Black feminism
Encyclopedia
Black feminism argues that sexism
, class oppression, and racism
are inextricably bound together. Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class
oppression. The Combahee River Collective
argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression. One of the theories that evolved out of this movement was Alice Walker
's Womanism
.
Alice Walker and other womanists pointed out that black women experienced a different and more intense kind of oppression from that of white women. They point to the emergence black feminism after earlier movements led by white middle-class women which they regard as having largely ignored oppression based on race and class. Patricia Hill Collins
defined Black feminism, in Black Feminist Thought (1991), as including "women who theorize the experiences and ideas shared by ordinary black women that provide a unique angle of vision on self, community, and society".
Black feminists contend that the liberation of black women entails freedom
for all people, since it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression. There is a long-standing and important alliance between postcolonial feminists, which overlaps with transnational feminism
and third-world feminism, and black feminists. Both have struggled for recognition, not only from men in their own culture, but also from Western feminists.
Black women faced the same struggles as white women; however, they had to face issues of diversity on top of inequality. Black feminist organizations emerged during the 1970s and face many difficulties from both the culture they were confronting and their adjustment to their vulnerability within it. These women also fought against suppression from the larger movements in which many of its members came from.
Black feminist organizations had to overcome three different challenges that no other feminist organization had to face. The first challenge these women faced was to “prove to other black women that feminism was not only for white women.” They also had to demand that white women “share power with them and affirm diversity” and “fight the misogynist tendencies of Black Nationalism”. With all the challenges these women had to face many activists referred to black feminists as “war weary warriors”.
The NBFO, the National Black Feminist Organization, founded in 1973. These women focused on the interconnectedness of the many prejudices that faced African American Women such as racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and lesbophobia. As an active organization the NBFO stopped operating nationally in 1977.
The Combahee River Collective was one of the most important black socialist feminist organizations of all time. Primarily a black feminist and lesbian organization this group began meeting in Boston in 1974, a time when socialist feminism was thriving in Boston. The name Combahee River Collective was suggested by the founder and African-American lesbian feminist, Barbara Smith, and it refers to the campaign led by Harriet Tubman who freed 750 slaves near the Combahee Rive in South Carolina in 1863. Smith said they wanted the name to mean something to African American women that “it was a way of talking about ourselves being on a continuum of black struggle, of black women’s struggle”.
The members of this organization consisted of many refugees from other political movements such as the civil rights movement, anti-war movement, labor movement, and others. Demita Frazier, co-founder of the Combahee River Collective says these women from other movements found themselves “in conflict with the lack of a feminist analysis and in many cases were left feeling divided against [themselves].”
As an organization they were labeled as troublemakers and many said they were brainwashed by the man hating white feminist, that they didn’t have their own mind they were just following in the white women’s footsteps. Throughout the 1970s the Combahee River Collective met weekly to discuss the different issues concerning black feminists. They also held retreats throughout the Northeast from 1977-1979 to help “institutionalize black feminism” and develop an “ideological separation from white feminism.”
As an organization they founded a local battered women’s shelter and worked in partnership with all community activists, women and men, gay and straight playing an active role in the reproductive rights movement. The Combahee River Collective ended their work together in 1980 and is now most widely remembered for developing the Combahee River Collective Statement, a key document in the history of contemporary black feminism and the development of the concepts of identity.
movement and the feminist movement
of the 1960s and 1970s.
One of the foundation texts of black feminism is An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force, authored by Mary Ann Weathers and published in 1969 in Cell 16
's radical feminist magazine No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation. Weathers states her belief that "Women's Liberation should be considered as a strategy for an eventual tie-up with the entire revolutionary movement consisting of women, men, and children," but she posits that "(w)e women must start this thing rolling" because
The following year, in 1970, the Third World Women’s Alliance published the Black Women’s Manifesto, which argued for a specificity of oppression against Black women. Co-signed by Gayle Linch, Eleanor Holmes Norton
, Maxine Williams, Frances M Beale and Linda La Rue, the manifesto
, opposing both racism
and capitalism
, stated that:
Other black feminists active in early second-wave feminism
were civil rights lawyer and author Florynce Kennedy
, who co-authored one of the first books on abortion, 1971's Abortion Rap; Cellestine Ware, of New York's Stanton-Anthony Brigade; and Patricia Robinson; who all "tried to show the connections between racism and male dominance" in society.
