HerStory 2024

We have been blessed by Beyonce’s newest album, Cowboy Carter, not only for the amazing music, but for all we have learned about country music and its roots in the African American diaspora. There has been lots of grumbling about a Black woman singing country, and we are here to confront those grumbles and dispel the incorrect beliefs that country music is somehow a white person thing. Country music, cowboys, and the banjo are all direct descendants of the music and knowledge that Africans brought with them when they were forcibly kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in America. 

Linda Martell, born in 1941 and raised in North Carolina, was the first Black woman artist to play at the Grand Ole Opry. She was the first Black woman to be commercially successful as a country music artist, with her sole album, Color Me Country, reaching number 40 on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart. She was the first Black woman to perform on Hee Haw. Due to all of the usual suspects (racism, misogyny, and more racism), her career didn’t advance the way her talent indicated it should, and her legacy became mostly known, honored, and recognized by other Black women in country music. Until, that is, Cowboy Carter.

Martell started her singing career in R&B, in a group with her sister and cousins that never achieved much commercial success. After their group disbanded, she was “discovered” while singing at an air force base, and encouraged to break into country music with a record label called (yikes): Plantation Records (and yes, the name bothered the heck out of her, but she didn’t feel she could pass up this opportunity). She recorded her album with this label, and three of the singles hit the country charts, but support for a Black female country music artist in 1970 was neither strong nor wide-ranging. When the combination of the label lessening its support and promotion for her music in favor of a white female performer and the constant heckling and racism she experienced while on the road got to be too much, and finding a new record label just plain didn’t happen, Martell stepped away from the country music lifestyle. She had an expansive and musical life: running a record store in Brooklyn, performing non-country music on cruise ships, and even driving a school bus back in North Carolina. But, for a long time, it seemed her short-lived success was a flash in the pan and, this ground-breaking artist had been all but forgotten due to that hallmark of America, white supremacy. 

More and more in the past several years, Martell has been remembered, discussed, interviewed, and honored for the impact she made on country music. Her granddaughter is currently producing (and crowd-funding) a a documentary about her called Bad Case of the Country Blues: the Linda Martell Story; the trailer is up and available to watch (link here: https://youtu.be/uI-s7jK61UQ?si=UKUj8n00VOqQuMTO). Her influence is felt by every Black female country artist making music today, and many pay homage to her legacy. Rissi Palmer named her podcast Color Me Country, after Martell’s groundbreaking album of the same name. Maren Morris thanked Martell for her influence in her 2020 acceptance speech for winning Female Vocalist of the Year at a country music awards show. And, as we all know, Beyonce not only invited Martell to provide voice-over support on Cowboy Carter, but also named one of the tracks The Linda Martell Show.

Our April color is inspired by the Snapdragon, because they are ‘known to grow in rocky areas. The snapdragons tenacity and ability to bloom in poor conditions has led it being seen as a symbol of strength in trying circumstances, and we think Linda Martell has done just that!

This month, we are honoring a true pioneer, who settled and broke barriers here in Oregon: Letitia Carson. In the mid-1800s, Carson was one of many hundreds of people journeying along the Oregon Trail to find a better life. She traveled with David Carson (a white man), with whom she eventually had 2 children (little is known about their relationship, and there is speculation that she may have been enslaved by Carson at some point in their relationship. They also did not seem to be married). Only about 3% of people heading west during westward pioneering days in 1800s were Black, and Letitia was among that 3%. 

They settled in Benton County, Oregon, and built a homestead on a land claim in Soap Creek Valley. Oregon was not what one would call friendly to Black people: among the state’s first acts of governance, a law was passed barring Black people from residing within its borders or claiming land (the exclusion law stated that any Black person who attempted to settle in Oregon would be publicly lashed 39 times every six months). When David died suddenly, leaving no will, an estate executor ruled that Letitia shouldn’t inherit the homestead, so she took the case to court. The gist of her complaint was that if she wasn’t recognized as David Carson’s legal heir, then she was due back wages, damages, and compensation for the unlawful sale of her cattle. She won the case, although her homestead had already been portioned off and sold. Sidenote: even the family’s bedding and cooking supplies were sold at auction, and Letitia had to spend $104.87 to buy back these basic possessions in order to survive.

She and her children moved to Douglas County, Oregon, with scant possessions and a few cows. She  lived and worked on the land of another family, and served as the community midwife. By this point in time, Oregon had passed the second of its three Black-exclusion laws, and the third was written into the Oregon Constitution in 1857, where it remained until 1926. 

