Black feminism

Black feminism has been around since the time of slavery. If defined as a way that Black women have sought to understand their position within systems of oppression, then this is exemplified in Sojourner Truth's famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman?", which was delivered in 1851 at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio. Truth addressed how the issues being discussed at the convention were issues that primarily impacted white women.[15]

The book, A Voice from the South (1892), by Anna Julia Cooper has been credited as one of the first pieces of literature that expresses a Black feminist perspective.[7] Cooper's contemporary, writer and activist, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, proposed "some of the most important questions of race, gender, and the work of Reconstruction in the nineteenth century". According to Harper, white women needed suffrage for education, but "Black women need the vote, not as a form of education, but as a form of protection".[16] In the 1890s Ida B. Wells, a politically driven activist, became famous for seeking to find the truth about the lynching of Black men, a subject that many white feminists avoided.[17]

In the post slavery period, Black female intellectuals and activists, such as Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, and Frances Harper, set in motion the principles that would become the basis for Black feminism.[18] These women accomplished things that were previously unheard of for Black women, such as giving public lectures, fighting for suffrage, and aiding those in need of help following Reconstruction. However, fissures soon developed between White feminists, even those who had been actiive in abolition, and pioneering Black feminists.

Suffrage was one the early areas of a schism between White and Black feminists. Though feminism as a movement was at a rise in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Black women were often left behind and disregarded by the White feminists of this movement. This, however, did not stop the Black feminists, who would eventually create a separate path for themselves fighting for the cause. Out of this, the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) founded in 1904, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded in 1909, and the National Association of Wage Earners founded in 1921, were born.[19]

Black writers of the early 1900s who undertook feminist themes included educator and activist Mary Church Terrell and Zora Neale Hurston. In her autobiography A Colored Woman in a White World (1940), Terrell chronicled her experiences with both racism and sexism.[20] Hurston's substantial number of published works include the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) featuring a strong female protagonist in Janie Crawford.[21]

Although the decades between the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1920) and the 1960s are not included among the "wave" periods of feminism, this was a particularly important moment in the development of Black feminist activism.[16] During this period, a few radical Black female activists joined the Communist party or focused on union activism. Although they did not all identify as feminists, their theorizing included important works that are the foundation for theories of intersectionality—integrating race, gender, and class. In 1940, for example, Esther V. Cooper (married name Esther Cooper Jackson) wrote a M.A. thesis called "The Negro Woman Domestic Worker in Relation to Trade Unionism".[22] And in 1949, Claudia Jones wrote "An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman".[23]

Other feminist activism and organizing happened around different cases of racial and sexual violence. For example, Esther Cooper and Rosa Parks organized to help Recy Taylor. In 1944, Taylor was the victim of a gang rape; Parks and Cooper attempted to bring the culprits to justice.[24] Black feminist activists focused on other similar cases, such as the 1949 arrest of and then death sentence issued to Rosa Lee Ingram, a victim of sexual violence. Defenders of Ingram included the famous Black feminist Mary Church Terrell, who was an octogenarian at the time.[25]

Despite often initiating protests, organizing and fundraising events, communicating to the community, and formulating strategies, women in positions of leadership are often overlooked by historians covering the Civil Rights Movement, which began in earnest in the 1950s.[26] Many events, such as the Montgomery bus boycott, were made successful due to the women who distributed information. During the Montgomery bus boycott, 35,000 leaflets were mimeographed and handed out after Rosa Parks’ arrest. Georgia Gilmore, after being fired from her job as a cook and black-listed from other jobs in Montgomery due to her contributions to the boycott, organized the Club From Nowhere, a group that cooked and baked to fund the effort.[27]

In the second half of the 20th century, Black feminism as a political and social movement grew out of Black women's feelings of discontent with both the civil rights movement and the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the foundational statements of left wing Black feminism is "An Argument for Black Women's Liberation as a Revolutionary Force", authored by Mary Ann Weathers and published in February 1969 in Cell 16's radical feminist magazine No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation.[28] Weathers states her belief that "women's liberation should be considered as a strategy for an eventual tie-up with the entire revolutionary movement consisting of women, men, and children", but she posits that "[w]e women must start this thing rolling" because:

All women suffer oppression, even white women, particularly poor white women, and especially Indian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Oriental and Black American women whose oppression is tripled by any of the above-mentioned. But we do have females' oppression in common. This means that we can begin to talk to other women with this common factor and start building links with them and thereby build and transform the revolutionary force we are now beginning to amass.[28]

Not only did the civil rights movement primarily focus on the oppression of Black men, but many Black women faced severe sexism within civil rights groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.[29] Within the movement, men dominated the powerful positions. Black feminists did not want the movement to be the struggle only for Black men's rights, they wanted Black women's rights to be incorporated too.[30] Black feminists also felt they needed to have their own movement because the complaints of white feminists sometimes differed from their own and favored white women.[31]

In the 1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was highly active and focused on achieving "a social order of justice" through peaceful tactics. The SNCC was founded by Ella Baker. Baker was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). When Baker served as Martin Luther King Jr.’s SCLC executive secretary, she was exposed to the hierarchical structure of the organization. Baker disapproved of what she saw as sexism within both the NAACP and the SCLC and wanted to start her own organization with an egalitarian structure, allowing women to voice their needs.[29][32]

In 1964 at a SNNC retreat in Waveland, Mississippi, the members discussed the role of women and addressed sexism that occurred within the group.[33] A group of women in the SNCC (who were later identified as white allies Mary King and Casey Hayden) openly challenged the way women were treated when they issued the "SNCC Position Paper (Women in the Movement)".[34] The paper listed 11 events in which women were treated as subordinate to men. According to the paper, women in SNCC did not have a chance to become the face of the organization, the top leaders, because they were assigned to clerical and housekeeping duties, whereas men were involved in decision-making.[35]

When Stokely Carmichael was elected chair of the SNCC in 1966, he reoriented the path of the organization towards Black Power and Black nationalism.[36][37] While it is often argued that Black women in the SNCC were significantly subjugated during the Carmichael era, Carmichael appointed several women to posts as project directors during his tenure as chair. By the latter half of the 1960s, more women were in charge of SNCC projects than during the first half.[38] Despite these improvements, the SNCC's leadership positions were occupied by men during the entirety of its existence, which ended in turmoil within a few years of Carmichael's resignation from the body in 1967.[39]

Angela Davis speaking at the University of Alberta on March 28, 2006

The unofficial symbol of Black feminism in the late 60s, a combination of the raised fist of Black Power, and the astrological symbol for Venus, denoted an intersection of ideals of Black Power and militant feminism. Some ideals were shared, such as a "critique on racial capitalism, starting with slavery". Despite this, Black feminism had reasons to become independent of Black nationalism, according to some critics, because it had achieved only a niche within the generally sexist and masculinist structure of Black nationalism.[40][41]

The second-wave feminist movement emerged in the 1960s, led by Betty Friedan. Some Black women felt alienated by the main planks of the mainstream branches of the second-wave feminist movement, which largely advocated for women's rights to work outside the home and expansion of reproductive rights. For example, earning the power to work outside the home was not seen as an accomplishment by Black women since many Black women had to work both inside and outside the home for generations due to poverty.[42] Additionally, as Angela Davis later wrote, while Afro-American women and white women were subjected to multiple unwilled pregnancies and had to clandestinely abort, Afro-American women were also suffering from compulsory sterilization programs that were not widely included in dialogue about reproductive justice.[43]

Some Black feminists who were active in the early second-wave feminism include civil rights lawyer and author Florynce Kennedy, who co-authored one of the first books on abortion, 1971's Abortion Rap; Cellestine Ware, of New York's Stanton-Anthony Brigade; and Patricia Robinson. These women "tried to show the connections between racism and male dominance" in society.[44]

Fighting against racism and sexism across the white dominated second wave feminist movement and male dominated Black Power and Black Arts Movement, Black feminist groups of artists such as Where We At! Black Women Artists Inc were formed in the early 1970s. The "Where We At" group was formed in 1971 by artists Vivian E. Browne and Faith Ringgold.[45] During the summer of that year, the group organized the first exhibition in history of only Black women artists to show the viewing public that "Black artist" was not synonymous with "Black male artist".[46] In 1972 Where We At! issued a list of demands to the Brooklyn Museum protesting what it saw as the museum's ignoring of Brooklyn's Black women artists. The demands brought forth changes and years later, in 2017, the museum's exhibit "We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-1985" celebrated the work of Black women artists who were part of the Black Arts and Black Power movements.[47]

