Black Feminist Organizations

Angela Davis speaking at the University of Alberta on March 28, 2006

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.[8] 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”[9] 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].”[10] 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.[10] 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.[10]

[edit]Development of Recent Black Feminism

Recent Black Feminism is a political/social movement that grew out of Black women's
feelings of discontent with both the Civil Rights 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.[11] 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"[11] because

All women suffer oppression, even white women, particularly poor white women,
“ and especially Indian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Oriental and Black American
women whose oppression is tripled by any of the above-mentioned. But we do
have females' oppression in common. This means that we can begin to talk to other
women with this common factor and start building links with them and thereby
build and transform the revolutionary force we are now beginning to amass.[12] ”
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:

The black woman is demanding a new set of female definitions and a recognition
“ of herself of a citizen, companion and confidant, not a matriarchal villain or a step
stool baby-maker. Role integration advocates the complementary recognition of
man and woman, not the competitive recognition of same.[13] ”
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.[14]
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 sterilizationprograms, white women were subjected to multiple
unwilled pregnancies and had to clandestinely abort.[15]

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 asSojourner 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.)
[16]
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 allessentialization 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 were 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, womanists and women of
color in New York [1]. The Salsa Soul Sisters published a Literary Quarterly
called Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
TheSisters are now known as African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change,
and is the oldest black lesbian organization in the United States.[17][18]

As stated above, the Black Feminist movement grew out of the Civil Rights Activist
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 wasn't so much
a growth , but more of a separation from black Civil Rights groups because the main
focus was male oppression. In the autobiography by Anne Moody, she has a quote that
brings the idea of Black Feminst into focus, she states, "...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."[19] 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. When compared to the White Feminist, Black Feminist do no face the threat
of being undermined by their own people. No one better exemplifies this ideal better than
Michelle Wallace who was a famous Black Feminist who also was a member of the
Combahee River Collective. She states in a certain excerpt that, "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." [20] The Black Feminist movement had to
contend to 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; loosing reliable allies in the struggle for civil rights. 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.
[edit]Recent Black Feminism
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-Clarence ThomasSenate Hearings in 1991, naming their effort African American
Women in Defense of Ourselves.[21]

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."[22]

In her year 2000 introduction to the 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."[23] Smith also notes that "even fewer are willing to bring
up homophobia and heterosexism, which are, of course, inextricably linked to gender
oppression.[23]

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 US Black feminism texts.[24]