When the Homestead Act passed in Congress, granting virtually free land to settlers (up to 160 acres) and not excluding Black folks from applying, Letitia filed a claim. It was certified in 1869 (hers was among the first 71 claims to be certified), and she became the only Black woman in the entire state of Oregon to get land through the Act. She built a ranch that included a two-story house, barn, smokehouse, cattle, pigs, and an orchard of over 100 fruit trees. She lived the remainder of her life on the ranch, prospering in a place that still had laws specifically designed to disenfranchise Black people.

Letitia’s daughter married an Indigenous man, who was Walla Walla and Metis, and they made their home on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Their descendants have rediscovered their family history, and their Black matriarch, and have worked at honoring Letitia’s legacy, through education and advocacy.

We chose the Camus flower to represent Letitia Carson due to its ubiquitousness in the place she first settled in Oregon: the Willamette Valley. Her Soap Creek Valley claim is now a part of Oregon State University’s holdings and an important piece of the Letitia Carson Legacy Project the university is sponsoring. This project pays homage to Black farmers in Oregon, and the project hopes for it to become both a historical center for the history of Black farming in Oregon and a resource for Black farmers of today. If you’d like to see more from the Legacy Project, here is a link to their digital home: https://letitiacarson.omeka.net/.

We’re heading to the high seas this month, as we honor Zheng Yi Sao, the Chinese Pirate Queen!

Zheng Yi Sao was one of the most successful pirates in history (and for sure the most successful female pirate), active in the South China Sea in the early 1800s. She went by many names (Shi Xianggu, Shek Yeung, Ching Shih, Cheng I Sao, Ching Yih Saou and Mrs. Cheng being some of them), and her backstory is a bit of a mystery. What we do know about her is that she was a ruthless and respected leader, and her organization skills and stringent rules of conduct for the pirates in her employ helped to make her the success that she was, and kept her confederation of pirate ships strong and connected until she ended things on her terms.

At age 26, she married a pirate named Zheng Yi, and accompanied him on his journeys. After his death in 1807, she took control of his operations, the Guangdong Pirate Confederation, with a fleet composed of 400 ships and between 40,000 and 60,000 pirates. They entered into conflict with several major powers, such as the East India Company, the Portuguese Empire, and the Great Qing.

They were both feared and respected, and, even though the whole pirate thing has a fun quality to modern sensibilities, the havoc they wreaked was pretty awful. Not only did they steal, they murdered and enslaved and tortured their captives. The punishments for infractions against the federation were severe, particularly for violence against female captives. Entire villages were laid to waste, casualties of wars the Confederation waged against the Chinese government and various trading companies. 

Zheng Yi Sao and her Guangong Pirate Confederation ruled the South China Sea for nearly a decade, and some say she was a victim of her own success. Piracy was so widespread, and had such a hold on the sea, that trade became almost non-existent, causing financial stress throughout China. The Chinese government, despite having been bested by Zheng Yi’s pirates on multiple occasions, came to a crossroads where they had no choice but to figure out how to end the hold piracy had on the country. 

In 1810, Zheng Yi Sao negotiated the most stylish surrender ever to the Qing authorities: she sailed into Canton harbor with her entire 260-boat fleet, flags flying, and demanded a very favorably-termed pardon. She and her pirates were able to keep their plunder, but had to give us most of their ships and weapons. Many of the pirates were actually then hired into the Chinese Navy, and in turn were in charge of persecuting pirates. Zheng Yi had a prosperous and peaceful life, after having been the most bad-ass of Pirate Queens.

To honor Zheng Yi Sao, we created the Chrysanthemum colorway. The chrysanthemum is a very important flower in the Chinese culture, having been honored and cultivated since hundreds of years BCE. In fact, there are over 20,000 cultivars in China! It’s also one of The Four Gentlemen (四君子 junzi), four plants that represent noble character: plum (梅 mei), orchid (兰 lan), bamboo (竹 zhu), and chrysanthemum (菊 ju).

For our second HerStory of 2024, we are sticking with catchy tunes by moving from the Mother of Hip Hop to the Queen of Salsa: Celia Cruz.

Born in Havana, Cuba in 1925, Celia loved music from a young age. It was said that she got her first-ever pair of shoes from a tourist who was impressed with her street performance when she was very young. Encouraged to become a teacher by her practical father, Cruz couldn’t get music out of her soul, and left her pursuit of education to study music. She took part in radio contests throughout her young adulthood, winning pretty much every one she took part in. 

