Beverly Guy-Sheftal's masterful anthology of African-American feminist thought, "Words of Fire," is a reminder that African-American women sometimes publicly expressed feminist thought before white women did.

Guy-Sheftal describes a small group of free Black "feminist abolitionists" who surfaced in the early 19th century, including Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth and Frances E.W. Harper. Anna Julia Cooper said that African-American women confront both a "woman question and a race problem," and Guy-Sheftal describes this question as the essence of Black feminist thought in the 19th century. In the late part of the 20th century, though, Black women are often told that we have to choose between race and gender.

Johnetta Cole has the answer to that. In her epilogue essay in Guy-Sheftal's book, she likens the choice between race and gender to a swimmer with both arms tied behind her back. Which would you have released, Cole asks? Would you fight racism or sexism when the battle against these twin evils is essential to your survival?

Because of the history of racism in the women's movement, many Black women find it hard to be "down" with white women. But many Black women, myself included, refuse to cede "feminism" to white women. In the name of women like Maria Stewart and Ida B. Wells, we are obligated to struggle for women's rights, even as we struggle for the rights of African Americans.

There were substantive reasons for some African-American feminists, myself included, to oppose the October 1995 Million Man March. If it were merely billed as a Black male "love-in," I would have had fewer objections. If Black women had not so explicitly been told (not asked) to stay home and "pray and teach" while the men "marched and led," the march would not have had the taint of traditional gender roles. If it had not been cast in the shadow of the 1963 March on Washington -- a march that did not exclude women's participation -- it might not have been as objectionable. And if it did not take on the conservative tinge of "atonement" and "taking responsibility" in a policy arena when these are exactly the things policymakers are asking of African-American people, it would not have been as much of a problem for me.