Amidst celebrations of Black History Month and the shared birth week of writers Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison, an intimate conversation on creating safe spaces for women of color with Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole was held on Feb. 21.

The event was part of Provost Renée T. White’s, or as Cole liked to call her “Sister Provost,” series titled “The Moment is Now: In Dialogue with Changemakers.” The event was gathered to discuss safe spaces, “In Times Such as These,” the central theme throughout the discussion.

Cole has been in the academic world for over 60 years. She received her Doctorate in philosophy at Northwestern University and was the first African American female president of Spelman College, a historically Black female institution. In 2021, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by the Biden administration. 

Cole opened with a story from her time at Spelman when Audre Lorde visited the campus. Cole described Lorde’s first visit as being met with homophobia “so thick, you could’ve cut it” from the Spelman student body. 

Due to this, Lorde vowed not to return, but Cole said she remained persistent in trying to get Lorde to give Spelman a second chance. Once Lorde agreed, Cole took a different approach, choosing a selection of Spelman women to come to her home for an intimate gathering. This allowed the women to express themselves in the sanctity of the space, enough for one of the women to declare her “fullness of … being a lesbian.”  

“If there’s anything [women of color] have always needed, it is a safe space to own the fullness of who we are, to hear what it is that we’re charged to do, and to commit ourselves to helping to provide safe space for others,” Cole said. 

The conversation on safe spaces was just a small portion of the Black History Month celebration at The New School. The College of Performing Arts hosted the larger event, titled “All Things Work Together For Good —- A Celebration of Black History.”

Charlotte Small, a CoPA jazz faculty member and curator for the recent Black History Month event, said she hadn’t “felt safe” at the university for years because she didn’t feel she could speak out and have other faculty members understand. Small also shared that she was discouraged from organizing a Black History Month event until she reached out to White. 

“I didn’t really know Provost White … but I decided to write to her because she is a Black woman, and she would understand where I was coming from.”

Small said it was “frustrating” that there hadn’t been many events regarding Black history in the 18 years she had been at The New School. 

“I had students come up to me yesterday when I was teaching saying … I can’t believe that this school has been in its existence for so many years, and this is only the second [in-person Black History Month event]. And that’s a lot. That’s deep,” Small said. 

This year, Small said it was especially important for her to have Cole as a guest speaker because of Kamala Harris’s campaign for president because of how Black women came together for her.

“I wanted the keynote speaker to be a Black woman, but I also wanted it to be a Black woman who is a mentor to all of us. Somebody who’s been around for a long time, yet someone that we can look up to and learn from.”

Small shared that with Cole’s visit, she wanted women of color to feel special and to be reminded that they bring a lot to the table. 

The conversation flowed into the different forms of Black consciousness and colorism. Cole emphasized that understanding one’s history is essential in moving forward and creating these spaces. 

“Forces dare to say to us that we have no right to understand our past. I mean, when I say it, I get chill bumps. How could you say that? That I have no right to understand my history, her story, their story. Why? Because it makes you and some of your people uncomfortable,” Cole said.

Cole used the word “Sankofa,” an African word that means “go back and fetch,” to speak on how people can use it to enact change.

Pani Farvid, associate professor of applied psychology at the Schools of Public Engagement, was also in attendance and shared her perspective on the environment of social structures around the world. 

Farvid, who is also a faculty fellow of The Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at TNS, has centered much of her research on racial and gender-based issues.  

“It’s about the community uptake and willingness to not only do one’s own work and one’s own self-reflexivity, but the difficult work of being in community with each other and in spaces where you’re uncomfortable, and realizing that there are a lot of people in your community who are actually always uncomfortable.”

Cole stressed the importance of community, “There is joy in the larger sense, in the collectivity. And I tell you, once you taste it, you get addicted.”