After spending a year studying at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, Elaine Hensle ’05 decided to bring an international movement to back with her to Wesleyan. Beginning this semester, via e-mail and posters, Hensle has been urging members of the University community to wear black on Thursdays to protest rape and violence against women and other marginalized groups.
Though she encountered “Thursdays in Black” in both Australia and New Zealand, the movement began approximately twenty years ago in Argentina. There, women wearing black march every Thursday in silence in the Plazo de Mayo. They hold placards bearing the names of those who have disappeared to ask for justice for these loved ones, according to an informational leaflet Hensle brought back with her from New Zealand.
Yet, the tradition of wearing black to protest injustice has much broader roots.
“Black was used as a symbol to protest apartheid in South Africa…Also, during Vietnam people wore black arm bands to show that they opposed the draft,” she said. “Black was used historically here as a symbol of African American power. That again draws on a tradition of wearing black as a statement against violence stemming from hate. This is basically a continuation of this tradition.”
Hensle added that in addition to the aforementioned nations, “Thursdays in Black” exists in China, Israel and Palestinian territories. She also has found it in about four universities in America.
“I’d like to see it become a more nationally connected network as it is in New Zealand where I encountered it,” she said.
To achieve this goal, Hensle had contacted various friends and acquaintances at universities throughout the United States and is developing a leaflet with statistics unique to the United States, in order to provide an impetus for the movement. She also urges anyone who wishes to become involved in any form to contact her.
“It’s an information campaign,” she said. “It works at an individual level by communicating information to people across the country and even around the world. There’s so many ‘facts’ as people call them floating around out there that it’s important to get the correct information and also it provides an outlet to give information and resources for people who become victimized, so they have people to get in contact with when they need it. The hope is that through sharing this information with other people that they will begin to understand the situation exactly as it is…Basically it’s your typical grassroots movement.”
Thus far, Hensle has received support mainly from her Kappa Alpha Theta sorority sisters, but due to the simplicity of the action, she feels that it has mass appeal.
“This is something that a mass group of people can easily partake in,” she said. “It’s not something that is ridiculously time demanding. It’s the ability to wake up on Thursday, put on something black and tie a black armband around your arm. And if someone asks you why, being able to tell them why. And if you have a close mate, and it’s Thursday being able to say ‘Why aren’t you wearing black?’ and then telling them about it.”
While the movement is ostensibly to protest violence against women, it has come to encompass any form of discrimination that leads to violence.
Hensle explained that though many on this campus would like to believe that they are safer here than at many other places, she noted that nearly three percent of college women experienced a complete or attempted rape during their college career, and that a rape occurs every 21 hours on each college campus in the United States. Moreover, more people are killed yearly by handguns in the United States than Great Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Australia and Canada combined.
“I know a lot of people who think that Wesleyan is an ideal place, but it’s definitely not,” she said. “That’s definitely something that everyone needs to realize.”
In addition to her most recent work, in high school, Hensle attended an anti-violence and resolution conference in Boston and has worked with Theta every April to raise money for Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA). The organization provides lawyers for abused children. Hensle hopes that if “Thursdays in Black” gains momentum, issues like this will become more visible.
“I want to use this as a way to raise violence awareness,” she said.
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