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BLACK FEMINISM
COLLECTION BY –
ANIL S AWAD
ENGLISH NET/SET CONSULTANT
9922113364 (ALSO WHATSAPP)
9423403368 (BSNL)
EMAIL – [email protected]

Black feminism argues that sexism, class oppression, and racism are inextricably
bound together. The way these relate to each other is called intersectionality. Forms
of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class oppression but ignore race can
discriminate against women through racial bias. The Combahee River
Collectiveargued 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 the Black feminist 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. Womanism is a critical disidentification with what black women
understood to be the anti-male sentiments of white feminists and white feminist
movements. Black womanists such as Alice Walker and Sherley Anne Williams
contended that "womanist" is preferable to "feminist" because "womanist" is actively
anti-separatist. Sherley Anne Williams notes, for example, that "womanist theory is,
by definition, 'committed to the survival and wholeness of entire people" . Womanists
also point to the emergence of 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".

There is a long-standing and important alliance between postcolonial feminists,

which overlaps with transnational feminism and third-world feminism, and black

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feminists. Both have struggled for recognition, not only from men in their own culture,
but also from Western feminists.

Black feminist theory has argued that black women are positioned within structures
of power in fundamentally different ways from white women. Black feminist theorists
such as Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins have argued, for example,
that black women, unlike many white women, are marginalized along lines of race,
class, gender, and sexuality. As such, mainstream white feminist theory has neither
comprehensively accounted for the economic, racial, and gender exigencies of black
female experience, nor, in many cases, tried to. As black feminist legal studies
scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw notes, "black women are sometimes excluded
from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a
discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of
race and gender" (The Black Feminist Reader, Crenshaw 209). Black women's
exclusion from feminist and antiracist discourses became especially clear in 1960s
and '70s social movements for racial and gender equality. Hence, the emergence of
black feminist organizations.
Black feminist organizations

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, was founded in 1973. This
organization of women focused on the interconnectedness of the many prejudices
that were faced by African American Women such as racism, sexism, classism, and
homophobia. 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 River in
South Carolina in 1863. Smith said they wanted the name to mean something to

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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 former members of other

political organizations that worked within 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 to 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

In the second half of the 20th century, black feminism as a political and social
movement 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 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

“ 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'

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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.”

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.”

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 was titled a 1982 book edited by Akasha
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, Akasha Gloria Hull, and other female activists tied to the

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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, womanists 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 1960s and 1970s, stemming from groups like SNCC (Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee), the Black Panthers and other such groups. Organizations
like the National Black Feminist Organization, found that many civil rights, and black
power organizations were unwilling to take up causes that were central to the lived
experiences of black women (forced sterilization, legal abortion, domestic violence,
safe and well-paid job opportunities for black domestics, etc...). Anne Moody in her
autobiography 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." Often, many women who later became
black feminists, found that sexism was rampant throughout many of the more
traditional civil rights organizations, as well as the black power organizations.

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The place where racial equality and gender equality meet, called intersectionality, is
an area often overlooked by many. Throughout the plight of African Americans, from
post slavery oppression until modern inequality disputes, African American women
have experienced this intersection of racial and gender inequality. The fight for
equality on both fronts has immense historical background, and various intersections
throughout this history. What many consider to be a culmination of the fight for racial
equality was the African-American Civil Rights Movement, from 1958 to 1972. While
this was happening, the fight for gender equality was culminating as well, and
certainly not taking a backseat to the civil rights movement. The peak of “Second
Wave Feminism” Second-wave feminism was occurring simultaneously alongside
the civil rights movement. Throughout these events, black feminism was the
intersection of the two, and the progress made was influential to both racial and
gender equality. Despite its relation, black feminism’s originated and evolved along
its own path, separate from mainstream feminism and early civil rights movements.

Much like many other demographics of feminism, black feminism has historical roots.
Unlike many other demographics of feminism, however, these historical roots are
both racial and gender discriminating. Beginning in the post slavery period, black
female intellectuals such as Sojourner Truth and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper set
in motion the principles that would become the basis for black feminism. Harper,
shown below, is not necessarily as well known, however her ideas were the
beginning of black feminism.

Activists such as Harper proposed “some of the most important questions of race,
gender, and the work of Reconstruction in the nineteenth century,” a very bold action
for a black woman at the time (MacDaneld, 394). Intellectuals such as Harper
accomplished things that were unheard of for black women, such as giving public
lectures, fighting for suffrage, and aiding those in need of help following
reconstruction. Suffrage was early evidence of schisms between white and black
feminism. According to Harper, white women needed suffrage for education,
however, “black women need the vote not as a form of education but as a form of
protection” (McDaneld 406). The right to vote would not only bring these women
closer to the power that men had, it would give black women an influence on the
politics which oppressed them. Another difference was the higher importance of
heritage for black women, and knowing the plight of their ancestors. These ideas
were transported through mediums such as lectures, and literature, making it
accessible for men and women, whites and blacks alike. Aspects of the work of early

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leaders such as Harper laid down the basis for black feminism, as these principles
would continue to be retained by later iterations and evolutions of black feminism.

