Black Women Radicals (BWR) is a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender expansive people’s radical political activism. Rooted in intersectional and transnational Black feminisms and Womanisms, we are committed to empowering Black transgender, queer, and cisgender radical women and gender expansive activists by centering their political, intellectual, and cultural contributions to the field of Black Politics across time, space, and place in Africa and the African Diaspora.
We are a collective that uplifts Black people of diverse gender identities and gender expressions, educational backgrounds, nationalities, religious and/or non-religious affiliations, languages, ethnicities, and more and who have diverse pathways of and to Blackness and to Black person-hoods and ways of being, but who are all committed to uplifting, centering, and honoring Black women and marginalized genders in their entireties. Our mission is to overcome the systemic erasure of Black women and gender expansive peoples’ radical activism by ensuring that their voices, perspectives, grassroots organizing, theoretical frameworks, leadership, and memory are seen, heard, felt, and known. For so long, Black women and gender non-conforming and non-binary people’s political leadership and movement building has been overlooked in academia and society writ-large. Our vision is to create and catalyze safe, inclusive, and informative spaces and critical conversations of and about historical, contemporary, and transnational Black women’s and gender expansive peoples’ activism. Through our blog, our database, community-centered events, research, and more, our purpose is to disrupt this erasure by uplifting and educating on and about Black women and gender expansive people’s political activism on the African continent and in the African Diaspora.
We are here and have always been.
#blackwomenradicals
Collage of Marsha P. Johnson by Doriana Diaz.
What We stand for: The Black Women Radicals Manifesto
On What “Radical” Means To Us
When we say “Black Women Radicals”, we employ Angela Davis’ definition of radical which “simply means grasping at the root.” To us, a Black Woman Radical is a Black woman-identifying person* –– irrespective of occupation, class, or educational background –– who “grasps at the root” for revolutionary transformation in all aspects of life and whose politics are based in an intersectional, transnational, Black radical feminist/Womanist liberation model that is queer, trans*, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and disabled inclusive, centered, affirming, and loving.
With this, below are characteristics of what we believe a “Black Woman Radical” represents:
To us, a “Black Woman Radical” seeks to uproot heteronormative white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, imperialism, colonialism, carceral feminisms, militarism, policing, homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, racism, sexism, fatphobia, aporophobia, ableism, xenophobia, colorism, classism, ageism, respectability politics, elitism, and any other violent manifestation that is the antithesis of a radical, Black feminist solidarity and collectivism.
*When we say “women”, we are emphatically inclusive of transgender women. Transgender women are women. Period.
The Black Women Radicals Squad
Founder, CrEATOR & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Jaimee A. Swift (she/her) is the executive director, creator, and founder of Black Women Radicals, a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender expansive people's radical activism in Africa and in the African Diaspora. She is also the creator and founder of The School for Black Feminist Politics (SBFP), the Black feminist political education arm of Black Women Radicals. As a political and cultural custodian dedicated to uncovering, restoring, and restituting Black women and gender expansive people's political memories, movements, narratives, and leadership, Swift works with Black feminist-activists, organizers, scholars, and educators from around the world to explore and expand on the power, possibilities, and futurity of Black feminisms.
She is the co-creator of the Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities Project, a collaboration between Black Women Radicals, the Asian American Feminist Collective, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Swift is also on the board of The Gloria Naylor Archive and is the co-curator of The Grassroots Archivist Collective of Black Women (GACBW). A collaboration between Black Lesbian Archives and Black Women Radicals, the GACBW is a transnational virtual convening of Black women and gender expansive grassroots archivists and/or aspiring archivists.
Swift has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Howard University. Her dissertation, “Toward A Queer Amefricanidade: State, Structural, and Symbolic Violence and Afro-Brazilian LGBT Women's Resistance in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil” examines Afro-Brazilian queer and transgender women's historical and contemporary political struggles against multiform state and quotidian violence since Brazil's democratic transition from military dictatorship from the 1980s to present day. Her recent article published by Oxford University Press for the Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics offers an analysis of Afro-Brazilian LGBT women’s activism based on her dissertation. As a journalist, her works have been published in The Washington Post, The Grio, Salon.com, For Harriet, and more. She has been featured on PBS, RT America, CBS.com, and more.
You can follow her on Twitter @JaimeeSwift.
Brand & Web Designer
Keshia White (she/her) is the founder of Keshia M. White Designs, LLC. Her agency provides strategic, yet beautiful brand strategy, brand identity, and website design for coaches, consultants, and other service providers. After nearly a decade in corporate America, working in business-to-business sales, from the telecommunications industry to the software industry, Keshia made a pivot to take her business full-time in 2018.
Keshia’s design work has been recognized by the leader in design software, Adobe. She was invited to design a user interface website design kit as part of Adobe’s promotional campaign for their prototyping tool, Adobe XD. She also conducted web design tutorials over live video from Adobe’s San Francisco studio, sharing her business-focused design process with thousands of up-and-coming designers from all over the world.
