Unknown Speaker  00:00
many talents and roles. Joe Jackson, Nick Cave is best known within the feminist community as a progressive ardent feminist, an organizer and a coalition builder. She is the founder and chair of the National Coalition of 100 black women, which has grown since its birth in 1981. To a membership of 7000 women in 25 states. The coalition has served as a leadership forum for professional women, as a conduit for articulating black women's interests to significant corporate and political actors. And as a creator of programs and resources for developing the leadership. I'm sorry, the leadership potential of young African American women. Joe Jackson, a cave speaks her mind even when what's on her mind is not universally popular. I guess she's not running for the president, the United States. For example, the National Coalition of 100 black women was one of the first and largest black women's organizations to publicly support Anita Hill and Jewel Jackson McCabe has been a leader among African American women and being critical of Louis Farrakhan and the Million Man March. As if all this were not enough, Miss McCabe also holds down more than one day job. She is president of jewel Jackson, McCabe Associates, a management consulting firm specializing in communications. She sits on a variety of corporate boards and the boards of several institutions of higher education, including her alma mater, Bard College, a good place but not to be confused with Barnard College. She has been appointed to a number of government Commission's including the New York State Council on fiscal and economic priorities, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, and she's also been the chair of New York State's Job Training Partnership Council. Her efforts to build communications between public and private sectors and among different groups of people is the consistent theme of all her work, along with a commitment to expanding opportunities and equality. As she'll talk about today, Ms. McCabe is committed to finding ways to cross boundaries, and form new creative coalition's in pursuit of those goals. Her talk today is entitled boundary crossing leadership, a 21st century reality. Please welcome Joe Jackson, McCabe.

Unknown Speaker  02:17
Thank you, Lesley. Um, first thing, I'm going to put this speech away and talk to you. Because you will have probably demonstrated the greatest tenacity that I've known in a long time. Because I was with my father, who is a wonderful African American man who did produce an African American female feminist before I came over, and he said, I'm jewel, do you think he was going to show up? And I said, Well, sweetie, I've talked to 5000. And I've talked to five, whatever it is, I've got some kind of message I'd like to articulate. I am. Always listen to the person who is introducing me, because my resume sort of is very strange, because I was a woman who always wanted to be able to dance on many sets, and have felt sort of frustrated from time to time, and not being able to inspire enough women to want to take on the challenge of dancing on many sets of understanding what the games are, and how to play them in order to be empowered in order to make a difference in the lives of women and especially young girls and the young generation of feminists who will be coming forward. Mine was an exciting beginning because I I talked to Lesley for about two seconds on the way over here and I asked her about Ruth Mandel and she said very laudatory things about Ruth. And Ruth is not an African American woman, I hope you know. And her dear friend, Edith Mertz is also not an African American woman. And back in the early 70s, I had the privilege of working with these two women when they were setting up at Rutgers at Eagleton, the Center for the American woman in politics. And I was one of those sisters at that time that came from a very bourgeois background that felt that the white women had all the privileges. They felt that this was some kind of indulgence of a few intellectuals. And that there's real struggle was that around race now at the age of 51, having been inspired by Ruth Mandel and Etosha Mertz having organized in 20 states in 10 months in 1981, having 7000 activists women who for once and for all are finally calling themselves black feminist. I can say to you that I understand In the varying struggles that we go through and a racist, sexist, classist society that still has to come to grips with all of those isms, on a daily basis. Part of our responsibility is to relive whether we're talking about Janet Rankin, and we're talking about Ida B. Wells, we're talking about tenacious women that understood that they had to be courageous. And about five years ago, I started to think about what the new challenges of my generation of feminists would be. And I came up with something quite simple. And that is boundary crossing leadership. Because over 30 years, I have been involved in all kinds of institutions and organizations, I have been involved with institutions and organizations that are led only by white males. I've been involved in organizations and institutions only led by black males, populated by African American women, supported by African American women, financially, emotionally, spiritually in every other which way by African American women. I've also founded an organization and worked with women of color. And there is something that is stagnant and dealing with sameness all the time. And part of the deal that has to be cut in this society, if we're going to deal with a global marketplace, if we're gonna deal with a 21st century reality if we're going to deal with technology and the issues of math, science for our girls, math, science for all of our minority poor children. If we're going to deal with globalization in a healthy way, if we're going to fight back this anti immigration attitude that reminds me of the Dred Scott decision of 1857. If we are going to do those things, we have got to stop trying to like each other, love each other, but learn how to work for mutual respect so that we can have boundary crossing leadership so that

