What would you do when you are being excluded? When you are shouted at or catcalled in the streets, when you are rejected because of who you are, or when your story is willfully ignored?
In 1983, a group of women in Nijmegen founded a new national network: the Groep Zwarte Vrouwen (Group of Black Women). It became a diverse group, with women of, among others, Indonesian, Surinamese, Moluccan, Antillean, and Mediterranean descent. In short, women who had to deal with racism and exclusion in the Netherlands on a daily basis. Women who decided to do something about it.
The national Black Women's Groups existed for about eight years. There was no strict organization, fixed structure or official program. Rather, it was a network of women throughout the Netherlands who, through their own local organizations, kept in touch with one other and got together at national meetings.
This exhibition is specifically about the Groep Zwarte Vrouwen Nijmegen (GZVN, Group of Black Women Nijmegen). During the 1980s, they came together to talk, read, eat, sing, and dance. They published books and articles, taught self-defense courses, handed out flyers, put up posters, and engaged in protests and other forms of activism.
Next to personal archives, this exhibition is mainly based on interviews with former members of the Group of Black Women Nijmegen: Carin, Claudia, Dewi, Grace, Lily, and Mo. And two women from the national network: Ans and Tineke. They shared their memories of and experiences with their activism. What motivated them to organize? And what can we still learn from them today?
From August to October, these questions can be found in an exhibition at the Huis van de Nijmeegse Geschiedenis (free admission).
