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Can I Get a Witness?: Prophetic Religious Voices of African American Women : An Anthology
A chorus of voices of African-American women, from slavery times to the present, documenting the crucial links between faith and the struggle for justice.
200 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1997
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May 4, 2026
AN EXCELLENT COLLECTION OF IMPORTANT VOICES OF BLACK WOMEN
Marcia Y. Riggs is a Professor of Christian Ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary, a womanist theologian, and an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church; she previously taught at the Lutheran School of Theology, the Pacific School of Religion, Drew University, and Vanderbilt University.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1997 collection, “Preachers in the black church often urge worshippers to respond to the Word by asking, ‘Can I get a witness?’ As I collected and listened to the voices of the women gathered in this volume, they became an enduring yes to the preacher’s question and to the quest for sources which comprise black women’s religious tradition. The compilation of these sources is thus a way to document a distinctive tradition from which many contemporary womanist religious scholars retrieve our insights and receive our inspiration. As sources of scholarly insights and devotional inspiration, the voices of these women confirm the power of our words to bear witness to the power and presence of the incarnate Word.”
She continues in the Introduction, “In recent years, a number of anthologies or primary sources documenting the lives and words of historical and contemporary black women have been compiled… Each of these anthologies has provided us with important primary source accounts by black women of their private and public lives from the slavery era through the contemporary period. This anthology builds on these previous works as I chronicle black women’s lives as faithful witnesses to the prophetic dimensions of the Gospel using significant sociohistorical moments (slavery, emancipation, urbanization) and movements (e.g. the Great Awakenings, abolition, temperance, suffrage, women’s clubs, women’s missionary efforts) as implicit principles of selection for this volume.
“Unlike those previous anthologies, this volume has a single focus, African American women and religion, or more specifically, the reconstruction and retrieval of a prophetic religious tradition of African American women. This tradition includes the experiences and writings of African American women who were involved formally and informally with religious institutions and social reform movements of past and present times. Also as a work of reconstruction and retrieval, this book seeks to document that tradition as predecessor to current womanist scholarship. This volume intends to suggest that the prophetic religious voices of African American women constitute a distinctive tradition within African American religious history and experience. Tradition here refers to a worldview which can be discerned over time through the writings of African American women who interpret the relevance of their spiritual experiences and belief systems for the church, community, and society. Documenting this tradition continues revisionist scholarship in one of the most important areas of the African American experience.” (Pg. xi)
She reports of Jarena Lee (1783-?), who in 1809 was ‘the first black woman to request the right to preach in an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. Although the initial response was denied, she continued her ministry as an itinerant preacher who challenged the status quo: She wrote, “It was not eight years since I have made application to be permitted to preach the gospel, during which time I had been allowed only to exhort, and even this privilege but seldom… Soon after this… the Rev. Richard Williams … took his text… and commenced to expound it. The text he took is in Jonah 2:9: ‘Salvation is of the Lord.’ But as he proceeded to explain, he seemed to have lost the spirit; when in the same instant, I sprang, as if by an altogether supernatural impulse, to my feet, when I was aided from above to give an exhortation on the very text which my brother Williams had taken… During the exhortation, God made manifest his power in a manner sufficient to show the world that I was called to labor according to my ability, and the grace given unto me, in the vineyard of the good husbandman. I now sat down… being frightened… I feared… I should be expelled from the church. Instead of this, the Bishop rose up in the assembly, and related that I had called upon him eight years before, asking to be permitted to preach, and that he had put me off; but that he now as much believed that I was called to that work, as any of the preachers present.” (Pg. 8-9)