Unknown Speaker  07:11
a Marian Wright Edelman, for example, and I have sour grapes of a not getting the NAACP, so I'm gonna beat up on a lot of people for a minute, because I just feel like doing it. See, Marian Wright Edelman can write the public policy and can institutionalize an advocacy center for America's 60 million children, but she could never head up the NAACP or the Urban League. Did you get it? Condoleezza Rice, could be Soviet Affairs Advisor in a bush Reagan administration could be provost at Stanford University, but she could never lead the NAACP, or the Urban League by Washington, could head up the advocacy, brilliant advocacy of the choice movement in America, but she could never be the head of the NAACP or the Urban League.

Unknown Speaker  08:11
So that part of the responsibility, as I have said to Reverend Jackson, a friend, not a colleague. Think about that. That if he is going to roll out the women's movement when it is convenient for him.

Unknown Speaker  08:34
And if he is going to call on the leadership of now, when it is convenient for him, that he needs to put the feminist agenda from the eyes of minority women in particular, but all women's specifically on the civil rights agenda continually. And I say to my feminist friends, who are leaders who are white, the same thing, because the racism within our society permeates also the feminist movement. You know, it's always amazing to me, I always say this about all of us, that white women, and white men only want to hear what they want to hear. So oftentimes, when they talk to their people of color, their friends that are people of color that are male or female, we have to continue to talk until we say what they want to hear before they were partnerships. Well, then boundary crossing leadership, we have to start to respect the set of experiences that one has fill their cultural environment. For me, it was a long time as the I was the Public Relations Officer for governor who carry for the women's division. For a long time I didn't understand the plight of white women that were middle class because our experiences was so different middle class black women always knew they had to work always knew they had to learn how to read and write knew that they We're going to be supplemental and CO equal earners within the family structure. middle class black women always know that they may have a sister that was on welfare and one that was a doctoral student at Harvard. middle class black women well educated may not know the right fork to eat work at first. So the unevenness of the African American experience in our society has made us different, not better than but different. And those differences have to be laid out. Those last taboos have to be put on the table before we can collectively come together as women, white women and women of color in order to do business. We can't talk about the ultimate boundary crossing leadership until we fess up about our own stereotypes about our own hangups. It's an interesting experience. It is one that is often rejuvenating. It is not a negative experience. I see some faces out there like where's your going to take us? The reality is that we are in a global marketplace, that we are suffering rollbacks, and ceilings like we have never before. And many of them are invisible because they are so sinister. These men it is being played out dramatically to the point that they will pay probably dearly on November 5, but the Republicans have just wiped out women. The feminist issue does not exist within the Republican agenda. And it's really amazing. I mean, when Tanya Milledge who I first met when I was in my 20s. And we are both in our 50s. Now, I'm still sort of hung up over that was always a young woman. I don't know what the hell happened. But you know, we're trying to hang in there. Those of us that turned 50 This year, it's a real trip. But Tanya Milledge, had the courage to challenge her party. Now, those of us that are politicians know that both of these candidates a horse, flat out horse, now, I will talk about Horse number one, the best communicator in this land.

Unknown Speaker  12:30
That's William Jefferson Clinton. This man disturbs me because he comes to you with all of his eloquent with all of his savvy, I

