Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Mcleod Bethune

She focused much of her time on women’s organizations and building a strong female community but very little on acquiring an organization for men and women as well as blacks and whites. However, this did not stop her she continued writing articles at the New York Age, lectured and organized anti-lynching societies, and traveled great distances to speak out against lynching. Wells-Barnett focused her fight for justice in another area. In the introduction of Killing Rage, she talks about how women are not listened to when it comes to talking about race and how that topic of conversation is considered to be a man’s turf. This is very important especially when you look at the work that Bethune did when it came to women’s organizations. She wrote articles against lynching which caused for her office at the newspaper to be destroyed. Socially, opposite sexes were not ready to be integrated because women were not thought of as strong-minded, or thought to be involved/ concerned with the same issues that men were fighting to achieve.

Separating black women and black men in such a way only helps with oppression.

However, even though both women were fighting for justice they were still hindered by the social limitations of sexism and racism, by the continual division of women/men and blacks/whites. The social limitations that bell hooks talks about play a large role in the efforts made by Bethune and Wells-Barnett. She was a big anti-lynching crusader. Both Bethune and Wells-Barnett were able to bring races of the same sex together but neither seemed to be able to unite races of the opposite sex. At that time had the sexes been integrated the dominating gender (men) would over power the subordinate group (women) because men don’t want to listen to the thoughts that women have on racism, a big point that bell hooks makes in her writings.