Zilpha Elaw (c. 1790) observed, “The pride of a white skin is a bauble of great value with many in some parts of the United States, who readily sacrifice their intelligence to their prejudices, and possess more knowledge than wisdom. The Almighty accounts not the black races of man either in the order of nature or spiritual capacity as inferior to the white; for He bestows his Holy Spirit on, and dwells in them as readily as in persons of whiter complexion; the Ethiopian eunuch was adopted as a son and heir of God; and when Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto him (Ps 68:31), their submission and worship will be graciously accepted.” (Pg. 16)
Of course, she includes Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) and her famous speech, ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ But after the most famous part of the speech (the part most often quoted), she then added, “that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him. If the first women God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they are asking the men to do it, the men better let them.” (Pg. 22)
Mary Eliza Church Terrell (1863-1954) observed, “As individuals, colored women have always been ambitious for their race. From the day when shackles first fell from their fettered limbs till now, they have often single-handed and alone, struggled against the most desperate and discouraging odds… But it dawned up them finally, that individuals working alone… would accomplish little, compared with the possible achievement of many individuals… And as a result of a general realization of this fact, the National Association of Colored Women was born.” (Pg. 68-69)
Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) said in her Last Will and Testament, “I would not exchange my color for all the wealth in the world, for had I been born white, I might not have been able to do all I have done and hope yet to do.” (Pg. 83)
Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) asked rhetorically, “Scorn the servant women? No, never. Rather scorn that class of women who have resolved not to work and hang out of doors and windows, hold up corners, or keep the neighborhood astir with demoralizing gossip. Scorn Negro women who flirt and loiter about the streets at the sacrifice of … the name of Negro womanhood.” (Pg. 89)
Fannie Barrier Willliams (1855-1944) said of the Women’s Club movement, “Race prejudice yields more readily to this interchange of service and helpfulness than to any other force in the relationship of races.” (Pg. 127)
Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) asserted, “The lynching record for a quarter of a century merits the thoughtful study of the American people. It presents three salient facts: First: Lynching is color line murder. Second: Crimes against women is the excuse, not the cause. Third: It is a national crime and requires a national remedy.” (Pg. 147)
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) stated, “when you see these white and black hypocrites in all of their fine clothes come out of a worship service, and turn up their nose at a kid in rags, or a man drunk on the street, and ask themselves, ‘Now, what’s wrong with HIM?’ They never ask, ‘WHY is that kid in rags?’ ‘WHY is that man drunk?’ They never stop to think that it was something that put that kid in rags, just as it was something that drove that man to drink.” (Pg. 179)
This is an excellent collection, that will be of great interest to anyone wanting to discover some fascinating ‘prophetic’ voices of the past (and recent present).
Marcia Y. Riggs is a Professor of Christian Ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary, a womanist theologian, and an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church; she previously taught at the Lutheran School of Theology, the Pacific School of Religion, Drew University, and Vanderbilt University.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1997 collection, “Preachers in the black church often urge worshippers to respond to the Word by asking, ‘Can I get a witness?’ As I collected and listened to the voices of the women gathered in this volume, they became an enduring yes to the preacher’s question and to the quest for sources which comprise black women’s religious tradition. The compilation of these sources is thus a way to document a distinctive tradition from which many contemporary womanist religious scholars retrieve our insights and receive our inspiration. As sources of scholarly insights and devotional inspiration, the voices of these women confirm the power of our words to bear witness to the power and presence of the incarnate Word.”
She continues in the Introduction, “In recent years, a number of anthologies or primary sources documenting the lives and words of historical and contemporary black women have been compiled… Each of these anthologies has provided us with important primary source accounts by black women of their private and public lives from the slavery era through the contemporary period. This anthology builds on these previous works as I chronicle black women’s lives as faithful witnesses to the prophetic dimensions of the Gospel using significant sociohistorical moments (slavery, emancipation, urbanization) and movements (e.g. the Great Awakenings, abolition, temperance, suffrage, women’s clubs, women’s missionary efforts) as implicit principles of selection for this volume.