Not only did the civil rights movement primarily focus only on the oppression of black men, but many black women faced severe sexism within civil rights groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
. The feminist movement focused on the problems faced by white women. For instance, earning the power to work outside of the home was not an accomplishment for black feminists; they had been working all along. Neither movement confronted the issues that concerned black women specifically. Because of their intersectional position
, black women were being systematically ignored by both movements: "All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men but Some of Us are Brave", as titled a 1982 book by Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith
.
Black women began creating theory and developing a new movement which spoke to the combination of problems they were battling, including sexism, racism, and classism. Angela Davis
, for instance, showed that while Afro-American women were suffering from compulsory sterilization
programs, white women were subjected to multiple unwilled pregnancies and had to clandestinely abort
.
The short-lived National Black Feminist Organization
was founded in 1973 in New York by Margaret Sloan-Hunter
and others. Two years later, Barbara Smith
, Beverly Smith
, Cheryl L. Clarke, Gloria Akasha Hull
, and other female activists tied to the civil rights movement, Black Nationalism
or the Black Panther Party
established, as an off-shoot of the National Black Feminist Organization, the Combahee River Collective
, a radical lesbian feminist group. Their founding text referred to important female figures of the abolitionist movement, such as Sojourner Truth
, Harriet Tubman
, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Welles Barnett and Mary Church Terrell
, president of the National Association of Colored Women
founded in 1896. The Combahee River Collective opposed the practice of lesbian separatism
, considering that, in practice, Separatists focused exclusively on sexist oppression and not on others oppression (race, class, etc.)
This group's primary goal was "the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking." They rejected all essentialization or biologization, focusing on political and economical analysis of various forms of domination. The Combahee River Collective, in particular on the impulse of Barbara Smith, would engage itself in various publications on feminism, showing that the position of Black women was specific and adding a new perspective to Women's studies
, mainly written by White women.
The Black Lesbian Caucus was created as an off-shoot of the Gay Liberation Front
in 1971, and later took the name of the Salsa Soul Sisters, Third World Wimmin Inc. Collective
, which was the first "out" organization for lesbians, womanist
s and women of color in New York
. The Salsa Soul Sisters published a literary quarterly called Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians
in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Sisters are now known as African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change, and is the oldest black lesbian organization in the United States
.
As stated above, the black feminist movement grew out of the civil rights movements of the 60's and 70's, stemming from groups like SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), the Black Panthers and other such groups. It was not so much a growth as a separation from black civil rights groups because the main focus was male oppression. In the autobiography of Anne Moody, she brings the idea of black feminism into focus, stating, "We were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being 'ladylike' and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people."
Black women not only had to deal with racism, but sexism as well and it was even more prevalent with black males. According to the authors, another reason why Black women were oppressed more is because of the certain stereotype attributed to black women, i.e. mammy, Sapphire, whore and bulldagger to name a few. These names are just an example of how insignificant these Black women's lives have become, and it's not only white people who continue the name calling, but also more importantly black males.
While the explanations above do a decent job of explaining the black feminist movement, there are certain ideas that are not addressed that play a major role in black feminism. As compared to white feminists, black feminists do no face the threat of being undermined by their own people. No one better exemplifies this ideal better than Michelle Wallace, a black feminist who also was a member of the Combahee River Collective. She states, "We exist as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world."
The black feminist movement had to contend with civil rights movements that wanted women in a lesser role. Men believed the black women would organize around their own needs and minimalize their own efforts; losing reliable allies in the struggle for civil rights. The black feminist movement not only had to contend with racial prejudice but also the structure of our patriarchal society making their struggle that much harder.
All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies, (Editors Akasha (Gloria T.) Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith) describes black feminists mobilizing "a remarkable national response to the Anita Hill
-Clarence Thomas
Senate Hearings in 1991, naming their effort African American Women in Defense of Ourselves.
E. Frances White
's expressed her belief that feminists need to revise the movement's relationship to the concept of "the family"; to acknowledge that, for women of color, "the family is not only a source of male dominance, but a source of resistance to racism as well."
In her introduction to the 2000 reissue of the 1983 black feminist anthology Home Girls
, theorist and author Barbara Smith states her opinion that "to this day most Black women are unwilling to jeopardize their 'racial credibility' (as defined by Black men) to address the realities of sexism." Smith also notes that "even fewer are willing to bring up homophobia
and heterosexism
, which are, of course, inextricably linked to gender oppression.