Keshia resides in Atlanta, Georgia and enjoys cooking, travel, and exploring nature in her spare time. You can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @keshiamwhite.
Contributing Writer + CO-Curator, BLack Trans Thought and Histories SERIES
emerald faith (they/them) is an English PhD candidate and Advanced Opportunity Fellow at The University of Wisconsin-Madison where she also received her master’s degrees in English and Afro-American studies. Their research interests include 20th century African American literature, Black queer literatures, Black queer theory, and Black feminisms. Most recently they were a Freedom Summer Collegiate professor where they co-taught a course on Black queer southern literatures. You can follow them on Twitter at @emeraldfaith.
Photo Credit: Bria Brown
LEad Columnist, Black Feminist Histories & Movement
Karla Mendez (she/her) is currently a student at Brown University, pursuing a master’s in American Studies. She recently graduated from the University of Central Florida, where she majored in Interdisciplinary Studies with a double minor in Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her research interests include Black feminist histories and movements, Black American literature, Black and Latina cultural productions, and social structures. When she isn’t studying, she fills up her time with books. She also enjoys watching 90s and early 00s films, drawing, and journaling. You can follow her on Instagram at @kmmendez. You can follow her on Instagram at @kmmendez.
Nana Brantuo, Co-Curator, Caribbean Feminisms Series and Lead Columnist, Black Feminist Migrations and Movements
Nana Brantuo is a Black transnational feminist scholar, researcher, and writer based in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Over the past decade, she has balanced teaching, facilitation, research, and advocacy appointments across the nonprofit, philanthropy, and education sectors. She has held positions as policy advocate and strategist for Black immigrant, Muslim, and domestic violence advocacy organizations and is an adjunct lecturer at the George Washington University. Currently, She is a contributing freelance writer for AMAKA.Studio and lead columnist for Black Women Radicals’ Voices in Movement blog. She also co-curates the Caribbean Feminisms Series with Dr. Andrea Baldwin, in partnership with Black Women Radicals. She’s also completing her dissertation, which focuses on Black immigrant students’ transnational networks, activism and advocacy from past to present.
Andrea Baldwin, Co-Curator, Caribbean Feminisms Series
Andrea N. Baldwin completed her doctoral studies at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus Barbados in 2013 with a thesis entitled, Investigating Power in the Anglophone Caribbean Middle Class: Ideologies and Love as Power – Barbados as a Case Study. She is an attorney-at-law who also holds an MSc. in International Trade Policy and her research interests include Black and transnational feminist epistemology, theorizing pedagogy as a form of feminist praxis, care in Black communities, and Caribbean cultural studies.
Dr. Baldwin is an assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana studies in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech. She has several publications and is currently working on her first monograph entitled Black Feminism, Postcolonialism and American Higher Education: Gender, Race and the Body. Dr. Baldwin has also written and narrated a short documentary film entitled Self Care: A Radical Act which was screened at the Belin Feminist Film Festival in March 2018. She is the recipient of several awards and was awarded an international fellowship at Brown University in 2010. She was also awarded the 2018 John S. King Excellence in Teaching Award from her former institution Connecticut College, where she also served as the Assistant Director of Africana Studies and the Associate Director for Praxis at the Center for the Critical Study of Race and Ethnicity. Dr. Baldwin was born and raised on the small Caribbean island state of Barbados and considers herself an all-around Caribbean woman and loves everything coconut and soca.
Doriana Diaz, Visual Designer
Doriana Diaz (she/her) is a storyteller, shapeshifter, and sensitive spirit rooted in Philadelphia's soulful rhythms. Doriana's craft of passion is visual and handmade collage work. Her artistry is a spiritual form of transcendence and self/community exploration. Her collages are an exploration of cultural agency, archival documentation, and rhythms of resistance and expansion.
Photo credit: Mars Santi (@marstookthemic)
Naomi Simmons-Thorne, Co-Curator, Black Trans Thought and Histories Series
Naomi Simmons-Thorne (She/Her) is a graduate student and educator. She is currently at the University of South Carolina where she studies teacher instruction, qualitative research, foundations and philosophy of education. Naomi has served as a Fellow at the Department of Education-funded North Carolina Central University Research Institute For Scholars of Equity as well as the Center For Minority Serving Institutions at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. She was recently awarded the distinction of becoming the inaugural recipient of the Cheryl A. Wall Prize in Black Women Studies. Between her studies, Naomi is working toward the completion of her first book, The Ontological Problem: Black Racial Ontology and the Politics of Sexual Difference.
Jaedyn Griddine, Database Curator Intern
Jaedyn (she/her) is a Georgia native, Virgo sun and current Political Science major at Emory University with aspirations of practicing law in her future. Her academic interests include radical leftist political theory, historic and contemporary Black political movements, French literature and francophone studies, constitutional law and civil rights law. In her free time you can find her galavanting through Atlanta, thrifting, reviewing films on Letterboxd, creating playlists on Spotify or completing crossword puzzles.
