The Combahee River Collective (CRC) ( )Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, Third Edition (Merriam-Webster, 1997; , p. 272. was a Black feminist lesbian socialist organization active in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1974 to 1980.Marable, Manning; Leith Mullings (eds), Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal, Combahee River Collective Statement, Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, , p. 524. 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. Racism was present in the mainstream feminist movement, while Delaney and Manditch-Prottas argue that much of the civil rights movement was sexist and homophobic. The Collective was a group that met to discuss the intersections of oppression based on race, gender, heteronormativity, and class and argued for the liberation of Black women on all fronts.
The Collective is perhaps best known for developing the Combahee River Collective Statement,The full text of the Combahee River Collective Statement is available here. 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,Hawkesworth, M. E.; Maurice Kogan. Encyclopedia of Government and Politics, 2nd edn Routledge, 2004, , p. 577.Sigerman, Harriet. The Columbia Documentary History of American Women Since 1941, Columbia University Press, 2003, , p. 316. and for introducing the concept of interlocking systems of oppression, including but not limited to gender, race, and sexuality, a fundamental concept of intersectionality. Gerald Izenberg credits the 1977 Combahee statement with the first usage of the phrase "identity politics". 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. The document embarked upon the separation of a gender-only focused feminism and highlighted the significance of interlocking systems of oppression.
National Black Feminist Organization Author 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.Bowen, Angela. Combahee River Collective, Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History in America, October 2005 issue.Collier-Thomas, Bettye; Vincent P. Franklin, Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement, NYU Press, 2001, , p. 292. The NBFO was formed by Black feminists, Florynce Kennedy, Margaret Sloan-Hunter, and others, reacting to the failure of mainstream White feminist groups to respond to the racism that Black women faced in the United States. The organization sought to challenge the exclusion of Black women from mainstream feminist discourse and activism, which often prioritized the concerns and experiences of white women. It aimed to create a space where Black women's voices, perspectives, and issues could be centered and addressed. Members of the collective began the groundwork for the organization, believing that they were in need of more radical views in order to better address issues.
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.Harris, Duchess. "From the Kennedy Commission to the Combahee Collective", in Sisters in the Struggle, Collier-Thomas et al. (eds), New York University Press, 2001, , p. 294. 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.
Naming
The Collective's name was suggested by Smith, who owned a book called Harriet Tubman, Conductor on the Underground Railroad by Earl Conrad. She "wanted to name the collective after a historical event that was meaningful to African American women." Smith noted: "It was a way of talking about ourselves being on a continuum of Black struggle, of Black women's struggle." The name commemorated a military operation at the Combahee River planned and led by Harriet Tubman on June 2, 1863, in the Port Royal region of South Carolina. The action freed more than 750 slaves, and it is the only military campaign in American history planned and led by a woman.Herrmann, Anne C.; Abigail J. Stewart, Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Westview Press, 2001, , p. 29.
Combahee River Collective Statement
Development The Combahee River Collective Statement was developed by a "collective of Black feminists...involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while...doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements..."Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement," in Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, ed. Zillah R. Eisenstein.
Members of the collective describe having a feeling of creating something which had not existed previously. Demita Frazier described the CRC's beginnings as "not a mix cake", meaning that the women involved had to create the meaning and purpose of the group "from scratch."Smith, Barbara. "Doing it from Scratch: The Challenge of Black Lesbian Organizing", in Barbara Smith (ed.), The Truth that Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender and Freedom, Rutgers University Press, , p. 172. In her 1995 essay "Doing it from Scratch: The Challenge of Black Lesbian Organizing", which borrows its title from Frazier's statement, Barbara Smith describes the early activities of the collective as "consciousness raising and political work on a multitude of issues", along with the building of "friendship networks, community and a rich Black women's culture where none had existed before."
