Image: Barbara Smith (middle) speaking with her official biographers, Joseph R. Fitzgerald (right) and Jaimee A. Swift (left) on Zoom on August 22, 2024.

By Joseph R. Fitzgerald and Jaimee A. Swift

Black feminist activist and author Barbara Smith, augments the historical record, concerning the archive on Palestine, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich.

On August 7th, writer Marina Magloire posted on the social media site X (formerly Twitter) that the Los Angeles Review of Books had just published “Moving Towards Life” (7 August 2024), her piece about June Jordan’s solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to life and self-determination. A Caribbean-American bisexual poet, activist, educator, and teacher, Jordan’s commitment to naming and denouncing the Palestinian genocide was a political stance she held since the early 1980s through the end of her life, and it was according to Magloire, a defining part of her radical Black feminist politics.

Jordan’s position on Palestinian people and the Israeli government’s economic and political oppression and subordination of them across Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank became a line of demarcation within her Black feminist worldview. On one side stood Jordan, wholly and steadfastly committed to Palestinians’ human rights against a settler colonial system that arose out of Zionism. On the other side, according to Magloire, were other Black feminists who were not as advanced politically on the issue of solidarity with Palestine as Jordan.

It is this political landscape–dating back four decades–where Magloire guides her readers through Jordan’s political history as an advocate for Palestinians and the broken relationships she experienced when she believed other Black feminists such as Caribbean-American lesbian feminist Audre Lorde did not have the same political commitments about Palestine and its people.

Magloire writes:

“In the aftermath of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, June Jordan and Audre Lorde had a falling out over the issue of Zionism. I’ve traced it across three archives, and it may be the most important story I’ve ever told. Read it, but more importantly, read June Jordan.”

— Marina Magloire, post on X, 07 Aug 2024).

Magloire’s piece offers extensive areas of research as it pertains to the archive that details the life, times, triumphs, and struggles of Jordan, and particularly, her rift with Lorde over her support of Jewish feminist author Adrienne Rich, and Rich’s Zionist stance. Not only does Magloire cite Lorde as a friend and fellow Black feminist comrade of Jordan's who had ideological and political differences on the subject of Palestine, she names Black lesbian feminist, Barbara Smith, founding member of the Combahee River Collective, co-author of its Statement (1977), co-founder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, and an architect of Black Women’s Studies in the United States, as someone who was also antagonistic to Jordan’s allyship with Palestine.

While Jordan and Lorde can now only speak through their archives, given that both are deceased (Lorde in 1992 and Jordan in 2002), Smith is still alive. What is missing from Magloire’s piece is Smith’s perspective. Smith notes in the transcript of the interview below that she was not contacted by Magloire to offer her thoughts and experiences about the topic. Subsequently, scholar Charisse Burden-Stelly in a review of Magloire’s piece titled, “The June Jordan-Audre Lorde Dispute, Kamala Harris, and Palestine,” published in the Black Agenda Report, also mentions Smith, noting that she, as well as Lorde and Rich later “...became anti-Zionists and supported Palestinian resistance.” Burden-Stelly also did not reach out to Smith.

These articles raise questions about what a Black feminist care ethic is as it pertains to the archive. Aisha K. Finch offers one definition of Black feminism and the politics of care that states: “[a]t its core, care is ‘painstaking or watchful attention.” How can scholars pay “painstaking or watchful attention” to not only the richness of the archive but also to those with living memories? Where is the care and concern of “...centering Black life and living” – and in this case, the lives and memories of Black feminists – if they are living and are not asked about their experiences as breathing archives? Are we muting and silencing Black feminists if we only rely on the archives to speak, and do not offer (or even consider) the opportunity for Black feminists who are still with us to speak for themselves?

How might Smith’s perspective and experiences have offered political and contextual nuance to Magloire’s article and Burden-Stelly’s review?

