“Dubbed Slave for Life”: Lightning Rider @ #Standing4BlackGirls Concert

Excerpt from Sikivu’s performance at the July 2025 #Standing4blackgirls benefit concert for the Women’s Leadership Project in Arlington, Massachusetts, reflecting on enslaved ancestor Harriet Stroope Knox vis-a-vis legacies of stolen girlhood and rape culture. In 1820, Thomas Jefferson, “Founding Father” rapist, pedophile, enslaver and racial capitalist, whose heirs profited from racial slavery and sexual terrorism for generations, wrote: “I know no error more consuming to an estate than that of stocking farms with men almost exclusively. I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.”