As feminism as a whole evolved, as did its demographics. Throughout the twentieth

century, black feminism evolved quite differently from mainstream feminism. It
retained historical principles, while being influenced by new thinkers such as Alice
Walker. Walker created a whole new subsect of black feminism, called Womanism,
which emphasized the degree of the oppression black women faced when compared
to white women. In addition, she retains the importance of heritage in black
feminism, through her passionate medium of literature, exemplified in the interview
she compares these ideas in “Everyday Use,” with a character changing her name
because, “[she] couldn’t bear it anymore, being named for the people who oppress
[her],” and her mother who then traces her birth name back into their own family tree
(Walker). The story was written in 1972, but takes place in the early twentieth
century, emphasizing this historical influence. In this short story, an emphasis is also
put on the lack of education available for black women at that time, further
elaborating the oppression and plight of black women throughout history. These
differences were also brought upon because “black women tended to form
independent feminist groups,” separate from those of other races (Gerhard, 1564).
As the civil rights movement began, black feminism and its goals became
independent of other, more general feminist groups. This separation would define
black feminism as its own movement, especially during the civil rights era.

The origin of the change that occurred in black feminism during the 1960s and '70s
set the stage for progress during that era and the evolution of black feminism. Amidst
all of the social progress of this time, “the ferment of reform and revolution had the
potential to divide political allegiances of women” (Gerhard, 1563). All the reform
movements occurring at the time had the ability to separate allegiances to previous
groups, while drawing members to new ones. This created the perfect environment
for black feminism to branch off of both mainstream feminism and the civil rights
movement. In this environment, there are many sects of feminism, and it is accepted
that “women of color came to feminism on their own terms,” despite the premonition
that black feminism is a direct “result of racism in the white women’s movement.”
(Gerhard, 1564). While racism within feminism certainly influenced black feminism, it
did not define it, as the movement defined itself in many ways. This includes both
reactions to related movements, along with original ideas and goals.

The civil rights era was a pivotal time for black feminism, and spurred the evolution
and definition of it, as the two movements worked alongside each other. At the same

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time, the Second Wave feminist movement was in full force. This was the perfect
time for black feminism to thrive. The intersectionality of gender and racial equality
movements formed black feminism into its own movement and cause. As the black
power movement arose Black Power, their principles of the importance of civil rights
along with separation from whites had an effect on the black feminist movement,
including separation from white feminists. Influence spread to the unofficial symbol of
black feminism, shown below:

This combination of the raised fist of black power, and the astrological symbol for
female, denotes an intersection of ideals of the two groups. Ideals were shared, such
as a “critique on racial capitalism, starting with slavery.” Despite this, black feminism
had reasons to become independent of Black Nationalism. Weinbaum describes how
black feminism has been casted “as a negotiation of the sexism and masculinism
(and sometimes heterosexism) of Black Nationalism” (Weinbaum 439). The racial
equality and reverence for their race was retained, while the sexism they carried was
rejected. This action allowed black feminism to independently define itself, and more
so than merely in relation to Black Nationalism and the Black Power movement.

On the other hand, black feminism separates itself from the second wave feminism
that took place simultaneously with the civil rights era and Black Nationalism, in that
it was a “response to the racism and classism of second wave feminism”
(Weinbaum, 439). This is a main example of the intersectionality of black feminism
that was defined during the civil rights era. They separated themselves from groups
which oppressed them, while retaining certain ideals from both, which allowed black
feminism to become its own movement. I was during this time in which they
developed their own concentrations as well. For instance, “beginning in the 1970’s,
black feminists … shifted from a narrow focus on access to abortion to examination
of an entire range of reproductive freedoms,” (Weinbaum, 439). The fact that black
feminism was not only synthesizing ideas and principles from other groups, but
furthering them and having their own independent ideas, is indicative of the strides
that this movement made during this era, for gender equality, racial equality, and the
intersection that is black feminism.

The solidified definition of black feminism formulated during the civil rights era is a
result of and a response to the intersectionality of racial and gender inequality. When
defining intersectionality itself, Gerhard states that it is the analysis of the “production
of identity through overlapping, mutually reinforcing oppressions of gender, race,
ethnicity, class, and sometimes sexual oppression” (Gerhard, 1564). This identity is
precisely what black feminism developed in full during this era, rather than being

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seen as a mere add-on to other, larger movements. Through their own intersection
of these oppressions, black feminists have created their own goals and ideals, thus
defining themselves as an independent movement. This is a result of black feminists
refusing to categorize gender independently of these different forms of oppression
that they faced. Because of this refusal, their own movement was made, and they
made progress tailored to this specific movement. The combination of history,
heritage, and intersectionality made black feminism its own movement that has
made and continues to make progress on many fronts.

