Rhonda Ridgell Sampson. Rhonda "Ridgehand" Alexander. Kierston Simms. Fredia Gibbs. Chavela Aaron. Linda Denley. Lynette Love. Cynthia Prouder. What do these women have in common, other than the fact that they were/are Black and beautiful? Well, these eight aforementioned women have all excelled in their specialties in the martial arts...and belong in a group of people whose accomplishments and contributions are often ignored, slighted, and not mentioned in greater detail by the martial arts community, making it easier for anyone to insist that a Black presence...or the Black experience... in the martial arts doesn't exist. As a younger man in the Eighties, I would flip the pages in my Black Belt pages, seeking an image of a martial arts teacher and student that looked like me. And it wasn't long until I found an article in an Inside Karate magazine about Ms. Kierston Simms, a model, and her experiences as a competitor and instructor in Dorchester, MA. From that point on, the likes of Mfundishi Tayari Casel and the late Dr. Moses Powell and Dr. Ronald McNair appeared in later editions, shedding more light on the positive impact of African Americans on the fighting arts, showing them as people with so many layers and so much to offer.
This latest drawing, a pictorial story of a beautiful young woman performing a kata, serves as a tribute to the Black men and women who laid a foundation before their students, hoping that they would follow in their footsteps.
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