During the 20th century, Black feminism evolved quite differently from mainstream feminism. In the late 1900s it was influenced by new writers such as Alice Walker whose literary works spawned the term Womanism, which emphasized the degree of the oppression Black women faced when compared to white women and, for her, encompassed "the solidarity of humanity".[18]

Black lesbian feminism, as a political identity and movement, arose out of a compound set of grievances involving race, gender, social class, as well as sexual orientation.[48] Black lesbian women were often unwelcome in male dominated Black movements, and tended to be marginalized not only in mainstream second wave feminism (as exemplified by Betty Friedan who held off making lesbian rights part of her political agenda) but also within the lesbian feminist movement itself. Here the problem was perhaps one more of class than of race. Among lesbian feminism's largely white, middle class leadership, the butch/femme sexual style, fairly common among Black and working class lesbian pairings, was often deprecated as a degrading imitation of male dominate heterosexuality.[49]

During the 1970s lesbian feminists created their own sector of feminism in response to the unwillingness of mainstream second wave feminism to embrace their cause. They developed a militant agenda, broadly challenging homophobia and demanding a respected place within feminism. Some advocated and experimented with as complete a social separation from men as possible. These separatist notions were off-putting to Black lesbian feminists involved in Black power movements and tended to deepen their feelings of alienation from a largely white led movement. As Anita Cornwell stated, "When the shooting starts any Black is fair game. the bullets don't give a damn whether I sleep with a woman or a man".[50]

In 1970, a defining moment for Black lesbian feminists occurred at the Black Panther’s Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Several Black lesbian feminists confronted a group of white lesbian feminists about what they saw as a racially divisive agenda. Following this event, several groups began to include and organize around Black lesbian politics. For example, in 1973, the National Black Feminist Organization was founded and included a lesbian agenda.[50] In 1975, the Combahee River Collective was founded out of experiences and feelings of sexism in the Black Power movements and racism in the lesbian feminist movement.[49] The primary focus of this collective was to fight what they saw as interlocking systems of oppression and raise awareness of these systems.[51]

In 1978, the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gay Men was founded.[50] In addition to the multiple organizations that focused on Black lesbian feminism, there were many authors that contributed to this movement, such as Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Pat Parker, June Jordan, Darlene Pagano, Kate Rushin, Doris Davenport, Cheryl Clarke, Margaret Sloan-Hunter, and a number of others.[52]

In the early 1990s, AWARE (African Woman's Action for Revolutionary Exchange) was formed in New York by Reena Walker and Laura Peoples after a plenary session on Black women's issues held at the Malcolm X Conference at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) entitled Black Women and Black Liberation: Fighting Oppression and Building Unity.[53] In 1991, the Malcolm X Conference was held again at BMCC, and the theme that year was "Sisters Remember Malcolm X: A Legacy to be Transformed". It featured plenary sessions, a workshop on "Sexual Harassment: Race, Gender and Power", and was held in a much larger theater that year. Black women were a central focus and not an aside as they were prior. Speakers included Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Verniece Miller, Reena Walker, Carol Bullard (Asha Bandele), and Vivian Morrison.[54] At the same time, Reena Walker, along with the members of AWARE, also worked in coalition with AWIDOO (American Women in Defense of Ourselves), formed by Barbara Ransby, to sign a full-page ad in The New York Times to stand in support of Anita Hill.[55]

In 1995, Reena Walker went on to put out the call to various women and organized the group African Americans Against Violence[56] that effectively stopped a parade that a group of reverends led by Al Sharpton were attempting to hold in Harlem for Mike Tyson.[57] The group, including Eve and Kathe Sandler, Nsia Bandele, and Indigo Washington, worked successfully to stop the parade from happening, bringing attention to the struggle of Black women against sexism and domestic violence.[58] A supporter of Mike Tyson, social worker Bill Jones, exclaimed "The man has paid his debt" (in regards to Tyson's rape conviction), and joined a large group of other Tyson supporters in heckling the African Americans Against Violence group, accusing them of "catering to white radical feminists".[58]