Starting around 2000, the "third wave
" of feminism in France
took interest in the relations between sexism and racism, with a certain amount of studies dedicated to black feminism. This new focus was displayed by the translation, in 2007, of the first anthology of U.S. black feminist texts.
believes that there is continuity "in the written work of many African American Women,... you can draw a line from the slave narrative
of Linda Brent to Elizabeth Keckley's life, to Their Eyes were Watching God
(by Zora Neale Hurston
) to Coming of Age in Mississippi (Anne Moody
) to Sula
(by Toni Morrison
), to the Salt Eaters (by Toni Cade Bambara
) to Praise Song for the Widow (by Paule Marshall
)." Cliff believes that all of these women, through their stories, "Work against the odds to claim the 'I'".
Activist and cultural critic Angela Davis
was one of the first people to articulate a written argument centered on intersectionality
, in Women, Race, and Class. Kimberle Crenshaw, prominent feminist law theorist, gave the idea a name while discussing Identity Politics
in her essay, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color." Another feminist theorist is Patricia Hill Collins
, who introduced the sociological theory of Matrix of Domination
; much of her work concerns the politics of black feminist thought and oppression.
was edited by Barbara Smith
and Lorraine Bethel
. Conditions 5 was "the first widely distributed collection of Black feminist writing in the U.S." Articles from the magazine were later released in Home Girls
, an anthology of black lesbian and feminist writing published in 1983 by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
, a publisher owned and operated by women of color.
, a follower of womanism
, a movement tied to black theology
, is the author of The Color Purple.
Pat Parker
's (1944–1989) involvement in the black feminist movement was reflected in her writings as a poet. Her work inspired other black feminist poets like Hattie Gossett
. Other Black feminist authors include: Jewelle Gomez
, June Jordan
, Sapphire, Becky Birtha, Donna Allegra, Cheryl Clarke
, Ann Allen Shockley, Alexis De Veaux and many others.
Rebecca Walker
's writings - especially Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2000) and One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love (2009) (Editor) - evince an interest in black feminism, racism, and her own biracial status.
The music of singer-songwriters Meshell Ndegeocello, Odetta
, Thomasina Winslow
, and Tracey Chapman have lyrics that discuss issues in black feminism.
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
, class oppression, and racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
are inextricably bound together. Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
oppression. The Combahee River Collective
Combahee River Collective
The Combahee River Collective was a Black feminist Lesbian organization active in Boston from 1974 to 1980. They are perhaps best known for developing the Combahee River Collective Statement, a key document in the history of contemporary Black feminism and the development of the concepts of...
argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression. One of the theories that evolved out of this movement was Alice Walker
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...
's Womanism
Womanism
The word womanism was adapted from Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker's use of the term in her book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose...
.
Alice Walker and other womanists pointed out that black women experienced a different and more intense kind of oppression from that of white women. They point to the emergence black feminism after earlier movements led by white middle-class women which they regard as having largely ignored oppression based on race and class. Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins, is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, former head of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati and past President of the American Sociological Association Council...
defined Black feminism, in Black Feminist Thought (1991), as including "women who theorize the experiences and ideas shared by ordinary black women that provide a unique angle of vision on self, community, and society".
Black feminists contend that the liberation of black women entails freedom
Freedom (political)
Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...
for all people, since it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression. There is a long-standing and important alliance between postcolonial feminists, which overlaps with transnational feminism
Transnational feminism
Transnational Feminism is a contemporary paradigm. The name highlights the difference between international and transnational conceptions of feminism, and favours the latter...
and third-world feminism, and black feminists. Both have struggled for recognition, not only from men in their own culture, but also from Western feminists.
Black women faced the same struggles as white women; however, they had to face issues of diversity on top of inequality. Black feminist organizations emerged during the 1970s and face many difficulties from both the culture they were confronting and their adjustment to their vulnerability within it. These women also fought against suppression from the larger movements in which many of its members came from.
Black feminist organizations had to overcome three different challenges that no other feminist organization had to face. The first challenge these women faced was to “prove to other black women that feminism was not only for white women.” They also had to demand that white women “share power with them and affirm diversity” and “fight the misogynist tendencies of Black Nationalism”. With all the challenges these women had to face many activists referred to black feminists as “war weary warriors”.
