An illustration of two Black woman with curly hair–one in a pattern yellow dress, the other in a patterned red dress–standing next to each other in a field of palm leaves.
Image Credit: “Confidence and Grace” by Melissa Koby / Mkoby Art

Editors’ Note: This article was originally written for the Spring 2025 issue of Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine, “How Women of Color in the South Are Reclaiming Space.”

Rebekah Barber: In the wake of the 2024 election, many people are seeking a way forward, reflecting on history and examples of times Black women have faced insurmountable odds but had to find a way to keep moving on. Can you tell me about what you have been reflecting on recently, particularly as it pertains to lessons from the past? 

Jara Butler: Absolutely. I talk about Fannie Lou Hamer all the time. It’s been 60 years since she made that powerful speech at the Democratic National Convention.

She died 13 years later…from cancer, but her body was just torn down. Even to the end, she was doing so many different things to make the lives of the people in her area better.

I look to leaders like Dolores Huerta, who continues to challenge us and continues to push forward, but also knowing that that’s been a long journey for her because she’s seen so many great things. She’s also seen some of the worst things as well.

I think about Ella Baker. I think about Ida B. Wells. I think about Mary Terrell.

I think about Maggie Lena Walker, who was an entrepreneur in Richmond [VA]. [She] had a grounding in “We have to provide for our community.” She looked for how her resources could provide for the community.

It’s going to take the community, and I think that’s the beauty of being a person of color, being a woman of color, being a Black woman—community is very important to us. That’s why we have cousins and aunties who may not be by blood, but they’re family.

“I think that is the legacy [of Black women civil rights leaders]….They didn’t teach us just how to fight, but they taught us how to live within the fight.” 

I’m thinking about and reflecting on Fannie Lou Hamer and wondering what she would say. She knew that freedom wasn’t an aspiration. It was a goal.

That is where I sit right now. Freedom is not an aspiration. It’s our goal.

I’m also thinking about other women: Medgar Evers’s wife, Myrlie Evers-Williams. I’m thinking about Betty Shabazz and Coretta Scott King and the fact that they had to grieve in public. I’m thinking about Mamie Till Mobley.

I think the American dream is aspirational, but that’s exactly what it is. It’s a dream.

A goal is focused. You have a strategy. You have tactics. You’re going to have setbacks, but you’re still moving towards that. I think that’s the shift and that’s the phrase I keep saying to myself, “Freedom is not an aspiration. It’s a goal.”

There is something that brings me comfort in hearing that.

I’ve also been playing some old gospel, listening to the caravans, listening to Albertina Walker—those freedom songs, because that’s what they were.

I think that is the legacy that these women left us. They taught us, not just about survival, but they taught us how to thrive. They didn’t teach us just how to fight, but they taught us how to live within the fight.

RB: Could you share how historical figures, your own mother, and other women around you have shown you how to take up space as a young girl growing up in the South?

JB: I’m very close to my mother. I also had a series of aunties that have been around me my entire life. Some of them have gone on now to be with the ancestors. They are there with God now. And that brings me sadness.

But my mother integrated her high school. She came of age during the hope years of Kennedy, the promises of the civil rights movement, and then the women’s rights movement.

She saw all those things. And she was able to see Barack Obama become president. But the thing that she reflected upon is that the journey for Black women, especially Black women in the South, is that we toiled with our hands.

Oftentimes there were laws that were put into place that prevented us from having access to the middle class. And even when we had that access, it was taken away from us.

There was a massacre that happened in Texas around the same time that we were experiencing the Atlanta race riot. My family lore is that we experienced something like that in Whitney, TX. So, all those traumas and all those things came to a head, I think, for her.

She is aging and looking at where she came from. She said, “I’m not afraid because I never had time for fear.” And she’s at peace. Her peace comes not from, “Everything’s going to be all right,” but just the peace of knowing that as a culture, Black folk, we’ve always been able to land. It hasn’t always been easy. But we’ve always been able to come through the storms.

Even a couple of days before the election my mom went to church on Sunday and she said, “I talked to a prophetess,” and I was like, “Here we go.”

She asked the prophetess [about the election] and the prophetess said, “I can’t tell you what the outcome is going to be, but what my spirit is saying is that we’re going to be all right anyway.”

And that makes so much sense right now. But again, as a Southerner, the Bible was everywhere for us, right? As a Southerner, spirituality is something that is just palpable because it is that hope.

There are a lot of parables and stories in the Bible that make sense for this time, and I’ve been reflecting on that with my mom.

I was sharing the story of King Solomon [who mediated between two women fighting over a baby]. I think that story is symbolic for the Black community especially in the South: We would rather not have it at all than for [someone else] to have it. So, these are the conversations I have with my mom because she’s very philosophical right now and she does have some pain.