A particularly imminent medium of oppression for Black women in the 1990s was hip-hop music. During that time, there was little effort to express Black feminism through the music. The New York hip-hop scene was mainly dominated my men in the 1990s, and most producers were focused on rap superstars Notorious B.I.G. and Sean "Diddy" Combs. Three female emcees can be credited to have expanded Black womanhood in music during this time. Lil' Kim who was signed to Biggie Smalls' Junior M.A.F.I.A. Imprint, expressed her message very quickly.[59]

She achieved an image of fierce independence and comfort with her body. She defied the presumption in hip-hop that women are there to humble the presence of men. Lil' Kim's outspokenness and unprecedented lyrics were rejected by many people who believed in the traditional sound of hip-hop. Lil' Kim stood behind her words and never apologized for who she is. Faith Evans is another female emcee who broke barriers in the hip-hop world. At just 21 years old, she was the first female artist signed to Bad Boy Records. Faith Evans spent more than 20 years in the music business fighting gender discrimination and harassment in an industry where men were the dominant content creators and producers.[59]

Mary J. Blige was another artist who became an advocate of women empowerment in hip-hop. She was a legendary singer who influenced the Bad Boy Records label, although she was never signed by them. Together, these women shared a sense of freedom in the music business that allowed them to bring women together across the world. There was a new perspective in the spot light that swung the pendulum in a different direction and gave women in hip-hop a voice.[59]

The new century has brought about a shift in thinking away from "traditional" feminism. Third-wave feminism claimed the need for more intersectionality in feminist activism and the inclusion of Black and other ethnic minority women. Moreover, the advancement of technology fostered the development of a new digital feminism. This online activism involved the use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and other forms of social media to discuss gender equality and social justice. According to NOW Toronto, the internet created a "call-out" culture, in which sexism or misogyny can be called out and challenged immediately with relative ease.

As an academic response to this shift, many scholars incorporated queer of color critique into their discussions of feminism and queer theory.[60][61] Queer of color critiques seeks an intersectional approach to misidentifying with the larger themes of "radicalized heteronormativity and heteropatriarchy" in order to create a more representative and revolutionary critique of social categories.[62][63][64] An example of queer of color critique can be seen in the Combahee River Collective's statement, which addresses the intersectionality of oppressions faced by Black lesbians.[65]

The 2010s saw a revitalization of Black feminism. As more influential figures began to identify themselves as feminist, social media saw a rise in young Black feminists willing to bring racist and sexist situations to light.[66] Brittney Cooper, assistant professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, said: "I think Black feminism is in one of the strongest moments it has seen in a while; From Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, to Laverne Cox on Orange Is the New Black to Beyoncé ... we have prominent Black women [sic] identifying publicly with the term."[67]

Social media served as a medium for Black feminists to express praise or discontent with organisations' representations of Black women. For example, the 2015 and 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows were commended by Ebony magazine for letting four Black models wear their natural hair on the runway. Black feminists on social media showed support for the natural hair movement using the hashtags #melanin and #BlackGirlmagic.[68]

Black Girl Magic (#BlackGirlMagic) is a movement that was popularized by CaShawn Thompson in 2013.[69] The concept was born as a way to "celebrate the beauty, power and resilience of Black women". Thompson began to use the hashtag #BlackGirlsAreMagic in 2013 to speak about the positive achievements of black women. Although it was popularised on social media, the movement has inspired many organizations to host events using the title, along with support from celebrities and politicians globally.

Alleged instances of the "appropriation" of Black culture were commented on. For example, a 2015 Vogue Italia photo shoot involving model Gigi Hadid wearing an afro sparked backlash on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Some users claimed it was problematic and racist to have a non-Black model wear an afro and a fake tan to give the appearance of Blackness when the fashion magazine could have hired a Black model instead.[70] Kearie Daniel wrote that white people wearing certain hairstyles is a particularly touchy subject in Black feminism because of the perceived double standard that when white women wear Black hairstyles, they are deemed "trendy" or "edgy", while Black women are labelled "ghetto" or "unprofessional".[71]

Black feminists also voiced the importance of increasing "representation" of Black women in television and movies. According to a 2014 study by the University of Southern California, of the 100 top films of that year, "nearly three-quarters of all characters were white", NPR reports, and only 17 of those 100 top movies featured non-white lead or co-lead actors. That number falls further when only looking at non-white women leads, considering only one-third of speaking roles were for women,[72] according to the same study.[73]

