At the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Class: Honoring the Revolutionary Feminist Legacy of the Third World Women’s Alliance
Cover image consists of images of the Third World Women’s Alliance. Sources: History in the City, Duke University’s Digital Repositories, and the Women of Color Resource Center’s Flickr.
By Karla Mendez
Writer Karla Mendez explores the revolutionary feminism of the Third World Women’s Alliance and how the organization served as political and ideological blueprint for other radical Black feminist organizations in the United States.
Frances M. Beal’s Introduction to Pan-Africanism and Internationalism
In the 1960s, the feminist movement went through a period commonly referred to as the second wave, which lasted for about two decades. During this time, many feminist groups formed with a mission of working towards equality for women. While middle-class, white women fronted many of these feminist groups that received mainstream recognition, they were often exclusionary of Black women and women of color. However, several organizations were created by and for Black women and women of color that focused on their unique experiences navigating race, gender, capitalism, migration, and more. Among these groups was the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWAA) in New York City, which also had a San Francisco Bay Area chapter established by Cheryl Johnson in 1971 (see footnote 1). Active from 1968 to 1980, the Third World Women’s Alliance was formed to respond to the need of women’s organizations within the anti-racism and radical leftist movements.
Prior to the organization being the Third World Women’s Alliance, it was originally the Black Women’s Liberation Committee (BWLC). The BWLC was a faction of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was nurtured by organizers such as Frances M. Beal, Mae Jackson, and Gwendolyn Patton who were members of SNCC. They wanted to discuss and advocate for reproductive rights, voter registration, political literacy, civil rights legislation, and other issues that pertained to Black women. However, it was Beal who was essential to the formation of the Third World Women’s Alliance. As the daughter of a father with African-American and Native American ancestry and a Russian-Jewish mother, Beal experienced racism and anti-Semitism early on, which developed her political consciousness and informed her life as an activist. Beal also watched her mother’s involvement in left-leaning politics and activism.
Beal moved to Paris to study in 1960. During this time, she underwent a politicization due to her interactions with people from Francophone colonies, primarily Algeria. She had not known about the ongoing anti-colonial struggle in Algeria, and living in Paris helped her learn about these struggles first hand. The Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) came to Paris to continue fighting for freedom and were involved in protests that caused tension between the FLN and the police. For Beal, learning from African students from French colonies was the catalyst to her Pan-Africanism and internationalism.
Beal was also a part of a group of students who organized to bring Malcolm X to Paris to lead a discussion in 1965 (see footnote 2). The event was so successful that the group arranged for him to speak again in a larger space, as the original location had an overflow of attendees. Malcolm X left for England after the first event but when he tried to return to Paris, he was prohibited by French authorities. In retrospect, Beal noted that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had prevented Malcolm X from returning to Paris. French security forces also questioned two members of Beal’s student group as to what kind of influence Malcolm X had on people from French colonies.
The Formation of a Radical Group: The Third World Women’s Alliance
During her time with SNCC, Beal was interested in political conversations on abortion and reproductive rights, particularly how both impact the lives of African American women. Although SNCC advocated and fought for racial equality, there was sexism present in the organization. Beal understood that Black women’s issues went beyond what SNCC could provide. In 1968, Beal co-founded the Black Women’s Liberation Committee (BWLC) as a part of SNCC to help address the racism and sexism–what we now identify as misogynoir–that African American women experienced in and outside the organization. In the documentary, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, Beal stated:
“I was in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. You’re talking about liberation and freedom half the night on the racial side, and then all of a sudden, men are going to turn around and start talking about putting you in your place. So in 1968, we founded the SNCC Black Women’s Liberation Committee to take up some of these issues.”
As SNCC began to close its chapters, the BWLC received new members who had no previous relationship with SNCC. In 1969, the Black Women’s Liberation Committee became the Black Women’s Alliance (BWA). Not only did the BWA assert its independence from SNCC as a separate and autonomous organization, it also did so politically; as according to Ashley Farmer in “The Third World Women’s Alliance, Cuba, and the Exchange of Ideas”, the ideological leanings of BWA shifted to a more Marxist and nationalist oriented framework. As the organization continued to address abortion, reproductive rights, and sterilization abuse in the southern region of the United States, Beal and members of BWA were approached by Puerto Rican women who wanted to be a part of the organization.
At first, BWA saw African American women’s problems as separate and different from those of Puerto Rican women. However, as they had conversations with Puerto Rican women and other women of color, they began to see that they too were dealing with oppression at the intersections of race, class, gender, capitalism, imperialism, and more. Members of the BWA realized that just like African American women experience exploitation and oppression, Asian, Chicana, Puerto Rican, and Native American women also experience similar oppressions as well. They debated whether they should admit Puerto Rican women from groups such as the Puerto Rican Independence Party and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, which were pro-independence parties advocating for Puerto Rico’s independence from the United States. With the move to accept Puerto Rican women into the organization, BWA transformed into TWAA in 1970 (see footnote 3).
