Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980

As they emerged in the 1970s, American black feminist organizations faced “multiple jeopardy” (p. 114), both from the culture they confronted and from their adaptation to their vulnerabilities within it. Members of these groups grappled with oppression due to not only their race and gender but also their class and sexual orientation. If this were not enough, they had to struggle against marginalization or suppression by the larger movements out of which they came. Before they could effectively contest social structures and attitudes, they had to surmount three daunting challenges: “to prove to other black women that feminism was not for white women only”; to demand that white feminists “share power and affirm diversity”; and to fight the “misogynist tendencies of black nationalism” (p. 139). Faced with this “triple challenge,” black feminists were, as one activist put it, “war weary warriors” (ibid.). The five organizations that Kimberly Springer examines, including the well-known National Black Feminist Organization (nbfo) and Combahee River Collective, handled these intra- and intermovement challenges differently and with varying success. Because of their origin, composition, and mission, the groups were more or less loyal to the larger women's movement, the black nationalist movement, and the wider constituency of African American women. They were more or less responsive to the needs of black lesbians, poor and uneducated women, and black separatists. The nbfo, for example (though led by a lesbian), echoed the National Organization for Women's initial discomfort with lesbian feminism, while the more militant Combahee River Collective pioneered the incorporation of sexual diversity into the American black feminist movement.