The activist movement Black Lives Matter was initially formed by Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Kahn-Cullors as a hashtag to campaign against racism and police brutality against African Americans in the United States.[74] The movement contributed to a revitalization and re-examining of the Black feminist movement.[75] While the deaths of Black men played a major part in the Black Lives Matter movement, Rekia Boyd, Michelle Cusseaux, Tanisha Anderson, Shelly Frey, Yvette Smith, Eleanor Bumpurs, Sandra Bland, and other women were also killed or assaulted by police officers.[76]

While Black Lives Matter has been critiqued for a failure to focus on Black women's treatment by the police, it has since been better about incorporating the interlocking systems of oppression that disadvantage Black women in particular.[77][78] Activism of Black feminists in Black Lives Matter has included protests against political candidates such as Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton, and they have used hashtags such as #oscarssowhite and #sayhername.[79]

The love and affection that is portrayed in the video depicting Beyonce and Blue Ivy represents something new than what is usually thought of when talking about Black parents. It represents a feeling of home and nurturing where they can cherish their time together [80]

Michelle Cliff believes that there is continuity "in the written work of many African American Women, ... you can draw a line from the slave narrative of Linda Brent to Elizabeth Keckley's life, to Their Eyes were Watching God (by Zora Neale Hurston) to Coming of Age in Mississippi (Anne Moody) to Sula (by Toni Morrison), to the Salt Eaters (by Toni Cade Bambara) to Praise Song for the Widow (by Paule Marshall)." Cliff believes that all of these women, through their stories, "Work against the odds to claim the 'I'".[92]

• 1945–1995, Black Internationalist Feminism: Women Writers of the Black Left by Cheryl Higashida[93] looks at Black women writers and their contributions to the feminist movement; specifically the Black feminist movement. Higashida "illustrates how literature is a crucial lens for studying Black internationalist feminism because these authors were at the forefront of bringing the perspectives and problems of Black women to light against their marginalization and silencing." Included in her work are writers such as Rosa Guy, Lorraine Hansberry, Audre Lorde, and Maya Angelou.
• 1970, Black Woman's Manifesto, published by the Third World Women's Alliance, argued for a specificity of oppression against Black women. Co-signed by Gayle Lynch, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Maxine Williams, Frances M Beale, and Linda La Rue, the manifesto, opposing both racism and capitalism, stated that "the Black woman is demanding a new set of female definitions and a recognition of herself of a citizen, companion, and confidant, not a matriarchal villain or a step stool baby-maker. Role integration advocates the complementary recognition of man and woman, not the competitive recognition of same."[94] Additionally, Toni Cade Bambara edited the eclectic volume The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970) which sought to "explore ourselves and set the record straight on the matriarch and the evil Black bitch." [95] It featured now considered canonical essays, such as Frances Beale's "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female" and Toni Cade Bambara's "On the Issue of Roles."
• 1979, Barbara Smith and Lorraine Bethel edited the Autumn 1979 issue of Conditions. Conditions 5 was "the first widely distributed collection of Black feminist writing in the U.S."[96]
• 1992, Black feminists mobilized "a remarkable national response" to the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Senate Hearings in 1991, naming their effort African American Women in Defense of Ourselves.[97]
• 1994, Evelyn Hammonds: "Black (W)holes and The Geometry of Black Female Sexuality"

Evelyn Hammonds begins her essay by reflecting, as a Black lesbian and feminist writer, on the "consistently exclusionary practices of lesbian and gay studies" that produce such problematic paucities as the presence of writers of color, articles written on Black women’s sexuality by Black women that complexly examine race in representations of gender, and the visibility of Black lesbian experiences (Hammonds, 127). Hammonds articulates how whiteness defines the canonical "categories, identities, and subject positions" of lesbian and gay studies and depends on maintaining and presupposing patterns of Black women and Black lesbian sexualities’ invisibility and absence (Hammonds, 128).