The CRC sought to address the failures of organizations like the NBFO and build a collective statement to enable the analysis of capitalism's oppression of Black women, coming to the conclusion for a revolutionary society to meet the needs for those significantly oppressed; and by doing this it would liberate everyone. This was not an academic exercise, rather the CRC sought to create a mechanism for Black women to engage in politics. The catalyst for this engagement were the failures of organizations like the NBFO to successfully address the oppression Black women faced on issues like sterilization, sexual assault, labor rights, and workplace rights. This alienation as well as the domination of the Black liberation movement by Black men, led members of the CRC to reimagine a politics that engaged these issues.
Drafting Throughout the mid-1970s members of the Combahee River Collective met weekly at the Women's Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Grant, Jaime M. (ed. Bonnie Zimmerman), Lesbian Histories and Cultures, Routledge, p. 184.
The Collective held retreats throughout the Northeast between 1977 and 1979 to discuss issues of concern to Black feminists. Author Alexis De Veaux, biographer of poet Audre Lorde, describes a goal of the retreats as to "institutionalize Black feminism" and develop "an ideological separation from white feminism", as well as to discuss "the limitations of white feminists' fixation 'on the primacy of gender as an oppression.'"De Veaux, Alexis. Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, , p. 237.
The first "Black feminist retreat" was held in July 1977 in South Hadley, Massachusetts, at the home of Jean Grossholtz, a lesbian feminist activist and professor of politics at Mount Holyoke with whom Barbara Smith had remained close. Its purpose was to assess the state of the movement, to share information about the participants' political work, and to talk about possibilities and issues for organizing Black women." "Twenty Black feminists...were invited (and) were asked to bring copies of any written materials relevant to Black feminism—articles, pamphlets, papers, their own creative work – to share with the group. Frazier, Smith, and Smith, who organized the retreats, hoped that they would foster political stimulation and spiritual rejuvenation."
The second retreat was held in November 1977 in Franklin Township, New Jersey, and the third and fourth were scheduled for March and July 1978. "After these retreats occurred, the participants were encouraged to write articles for the Third World women's issue of Conditions, a journal edited by Lorraine Bethel and Barbara Smith." The importance of publishing was also emphasized in the fifth retreat, held July 1979, and the collective discussed contributing articles for a lesbian herstory issue of two journals, Heresies, and Frontiers.
"Participants at the sixth retreat...discussed articles in the May/June 1979 issue of The Black Scholar collectively titled The Black Sexism Debate...They also discussed the importance of writing to Essence to support an article in the September 1979 issue titled I Am a Lesbian by Chirlane McCray, who was a Combahee member...The seventh retreat was held in Washington, D.C., in Feb. 1980."
The final statement was based on this collective discussion, and drafted by African-American activists Barbara Smith, Demita Frazier and Beverly Smith.
Content The Combahee River Collective Statement was separated into four chapters: The Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism; What We Believe; Problems in Organizing Black Feminists; and Black Feminist Issues and Projects.
Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism This chapter of the CRC statement traces the origin and trajectory of Black feminism. It situates the CRC within the larger Black feminist movement. The CRC presented itself as rooted in the historical activism of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, as well as many unknown activists "who have a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique." The CRC framed contemporary Black feminism as a genesis built upon the work of these activists. The Black feminist presence in the larger second wave American feminist movement resulted in the formation of separate Black feminist groups such as the National Black Feminist Organization as the needs of Black feminists were not met by mainstream organizations. The CRC also stated that it was the involvement of Black feminists in the Black Liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s which impacted CRC members' ideologies and led to disillusionment with those movements. It mentions how this genesis is inherently a personal one for black women, tying into childhood experiences where one realizes the harsh reality of both racism and sexism. This keeps black women into looking deeper into their experiences and political analysis feminism uses in order to dismantle the system that oppresses them. It also addresses the development that occurred as a result of World War II, allowing its following generation financial and educational access not granted previously; through the use of tools tokenism has granted them to effectively fight the oppressor.