Introduction

The passing of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in August 1920 was a milestone in the history of suffrage for women in America, but it was far from a complete victory. It has required continued advocacy, civic engagement, and political organizing to extend the vote to all women.

The women highlighted in this exhibition demonstrate the diversity of womanhood and particularly the diversity of political womanhood. They are actively making space for women as a collective, rather than some of the original suffragists who were only interested in making space for themselves. These women used their right to vote as leaders in Houston and the broader national community, working for women’s rights, civil rights for people of color, rights for the LGBTQIA community, improved education and health care, and many other issues.

The Making of the Political Woman

On Jailed for Freedom:

How do we contextualize the suffragist movement considering that almost all of the faces of the women’s suffrage movement are white or at the very least white-passing?

“'We knew somethin' was goin' to happen,' said one negro girl, 'because Monday the close we had on wer' took off us an' we were giv' these old patched ones. We wuz told they wanted to take `stock,’ but we heard they wuz bein' washed fo' you-all suff'agettes.'

We doubted the seriousness of this threat of thrashing until one of the girls confided to us that such outrages happened often. We afterward obtained proof of these brutalities.” (1)

Racism was institutionalized and used to divide the working class and fragment political movements, like the women’s suffrage movement. These movements have consistently internalized these fragmentations:

“Susan B. Anthony, who stated, 'I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.' (2)

The political woman was first established as a middle-class white woman. Jailed for Freedom reveals the disparities of the political woman at the time of the suffragist movement. The women in this exhibition demonstrate the diversity of womanhood and particularly the diversity of political womanhood. They also are actively making space for women as a collective, rather than some of the original suffragists who were only interested in making space for themselves-- themselves being cisgender, straight, middle-class white women.This exhibition highlights three women that were constantly making space for all women, women that aligned with their identities and those beyond.

1. Stevens, Doris. Jailed for Freedom. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920, pg. 113.

2. "Black Women and the Suffrage Movement," Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, https://www.wesleyan.edu/mlk/posters/suffrage.html

Houston's Powerful Women

For centuries in Western society, patriarchal violence and ideology defined generations of socialization. Children and adults were trained by these ideals to ensure a hierarchical binary between men and women, in which women were the default subjugated gender. The maintenance of this hierarchy came from the enforced isolation and persecution of women. Existing as part of a community of women, rather than just an individual woman, became a radical act against the backdrop of male social and political domination. Therefore, a woman existing as a woman and embracing femininity and womanhood in predominantly masculine and male spaces is an important and radical act that actively makes social, political, and even physical space for other women to continue in this radicalism of sisterhood.

From the arena of politics, to the field of community organization, and to the courtrooms, women throughout history have been making space for women, for embracing womanhood and identifying with femininity. Our focus points of this exhibition, Billie Carr, Glenda Joe, and Judge Clarease Yates, are all pivotal individuals in their fields and have created tangible pathways for other women to succeed them and continue their work.

Judge Clarease Yates

Born Clarease Stewart, Judge Clarease Mitchell Rankin Yates was born in 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was born and raise in Philadelphia, where she earned her high school degree in 1958 and both her bachelor’s degree and Juris Doctorate from Temple University.

Her legal career began in the office of Philadelphia’s district attorney, and in 1980 she progressed forward and accepted a position as an attorney with the United States International Trade Commission. Moving into the District of Columbia, she, then, served as a senior legislative analyst, and in 1986, she was appointed an administrative law judge.

After her time in Washington D. C., her journey into the south, specifically Houston, began as she was appointed to a judgeship in 1990 with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service in Houston, Texas. This position made her both the first African-American and first African-American woman immigration judge in the United States. As she departed from Washington D. C., she was honored for her work and time there with the Clarease E. Mitchell Rankin Recognition Resolution of 1990. And a year later, she was honored by the Commonwealth of Kentucky by being commissioned a Kentucky Colonel. 

Judge Yates holds many awards an honors in her name, and she has created a history of possibilities for women, especially for Black women. And in 1992, she was honored at the YWCA Outstanding Women’s Day for her contributions to the field of law, and a year later, she began serving as an adjunct professor of law at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University.