She joined and became the lead singer for the Afro-Cuban orchestra Sonora Matancera in 1950, the ensemble’s first Black front person since its founding about 25 years earlier, and that was where her star truly began to rise. It was during this time that she coined her trademark shout “¡Azúcar!” in response to a waiter at a restaurant in Miami who asked if she would like her coffee with sugar. It became her catchphrase, and took on deeper significance as a remembrance of enslaved Africans who worked on Cuban sugar plantations, particularly poignant coming from a Black Cuban like Cruz.

While on tour in Mexico in 1960, Fidel Castro took control of Cuba, and La Sonora Matancera renounced his regime. They were exiled from Cuba, and Cruz wasn’t able to return for many decades. Castro even forbid their music to be played in the country. 

Cruz’s music and style constantly evolved. While her salsa music was perhaps what she was best-known for, she also performed rumba and reggaeton, and starred in films. Known for her powerful voice, colorful costumes, and energizing rhythm, Cruz was a vivacious entertainer that appealed to all generations. She influenced everything from fashion to music (a gown of hers is on display at the Smithsonian). She is still one of the best-known Latin artists and one of the most famous Afro-Latinas in the world, and her influence is still inspiring musicians across genres.

Cruz has an asteroid named after her, a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, had a postage stamp created to honor her, and has a wax replica at the Hollywood Wax Museum, to name a few of the honors bestowed on this talented multi-Grammy-winning singer (of course, the highest honor in our estimation is being included in our HerStory lineup ;)) This year, a quarter bearing her likeness will be released, so keep your eyes peeled! 

This month’s HerStory colorway is White Mariposa, the official flower of Cruz’s beloved Cuba. When she returned in 1990 to perform, Cruz collected a bag of soil from Cuban earth, and when she was buried in 2003, that soil was buried with her. Cuba was in her heart and soul, even though she lived outside of the country for longer than she lived in it. Honoring this love by creating a colorway inspired by Cuba’s official flower seemed the right choice. The fact that her very existence and fame seems a bit subversive, given her demographics (young, female, Black, Cuban), this flower, which was used for subversive means during the Spanish colonial times: women used to adorn themselves with these fragrant flowers and because of the flower’s intricate structure, women hid and carried secret messages important to the independence cause in the center of the petals.

It’s a fresh new year, and, after two years of the HerStory Book Club, we are ready for a bit of a change. For 2024, we are going to focus on flowers for HerStory, and our inspiration is going to be a bit more loosey-goosey than it usually is. Every month, our colorway will be inspired by a flower, and the HerStory recipient of that month will somehow be associated with that flower. 

January’s colorway is Lily of the Valley, inspired by the lovely flowers that are the birth-month flowers of our HerStory recipient, Sylvia Robinson. Robinson is known as the Mother of Hip-Hop: she was the founder and CEO of Sugar Hill records AND the producer and promoter of two of the most iconic songs in hip-hop history, Rapper’s Delight (1979) by the Sugarhill Gang, and The Message (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. In a discovery that tickled our fancy even more, she’s the Sylvia from the “Sylvia? Yes Mickey? How do you call your loverboy?” song from Dirty Dancing! AND! She played guitar on and arranged Ike & Tina Turner’s first hit, It’s Gonna Work Out Fine (but did not get a producer credit, because patriarchy).

Robinson was at the vanguard of so many things regarding women, particularly Black women, in the music industry, and there is definitely some sordidness in regards to her business practices, which have tarnished her reputation a bit. We won’t get into those today, because we are here to sing her praises and celebrate everything she did for the genre and industry, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention them. 

So many songs from early hip-hop and rap have her mark on them; Sugar Hill Records was THE label that first recorded and promoted rap and hip-hop, and helped to cement it as a musical genre in the waning days of disco and funk. Even things like boy bands have Sylvia to thank: she created the Sugarhill Gang specifically to explore the genre of hip-hop she had been hearing at clubs. And now, hip-hop/rap is the most listened-to musical genre in the world.

Sylvia Robinson’s legacy is still being felt today. Every hip-hop song that breaks records, every female recording artist that dips her toes into producing, every song about the struggles of marginalized communities that hits the charts, has Robinson to thank in some ways. She fought for herself in a time that was less than encouraging to women. She had two distinct recording careers: one as half of Mickey & Silvia in the 1950s, and one as a solo act in the 1970s. She founded two recording labels, received awards and recognition across musical genres for her work, and was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. She’s an absolute legend, and we have so enjoyed getting to know more about her history, and by extension, the history of hip-hop, this month.