Black feminist organizations
The Combahee River Collective was one of the most important black socialist feminist organizations of all time. Primarily a black feminist and lesbian organization this group began meeting in Boston in 1974, a time when socialist feminism was thriving in Boston. The name Combahee River Collective was suggested by the founder and African-American lesbian feminist, Barbara Smith, and it refers to the campaign led by Harriet Tubman who freed 750 slaves near the Combahee Rive in South Carolina in 1863. Smith said they wanted the name to mean something to African American women that “it was a way of talking about ourselves being on a continuum of black struggle, of black women’s struggle”.
The members of this organization consisted of many refugees from other political movements such as the civil rights movement, anti-war movement, labor movement, and others. Demita Frazier, co-founder of the Combahee River Collective says these women from other movements found themselves “in conflict with the lack of a feminist analysis and in many cases were left feeling divided against [themselves].”
As an organization they were labeled as troublemakers and many said they were brainwashed by the man hating white feminist, that they didn’t have their own mind they were just following in the white women’s footsteps. Throughout the 1970s the Combahee River Collective met weekly to discuss the different issues concerning black feminists. They also held retreats throughout the Northeast from 1977-1979 to help “institutionalize black feminism” and develop an “ideological separation from white feminism.”
As an organization they founded a local battered women’s shelter and worked in partnership with all community activists, women and men, gay and straight playing an active role in the reproductive rights movement. The Combahee River Collective ended their work together in 1980 and is now most widely remembered for developing the Combahee River Collective Statement, a key document in the history of contemporary black feminism and the development of the concepts of identity.
Latter 20th century
Recent black feminism as a political/social movement grew out of black women's feelings of discontent with both the civil rightsCivil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
movement and the feminist movement
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
of the 1960s and 1970s.
One of the foundation texts of black feminism is An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force, authored by Mary Ann Weathers and published in 1969 in Cell 16
Cell 16
Cell 16 was a militant feminist organization known for its program of celibacy, separation from men and self-defense training...
's radical feminist magazine No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation. Weathers states her belief that "Women's Liberation should be considered as a strategy for an eventual tie-up with the entire revolutionary movement consisting of women, men, and children," but she posits that "(w)e women must start this thing rolling" because
The following year, in 1970, the Third World Women’s Alliance published the Black Women’s Manifesto, which argued for a specificity of oppression against Black women. Co-signed by Gayle Linch, Eleanor Holmes Norton
Eleanor Holmes Norton
Eleanor Holmes Norton is a Delegate to Congress representing the District of Columbia. In her position she is able to serve on and vote with committees, as well as speak from the House floor...
, Maxine Williams, Frances M Beale and Linda La Rue, the manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
, opposing both racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, stated that:
Other black feminists active in early second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism
The Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
were civil rights lawyer and author Florynce Kennedy
Florynce Kennedy
Florynce "Flo" Kennedy , was a U.S. lawyer, activist, civil rights advocate, and feminist.- Early life :...
, who co-authored one of the first books on abortion, 1971's Abortion Rap; Cellestine Ware, of New York's Stanton-Anthony Brigade; and Patricia Robinson; who all "tried to show the connections between racism and male dominance" in society.
Not only did the civil rights movement primarily focus only on the oppression of black men, but many black women faced severe sexism within civil rights groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
. The feminist movement focused on the problems faced by white women. For instance, earning the power to work outside of the home was not an accomplishment for black feminists; they had been working all along. Neither movement confronted the issues that concerned black women specifically. Because of their intersectional position
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a feminist sociological theory first highlighted by Kimberlé Crenshaw . Intersectionality is a methodology of studying "the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations"...
, black women were being systematically ignored by both movements: "All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men but Some of Us are Brave", as titled a 1982 book by Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith in Cleveland is an American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic, teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black...
.
Black women began creating theory and developing a new movement which spoke to the combination of problems they were battling, including sexism, racism, and classism. Angela Davis
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party...
, for instance, showed that while Afro-American women were suffering from compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
programs, white women were subjected to multiple unwilled pregnancies and had to clandestinely abort
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
.
The short-lived National Black Feminist Organization
National black feminist organization
The National Black Feminist Organization was founded in 1973. The group worked to address the unique issues affecting black women in America. Founding members included Michele Wallace, Faith Ringgold, Doris Wright and Margaret Sloan-Hunter. They borrowed the office of the New York City chapter of...
was founded in 1973 in New York by Margaret Sloan-Hunter
Margaret Sloan-Hunter
Margaret Sloan-Hunter was a Black feminist, lesbian, and civil rights advocate, and one of the founding editors of Ms. Magazine.Sloan-Hunter was born in Chattanooga, TN., and grew up in Chicago, Il....
and others. Two years later, Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith in Cleveland is an American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic, teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black...