Black women's voices were continuously marginalized but groups were formed that
stood up in the face of oppression. In the early 1990s. AWARE (African Woman's
Action for Revolutionary Exchange) was formed in New York by Reena Walker and
Laura Peoples after an inspiring plenary session on black women's issues held at the
Malcolm X Conference at the Borough of Manhattan Community College entitled:
Black Women and Black Liberation: Fighting Oppression and Building Unity. The
panel featured Vivial Morris – Freedom Road Organization, Fran Beale – Frontline
Political Organization, Vernice Miller – Center for Constitutional Rights, Barbara
Ransby – Ella Baker – Nelson Mandela Center, Maxine Alexander – editor Speaking
for Ourselves, Miriam Kramer – National Welfare Rights Organization.

AWARE went on to lead fights against the AMA and unnecessary medical
procedures and was central to the anti-war movement during the Persian Gulf War in
1991. Reena Walker was featured regularly on WLIB Gary Byrd's show and WBAI
radio and AWARE forged alliances with Women in Limbo The Harlem Birth Action
Center as well as various black coalitions and ad hoc groups. AWARE's voice was
essential to the representation of black women in the anti-war movement. Reena
coined the phrase "Our War is Here Not in The Persian Gulf". AWARE regularly held
seminars, forums and panel discussions on black women's issues i.e. "Racism,
Sexism and Misogyny: The Mass Media's Impact on our Sisters", in Harlem. The
panelists included Verniece Miller, Carlotta Joy Walker, Asha Bandele, Ann Tripp
and a host of other black women feminists authors, activists and artists to discuss
and inform the public about the specific issues black women were dealing with in
their communities and how the larger issues affected them on a local level.

In 1991 The Malcolm X Conference was held again at BMCC and the theme that
year was Sisters Remember Malcolm X: A Legacy to be Transformed. It featured
plenary sessions, "Sexual Harassment: Race Gender and Power" and was held in a
much larger theater that year. Black women were a central focus and not an aside as
it was prior. The call letter read: "The conference will focus on critical aspects of the

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life and legacy of MALCOLM X. A major feature will be the opening forum, "Sisters
Remember MALCOLM X: A Legacy to be Transformed". A group of leading African-
American women, activists and intellectuals will speak on how MALCOLM X
impacted their lives. In the spirit of building unity based on principles of equality and
justice, these women will both embrace the positive aspects of MALCOLM X and his
legacy and criticize those things which need improvement through transformation.
This session will be dedicated to hearing the legitimate voices of Black women as a
critical part of the legacy of MALCOLM X as a vital part of the intellectual tradition of
the Black liberation movement. In the wake of the recent congressional hearings and
the emergence into even greater prominence of Black conservatives, there will be a
plenary on "MALCOLM X versus Clarence Thomas: The Crisis of Black Unity in the
1990's" and a workshop on "Sexual Harassment: Race, Gender and Power".
Speakers included: Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lourde, Verniece Miller, Reena Walker,
Carol Bullard (Asha Bandele) and Vivian Morrison. In 1991 Reena Walker along with
the members of AWARE also worked in coalition with AWIDOO African American
Women in Defense of ourselves formed by Barbara Ransby to sign a full page ad in
the NY Times to stand in support of Anita Hill.

In 1995 Reena Walker went on to put out the call to various women and organized
the group African Americans Against Violence that effectively stopped a parade that
a group of reverends led by Al Sharpton were attempting to hold in Harlem for Mike
Tyson. The group including Eve and Kathe Sandler, Nsia Bandele and Indigo
Washington, worked tirelessly and successfully stopped the parade from happening
and brought much needed attention to the struggle of black women and sexism and
domestic violence. Even within that struggle there were black men like Bill Lynch and
Donald Suggs who aligned themselves with Jill Nelson who brought them in and who
had an agenda of publicity and ran roughshod over the other group members. As a
result, the effort on the part of these women to build a larger and ongoing black
grassroots women's movement was thwarted by these publicity seekers.
21st century

The African Feminist Forum is a biennial conference that brings together African
feminist activists to deliberate on issues of key concern to the feminist movement. It
took place for the first time in November 2006 inAccra, Ghana.

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

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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 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.
Black feminist literature

The importance of identity

Michelle Cliff 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,

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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.
Black publishing

The Autumn 1979 issue of Conditions 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 publishing imprint owned and operated by women of color.
Examples

Alice Walker, a founder of womanism, is the author of The Color Purple. Within the
study of religion, womanism has been used as a source for Womanist theology, a
dominantly Christian movement that discusses issues of intersectionality (race,
gender, class, and sexuality) within the study of religion. Womanist scholarship is a
dialogue partner to black theology.

The involvement of Pat Parker (1944–1989) 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, bell hooks, 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 Tracy Chapman have lyrics that discuss issues in black feminism.

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