“Unlike those previous anthologies, this volume has a single focus, African American women and religion, or more specifically, the reconstruction and retrieval of a prophetic religious tradition of African American women. This tradition includes the experiences and writings of African American women who were involved formally and informally with religious institutions and social reform movements of past and present times. Also as a work of reconstruction and retrieval, this book seeks to document that tradition as predecessor to current womanist scholarship. This volume intends to suggest that the prophetic religious voices of African American women constitute a distinctive tradition within African American religious history and experience. Tradition here refers to a worldview which can be discerned over time through the writings of African American women who interpret the relevance of their spiritual experiences and belief systems for the church, community, and society. Documenting this tradition continues revisionist scholarship in one of the most important areas of the African American experience.” (Pg. xi)
She reports of Jarena Lee (1783-?), who in 1809 was ‘the first black woman to request the right to preach in an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. Although the initial response was denied, she continued her ministry as an itinerant preacher who challenged the status quo: She wrote, “It was not eight years since I have made application to be permitted to preach the gospel, during which time I had been allowed only to exhort, and even this privilege but seldom… Soon after this… the Rev. Richard Williams … took his text… and commenced to expound it. The text he took is in Jonah 2:9: ‘Salvation is of the Lord.’ But as he proceeded to explain, he seemed to have lost the spirit; when in the same instant, I sprang, as if by an altogether supernatural impulse, to my feet, when I was aided from above to give an exhortation on the very text which my brother Williams had taken… During the exhortation, God made manifest his power in a manner sufficient to show the world that I was called to labor according to my ability, and the grace given unto me, in the vineyard of the good husbandman. I now sat down… being frightened… I feared… I should be expelled from the church. Instead of this, the Bishop rose up in the assembly, and related that I had called upon him eight years before, asking to be permitted to preach, and that he had put me off; but that he now as much believed that I was called to that work, as any of the preachers present.” (Pg. 8-9)
Zilpha Elaw (c. 1790) observed, “The pride of a white skin is a bauble of great value with many in some parts of the United States, who readily sacrifice their intelligence to their prejudices, and possess more knowledge than wisdom. The Almighty accounts not the black races of man either in the order of nature or spiritual capacity as inferior to the white; for He bestows his Holy Spirit on, and dwells in them as readily as in persons of whiter complexion; the Ethiopian eunuch was adopted as a son and heir of God; and when Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto him (Ps 68:31), their submission and worship will be graciously accepted.” (Pg. 16)
Of course, she includes Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) and her famous speech, ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ But after the most famous part of the speech (the part most often quoted), she then added, “that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him. If the first women God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they are asking the men to do it, the men better let them.” (Pg. 22)
Mary Eliza Church Terrell (1863-1954) observed, “As individuals, colored women have always been ambitious for their race. From the day when shackles first fell from their fettered limbs till now, they have often single-handed and alone, struggled against the most desperate and discouraging odds… But it dawned up them finally, that individuals working alone… would accomplish little, compared with the possible achievement of many individuals… And as a result of a general realization of this fact, the National Association of Colored Women was born.” (Pg. 68-69)
Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) said in her Last Will and Testament, “I would not exchange my color for all the wealth in the world, for had I been born white, I might not have been able to do all I have done and hope yet to do.” (Pg. 83)
Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) asked rhetorically, “Scorn the servant women? No, never. Rather scorn that class of women who have resolved not to work and hang out of doors and windows, hold up corners, or keep the neighborhood astir with demoralizing gossip. Scorn Negro women who flirt and loiter about the streets at the sacrifice of … the name of Negro womanhood.” (Pg. 89)
Fannie Barrier Willliams (1855-1944) said of the Women’s Club movement, “Race prejudice yields more readily to this interchange of service and helpfulness than to any other force in the relationship of races.” (Pg. 127)
Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) asserted, “The lynching record for a quarter of a century merits the thoughtful study of the American people. It presents three salient facts: First: Lynching is color line murder. Second: Crimes against women is the excuse, not the cause. Third: It is a national crime and requires a national remedy.” (Pg. 147)
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) stated, “when you see these white and black hypocrites in all of their fine clothes come out of a worship service, and turn up their nose at a kid in rags, or a man drunk on the street, and ask themselves, ‘Now, what’s wrong with HIM?’ They never ask, ‘WHY is that kid in rags?’ ‘WHY is that man drunk?’ They never stop to think that it was something that put that kid in rags, just as it was something that drove that man to drink.” (Pg. 179)
This is an excellent collection, that will be of great interest to anyone wanting to discover some fascinating ‘prophetic’ voices of the past (and recent present).
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