In this interview, Smith speaks to her official biographers, author Joseph R. Fitzgerald, and Jaimee A. Swift, founder and executive director of Black Women Radicals, addressing the archive on Palestine, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich, from her point-of-view.

The interview, recorded on August 22, 2024 and supplemented by follow-up correspondence from Smith, has been edited for clarity and length.

Jaimee A. Swift (JS): What are your politics as a Black feminist?

Barbara Smith (BSmith): My politics, in many ways, you can find pretty easily by reading the Combahee River Collective Statement. The statement was written in 1977 and was co-authored by Demita Frazier, and my sister, Beverly Smith. I had those politics before the statement came out. The statement was based on conversations that we had for the purpose of completing the statement. If you're familiar with the Combahee River Collective Statement, you basically know what my politics are. But I will say that I've been involved in the struggle for justice and for human rights ever since I was a teenager in Cleveland, Ohio. I was involved in the long Civil Rights Movement in the mid 1960s, and I have been politically active ever since. I've never stopped being politically active. I'm now a senior. I'm, in theory, retired, but I go to multiple meetings every week of groups that I am involved in locally and then also around issues of national and international significance, like the ongoing genocide in Gaza. And my politics as a Black feminist are that we, as Black feminists, believe very, very strongly in coalition work.

One of the things about the articles that prompted us to have this conversation today about the rift between June Jordan and Audre Lorde is that they don't necessarily consider how strongly we felt about coalitions across differences during that period of building Black feminism. I define myself as a socialist and an anti-capitalist. I've been an out lesbian since the mid-to late-1970s. I first spoke the words “I think maybe I'm a lesbian” in late-1974, and soon after that, not only did I come out, but then I began to write explicitly from my lesbian experience. I'm talking about looking at the literature and trying to find an historical cultural tradition for [Black lesbians’] existence. And of course, I've been Black since the day I was born back in November of 1946.

“And my politics as a Black feminist are that we, as Black feminists, believe very, very strongly in coalition work.”

Joseph R. Fitzgerald (JRF): A couple of things come up when I read through these two different documents: One is Marina Magloire’s piece from August 7th. I read through the piece. It is about framing, the framing of the conflict and the tension between [Jordan and Lorde], but also Adrienne Rich because she's also, I think, an important part of this story. I'm quoting now from Magloire's piece: “Lorde's journey to a pro-Palestinian stance was slow and halting.” Now I'm going to read something from Charisse Burden-Stelly’s piece: “Two concepts, intersectional imperialism and identity reductionism, are relevant to understanding Lorde and her feminist counterparts’ use of Black and Jewish identity to bludgeon Jordan's righteous critique of the colonial entity.” Did Marina Magloire and Charisse Burden-Stelly reach out to you to contact you about what they wrote about this conflict?

BSmith: No, they did not. I actually know Charisse. I did not know about Marina Magloire until I saw her article, but I did see that she does follow me on Twitter. So she does know of my existence, and as I said, no, neither one of them contacted me.

JRF: Thank you very much for that clarification. I think that's important for our readers to know. Because this is about the practice of scholarship and research and making the best good faith effort one can to corroborate, to find sources that are not simply textual documents, but also including oral histories, particularly those that have been memorialized through audio and video and transcribed, as well as producing oral histories through an actual interview by a researcher of a historical person such as yourself. The claim by Magloire is “Lorde’s journey to a pro-Palestinian stance was slow and halting.” And then Charisse Burden-Stelly says, essentially, this is all about the idea of you all preventing the publication of June Jordan's letter criticizing–particularly by name, Adrienne Rich–and that you, and your colleagues who are Jewish used your Black and Jewish identities to “bludgeon” Jordan's “righteous critique.” Please respond to this.

What are your thoughts about Lorde’s journey being “slow and halting,” and you being accused of using your identity to bludgeon another Black woman’s [June Jordan’s], righteous critique of the colonial entity.