Holding Space for Third World Women
Not only did TWAA’s name change exemplify their commitment to solidarity, but it also echoed their move from “double jeopardy,” on sex and race to “triple jeopardy,” with a focus on sex, race, and class. The members of TWWA recognized the importance of centering the voices of African American women and women of color from around the world. According to Beal, the New York City chapter rejected the traditional notions and uses of feminism as they felt it was too narrow. Unlike other feminist groups and civil rights groups, the TWWA was not fighting solely against racism or sexism but fighting against both in addition to class and how women at the intersection of all three are affected worldwide.
The cover of the “Black Woman’s Manifesto”, which was a pamphlet distributed by the Third World Women's Alliance. In the pamphlet is Frances Beal’s “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female". Source: Duke University’s Digital Repositories.
They instead pioneered a form of feminism that focused on how U.S. imperialism affects women’s lives globally. TWWA’s focus on race, gender, and class from an anti-imperialist lens set them apart from other feminist groups of their time. They believed that to achieve liberation, the institutions of racism and imperialism would have to be abolished and that groups like TWWA would be at the forefront of this transformation. According to Ariane Vani Kannan in “The Third World Women’s Alliance: History, Geopolitics, and Form”, the TWAA was at the forefront of standing in solidarity with several anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles globally and “...participated in activism against U.S. intervention in Vietnam; student movements; the Puerto Rican movement; land struggles in the Chicano movement; movements to free political prisoners including Angela Davis and Lolita Lebrón; Native American sovereignty struggles; workers’ rights movements; and struggles for access to health care, housing, and education”.
Paving the Way for Interlocking Oppressions and Intersectionality
Among the many accomplishments of the TWWA was the publication of “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female” in the “Black Woman's Manifesto” in 1969. Written by Beal, the TWWA later distributed the publication as a pamphlet between 1970 and 1975. Double Jeopardy explores the different forms of oppression that African American women contend within U.S. society. TWWA also published a newspaper titled Triple Jeopardy, in which they shared their advocacy and helped raise awareness of the struggles of African American and Third World women. In the first issue of Triple Jeopardy, the organization discussed what prompted them to form TWWA. One of the reasons was they were tired of having to contend with the stereotype that African American women did not face as much anti-Black oppression and racism as African American men. For example, they wrote:
“We decided to form a black women’s organization for many reasons. One was and still is the widespread myth and concept in the black community of the matriarchy. We stated that the concept of the matriarchy was myth and that it has never existed in the United States. A matriarchy denotes a society where the economic power of a group rests in the hands of the women and we all know where the economic power of this nation rests. Our position would be to expose this myth.”
“There was also the widespread concept that by some miracle, the oppression of slavery for the black woman was not as degrading, not as horrifying, not as barbaric as it had been for the black man. However, we state that in any society where men are not yet free, women are less free because we are further enslaved by our sex.”
TWWA’s emphasis on how racism and sexism impacted the everyday lives of Black women, and their ideological and political movement towards an anti-capitalist analysis is one example of a precursor to what we now know as intersectionality. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé W. Crenshaw in“Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics” (1989), intersectionality is a framework or lens to view how race, gender, class, and other forms oppressions and inequities intersect, interlock, and exacerbate each other. Although TWAA obviously preceded Crenshaw’s intersectionality, the organization understood early on the material and political impacts of the various identities that Black women possessed. This why Beal noted in a 2005 interview that:
“Black women’s liberation is not just the skin analysis. It’s not just the class analysis. It’s not just the racial analysis. It’s how those things operate in the real world in an integrated way, to both understand oppression and exploitation and to understand some methods by which we might kind of try to deal with them.”
Image of Vol. 1 No. 1 of the Third World Women’s Alliance’s newspaper titled Triple Jeopardy. September-October 1971. Source: History in the City.
TWAA’s praxis to recognize how various identities intersect laid the foundation for the Combahee River Collective Statement, written by Combahee River Collective members Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, and Demita Frazier. Founded in 1974, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) was a radical Black feminist and socialist organization based in Boston, Massachusetts and named in honor of Harriet Tubman’s triumph in freeing 750 enslaved Africans on the Combahee River in South Carolina in 1853. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor emphasizes in How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, “the CRC described oppression as ‘interlocking’ or happening ‘simultaneously’, thus creating new measures of oppression and inequality. In other words, Black women could not quantify their oppression only in terms of sexism or racism, or of homophobia experienced by Black lesbians. They were not ever a single category, but it was the merging or enmeshment of those identities that compounded how Black women experienced oppression” (see footnote 4).
