By SUSIEDAY / SPECTRE
We on the revolutionary left in the United States are inclined to interpret history through icons. Che, Assata, George Jackson, Fred Hampton, Malcolm, Marx: one look at their familiar images and we know what time it is.
But you don’t have to be an icon to be part of history; you don’t have to be in a famous underground cadre, or be martyred by prison or COINTELPRO. You just have to be one person, however “obscure.” You have to stand up for the people you love, to help them live. Then you keep working and fighting. That’s it. Everybody has this potential. And, given history, Black women tend to have it more than most.
Carol Jean Crooks was a Black dyke. Born October 12, 1946, she grew up on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and died alone in early 2022. She worked and fought all her life in relative obscurity. Though most of her work wasn’t legal, her fights created a better and fairer world. If you knew her at all, you probably knew her as Crooksie…