In a recent Ms. article, Dr. Régine Jean-Charles, director of Africana Studies and professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies at Northeastern, writes about the enduring legacy of the Boston-based Combahee River Collective in community organizing.
Expounding on Black lesbian feminists Barbara and Beverly Smith, the co-creators of the collective, as well as the Harvard’s Schlesinger Library’s archives on the Black feminist writing and activism from the 70s to the 90s, featuring correspondence between the icons Audre Lorde and June Jordan, Jean-Charles celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Combahee River Collective’s “Black Feminist Statement” as a guiding map for grassroots organizing – and one that she teaches students in class.
“Regardless of their politics, it is an important practice for students to articulate what they believe, describe a concrete vision, consider the extant problems and explain (or imagine) how they will achieve that vision. The practice of “defining and clarifying” one’s politics is a useful (and crucial) exercise.”
Jean-Charles honors this rich past in a present marked by authoritarian politics, raging wars and genocide, erasures of Black history, attacks on trans and reproductive rights, ICE violence, and systematic assaults on immigrants. The Combahee River Collective provides a way forward. Read the full article here.
