Unyielding Voices: Black Women’s Fight for Freedom of Speech

Through the ages, Black women have been told to quiet down; to shut their mouths or soften their tone. And an equally long and unbroken tradition has reigned: Black women refusing to be silenced.

In every generation, there are those who push against the tide — not just for the sake of rebellion, but because silence has never been safe. It is an unworthy shield that hides, never fortifies. And so they speak.

Black women have raised their voices even when it cost them everything. And today, they are still speaking.

Amy Sherald — known for her portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama and for centering the sacred ordinariness of Black life — recently withdrew from an exhibition at the Smithsonian after the institution attempted to censor her work. Rather than allow her depiction of Black grief and resistance to be softened for broader comfort, she chose the door. A quiet but firm declaration: her art, and her people, are not up for compromise.

This insistence on integrity is not new. It pulses through the legacy of Ida B. Wells, who reported on lynching at a time when even naming such violence could cost you your life. Her printing press — destroyed. Her colleagues — assassinated. She kept writing. Where others turned away, she made the world look.

Black women have fought to speak freely — at pulpits, in newsrooms, at the ballot box, and inside the rooms where decisions get made. Lisa Cook’s appointment to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, currently at the center of litigation, marked a historic first. Despite her experience, her confirmation process was riddled with hostility and dismissiveness, as though her qualifications were somehow still up for debate. However she stayed the course, cracking open the door for others.

Some have fought not just to be heard — but to be believed.

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia mother and daughter election workers falsely accused of tampering with ballots, faced an onslaught of threats and defamation. Their faces were splashed across media platforms pushing conspiracy theories. Forced to go into hiding, their lives changed overnight, but they stood up in court. They told the truth and they won. What they reclaimed wasn’t just their names. They secured a measure of justice for all Black women made into scapegoats.

Former Flint mayor Karen Weaver knows that fight well. When the water crisis reached national attention, she didn’t mince words. She exposed the systemic failure that allowed poisoned water to flow through a Black city’s pipes. When silence would have served the state, she chose the people.

The battle isn’t confined to politics. In Austin, Katrina Brooks is fighting book bans with bound pages and open doors. Her bookstore, Black Pearl, is more than a shop—it’s a sanctuary for stories under attack. When the state came for our books, she built a home for them. Where others saw danger, she saw sacred ground.

This is the legacy. These are the women who stand in for the legions of sisters — famous and hardly known — owning the ancestral tradition of defiance. With resistance and resolve, they make a loud and joyful sound. 

Their voices won’t be erased. Carried in ink, in brushstrokes, in ballots cast and policies challenged. In stories, songs and small storefronts overflowing with banned books that won’t be shut away.

In this moment, Black women’s opinions are once again being marginalized, their art softened, their warnings disregarded. But history shows that every time a Black woman speaks, she echoes those who came before her. And every time she is silenced, the world loses power and possibilities. 

Joshua Levi Perrin is a writer and content curator for Unerased | Black Women Speak.

This story was originally published on Word In Black on September 18th, 2025