Unknown Speaker  12:45
have a Jewish friend to tell me one day she called me up. She said, Jewel, I just came from a meeting with Bill Clinton. I think he wants to be a Jew. I said Mona, why can't you? What the hell are you talking? Y'all? I'm telling you, he's in it when we talk. I mean, tears come to his eyes. I said, Sweetie, go to a Baptist church with this man. Let some big black woman stand up and sing. I said he will sit there and you will see tears flowing down his face. He want to be black that day. We have got a chameleon and a person that has wanted to make it so bad and society that he stands for nothing but he does carry the symbol of progressive liberalism. And if enough other reason some people will vote for that. And I don't put that down. What I have a problem with you see, because I'm a friend of Lonnie granaries. And I use her experience not as just because she was an African American woman. And by the way, one of his African male henchmen, cornered me one day and said, Why don't you keep your mouth shut? And I said, if Thurgood Marshall had this administration, to strategize his appointment to the Supreme Court, we would have never had him and this African American man who will go nameless. Oops, I may go through this crap. said to me, well, Lonnie, is no Thurgood Marshall. I said, we will never know will we? I'm a strategist. I was waiting for the strategy to come from the White House. I didn't do anything with our troops. I was waiting for someone to say where are we going to put the positive spin on this woman? I was waiting. So my problem is I know too much of the treachery. However, the bigger picture may be the symbol. But I have a real problem when a politician and I'm a strategist, I don't mind what we have to do to win if you are coming Get it to an agenda that is about progressive change in our society. And progressive change is inclusive. And it deals with the isms of this society. And it opens up this mainstream America to all for equal pay for child care, for reproductive health rights, inclusive of choice for gay and lesbian rights, for all of those issues that America should stand for. I have a passion because I come from a people that came here in 1619, as three fifths human beings as chattel, who were punishable by death if they learned how to read and write. That was 377 years ago, and 246 years we live as three fifths human beings. And we were punished by death if we learned how to read and write. And we lived through Dred Scott. And we lived through Plessy versus Ferguson for another 100 years. And we did have the Supreme Court with Constance Baker Motley, one of the co founders of the movement with target that changed the face of the Supreme Court and its decisions. And I bring up Connie because you never hear about that. It's like you hear about Frederick Douglass, but you don't hear about it. Well since hadn't been for the journalistic scholarship of Ida B. Wells, the journalist who chronicle the lynchings in Memphis, you wouldn't have had a Frederick Douglass. So certainly you would not have had Thurgood if you had not had the scholarship that tenacity, the wisdom of Constance Baker Motley. No those histories it is important when you hear the optimism of African American people is because we came here, not as a running from politics. We didn't come here with a village to go to or neighborhood to go to. We didn't come here

Unknown Speaker  16:58
being received, or as wealthy immigrants as we have today. We don't want to be better than anybody. But we do expect

Unknown Speaker  17:10
having worked the territory of these great United States to continue the affirmative action and the spirit of affirmative action as it was so designed. Now I say that passionately, so that you understand my frustration with a William Jefferson Clinton even more so than a bob dole. Because I know what I got with Bob dough. I truly do. I can have an agenda to fight Bob dough, I can organize, I can enlighten people. We can make a difference. We did it. The Constitution and its founding fathers. The ideals were brilliant. The sexism and classism was ramping the people who have died to free us all for us in this century, we women to get the vote, the amendments to this constitution, the process works. But if you have a fraud in the White House, representing democratic politics in the best sense of the world, how the hell do we know what we're gonna get in the next four years? How the hell do we know what will happen with Al Gore? What

Unknown Speaker  18:29
kind of compromised freak he may become? Now, I don't say that to tell people go out and vote for Bob Dole.

Unknown Speaker  18:38
I'm not but I'm not there. And if Jack Kemp uses another sports metaphor, I think I will be ill. I mean, he doesn't get it. He is so out of touch. Everybody's talking about he's the youngest. 61 year old if anybody black in this room knows. And maybe a few enlightened white women. Let me tell you, when he went to Harlem, he rolled out the you know where I'm coming from. He rolls out some of the oldest people and I'm not an ageist now. I am truly I can't afford to be. I know what I'm facing. But you can have old ideas and stagnant ideas and be it be in your 20s He rolls out Lionel Hampton that's got to be 91 years old. And I love Lionel Hampton. He is a friend of mine, Bob, trust me. But there's no way you're going to energize a black community with Lionel Hampton. up as Sylvia. I said, What kind of patronizing confusion is this? I love fried chicken. Don't get me wrong. It's part of a cultural thing. But we've got fools I said to Lesley before, I said, you know, if you let White men run around long enough, their survival skills will just totally atrophy. Now Clinton is sort of a redneck so he knows how to kick but he knows how to survive, but the DUP These other boys, they've been out there so long. They're like, the cops that couldn't shoot straight. You look at me read the paper, they make the bus and at least give Clinton something to run against. You know everything we may get so lazy because this crowd is so dumb. You figured they come out of the Republican Convention, you figure they know that they've got to get the women's vote. I'm then going to talk about camp talking about he, you know, before Colin Powell gets up there. Now, Colin Powell is one of the best public speakers I've ever heard. I don't know how many in this room have ever heard it before. But that was the he's one of those that even when he's bad, he's good. That nervous speech that he gave up there? I said, Would you look at how nervous colonists today his glasses were little half cocked? Because he knew that this was fraudulent. But once they came out of there, don't you think that Lynnie doe who personally not you know, I don't I get caught up in um, I love greatness. Sometimes I will not compromise my ideology. And let me fess up right now. I was a Paul Tsongas Democrat. Okay. And that's really where I come from. I come from a whole bunch of fiscal realities and a progressive, liberal domestic policy. So you know, and that's always confusing to people. But I do believe that you can do both.

