'Tis true

my pearls were beads of sweat

wrung for weary bodies' pain,

instead of rings upon my hands

I wore swollen bursting veins.

My ornaments were the whip-lash's scar

my diamond, perhaps, a tear.

Instead of paint and powder on my face

I wore a solid mask of fear to see my blood so spilled.

And you, women seeing

spoke no protest

but cuddled down in your pink slavery

as though somehow my wasted blood

confirmed your superiority.' Beulah Richardson

NASCENT YET, the singular movement of black women, as women, I believe can be realized. Because the necessary sense of urgency is obscured behind the facade of other forms of expressed empathy and solidarity, the few omens appear as ignored and undeciphered glyphs. But listen to the voices sometimes, though I am not inducing you to magnify what in any case is only rudimentary and fragmentary. If there is a "feminine consciousness"(and the words embody a trailing off behind the ineffably seductive); its roots are here.