Black Feminist

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The Black Feminist movement started to appear during the late 1960s and flourished into the 1970s as the defining decade for contemporary Black Feminism. Growing tensions between the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Civil Rights Movement encouraged Black women to build their own movement. Their goal was to separate from the mainstream of white-dominated women’s liberation and establish black feminism centralized around intersectionality. Intersectionality, a term coined in 1989 by Kimberle Crenshaw, examines how multiple identity points including gender, race, and other social categories, work in concert to influence one’s life. Black feminists have to fight on two fronts, equality for gender and race. Currently, Black Feminism has focused on queer and trans black women, girls, and gender nonconforming peoples. A few of the most recognizable Black Feminist figures include: Sojourner Truth, Patricia Hill Collins, Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Ida B. Wells, Shirley Chisholm, and Audre Lorde.