Her commitment to civil engagement manifested in many ways in Houston. She joined the board of the Sickle Cell Association of the Gulf Coast, the National Coalition of 100 Back Women, the NAACP, and the Houston Symphony board. As will unfold in this exhibition, Judge Yates’s dedication to community is very obviously a core value of hers, and this dedication serves as grounding and foundation for all young Black women to see the capabilities of Black women in these predominantly white and masculine fields, like law and community organizations.

Looking at the work that Judge Yates has done for her community and the awards and honors she’s received, it is already apparent that she is a force within the community and a model for breaking down constrictive social walls to actively make space for Black women in the law field and in her community.  The work that she does, both by existing and by active engagement, normalizes Black womanhood and Black femininity in a social context that denormalizes these ways of beings. Most notably in her founding and directing of a gala for the Sickle Cell Association of the Gulf Coast, she focused the fundraising gala on fashion, especially on the fashioning of Black people and Black women. It became a place for Black business to be highlighted and for fashion, a socially determined feminine interest and space, to be centered and respected.

Along with her many civic activities, Judge Yates in 2004 acquired a Certificate in Image Consulting from Houston Community College. She also has certification in modeling and acting from Page Parks School of Modeling and Acting. In 2005 she founded Indestructible Beginnings, an image consulting 501(c)(3) corporation “whose mission is to immerse our youth into an exciting, educational experience which will stimulate their appetites to enjoy all of the wonderful, positive experiences which are available to them.” She has developed a program of classes and written a book titled Indestructible Beginnings - The ABC of Common Courtesy. This endeavor became a directly influential business that gave young people, predominantly Black girls, the tools to find comfort and inner strength to pursue their careers and passions.

Judge Clarease Yates: The Woman Before Women

Before women were able to find space, community, and comfort in these fields that men dominated, there had to be the passionate few who opened those doors for them. Judge Yates established her position in these spaces with her family backing her, and in doing so, she became a respected and beloved figure in the legal community and in the social circles associated with this community.

“[T]here's really nothing that you can't do if in your heart you want to do it, if it's something you want to do, and sometimes it may not be in your heart, because you haven't been exposed to anyone that's done that before.” (1)

Judge Yates provides a pathway for women, for Black women, to follow along. She demonstrates what can be done both to those that see themselves in her and those that have never seen anyone like her in their profession/field.

1. Clarease Yates oral history video, CERCL (Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning) records, UA 258, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University 

Judge Clarease Yates: It Takes a Village

“So the pictures and anything that I submitted – they're just things that show that I'm just a person like anybody else, but I had a blessing. I had a [path] I had people along the way who were interested in me, and that's another thing that I'd like to leave. My legacy should be that I loved reaching back and helping.” (1)

For Judge Yates, family and culture are foundational to her success. Having such a supportive community behind her gave her both strength and opportunities to enter the predominantly white male profession that she entered.

1. Clarease Yates oral history video, CERCL (Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning) records, UA 258, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University 

Judge Clarease Yates: Community Care

Judge Yates’s establishment of the “Let the Fashions Begin Inc.” fundraiser gave both the sickle cell patients platforms to show and share their art and strength to combat narratives of helplessness and the young Black women a model within the community who is openly compassionate and nurturing of those disenfranchised by societal standards.

Similarly, she, in her work, advocates for and provides knowledge to immigrants or soon-to-be immigrants. As a judge in the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, she was able to see the world of immigration and the hardships associated with immigrating. The presentation on immigration and immigration documents with the Zumunta Association USA, Inc., a Nigerian socio-cultural organization, demonstrates her knowledge and her willingness to share this knowledge of immigration. Judge Yates continues to maintain a character of compassion and nurturing for her communities and other communities most harmed by the systems she has endured throughout her career.

Judge Clarease Yates: Sucess - Everyone Wins

Judge Clarease Yates is a Black woman who grew up in a white and white worshipping society. Her work and her successes are collective. Judge Yates is constantly and openly a member of her communities, and the successes she achieves are shared. Each honor, award, appointment, and triumph she gains is passed down to her children, her friends, her family, and her community. All that she gives to the world trickles down to the next generation, and so much of the work that she has done and continues to do is constantly making space for more and more Black women in the legal field and in community organizing.

Glenda Joe: Cultural Community Support

One of the most crucial components of ensuring the social and material wellbeing of a community, especially within the United States, is investing in socioeconomic wellbeing. Glenda Joe’s Asian American Merchants’ Handbook is a foundational text for Asian American business owners and entrepreneurs to give them insight into American cultural practices that will set them up for success and mitigate potential difficulties with discrimination in the future.

