![]() ![]() The Collective's name was suggested by Smith, who owned a book called: Harriet Tubman, Conductor on the Underground Railroad by Earl Conrad. Naming įurther information: Raid at Combahee Ferry Members of the CRC, notably Barbara Smith and Demita Frazier, felt it was critical that the organization address the needs of Black lesbians, in addition to organizing on behalf of Black feminists. In her 2001 essay "From the Kennedy Commission to the Combahee Collective", historian and African American Studies professor Duchess Harris states that, in 1974 the Boston collective "observed that their vision for social change was more radical than the NBFO", and as a result, the group chose to strike out on its own as the Combahee River Collective. The NBFO was formed by Black feminists reacting to the failure of mainstream White feminist groups to respond to the racism that Black women faced in the United States. National Black Feminist Organization Īuthor Barbara Smith and other delegates attending the first (1973) regional meeting of the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) in New York City provided the groundwork for the Combahee River Collective with its efforts to build an NBFO Chapter in Boston. ![]() Through writing its statement, the CRC connected themselves to the activist tradition of Black women in the 19th Century and to the struggles of Black liberation in the 1960s. ![]() Gerald Izenberg credits the 1977 Combahee statement with the first usage of the phrase "identity politics". The Collective is 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 identity politics as used among political organizers and social theorists, and for introducing the concept of interlocking systems of oppression, including but not limited to gender, race, and homophobia, a fundamental concept of intersectionality. Racism was present in the mainstream feminist movement, while Delaney and Manditch-Prottas argue that much of the Civil Rights Movement had a sexist and homophobic reputation. The Collective argued that both the white feminist movement and the Civil Rights Movement were not addressing their particular needs as Black women and more specifically as Black lesbians. The Combahee River Collective (CRC) ( / k ə m ˈ b iː/ kəm- BEE) was a Black feminist lesbian socialist organization active in Boston, Massachusetts from 1974 to 1980. ![]()
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