Call for Abstracts: 50 Years of Combahee - Special Blog Issue for Voices in Movement
Collage of members of the Combahee River Collective. Collage by Doriana Diaz.
By emerald faith, Karla Méndez, and Jaimee A. Swift
Black Women Radicals is celebrating “50 Years of the Combahee River Collective” with a Call for Abstracts for a Special Issue of our blog, VOICES IN MOVEMENT.
Call for Abstracts: 50 Years of Combahee
1974 Boston, Massachusetts saw the formation of the Combahee River Collective – a Black lesbian socialist feminist organization named after and in the revolutionary spirit of the Harriet Tubman-led South Carolina Combahee River Raid of June 1863, which resulted in the freedom of over 750 enslaved people.
Founding members Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Demita Frazier, Margo Okazawa Rey, Gloria Akasha Hull, Chirlane McCray, Mercedes Tompkins, and Sharon Page Ritchie parted ways with the Boston chapter of the National Black Feminist Organization due to a lack of clarity on the organization's commitment to a class analysis and critique of heteronormativity. Furthermore, the impetus for the Collective’s founding was also rooted in disillusionment with the racism of mainstream white feminist organizations and the homophobia and sexism of Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Nationalist movements and discourses.
The Collective formulated a socio-political vision, philosophy, and praxis – best exhibited through its 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement– that foregrounded a Black feminist material analysis of the most vulnerable and marginalized under our white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist, heteropatriarchal society, with the goal of liberating all oppressed people. From their socialist position, the Collective dispelled the assumption that Black feminism’s attention to Black women’s intramural sexual, physical, and psychological suffering represented a kind of “confusion” about the real source of their oppression and the revolutionary actions necessary for its resolve.
Organized into four key sections: 1) The Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism 2) What We Believe 3) Problems in Organizing Black Feminists 4) Black Feminist Issues and Projects, the now field-defining, movement-grounding statement put forth concepts and frameworks like identity politics and interlocking oppressions that have since become integral to the further development of Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, transnational Black queer and trans feminisms, and beyond.
To honor 50 years of the Combahee River Collective, this call asks us to return to the text – to sit with how the Combahee River Collective and their political and theoretical offerings have been taken up, pulled apart, wrestled with, challenged, and built on since 1974.
To submit, please use the hyperlinked Google Form to submit a 150-200 word abstract by June 24th, 2024.
If your abstract is selected, you will be notified by the end of July, with an end of August full-essay deadline.
Please note: This is a paid opportunity.
View the Call for Abstracts Google Form: https://forms.gle/bGTPyqGG8zY6bV2L6
View the Writing Guidelines: https://bit.ly/WritingGuidelinesCombahee
We welcome essays and creative non-fiction articles that include but are not limited to the following topics:
Combahee, Black Feminist Internationalism, and Solidarity
Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid
Black Midwest Feminisms
Black Feminist Subjectivities and Black Madness
Black Feminist Retreats and Black Feminist Consciousness Raising
The Limitations of Lesbian Separatism: Black Feminism, the Family, and Community
Intersectional Anti-Black State Violence Against Black Women and Gender Expansive Communities
The Future and End of Black (Queer) Feminist Politics
Reproductive Justice
On the Issues of Essentialism: On The Limitations and Failures of Biological and Gender Essentialism
The Misuse of Identity Politics
Combahee and Black Trans Feminist Critique
A Black Feminist Critique of Empire, Interlocking Systems of Oppression, and Intersectionality
Neoliberalism, Capitalism, and The Co-optation of Radical and Revolutionary Black Feminisms
Working Class and Poor Perspectives of Black Feminisms
Black Feminist Socialist Politics and Praxis
Current Issues within Black Feminist Organizing
Combahee and Womanism
Combahee, Black Feminism, and Disability Politics
Black Feminism and the Notion of “Smart-Ugly,” or Desirability
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at combahee50@gmail.com.
Meet the editors of The Special Blog Issue
Photo of emerald faith.
emerald faith (they/them) is an English PhD Candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where they also received their 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. They are currently an editorial fellow at JSTOR Daily. You can follow them on Twitter at @emeraldfaith.
Photo of Karla Méndez. Courtesy of Karla Méndez.
Karla Méndez is an arts and culture writer. She is a lead columnist for Black Women Radicals’ Black Feminist Histories and Movement and is a contributing writer for Elephant Magazine. She has also contributed writing to the Boston Art Review, Burnaway, Polyester Zine, Teen Vogue, Variable West, and elsewhere. She writes about the histories of Black and Latin American women and their representation in visual art, performance, and poetry. She holds a master’s in American Studies from Brown University and a BA with honors in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Central Florida.
Photo of Jaimee Swift. Photo Credit: Kerrin Lyons.
Jaimee A. Swift (she/her) is the executive director 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. The mission of the SBFP is to empower Black feminisms in Black Politics by expanding the field from transnational, intersectional, and multidisciplinary perspectives. She is the co-author, with Joseph R. Fitzgerald, of the forthcoming biography of Black feminist icon, Barbara Smith.
Watch: “50 Years of Combahee” with demita frazier & Barbara Smith
On May 22, 2024, Black Women Radicals hosted the Zoom event, “50 Years of Combahee”, celebrating 50 years since the founding of the Combahee River Collective. The event featured two founding members of the organization, Demita Frazier and Barbara Smith.