Other crucial components that Joe feverishly invested in were mental health, sexual health, interpersonal violence prevention, women’s rights, and social treatment. Joe was, like the other women in this exhibition, heavily involved and actively working to cater to and open doors for those most in need and most consistently harmed by the systems set in place that are designed to exclude them, particularly women and women of color.

Glenda Joe: Community in Danger

Growing up in Houston, Glenda Joe was confronted with a constantly shifting world. In the mid 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement and Act occupied the minds of every American, and Joe was enamored by this at the young age of 13. She saw the destructive abilities of white supremacy and how it manifested in the communities through interracial conflict and anti-Asian and anti-Black violence. A lot of work was needed to be done to ensure the social and material wellbeing of the Asian-American community, and Glenda Joe, throughout her prolific career, put in a lot of the work.

Glenda Joe

Born in Houston in 1954, Glenda Joe began her career in community organizing at the young age of 13 when she organized her first civil rights rally. Ever since, she has been a prominent and pivotal activist for the Asian-American community in Houston, Texas. The work that she began doing at such a young age was, and still is, genuinely foundational for the prominence and wellness of the Asian-American community in Houston. She worked as a consultant for Asian issues with the Houston Police Department, wrote the Asian Merchant’s Handbook that provided information and support for reducing interracial conflict in the increasingly diversifying Black and Asian neighborhoods, and investigated hate crimes against Asians people in the local community.

She also created a business, Great Wall Enterprises, which functions as support for Asian-Americans by advertising public awareness campaigns, like raising awareness for immunizations, voting, and census participation, targeted towards Asian people, particularly recent immigrants. In 1991, she became the first Asian-American, and the first Asian-American woman, to run for Houston City Council, which she did not win, but this did not deter her investment in the city of Houston and the communities that make up the city.

In 1980, at the age of 26, Joe became involved with The Houston Asian American Festival Association, of which she eventually became the executive director. According to Glenda Joe: “HAAFA was organized in response to President Jimmy Carter’s first proclamation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Week in 1980. It was the first time Asians from all ethnicities convened to work for common cause in Houston. It was the catalyst for pan-Asian organizing around other civic and social issues affecting all Asians in Houston.” This became a space for pan-Asian solidarity and a space for celebration of the multitude of cultures and identities that construct the Asian diaspora. This celebration became the space in which Asian identity and culture could be understood as normal, especially in Asian femininity which was exoticized in American culture, which has been an ongoing, racist imagination in America since the 1800s.

Joe was a pivotal force in normalizing Asian femininity both in a social context but also in a leadership context. She was a force within community organizing circles across Houston. In the exhibition you are able to see how she navigated interracial and interethnic community difficulties and constantly advocated for harmonious coexistence. She demonstrated the ability to bridge the gaps between drastically different experiences, yet both difficult experiences, of Black communities, Asian communities, and Hispanic communities. Joe actively made space and served as a model for solidarity, especially in interracial femininity: a feat that undergirds this entire exhibition.

Glenda Joe: Uplift

The Houston Asian American Festival was a place for learning: learning to love oneself and one another. Joe’s hand in creating and carrying on this festival is extremely important to the Asian American community in Houston as it provides the grounds from which Asian Americans can discover their community and discover their own culture in the eyes of others. The pan-Asian structure of this festival both creates a world of solidarity and a world of diversity. It combats the monolithic imagination of the Asian community, while maintaining a strength in numbers, in togetherness that defines the Asian-American experience.

Glenda Joe: Intercommunal Growth

Joe’s work with other communities also shows her commitment to coexistence, co-thriving, and general harmony in opposition to a world rife with oppressive systems of white patriarchal ways of being. In her papers, her dedication to collaborating and uplifting the Black community along with the Asian community is obvious and foundational to her reputation within the Gulf Coast area. 

Most importantly, her dedication to this intercommunal growth provided platforms for and collaborations with other BIPOC women to demonstrate to younger generations and the contemporary generation that power and formidability of all women in the world of community organization and society in general.

Billie Carr

Born Billie McClain Carr, the late Carr was born in Houston, Texas in 1928. She grew up in Houston, graduated from Sam Houston High School in 1946, married three months later, had three sons, and over the years took many courses at South Texas College and the University of Houston. 

