"Still I Rise !": The African-American Woman, and Her Struggle with the Jezebel and Mammy Stereotypes

You may write me down in history

With your bitter twisted lies

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise. -Maya Angelou[1]

The Black Woman, as Zora Neal Hurston states, is the "the mule of the world"[2]; bearing the impossible load of being both black and female. Racism reserved her place at the bottom of society, sexism kept her there. With the black woman's departure-the moment her feet left the coast of Africa -her true essence was disregarded, and later, erased from her identity. She no longer owned her body, her soul- sold at the auction block.

The new status of the black woman was "servant"; sexually, physically emotionally and most frightening, mentally. Through this status, the black woman acquired two dangerous stereotypes: the mammy and the jezebel. The black woman gave Academy Award deserving performances of the mammy and the jezebel for the chance at freedom, for the sake of better treatment, and later in history, to survive. Unfortunately, the oppressor's rationalization of the black woman's enslavement and his transgressions against her, were based upon stereotypes she portrayed yet didn't live.