Barbara Smith
- Born December 16, 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio;
- Had to move several times from Ohio to Georgia because of racism;
- Studied at the New School for Social Research (New York);
- Volunteered at the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE);
- Disappointed in sexism in the African American Movement;
- Became a member of the National Black Feminist Organization;
- One of the key authors of the Combahee River Collective Statement.
Beverly Smith
- Born December 16, 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio;
- Barbara Smith’s twin sister;
- Prolific writer and women’s rights activist;
- Works as a Woman’s Health Instructor (University of Massachusetts);
- One of the key contributors to the Combahee River Collective Statement.
Sexism and Homophobia
- Sexism was an explicit element of the African American Civil Rights Movement;
- Fight against segregation was rather single-sided;
- Women’s rights were severely underrepresented, and women were invisible;
- Homophobia dominated, with the needs of LGBT and particularly lesbians being disregarded;
- The role of a woman in the society was defined as the one of a housewife;
- There was a need for change in the representation of African American women.
Patriarchy
- Even with the introduction of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ideas, sexism persisted;
- Women needed equal employment and education options;
- The presence of social constraints was detrimental for women at the time;
- Patriarchal principles dominated the Movement;
- There was a necessity for raising the voice for the rights of women and sexual minorities;
- Barbara and Beverly Smith led the creation of the Combahee River Collective Statement to address gender inequality.
Quotes
Barbara Smith: “I was just thinking about how could I add lesbian to being a Black woman. It was just like no place for us” (Gates and Burton 807).
Beverly Smith: “It is galling that ostensible feminists and acknowledged lesbians have been so blinded to the implications of any womanhood that is not white womanhood and that they have yet to struggle with the deep racism in themselves that is at the source of this blindness” (Hull et al. par. 158).
Work Cited
Gates, Henry Louis, JR., and Jennifer Burton. Call and Response: Key Debates in African American Studies. W.W. Norton & Co., 2011.
Smith, Beverly. “Three’s a Crowd: The Dilemma of the Black Woman in Higher Education,” edited by Hull, Gloria T., et al., But Some of Us Are Brave, The Feminist Press, 1982, pp. 103-114.