In 1952, she unexpectedly won Democratic chairman of her precinct, which began her political organizing career and set her up to become a household name in the Houston Democratic social sphere. Soon after, she became a protege of Frankie Randolph, a leader and benefactress of liberal causes who helped found the Harris County Democrats in 1953. From Randolph, Carr learned her skills in grassroots political organizing, which gave her the foundation to assume a leadership role in Harris County Democrats: the establishment of her statewide reputation as an organizer, convention strategist, and spokesperson for the statewide liberal coalition.

She was known as “The Godmother” for her work on behalf of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. In 1954 Carr was elected a member from her precinct to the Harris County Democratic Executive Committee, serving in that capacity until 1972; she was also Harris County’s member on the Texas State Democratic Executive Committee from 1964 to 1966.

And quite literally, Carr was making space in society and politics for women, queer people, and Black women, not just by her position but by activism and campaigning that she did for others. As a liberal activist and strategist, Carr also fought for civil rights. She protested the Vietnam War and fought for women’s rights in the 1970s, and for gay rights in the 1980s. She helped organize the 1966 campaign leading to the election of Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman elected to the Texas Senate, and was later described by U. S. Rep. Mickey Leland as “the grand old lady of liberal politics” for her efforts in helping a number of minority candidates (including himself) win political office. She later established a business, Billie Carr & Associates, specializing in campaign and other political services.

In 1972, she began serving as a member of the Democratic National Committee, which she held until 2000. Her position and her goals maintained the progressivist and liberal focuses of the Democratic Party by keeping doors open and spaces open for women, for all women. And in 2002, Billie Carr passed away leaving behind a history of opening doors and asserting the power and normality of femininity in these positions of prestige and of power.

Billie Carr: Poltical Womanhood

Billie Carr, born less than a decade after the passage of the 19th Amendment, grew up in a time of newly founded political womanhood. The work that she was doing was truly foundational in that it was building upon this new political womanhood. This idea of political womanhood is one that asserts the necessity of femininity and woman identity in the political sphere, which is founded upon the philosophies and assertions of feminism. Political womanhood, as embodied by all the women in this exhibition, asserts that womanhood and femininity are necessary components of the political process and politics in general. Carr’s work asserts her own political womanhood and makes way for other women in politics. All of the documents shown are either supported by or authored by Carr, and they demonstrate her dedication to expanding the role of women in politics and society.

Billie Carr: First, Learn . . . Then, Organize!

The most fundamental component of organizing and political progression is teaching and learning. Carr compiled and created multiple pamphlets that (1) demonstrated her young dedication to accessibility and broad dispersal of knowledge and (2) showed how rooted and functional the knowledge she shared was. All of these pamphlets are signifiers of her ability to parse through organizational tasks and actions so that people after her could partake in organizing to the same degree. Her commitment to maintaining a cycle of organizing against current systems of oppression and conservatism is demonstrative of her position as a woman making space for other women. Similar to the other women of this exhibition, from the women before to the women after, space-making is an essential component of political womanhood, in which one becomes a woman of women, no longer alone. Organizing becomes a task of creating spaces for women and for other disenfranchised communities so that they may exist, and specifically thrive, politically and socially.

Conclusion

As one of the most diverse cities, if not the most diverse city, in the United States, the importance of these women and women like them is constantly understated. Women, Black women, women of color, trans women, queer women, disabled women, and all of the intersections of these different womanhoods are fundamental to the wellbeing of every harmed and disenfranchised member of society. The most important method of caring for the most marginalized is to give them space, make space for them in the world so that they can survive and thrive and organize as a community against white heteropatriarchal systems that fuel the American sociocultural identity.

Resources

Additional information about these resources can be found online and in the Woodson Reseach Center, Fondren Library. Our finding aids, which are guides to the physical collections, can be found at the links below, along with links to the related oral history interviews.

Archival Collections:

Billie Carr papers, 1956-2003, MS 0373, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University

Glenda Joe / Houston Asian American community advocacy and festival arts records, circa 1980-2015, MS 0667, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University

Judge Clarease Yates Papers, 1990-2005, MS 0123, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University

Oral histories:

Billie Carr's oral histories

Glenda Joe's oral history

Judge Clarease Yates's oral history

Published Books:

Stevens, Doris. Jailed for Freedom. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920.

This exhibit was made by Evan Delafose in 2021 with funding from the Fondren Fellows.