Combahee River Collective
AKA: Combahee · the Combahee River Collective · CRC
The Record
The collective first began meeting in 1974,1 in Boston.2 It took its name from the raid that Harriet Tubman led at the Combahee River.3 Barbara Smith and Demita Frazier were both among the early founders of the collective.4
Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith and Demita Frazier wrote the statement together. They called it "A Black Feminist Statement" in 1977.5 Zillah Eisenstein then collected it in 1978, in Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism.6
The statement carries the earliest known use of the phrase identity politics.7 It argues that the most profound politics of all come from one’s own identity. It even calls this politics potentially the most radical kind there is.8
The three women were socialists, and said so in the statement itself: "We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy."9
They spell out the word socialists for themselves. "We are socialists," they write, "because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses."9 They also write that they are "not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation".9 Forty years on, Barbara Smith looked back and said the anticapitalism is what gives Combahee’s black feminism its edge.10
Socialists built identity politics up from inside the economics of the left, and that is where the whole idea started. They argued that the economics alone would not be enough.
Sources
- The Combahee River Collective had been meeting together since 1974. Source: The Combahee River Collective, 'A Black Feminist Statement', in Zillah R. Eisenstein (ed.), Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (Monthly Review Press, 1979), p. 362 ↩
- The Combahee River Collective formed in Boston. Source: Feminist Manifestos: A Global Documentary Reader, Editorial headnote, p. 269. The passage is the anthology editors' headnote, not the collective's statement. ↩
- The Combahee River Collective took its name from Harriet Tubman's raid at the Combahee River. Source: Barbara Smith, interview by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, in Taylor (ed.), How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective (Haymarket Books, 2017), the passage on the collective's name ↩
- Barbara Smith and Demita Frazier were among the founders of the Combahee River Collective. Source: How We Get Free, Demita Frazier interview, Beverly Smith interview, and contributor biographies. Frazier on beginning the Boston NBFO chapter, Beverly Smith on Barbara Smith beginning the Boston organising, and the contributor biography naming Frazier a founding member. ↩
- Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith and Demita Frazier wrote the Combahee River Collective's 1977 statement, "A Black Feminist Statement". Source: Barbara Smith, foreword to The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing In The Seventies and Eighties (Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1986), p. 3 ↩
- Zillah R. Eisenstein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, Monthly Review Press, 1978, pp. 362 to 372, the collection that first gathered the statement. ↩
- The Combahee River Collective's April 1977 statement is the earliest known use of the term identity politics. Sources: Eisenstein (ed.), Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, p. 365. The statement's own use of the term.; How We Get Free, Barbara Smith interview, and editor's introduction. Smith claiming the coinage and hedging it, and Taylor hedging it further.; Feminist Manifestos: A Global Documentary Reader, Editorial headnote, p. 270. The editors credit dispersal rather than origin. ↩
- The Combahee River Collective's 1977 statement argued that the most profound and potentially the most radical politics come directly out of one's own identity. Source: Eisenstein (ed.), Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, p. 365 ↩
- Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement" (1977), quoted in Ashley J. Bohrer, Marxism and Intersectionality, transcript Verlag, 2019, p. 73. A movement source carried by an academic one: the original pamphlet is not on the shelf, so Bohrer is named as the carrier rather than the author. ↩
- Barbara Smith later said that anticapitalism is what gives the Combahee River Collective's black feminism its edge. Source: Barbara Smith, interview by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, in Taylor (ed.), How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective (Haymarket Books, 2017), the closing exchange of the interview ↩
Relationship Ledger
The Combahee River Collective statement of 1977 introduced the term identity politics from inside socialism, arguing that the most radical politics come directly out of one’s own identity. Source: Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
Robinson's Black Marxism (1983) named racial capitalism and the Black radical tradition. Source: Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
Abolition. Feminism. Now. (2021) closes the circuit this line opened in 1977.
Referenced in
Records whose text names Combahee River Collective. The list is rebuilt from the published prose and checked for drift.
- Where woke came fromis mentioned in
- Demita Frazieris mentioned in
- Beverly Smithis mentioned in
- Barbara Smithis mentioned in
- Angela Davisis mentioned in