Period Poverty is Black History
There are parts of our history that never make it into textbooks. The quiet parts. The private parts. The parts that lived in bedrooms, bathrooms, school hallways, and church basements. The parts that shaped how Black women and Black people who menstruate learned to care for themselves long before the world cared about them.
Period poverty is one of those stories and it is not new. It is not a trend or a modern discovery. It is a thread that runs through generations of Black life in and outside of this country. When we talk about menstrual equity, we are talking about Black history.
For so many of us, the story begins with women who had to figure it out alone. Enslaved women were denied rest, denied privacy, and denied the basic materials needed to manage their cycles. They used scraps of cloth or whatever they could find. Their bodies were treated as labor, not as human. That disregard did not disappear with freedom. It simply changed shape.
Throughout the twentieth century, many Black girls grew up in homes where money was tight and information was limited. Many learned about their periods through whispers or through trial and error. Store bought products were expensive. Schools rarely taught anything useful. Doctors dismissed our pain, and society expected Black women to be strong, silent, and self‑sufficient. Menstruation became something to hide, something to manage quietly, something that required creativity when resources were scarce.
Even now, the pattern continues. Black women are more likely to experience period poverty because of the wage gap, because of limited access to affordable products, and because of the ongoing reality of medical racism. We are more likely to be ignored when we report pain. We are more likely to be judged when we ask for help. We are more likely to be told to push through it.
This story is not only about Black women. Black people who do not identify as women carry this history too. Black trans men, Black nonbinary people, and Black gender expansive people who menstruate face the same financial barriers and the same medical neglect, often with added layers of invisibility. Their needs are questioned. Their experiences are erased. They navigate period poverty in silence because the world refuses to imagine them. They deserve to be seen in this conversation. They deserve care, dignity, and safety.
Period poverty is Black history because it reveals the systems that have always tried to limit our autonomy. It is connected to economic inequality. It is connected to the criminalization of poverty. It is connected to the long tradition of dismissing Black pain. This is a connection to the silence that has followed Black girls and Black gender expansive people for generations.
Yet, there is another side to this story. Black people have always created care where care was denied. We have always shared what we had, taught each other, and built community solutions when institutions failed us. That resourcefulness is part of our history too. It is a story of survival, but also a story of love.
The Good Girl Movement stands in that lineage. We honor the women who had to learn to improvise and to protect themselves. As well as the Black people who do not identify as women but still carry the weight of this issue without recognition. We honor the communities that stretched every resource to make sure someone else was covered.
Our work is not only about providing products. It is about restoring dignity. It is about telling the truth out loud. It is about making sure the next generation of Black people who menstruate do not inherit the same silence.
Period poverty is Black history, but it does not have to be Black future. We are building something different. We are choosing care. We are choosing community. We are choosing each other.
