Black Sisterhood in the Shadow of the Brett Kavanaugh Hearings

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This week made me think a lot about black sisterhood as an antidote to which many black women turn in times of pain and suffering.

In 1991, Tayari Jones was a 20-year-old graduate student at the University of Iowa working on her Ph.D. She was a young black woman who had grown up in Atlanta, a graduate of Spelman College. Iowa, more than 90 percent white, was a culture shock, and the isolation that Ms. Jones felt there was made more palpable by the fact that the Clarence Thomas hearings were playing out in the background.

“I felt enraged and hopeless and I didn’t know what a person like me could do to help,” Ms. Jones, who went on to become an award-winning novelist, told me this week.

Then one day, a black woman, a stranger, stopped her on a street and told her that a lot of other black women were putting together a full-page ad to appear in The New York Times in support of Anita Hill. Ms. Jones agreed to sign her name and donate $25, even though she was living on $800 a month, half of which went toward rent.

“I told her, ‘I don’t have any money. I’m just a student.’ But she said, ‘It’s important that you give money. It’s important that you are willing to make a sacrifice toward what you believe. Signing your name is important because your good name is important. But you underscore this moment by giving.’”