, Beverly Smith
Beverly Smith
Beverly Smith in Cleveland, Ohio is a Black feminist health advocate, writer, academic, theorist and activist who is also the twin sister of writer, publisher, activist and academic Barbara Smith...
, Cheryl L. Clarke, Gloria Akasha Hull
Gloria Akasha Hull
Gloria Akasha Hull is a writer, educator and Black feminist activist.-Biography:Gloria Akasha Hull was born Gloria Theresa Thompson on December 6, 1944, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her father Robert Thompson was a laborer and her mother Jimmie was a house keeper.She married on June 12, 1966 and...
, and other female activists tied to the civil rights movement, Black Nationalism
Black nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
or the Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
established, as an off-shoot of the National Black Feminist Organization, the Combahee River Collective
Combahee River Collective
The Combahee River Collective was a Black feminist Lesbian organization active in Boston from 1974 to 1980. They are perhaps best known for developing the Combahee River Collective Statement, a key document in the history of contemporary Black feminism and the development of the concepts of...
, a radical lesbian feminist group. Their founding text referred to important female figures of the abolitionist movement, such as Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she...
, Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; (1820 – 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves...
, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Welles Barnett and Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell , daughter of former slaves, was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree. She became an activist who led several important associations and worked for civil rights and suffrage....
, president of the National Association of Colored Women
National Association of Colored Women
The National Association of Colored Women Clubs was established in Washington, D.C., USA, by the merger in 1896 of the National Federation of Afro-American Women, the Women's Era Club of Boston, and the National League of Colored Women of Washington, DC, as well as smaller organizations that had...
founded in 1896. The Combahee River Collective opposed the practice of lesbian separatism
Separatist feminism
Separatist feminism is a form of radical feminism that holds that opposition to patriarchy is best done through focusing exclusively on women and girls...
, considering that, in practice, Separatists focused exclusively on sexist oppression and not on others oppression (race, class, etc.)
This group's primary goal was "the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking." They rejected all essentialization or biologization, focusing on political and economical analysis of various forms of domination. The Combahee River Collective, in particular on the impulse of Barbara Smith, would engage itself in various publications on feminism, showing that the position of Black women was specific and adding a new perspective to Women's studies
Women's studies
Women's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective...
, mainly written by White women.
The Black Lesbian Caucus was created as an off-shoot of the Gay Liberation Front
Gay Liberation Front
Gay Liberation Front was the name of a number of Gay Liberation groups, the first of which was formed in New York City in 1969, immediately after the Stonewall riots, in which police clashed with gay demonstrators.-The Gay Liberation Front:...
in 1971, and later took the name of the Salsa Soul Sisters, Third World Wimmin Inc. Collective
Salsa Soul Sisters
The Salsa Soul Sisters, Third World Wimmin Inc Collective was the first "out" organization for lesbians, womanists and women of color in New York City...
, which was the first "out" organization for lesbians, womanist
Womanist
Womanist theology is a religious conceptual framework which reconsiders and revises the traditions, practices, scriptures, and biblical interpretation with a special lens to empower and liberate African American women in America...
s and women of color in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. The Salsa Soul Sisters published a literary quarterly called Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians
Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians
Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians was a quarterly periodical for black and Latina lesbians published between 1977-1983 by the Salsa Soul Sisters, Third World Wimmin Inc Collective...
in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Sisters are now known as African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change, and is the oldest black lesbian organization in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
As stated above, the black feminist movement grew out of the civil rights movements of the 60's and 70's, stemming from groups like SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), the Black Panthers and other such groups. It was not so much a growth as a separation from black civil rights groups because the main focus was male oppression. In the autobiography of Anne Moody, she brings the idea of black feminism into focus, stating, "We were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being 'ladylike' and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people."
Black women not only had to deal with racism, but sexism as well and it was even more prevalent with black males. According to the authors, another reason why Black women were oppressed more is because of the certain stereotype attributed to black women, i.e. mammy, Sapphire, whore and bulldagger to name a few. These names are just an example of how insignificant these Black women's lives have become, and it's not only white people who continue the name calling, but also more importantly black males.
While the explanations above do a decent job of explaining the black feminist movement, there are certain ideas that are not addressed that play a major role in black feminism. As compared to white feminists, black feminists do no face the threat of being undermined by their own people. No one better exemplifies this ideal better than Michelle Wallace, a black feminist who also was a member of the Combahee River Collective. She states, "We exist as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world."
