stories, and activism. This is shown in many ways through the essay, although it was not a primary focus of Field’s work, which highlights how this erasure is always at the heart of issues, regardless of the intersectionality of that issue. When applied to the course discussion, we have seen this erasure, which has also been done through suspect curation by the media of Black lives, as seen when Black people are murdered by private and public violence, and other forms of oppression, which is a continued issue that Black feminists address while challenging white supremist systems and ideas.

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          Although Black feminists look at the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and class, Kimberlé Crenshaw continued to expand on her work around intersectionality to identify age as a “vector that moves individuals through the intersecting structures of domination” (Field 37). By identifying the vector of age, it illustrates the failings of Black studies that focus the lens on young Black womanhood while ignoring the accomplishments and contributions of older Black women. Often, old Black women are removed from the conversation and that removal creates an erasure of not only the work they have done in the past but the work many are still doing. In fact, there is a sense within radical movements for social justice that the youth are the “vital vanguard of the future and old women [are] worn-out representatives of the past” (Field 40). Tubman’s and Truth’s history illustrate how this is not true and that older Black women are as vital to the future as they were in their youth.

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          When there is an erasure of old Black women, it is easy for there to be an erasure of the history of neglect that Black women have faced as they reach old age. This can be seen in the lives of Black womanhood in relation to capitalism—specifically as it pertains to the worth of enslaved Black girls through their fertility and how that worth is diminished as their fertility diminishes. However, old Black women face the additional work of caregiving labor, often through “forced to care” models that are predominantly exploited by white women to ensure security in their old age. This latter point shows “how slavery and domestic work structured the history of old age, and, more generally, the mechanisms of biopolitical power in industrializing America” (Field 40). This biopolitical power could not occur without the erasure of Black women’s labour as they age.

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          It is interesting to note that the determination of worth regarding fertility brings to the forefront the stereotypes of the Mammy and the Jezebel, which was identified in Ana Quiring’s essay this week, where the character of Kiki is identified as either a hypersexualized seductress or a desexualized domestic labourer (Quiring 96). Through these stereotypes, Black women, and their unique experiences through the vector of age are erased.

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          While there is a historical context to the “forced to care” model, this exploitation of Black workers, especially Black women workers, has shifted through enslavement, antebellum and the Jim Crow eras and continues today. In fact, the long-term care industry is considered a structure of institutional racism that sees women, especially Black women, and other women of colour, filling low-wage positions as long-term health workers (Field). This was further seen through Covid-19, where over 80 percent of African Americans held jobs in the “essential but underpaid” industries such as service jobs, mass transit, health care and retail, continuing the history of placing Black bodies in vulnerable positions that open them up to further harms (Field 45). Care, and exploiting Black labour, especially the labour of Black women, is both a historical and contemporary issue for Black feminists. That it is often overlooked, and Black workers are not compensated with adequate care in old age, is further evidence of the erasure I have been discussing.

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          This brings us to an important aspect of Black womanhood and their link to the “soul values” for Black people, especially around enslaved people where their self-worth, through spiritual insight, was quantified in relation to their age (Field 38). Black women as part of the soul values that allow for care outside of one’s kin creates an “interconnectedness of community work (labour), political activism, and mothering” (Rodriguez 66), known as activist mothering, where older Black women are integral. By erasing the history and the importance of Black women as they age, especially when they are “othermothers” who “pave the paths to freedom for all of us” (Rodriguez 68), which Tubman, Truth and many other Black feminist have done, we are erasing the very fibre of Black community and culture.

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          This brings us to my last point and why it is important to understand how Field’s emphasized the erasure of Black women, particularly around their accomplishments and stories, through the exploration of the work and history of both Truth and Tubman. First, this is seen in the fact that the majority of history taught around these two women are monolithic in nature. Truth is well known for her speech given at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, “Ain’t I a Women,” but her work around old age justice, including the need for housing, food, and care in old age for emancipated slaves, is not well known. The same is seen with Tubman’s work historically centered on her ties to the Underground Railroad and very little is considered on her work around old age, including her effort in raising funds for a home for aged African Americans.

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          While both women critiqued how “old age marginalized women under patriarchy” (Field 43) they also understood how race and class allowed for the exploitation by white women who gained their old age security through the labour and care of women, primarily Black women, who did not have the privileges of class and property ownership (Field 43). However, the lack of knowledge on this history illustrates that even when Black histories are remembered, they are carefully curated to fit a narrative by movements or media that erase important parts of their work.

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          In conclusion, I agree with Field that it is important to look at the historical category of old Black woman so that we can understand how this history was curated, how Black women experienced and continue to experience old age, and how white supremist systems continue to erase Black bodies, including the bodies of old Black women. As Field wrote her essay during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is abundantly clear that the work of Black feminists is as essential as ever and that by providing care, understanding and visibility to older Black women, we as a society can create a social and political environment that transforms into equality for everyone.

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Works Cited

Field, Corinne T. “Old-Age Justice and Black Feminist History: Sojourner Truth’s and Harriet Tubman’s Intersectional Legacies.” Radical History Review, vol. 2021, no. 139, Jan. 2021, pp. 37–51, doi:10.1215/01636545-8822590.

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Quiring, Ana. “Going with the Gut: Fatness and Erotic Knowledge in Black Feminist Theories of the Body.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 1, 2022, pp. 86–102, https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2022.0006.

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Rodriguez, Cheryl. “Mothering While Black: Feminist Thought on Maternal Loss, Mourning and Agency in the African Diaspora.” Transforming Anthropology, vol. 24, no. 1, 2016, pp. 61–69, https://doi.org/10.1111/traa.12059.

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