Combahee River Collective Statement

The Black feminist organization, the Combahee River Collective, formed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1974. The group's name honors Harriet Tubman and a raid she organized during the Civil War that liberated more than 700 enslaved individuals along the Combahee River in South Carolina. Collective members Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith and Demita Frazier wrote this Statement in 1977 to explain the group's mission and principles. In this excerpt, the group introduced their vision of a Black feminist theory and practice that interprets gender, race, class, and sexuality as interlocking systems.

“We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.”