Women were primarily not seen as able to preach. I have been to an Apostolic church where the statement is “women can teach, but they can’t preach.” It was around that time that I thought that I wanted to join the church, even though I already belonged to St. Thomas Baptist Church, where my preacher is a woman. I remained a Baptist mostly because, at the time, 12-year-old me did not want to wear skirts or dresses every day for the rest of my life. The women at that church were treated differently than how my church is. My church is literally run by women, women preach, schedule the gatherings, run choir rehearsal, and are ministers and trustees.

It is hard for to me to believe that at a time my church was not run by women and that today not many other black churches have a lot of women preachers. In all the readings, I thought that the women tried as hard as they could to serve the Lord at that time. Rosa Young made a school because she could not preach. That amount of dedication shocks me. For someone to be so committed to the Lord to go against everything at their time and make a school. The masculinity in churches became the norm. In white churches, the women were not preaching. But in Righteous Discontent,  some black women talked with white women about their churches.