Foreword Rosie Phillips Davis The image of the White policeman’s knee on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds as he cried out, “I can’t breathe,” in May 2020 will live in my memory forever. I was so shaken that I could not talk. In my predominantly White neighborhood, I walk about five days a week, speak to all the neighbors, and encourage their walking. I am a member of our neighborhood garden club. And yet when Floyd was killed, no one said anything to me. No one called. When I finally mentioned it, people seemed surprised by my feelings. I hardly heard from any of my White friends and colleagues, even though I was serving as immediate past pres- ident of the American Psychological Association. Interestingly, as I served on a dissertation committee for an African American doctoral student, part of her study included conversations about the strong Black woman. The literature that she used questioned what such labeling did to Black/ African American women. Strangely, the discussion made me rediscover the strong Black woman in me. I decided to stop waiting on someone to save me. I began to find my voice. I wonder what I would have done had I had women like Drs. Shelton, Lyn, and Endale around or any of the women writers in this book? I sus- pect the time it took to regain my voice may have been shorter. Oh, I have seen therapists over the years, but the problems I took to them were so definable. They were usually about my family and my relationships. But what about the societal stressors that Black women face just because they live in the United States of America? Throughout this book the authors call that fact to the reader’s attention. They talk about the intersectionality of
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