Unknown Speaker  21:30
But I sat and I watched Newt Gingrich, stand up at the Republican Convention, and say that the greatest living American, the greatest American who ever lived, the greatest leader, came from Georgia. And his name was Martin Luther King. Well, I

Unknown Speaker  22:00
said to myself, that I know I'm losing my mind. Both conventions were like soap operas, they were very, very, very, very revealing. And frightening. Because as we talk about a global marketplace, we're not getting manufacturing back in this country, you know, service sectors, is driven by women in this society. And you know that 80% of the service sector are women and you know, that we represent less than 3% of management of ownership. You know, that we are electing fewer women. And the women that we're electing are not feminists. I don't know. And I hope somebody challenges me, one black woman that's elected to office. That's a feminist. I wish you would challenge me. I would and a few people people said well, when when I came out against the million men are you would have thought the Million Man March one positive thing happened, Spike Lee's gonna make a lot of money because I hear that this movie is quite fabulous. Let's get on the bus thing. So in spike needed something positive to happen in his less than stellar career. And by the way, since I'm in two movies for this moment, Whoopi Goldberg associate, will thrill you. It is a feminist, it's as good as comedy. But I wanted to stand up and cheer. She told my whole story. So please go see that. But last year, when I came out against Louis Farrakhan, and Angela Davis came out, you could not have had more Oddfellows in July, Jackson, McCabe and Angela Davis, trust me, we love each other, we respect each other, but I am a flat out capitalist, you get it? And I'm clear about it. I'm also flat out feminists. Now, I wasn't attacked as much. As I got more attacks from one of my chapters to the 100 black woman, I'll tell on myself, I have, I have 62 chapters. And they are perceived in their communities in different ways from sort of activist women, they probably are perceived as bourgeois black women. I perceive them as the way black women always have been undercover doing what they have to do in a network to make things happen on behalf of the community and themselves. But I had a chapter in Boston of one women run listen from the Academy. What have I done 30 minutes

Unknown Speaker  24:57
oh, we don't want anybody to do Oh my god. All right, yeah. This is okay. I mean, I, I let me just fit what the hell was I saying I was somebody, Angela?