The black feminist movement had to contend with civil rights movements that wanted women in a lesser role. Men believed the black women would organize around their own needs and minimalize their own efforts; losing reliable allies in the struggle for civil rights. The black feminist movement not only had to contend with racial prejudice but also the structure of our patriarchal society making their struggle that much harder.
21st century
July 2009 saw the release of Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton, (Palgrave Macmillan) by Associate Professor Duchess Harris, which analyzes black women's involvement in American political life, focusing on what they did to gain political power between 1961 and 2001, and why, in many cases, they did not succeed.All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies, (Editors Akasha (Gloria T.) Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith) describes black feminists mobilizing "a remarkable national response to the Anita Hill
Anita Hill
Anita Faye Hill is an American attorney and academic—presently a professor of social policy, law and women's studies at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She became a national figure in 1991 when she alleged that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had...
-Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court....
Senate Hearings in 1991, naming their effort African American Women in Defense of Ourselves.
E. Frances White
E. Frances White
E. Frances White is a historian, author and academic.She is currently the Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs at New York University. Prior to that post, she was the Dean of New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study . She holds a B.A. from Wheaton College , an M.A...
's expressed her belief that feminists need to revise the movement's relationship to the concept of "the family"; to acknowledge that, for women of color, "the family is not only a source of male dominance, but a source of resistance to racism as well."
In her introduction to the 2000 reissue of the 1983 black feminist anthology Home Girls
Home Girls
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology is a collection of Black lesbian and Black feminist writing, edited by Barbara Smith. The anthology was first published in 1983 by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, and was reissued by Rutgers University Press in 2000 ....
, theorist and author Barbara Smith states her opinion that "to this day most Black women are unwilling to jeopardize their 'racial credibility' (as defined by Black men) to address the realities of sexism." Smith also notes that "even fewer are willing to bring up homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
and heterosexism
Heterosexism
Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and therefore superior...
, which are, of course, inextricably linked to gender oppression.
Starting around 2000, the "third wave
Third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
" of feminism in France
Feminism in France
Feminism in France has its origins in the French Revolution. A few famous figures emerged during the 1871 Paris Commune, including Louise Michel, Russian-born Elisabeth Dmitrieff, Nathalie Lemel, and Renée Vivien .-French Revolution:...
took interest in the relations between sexism and racism, with a certain amount of studies dedicated to black feminism. This new focus was displayed by the translation, in 2007, of the first anthology of U.S. black feminist texts.
The importance of identity
Michelle CliffMichelle Cliff
Michelle Cliff is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise.Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism...
believes that there is continuity "in the written work of many African American Women,... you can draw a line from the slave narrative
Slave narrative
The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations...
of Linda Brent to Elizabeth Keckley's life, to Their Eyes were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel and the best-known work by African American writer Zora Neale Hurston. Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel garnered attention and controversy at the time of its publication, and has come to be regarded as a seminal...
(by Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
) to Coming of Age in Mississippi (Anne Moody
Anne Moody
Anne Moody is an African-American author who has written about her experiences growing up poor and black in rural Mississippi, joining the Civil Rights Movement, and fighting racism against blacks in the United States beginning in the 1960s-Life:Born Essie Mae Moody, she was the oldest of nine...
) to Sula
Sula (novel)
Sula is a 1973 novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison.-Plot summary:The Bottom is a mostly black community in Ohio, situated in the hills above the mostly white, wealthier community of Medallion. The Bottom first became a community when a master gave it to his former slave...
(by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
), to the Salt Eaters (by Toni Cade Bambara
Toni Cade Bambara
Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor.- Biography :...
) to Praise Song for the Widow (by Paule Marshall
Paule Marshall
Paule Marshall is an American author. She was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn to Barbadian parents and educated at Girls High School, Brooklyn College and Hunter College . Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose...
)." Cliff believes that all of these women, through their stories, "Work against the odds to claim the 'I'".
Activist and cultural critic Angela Davis
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party...
was one of the first people to articulate a written argument centered on intersectionality
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a feminist sociological theory first highlighted by Kimberlé Crenshaw . Intersectionality is a methodology of studying "the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations"...
, in Women, Race, and Class. Kimberle Crenshaw, prominent feminist law theorist, gave the idea a name while discussing Identity Politics
Identity politics
Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...
in her essay, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color." Another feminist theorist is Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins, is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, former head of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati and past President of the American Sociological Association Council...
