Chapter 4: The Red Owl Collaborative: Leveraging Sisterhood and Social Justice

True, the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept. And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not Whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself. (Morrison, 1971)

African American women’s presence and voice within higher education, or the academy, are not only missing, but also, are all too often misrepresented. Hull, Scott, and Smith (1993) and S. Y. Evans (2007) aptly noted that African American women’s intellectual history and space within the academy could be described as a widely known secret, because according to history, all of the women are White, all of the Blacks are men, but there are some of us who are brave. And, although there may be a new interest in the lived experiences of African American women through the current reality show or social media representations, there is a serious need to counter, and perhaps disrupt, the continual seepage of negative stereotypes and perceptions of African American women, with authentic, counter-narrative, and historical context.