This articulation is directly linked to Hammonds' concern about the visibility and audibility of Black queer sexualities, since Black women’s sexualities are perceived as always invisible or absent, then lesbian and queer Black women and authors must follow as doubly invisible. While white sexuality as the normative sexuality has been challenged by other writers, Hammonds frames her intervention as reaching beyond the limits of this familiar critique. To effectively challenge the hegemony of whiteness within Queer theory, Hammonds charges Black feminists with the major projects of reclaiming sexuality so that Black women and Black women sexualities may register as present and power relations between white women and Black women's expression of gender and sexuality becomes a part of theory making within Queer studies (Hammonds, 131).

Black holes become a metaphor used to stage an intervention within Queer theory—Hammonds mobilizes this astrophysical phenomenon to provide a new way to approach the relationship between less visible (but still present) Black female sexualities and the more visible (but not normal) white sexualities. Hammonds writes that in Queer studies' "theorizing of difference" white female sexualities hold the position of visibility which is "theoretically dependent upon an absent yet-ever-present pathologized Black female sexuality" (Hammonds, 131).

• 2000, in her introduction to the 2000 reissue of the 1983 Black feminist anthology Home Girls, theorist and author Barbara Smith states her opinion that "to this day most Black women are unwilling to jeopardize their 'racial credibility' (as defined by Black men) to address the realities of sexism."[98] Smith also notes that "even fewer are willing to bring up homophobia and heterosexism, which are, of course, inextricably linked to gender oppression."[98]

The involvement of Pat Parker in the Black feminist movement was reflected in her writings as a poet. Her work inspired other Black feminist poets such as Hattie Gossett.[99]

In 2018, Carol Giardian wrote an article, "Mow to Now: Black Feminism Resets the Chronology of the Founding of Modern Feminism", which explores Black women and their involvement with the organizing of the 1963 March on Washington (MOW). Particular focus is given to how this was pivotal to the shift of feminist organizing of the 1960s. Many activists are noted, including Dorothy Height, Pauli Murray, and Anna Arnold Hedgeman. Facing down powerful male figures of the Black church, they established feminist protest models that they subsequently used to inform the establishment of the National Organization for Women in 1966.[100]

Other theorists and writers who have contributed to the literature of Black feminism include Moya Bailey and Trudy of Gradient Lair, who both write about the anti-Black and/or racist misogyny against Black women, also known as misogynoir, a term coined by Bailey in 2008. In 2018, both these women wrote an article named "On Misogynoir: Citation, erasure and plagiarism", which talks about the works of Black feminists often being plagiarised or erased from most literary works, also implicitly and sometimes explicitly linked to gender oppression, particularly for women of colour.[101]

Misogynoir is grounded in the theory of intersectionality; it examines how identities such as race, gender, and sexual orientation connect in systems of oppression. Modern day Black activists, such as Feminista Jones, a feminist commentator, claim that "Misogynoir provides a racialised nuance that mainstream feminism wasn’t catching" and that "there is a specific misogyny that is aimed at Black women and is uniquely detrimental to Black women."[102]

• bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism (1981)
• Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women & Critical Transformations (1994)
• Muhs, Gabriella Gutiérrez y; Harris, Angela P.; Flores Niemann, Yolanda; González, Carmen G. (2012). Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. ISBN 978-0-87421-922-7.
• Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (1990) and Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (here) (Routledge, 2005)
• Third World Women's Alliance. Black Women's Manifesto (1970)
• Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (here). Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983; Reed. 2000
• This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color , (here) edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa (Persephone Press, 1981; 2nd edn 1984, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press; translated into Spanish in 2002 by Cherríe Moraga, Ana Castillo, and Norma Alarcón)

• Benard, Akeia A.F. (October–December 2016). "Colonizing Black female bodies within patriarchal capitalism". Sexualization, Media, & Society. 2 (4): 237462381668062. doi:10.1177/2374623816680622.
• Chapman, Erin D. "A historiography of black feminist activism" History Compass (2019) https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12576 abstract
• Harnois, Catherine E (2010). "Race, Gender and the Black women's Standpoint". Sociological Forum. 25 (1): 68–85. doi:10.1111/j.1573-7861.2009.01157.x.
• McClaurin, Irma, ed. (2001). Black Feminist Anthropology. Rutgers University Press.
• Springer, Kimberly (Summer 2002). "Third wave Black feminism?". Signs. 27 (4): 1059–1082. doi:10.1086/339636. JSTOR 10.1086/339636. S2CID 143519056.