, who introduced the sociological theory of Matrix of Domination
Matrix of Domination
The Matrix of Domination is a sociological theory that explains issues of oppression that deal with race, class, and gender, which, though recognized as different social classifications, are all interconnected. Other forms of classification, such as sexual orientation, religion, or age, apply to...
; much of her work concerns the politics of black feminist thought and oppression.
Black publishing
The Autumn 1979 issue of ConditionsConditions (magazine)
Conditions was a lesbian feminist literary annual founded in 1976 in Brooklyn, New York by Elly Bulkin, Jan Clausen, Irena Klepfisz and Rima Shore.-Publishing Collective:Conditions was a magazine which emphasised the lives and writings of lesbians, and, throughout its...
was edited by Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith in Cleveland is an American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic, teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black...
and Lorraine Bethel
Lorraine Bethel
Lorraine Bethel is an African American lesbian feminist poet and author. She is a graduate of Yale University.Bethel has taught and lectured on black women's literature and black female culture at various institutions...
. Conditions 5 was "the first widely distributed collection of Black feminist writing in the U.S." Articles from the magazine were later released in Home Girls
Home Girls
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology is a collection of Black lesbian and Black feminist writing, edited by Barbara Smith. The anthology was first published in 1983 by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, and was reissued by Rutgers University Press in 2000 ....
, an anthology of black lesbian and feminist writing published in 1983 by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was an activist feminist press started in 1980 by author Barbara Smith at the suggestion of her friend, poet Audre Lorde.-Beginnings:...
, a publisher owned and operated by women of color.
Examples
Alice WalkerAlice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...
, a follower of womanism
Womanism
The word womanism was adapted from Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker's use of the term in her book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose...
, a movement tied to black theology
Black theology
Black theology refers to a variety of Black theologies which have as their base the liberation of the marginalized, especially the injustice done towards Blacks in American and South African contexts...
, is the author of The Color Purple.
Pat Parker
Pat Parker
Pat Parker was an African-American lesbian feminist poet.-Early life:Parker grew up working class poor in Third Ward, Houston, Texas, a mostly African-American part of the city...
's (1944–1989) involvement in the black feminist movement was reflected in her writings as a poet. Her work inspired other black feminist poets like Hattie Gossett
Hattie Gossett
Hattie Gossett is an African-American feminist playwright, poet, and magazine editor. Her work focuses on bolstering the self-esteem of young black women....
. Other Black feminist authors include: Jewelle Gomez
Jewelle Gomez
Jewelle Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived and worked in New York City for twenty-two years working in public television, theatre as well as philanthropy before relocating to the West Coast...
, June Jordan
June Jordan
June Millicent Jordan was a Caribbean American poet, novelist, journalist, biographer, dramatist, teacher and committed activist...
, Sapphire, Becky Birtha, Donna Allegra, Cheryl Clarke
Cheryl Clarke
Cheryl L. Clarke is a writer, educator and lesbian Black feminist activist, born in Washington DC in 1947.-Writing:Raised in Washington DC, some of her earliest work reflected the troubled times of the 1960s and the rebellions that ripped through the District of Columbia following the...
, Ann Allen Shockley, Alexis De Veaux and many others.
Rebecca Walker
Rebecca Walker
Rebecca Walker is an American writer. She has been named by Time Magazine as one of the 50 future leaders of America.-Early life:...
's writings - especially Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2000) and One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love (2009) (Editor) - evince an interest in black feminism, racism, and her own biracial status.
The music of singer-songwriters Meshell Ndegeocello, Odetta
Odetta
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals...
, Thomasina Winslow
Thomasina Winslow
Thomasina Winslow is an American blues musician from the Albany, New York area, and the daughter of folk musician Tom Winslow. As a toddler, she sang back-up on her father's folk music classic Hey Looka Yonder ; also singing a solo version of One-Two-Three, another version of which she produced on...
, and Tracey Chapman have lyrics that discuss issues in black feminism.
See also
- African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change
- Africana womanismAfricana womanism"Africana Womanism" is a termed coined in the late 1980s by Clenora Hudson-Weems intended as an ideology applicable to all women of African descent. It is grounded in African culture and Afrocentrism and focuses on the experiences, struggles, needs, and desires of Africana women of the African...
- Audre LordeAudre LordeAudre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...