Unknown Speaker  25:14
What was my Boston check? Now? I really want to tell you seriously about what happened to Angela because it's probably more important what happened to me but I have women that I love with a passion who will follow me even when they're not sure who followed me with a Anita Hill when African American women who usually if we stand up when we are met with with naked hatred, by African Americans, naked hatred, cut out your heart and watch it beat hatred. I'm serious. You all don't know about naked hatred. But you guys if you have black men that may have one paycheck more new, and they think you are the enemy because they are misguided. Trust me, in this patriarchal society, where they are as confused as we all are, by the way, because we all have some scars from the sexist racist classes society, black women that had the nerve to stand up and say, validate my opinion, because I have earned it. I met with naked hatred. Anyway, my chapter I had one chapter that defected. These women, they're up and bought, I mean, they, they I'm talking about women with great, all kinds of great titles and everything, I found out what they did. First of all, they denounced me, their founder in the newspaper, I thought they'd lost their mind, because I have an ego you see. But what they did, which was the most repulsive thing, and I only because I have to humble myself from time to time, as they actually stood in saying to the men as they got on the bus. So whatever happens to the Boston chapter, c'est la vie. If you get my drift, because one measure of power women, and this is always uncomfortable for women to hear, but the true measure of power is the ability to punish. You get it? It's not a few perks. But anyway, you will think about that tonight, because that's really a deep statement. Um, but Angela, I was appalled at and I say this, because I have a theme that we'll run through, which is the sexism within my own community that, um, that we have to confront those of us who are African American women, especially those women of scholarship, especially those African American women, like Patricia Williams, you know, and others that really have to fight for our life. And you need to know this. It is it is it is the most insidious Angela Davis and all the nationalists bookstores soon as she came out against the Million Man March and who was Farrakhan they ripped her books out of the national. So they took her posters, they started to talk about her lifestyle in the black press. They were the most vicious. I have never seen Angela, because Angela had never been booed by a black audience before and these men were vicious now me they could not touch me because I have been in their face. Clearly. I said, you know, Angela, if you recall, was free in the solid dad brothers in the second she was not free and the solid dead sisters get it clear. This has been your quote unquote, comrade, and how dare you If you respect her intellect and her leadership and her ideology, if she dares one time not to walk lockstep assign some ignorant promise keeper confusion. Remember the Promise Keepers don't want you all to think that you will get off scot free. So hold back to Brian with the Promise Keepers to they stand up and lock arms and try to look masculine and keep women home in the kitchen. Now I enjoy cooking a great deal and started a blog gourmet club a long time ago, I like to dance on a lag on ebay so they can do anything better than me. But you know, almost make a fool of myself from time to time. But the reality is that I don't want in my community 50% of our leadership to be stripped from us and right now it is they would rather have a failed idiot. People marvel at I'm so sick of hearing about how Louis Farrakhan was the only black man that could get a million people. Let me tell you what got a million men out. Which made intelligent African women say stupid thing is because for 18 months, we had to hear 911 tape. We had to watch firm and we had to know about the the code of silence. We had to be reminded through our historic memory of the race. CISM have many courts, though many southern towns where people came in and just murdered and Hatchard black women and children.

Unknown Speaker  30:17
18 months of an OJ Simpson confusion that drove some of us who know when the issue of his guilt is a non issue. We know he did it. But I don't know how many people Furman may have killed. And everybody's got an LAPD story that's black in America that's been through that God forsaken place. What got a million men together was Rodney King having his head bludgeoned in damn near, and we know that he wasn't working with all eight pistons to begin with. But that still does not suggest that one should be beaten like an animal. We know that he needed counseling, and his own substance abuse and his abuse of his family and his friends and society. But that did not give anybody the excuse to beat his brains out. We saw Mike Tyson what his strange young self we experienced to pop to core with his vulgar, misguided self. I personally witnessed black leaders not smart enough to embrace these young black men. Dan King is the one who should have gone to jail because he set up the little beauty pageant as if he was going to pick out bonbons, which one do you want. It used to be in the black community. By the way, the NAACP in the Urban League protected our young people so Tupac Shakur would have been to a council would have been protected would have been and stops by bright people. So the rage of people you could have had any idiot stand up not Jesse Jackson because he had spent himself not nobody is going follow Al Sharpton who's a good friend of mine. But until he stopped putting them curlers in his hair, nobody is gonna follow out. Now let's be cool about I'm clear. And the venom and the hatred of Louis Farrakhan spoke to the very soul of people who had been barraged by negative imaging of African Americans when in fact, African Americans today are 60%, middle class, when in fact, the issues of Appalachia are still issues that white folks don't talk about, that the voice of moral authority will still come from people of color, and that's okay. I like it. I think it's important Barbara Jordan reminded us of that. So boundary crossing leadership is critically important. We got to get smart and wise, we've got to stop trying to love each other. Do not patronize me with a million questions about where I went to school, unless you are willing to answer the same million questions about your family and folks. And then some of my biases may come out and some of my love may come out and some of our wisdom may gel and there may be a synergy between us and we may be able to write policy together. We may be able to inspire people to run for office, we may be able to buy some businesses in order to give some money back to create shelters for women who have been battered and abused. There are all kinds of terrific things that we can do but we must be smart. We must know our history. We must understand our differences and celebrate those differences. I watched the water rise.

Unknown Speaker  33:40
I am trying to submit it is a challenge may i LESLEY bow at this point because I do my time Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  34:26
Think that was one of the most biblically inspiring speeches we've ever had courtesy of the Center for Research on Women. I hope the waters part as we leave. Thank you all for coming. I look forward to seeing you at many Women's Center events and thank you so much