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Bulletin
Four decades ago, 2,000 blacks gathered at Spelman College for a fitness conference.
By Matthew Thompson
Note: This newsletter was sent to readers in December 2023. Headway is publishing the newsletter as an article to bring it together with other newsletters on site. Read them all here.
Four decades ago, some 2,000 black women gathered in Atlanta for a fitness convention at Spelman College. As Dara Mathis recently reported for Headway, the occasion marked a milestone in a movement that was then in its infancy.
After the story was published, we heard from several readers who had attended the event or knew someone who had. I followed some of them to better understand what drew them there and the effect the convention had on them. A few things came out of our conversations.
I was amazed at how many facets of their lives the participants shamelessly discussed for the first time. When she went to the conference, Brenda Smith had just graduated from Spelman and was reading at Georgetown University Law Center. “I think it was probably one of the first talks I heard about abortion,” Smith told me. “I think it was the first time I heard open conversations about sexual violence, that other people were talking about domestic violence. I think it was probably the first time other people recognized, or felt that other people were open and liked other women.
Nancy Anderson was a young doctor working at an Atlanta County hospital at the time. “I had read an e-book called ‘This Bridge Called Me Back,'” Anderson said. “That’s when I learned that, ‘Oh, there are other people who really describe what it’s like to be a black woman. ‘They had all kinds of points of view. I learned that I can locate other people like that in Atlanta. Reading the book, a collection of writings by women of color, helped her start a process of exploration that led to the event at Spelman. Thousands of similar silent facilitators have led women across the country to organize buses and rideshares to Georgia.
Perhaps the most resonant and novel message from the conference was that women’s well-being was worth time, attention and care. Black women in particular faced ubiquitous messaging that they should endlessly sacrifice their own needs for others.
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