- Black matriarchyBlack matriarchyBlack matriarchy was a popular stereotype in the 1950s and 1960s that exemplified black American family structure. This ideology depicted traditional black American households as being dominated and controlled by outspoken and emasculating women....
- Misogyny in hip hop cultureMisogyny in hip hop cultureMisogyny in hip hop culture refers to lyrics, videos or other aspects of hip hop culture that support, glorify, justify, or normalize the objectification, exploitation, or victimization of women. Misogyny in rap music instills and perpetuates negative stereotypes about women. It can range from...
- From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and FeminismFrom Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and FeminismFrom Black Power to Hip-Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism is the title of a non-fiction book written by Patricia Hill Collins. Published in 2006 by Temple University Press, the book analyzes issues as diverse as family planning, Afrocentrism, and the role of African-American women in the...
- Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New RacismBlack Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New RacismBlack Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism by Patricia Hill Collins is a work of critical theory that discusses the way that race, class and gender intersect to affect the lives of African American men and women in many different ways, but with similar results...
- From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism
- PaVEMPaVEMPaVEM, the Dutch government's Committee for Participation of Women of Ethnic Minority Groups , worked from 2003 to 2005 to improve the access of and participation by ethnic minority women in social movements, and thus to facilitate minority women's integration into Dutch society...
- Postcolonial feminismPostcolonial feminismPostcolonial feminism, often referred to as Third World feminism, is a form of feminist philosophy which centers around the idea that racism, colonialism, and the long lasting effects of colonialism in the postcolonial setting, are inextricably bound up with the unique gendered realities of...
- Third-wave feminismThird-wave feminismThird-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
- Third World feminism
- WomanismWomanismThe word womanism was adapted from Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker's use of the term in her book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose...
Further reading
- Refuse The Silence, Women of Color in Academia Speak Out, http://www.refusethesilence.com
- http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/blackwomen.htm
- Third World Women's Alliance. Black Women's Manifesto (1970. On-line)
- Patricia Hill CollinsPatricia Hill CollinsPatricia Hill Collins, is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, former head of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati and past President of the American Sociological Association Council...
, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (1990) and Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New RacismBlack Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New RacismBlack Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism by Patricia Hill Collins is a work of critical theory that discusses the way that race, class and gender intersect to affect the lives of African American men and women in many different ways, but with similar results...
(Routledge, 2005) - bell hooksBell hooksGloria Jean Watkins , better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, feminist, and social activist....
, Ain't I a Woman?: Black women and feminismAin't I a Woman? (book)Ain't I a Woman?: Black women and feminism is a 1981 book by bell hooks titled after Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, ISBN 0-89608-129-X. hooks examines the effect of racism and sexism on black women, the civil rights movement, and feminist movements from suffrage to the seventies...
(1981) - Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women & Critical Transformations (1994)
- Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Kitchen Table: Women of Color PressKitchen Table: Women of Color PressKitchen Table: Women of Color Press was an activist feminist press started in 1980 by author Barbara Smith at the suggestion of her friend, poet Audre Lorde.-Beginnings:...
, 1983; reed. 2000) - This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of ColorThis Bridge Called My BackThis Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color is a feminist anthology edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa. The anthology was first published in 1981 by Persephone Press, and the second edition was published in 1984 by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press...
, edited by Cherríe MoragaCherríe MoragaCherríe L. Moraga is a Chicana writer, feminist activist, poet, essayist, and playwright.-Biography:Moraga was born in Whittier, California. She earned her Bachelor's degree from Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, California and her Master's from San Francisco State University in 1980...
and Gloria E. AnzaldúaGloria E. AnzaldúaGloria Evangelina Anzaldúa was considered a leading scholar of Chicano cultural theory and Queer theory. She loosely based her most well-known book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza on her life growing up on the Mexican-Texas border and incorporated her lifelong feelings of social and...
(Persephone Press, 1981; 2nd ed. 1984, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press; translated in Spanish in 2002 by Cherríe Moraga, Ana CastilloAna CastilloAna Castillo is a Mexican-American Chicana novelist, poet, short story writer, and essayist.- Life and career :Castillo was born and raised in an inner city barrio of Chicago, Illinois. After completing undergraduate studies, she immediately began teaching college courses...
, and Norma AlarcónNorma AlarcónNorma Alarcón is a Chicana author, professor, and publisher in the United States. She is the founder of Third Woman Press and a major figure in Chicana feminism.-Biography and Schooling:...
)