How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The Combahee River Collective built on those observations by continuing to analyze the roots of Black women’s oppression under capitalism and arguing for the reorganization of society based on the collective needs of the most oppressed.

The women of the CRC did not define “identity politics” as exclusionary, whereby only those experiencing a particular oppression could fight against it. Nor did they envision identity politics as a tool to claim the mantle of “most oppressed.” They saw it as an analysis that would validate Black women’s experiences while simultaneously creating an opportunity for them to become politically active to fight for the issues most important to them.

Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s but because of our need as human persons for autonomy.

Dr. Kenneth Edelin. He was an ob-gyn—and he was Black. He did a legal abortion in Boston City Hospital, and he was tried for manslaughter.

this is after Roe v. Wade. So abortion was legal, right? And the compulsory pregnancy people—they had been looking for an ideal test case. And with whoever was around during the procedure cooperating, they brought him up on charges. He went on trial.

what was the purpose of the retreats? It was really about—first of all—to get Black feminists together so we could talk about what it was we were trying to do. It was to address isolation that we faced as Black feminists. So it was to get us all together in one place. It was to have serious political discussion. It was to have cultural and social opportunities and outlets. It was everything. [laugh] It was multipurpose, three days of everything. There would be—there was food of a level you could not even imagine.

So there was the food, there were the books. If we had read something somewhere—the only technology at that point was to copy something or to xerox it or to mimeograph it or to ditto it. I mean, we would have like a literature table. A little literature table with books and articles. Bring enough so that everybody

at that time, there was very little going on in this country that had to do with violence against women. I suspect at that time there—yeah, this is ’73. So you know, I suspect there were absolutely no shelters for women.

What appealed to me about Black feminism was it asserted that we deserve space. We deserve space. If you’re not dealing with these issues that we have on our backs all the time, you’re not getting free, period, dot. We’re not even having a conversation until we can start there. So that’s my history with it.

I’m tired of having to be smart enough to jab with people just to get my fucking point across,

one person I think it would be awesome if you wanted to talk with is my sister Marisa Franco, who is coordinating this network called Mijente. And I suggest her because their whole network was built in this context where she felt Latinos need to get in line and on board. Right? We’re fighting this fight around immigration reform, which is quickly turning into a fight around criminalization, and nobody wants to talk about that. Right? Right. Yeah. And they’ve actually done some really interesting work, but they also came out pretty hard after Mike Brown was killed. And they were one of the only non-Black, Latino-led groups that were like, “Not only are we taking leadership from Black folks, but we want to talk about anti-Blackness in our own communities and how some of our people are supporting people like George Zimmerman, or supporting people like Darren Wilson, because of the way in which criminal behavior is defined and because of the way in which Black bodies are criminalized.” So that’s an example of I think how folks have been shaped by this movement, Black folks and other folks of color. But I would say the Bay is a specific place. And it has its own history, patterns, traditions, like every other place. But it also has way more infrastructure than many places throughout the country. So what the Bay looked like, we didn’t actually start a chapter here until 2014. And we did it really slowly mostly because we were like, “Is that our best contribution to this movement...

back in the day folk were talking about themselves as “third-world women,” which I think is a way better unifier than “women of color.” But that’s a solidarity term and not a political identity, and I think people miss that. There’s also not a lot of places where people are being trained politically, except in the academy. And the academy is not sufficient to train people politically I think, especially when it comes to what it means to build power with people who have a wide spectrum of ideas, experience, and relationship to power.

this narrative of criminality is being attached as an inherent trait of Black people as opposed to a condition, like a symptom of systems.

our movements can’t only be composed of the people who are most disenfranchised. Our movements also have to be composed of people from across the class spectrum and people who also have power. Right? If we want to compete for power, then part of what it means is we have to amass our power as a unit. And it also means we have to take some of theirs. That’s how you compete, right? You’ve got to break some of their folks off and be like, “Well, which side are you actually on?” Right? And it also means that our vision for what a new society can look like has to appeal to more than just the intellectual class of activists and organizers.

I was in a conversation with someone about Standing Rock. And they were going crazy because they were like, “It’s not a victory, and none of this matters.” I’m like, “It’s totally a victory, and they’re going to keep drilling.” They’re going to keep drilling. It is still a victory that you got Obama’s lame ass to step in. You know? Yes. You didn’t fix anything. You just changed the balance of forces, that’s all. And that’s a big deal. And you should celebrate that because people put work into that shit. It’s seventeen degrees, and there are seven thousand people out there.

when I think about Cuba, when I think about any successful political revolution, they had to demonstrate that they could govern. And I think that’s why our track record is not so good. You know? We don’t know what it looks like to run cities in ways that actually improve Black people’s lives.

Even if it’s at the smallest level. Do you know what I’m saying? Yeah. Like Black people need to run the transit board. Black people need to run the water board. Black people need to run the school board. Those are sites of shaping. And when you can tangibly say, “This is how I’ve improved your life,” it allows for people to break with what they don’t love but they don’t know anything else.