RB: In the South, part of what reclaiming spaces looks like is finding our own sacred spaces like churches, community centers, the different places where we find community. Can you talk about how you see those spaces?

JB: I think for me, I have community. I have friends who are doing this work. I have friends who are in the political space.

“I think sometimes what separates the Black community from other communities is…we have this bigger community….We created our own spaces for us.”

But I also have friends who have nothing to do with political space like my extended family, my cousins. And we have the Divine Nine sororities and fraternities.

At church on Sunday, my pastor made sense of something that doesn’t always make sense. He talked about hope. And it led me to think, when did I stop dreaming? When did we stop dreaming? When did we as Americans stop dreaming? I’ve been reflecting on that.

I think sometimes what separates the Black community from other communities is that we have this bigger community. We have organizations that we’re part of. We have so many things that were set up because we were segregated. We created our own spaces for us.

“I do believe that the South is the epicenter of where we can build power. I believe that the South is unfinished business.”

RB:  Can you talk about the importance of local organizing, especially in the South?

JB: I’m a big proponent of running locally first. And I think that if we’re going to make gains in the South, it’s going to be local. It’s going to be a mayoral race. It’s going to be city council. It’s going to be the school board. It’s going to be at the state level: state representative, state senator. Because those are the people who directly impact the needs that folks have in the South. They are the people who decide where resources are going to go.

I think that is where we are going to be able to build. I want to encourage other young, rural, Black folks to run. Do it. And funders: Fund them. Fund them. Because these races are so small. In rural counties, sometimes you may have 2,500 people vote for 2,500 people.

I do believe that the South is the epicenter of where we can build power. I believe that the South is unfinished business. I feel like we’re seeing a resurgence of a new South. I think you’re seeing a lot of folks like me feel like we’re going home because we want our homes to be better. And I hope we continue to see young Black folks, young people in the south run locally, because that’s where they can have the biggest impact.

RB: In what ways are you seeing Black women take up space in electoral spaces, but also outside of them?

JB: I think about Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. She’s from the district next to mine. And she takes up space by being herself. She is unapologetic in who she is. She knows who she is and who she’s not. She’s uncompromising and she can speak truth to power in a way that is palatable and digestible to regular people.

I think in our politics sometimes we get a little high-minded. We forget to digest things and break them down.

I also think of State Representative Rhetta Bowers, who is in Texas, representing a swing district. But she continues to get elected because they say that the locals in that area know her so well because she shows up to everything. She takes meetings and her children all went to the school there. She has deep, deep roots in the community, and that matters.

I think about London Lamar, who’s a young black senator in Tennessee, who is constantly talking about issues that really impact folks.

And I think about like people like Sammi Brown, a former a West Virginia delegate, who fought to support unions and workers in West Virginia.

These stories are all over the South. They often get ignored, but these people are out there doing real work. I think some people call that retail politics. But I call that being a community servant.

And going back to our original conversation about Hamer and the roots of Black organizing, the civil rights movement—towards the end of her life, she opened a community store. She opened a job center. She came back into the community and said, “Okay, we’re not going to get these things [at the national level]. I’m going to do everything I can to get them.

RB: What does reclaiming space mean to you?

JB: I’m going to be transparent for a moment. For a long time, especially in my youth, as a middle schooler, high schooler, I kind of had my head down a little bit because all I wanted to do was belong. I didn’t have the respect that I should have had because I didn’t understand it.

“I don’t want the table to just have me rooted here and no place for anyone else. I want as many people here as possible.”

Now, as a fully grown woman, I am so proud to be the great-granddaughter of an enslaved woman. I am so proud to be the granddaughter of a housekeeper, domestic worker, and the daughter of an office worker. I am so proud of those things in my upbringing because these women made a way for me to be here.

So, it’s not for me to occupy this seat. It is for me to give that seat to others. It can’t just be me.

I start envisioning who would be a good fit here? Who do I need to invite? Who do I need to make sure is in here? And if they’re not in the position, how do I do that? And so, it starts at home.

I don’t want the table to just have me rooted here and no place for anyone else. I want as many people here as possible.

Because the thing about the gender equity space that I want to break is that we are fighting over crumbs. We made the meal, so we should be sitting at it and eating it instead of fighting one another. I want to see more of that. Instead of this being a dinner, it should be a buffet. And we each can come.

And that’s how I take up space. I take up space by always acknowledging who isn’t in the room.

Title-wise, I maybe get deference, but there may be other folks who don’t have the title, and they’re sitting here anyway. I speak because that opens the door for them. That’s how I take it. I don’t take space for me. I take space for us.