As mentioned earlier in this section, in the first issue of Triple Jeopardy, when discussing how Black women must contend with racism and sexism, members of TWAA wrote that “..in any society where men are not yet free, women are less free because we are further enslaved by our sex.” However, in the Combahee River Collective Statement, they wrote that “if Black women were free, it would mean everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression”. In centering Black women’s intersecting and interlocking positions as an oppressed group, the CRC-as Taylor notes-reinforced that“...if you could free the most oppressed people in society, then you would have to free everyone”.
Here, one can see the importance of interrogating Black feminist geneologies and how the TWAA was and is still critical to the formation of Black feminist thought and behavior throughout the years.
A Path Forward
Unfortunately, as with other Black feminist groups of that time, TWWA closed its New York Chapter in 1977. The Bay Area chapter, which was established by Cheryl Johnson, a member of TWWA, continued. According to Kannan, it was in 1977 that the Bay Area chapter transitioned into an organization focused on widespread activism and they organized committees such as the National Organization to Overturn the Bakke Decision, Coalition to Fight Infant Mortality, Third World Front Against Imperialism, Native American Project, and the Lolita Lebrón committee (see footnote 5). The Cultural Committee organized what came to be known as their primary and most enduring event–the International Women’s Day celebration. It was another opportunity to discuss and examine sexism, racism, class exploitation, and solidarity. The Bay Area chapter would close in 1979 and later evolved into the Alliance Against Women’s Oppression (AAWO), which was active until 1989.
In 1990, former members of AAWO, most notably Linda Burnham, founded the Women of Color Resource Center (WCRC) in the San Francisco Bay Area. A leader in TWAA, Burnham served as the executive director of WCRC for 18 years. Just like TWAA, WCRC was committed to advancing the rights and needs of women globally and supporting women and girls of color across varying political, social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. In 2008, Burnham stepped down as executive director. After her departure, WCRC endured financial instability and was forced to close in 2010.
TWWA was not only a safe space for Black women and women of color to address and advocate for their rights but it also paved the way for a more expansive, inclusive, and revolutionary Black feminism. The TWAA opened the door for more Black feminist groups such as the Combahee River Collective and for the evolution of Black feminist thought and behavior from an anti-capitalist lens.
TWWA and other Black feminist groups understood that if they wanted a group within the second wave movement to address the needs and struggles of African American women, they would have to establish those groups themselves. Organizing groups independent of a movement was not new, but the 1960s and 1970s was a revolutionary time for feminism, particularly for Black feminism. Black feminists found their struggles being overlooked by second-wave feminist groups and civil rights groups. As a result, they carved out their own movement, one that centered their unique experiences and their needs. And out of that, the Third World Women’s Alliance was born.
Footnotes
Scholar Ariane Vani Kannan in “The Third World Women’s Alliance: History, Geopolitics, and Form” (2018) noted that the TWAA also established a chapter in Seattle, Washington that organized until 1974 (p. 49).
In a 2005 Voices of Feminism Oral History Project interview of Frances M. Beal conducted by activist Loretta J. Ross, on page 23 Beal discusses how she and other students brought Malcolm X to Paris in 1965, and how he was critical in shaping Beal politically. Kannan in “The Third World Women’s Alliance: History, Geopolitics, and Form” (2018) also references how Beal’s political consciousness was influenced by Malcolm X’s, noting that meeting him was “...one of the concrete moments that shaped her anti-imperialist political analysis during this time” (p. 45).
You can read more about the political and ideological shift from the Black Women’s Liberation Committee (BWLC) and the Black Women’s Alliance (BWA) to the Third World Women’s Alliance in Kannan’s work, starting at page 47.
In How We Get Free, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor also cites Anna Julia Cooper and Frances Beal as antecedents to the Combahee River Collective’s political analysis on Black women (pgs. 4-5).
For more information, please read Kannan’s scholarship, particularly pgs. 50-51.
About the author:
Karla Mendez (she/her/hers) is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Central Florida, pursuing a major in Interdisciplinary Studies and a double minor in Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies. She holds a certificate in Feminism and Social Justice from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has just completed an internship with the United Nations Association. In addition to being a student, she is a freelance writer. Karla is of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, she recognizes the importance of intersectionality in feminism, and as such, her research and writing focus on the intersection of race, gender, class, and politics.
With her writing and research, she wants to introduce people to historical figures who paved the way for change while bringing awareness to how discrimination and oppression can affect people differently. She will continue to explore her research as she begins graduate school next year to pursue a Master’s in Women’s Studies and American Studies. When she isn’t studying or reading for school, she enjoys reading for fun, watching old movies, and spending time with her family. You can follow her on Instagram.