BSmith: That line about “slow and halting” really stood out to me as well, because knowing Audre as I did from the late-1970s on – I was friends with her up until the time of her death – “[s]low and halting”– I don't know if this ever described anything that she did. She was deliberate. She was incredibly thoughtful. She was brilliant. She also was a part of the Left. She was very politically conscious. I don't remember us having specific conversations about what was going on with Israel and in Palestine during that period. I honestly can't remember having explicit conversations. I remember a very memorable conversation about Grenada after the invasion of Grenada because one of her family members, I don't remember which parent was from Grenada, and [Lorde] actually cried. We were sitting in the Kitchen Table Press office and she was crying after Reagan had orchestrated that invasion of an autonomous people's revolution and nation. But in any event, I do not remember our conversations about Palestine and the occupation, but there's no reason for me to believe that she was dragging her feet around speaking out. Now, I was at Oberlin College in 1989 when she gave the speech that is being referred to [by Magloire]. Because that may be the first written evidence of her concern about what was going on with the Palestinian people. I used certain words just now. I used “deliberate.” I used “thoughtful.” Those are adjectives that could have been used in that sentence too, but instead the sentence is “slow and halting.”

We were doing lots of things at that time. I was not involved in any ongoing political organizations during the time I lived in New York City in the early 1980s when we were starting Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. I moved from Boston to New York City, specifically Brooklyn, in the summer of 1981 because it was clear that Audre was one of the people who was most committed to us starting the press. But I did not, as I say, participate in other political groups at that time because I was far too busy starting the Press with others and trying to keep body and soul together living on a shoestring. So that's what I was doing during that time. But of course, I was around people who were quite political.

One of the things that I've thought about is the segregation that those of us who were out Black lesbians were experiencing even in a place like New York City during that period of the early 1980s. We were such persona non grata as people who were out, as lesbians, and who were feminists. And I know there are a lot of terms that are used now that weren't being used then. We defined ourselves as lesbians, as lesbian feminists, as women of color, et cetera. Those are the terms that we used. I'll use those terms, although we know that we could also talk about that as a queer women of color community. But as I said, we were so isolated, so marginalized that places where we might've been involved in robust discussions about this struggle for Palestinian freedom, we were not necessarily welcome at those places. I've given this a lot of thought since I read Marina Magloire’s article. So, what was happening on a practical, lived level? I knew a lot about what was going on in Central America because there were lesbian feminists, socialist feminists, women on the Left who I saw on a regular basis who were quite involved in that. And that was also a time when many people who had those politics were going to Cuba. They were going to El Salvador. They were going to Guatemala and Nicaragua. There would be conversations about that.

I don't have any clear memory of knowing anyone who was in my kind of circle who was involved in the Palestinian struggle, not because we didn't care, but because we might not have been in proximity to people for whom it was a major focus of their political work. Because I was just thinking about those years that I lived in New York City, I probably went to maybe one or two Black cultural events [during that time]. Because as I said, we were persona non grata, and that was true for Audre as well.

JRF: About the use of the term bludgeon. June Jordan's letter that she had written, criticizing what she believed and characterized as Zionism within Left political groups and particularly among white Jewish women and Black lesbian feminists, where she had singled out Adrienne Rich. And you and Lorde had interceded to prevent that letter from being published. Charisse Burden-Stelly characterized this as a bludgeoning of June Jordan and not having her voice being able to be shared and that she was essentially sidelined by Black women. Can you speak to that characterization, but also what did you see about that letter that isn't being presented in these recent publications about this rift that you would hope folks would want to know that what that letter could have done, might have done, possibly been interpreted, and how might that affect political coalitions and politics?

BSmith: It wasn't just Audre and I who wrote to Womanews that was a major feminist newspaper in New York City at the time. It wasn't just the two of us. It was a group of five Black women and five white Jewish women. I knew everyone who signed the letter. What interests me is that my name is the only one that's mentioned. In other words, ten people wrote to WomaNews; only Audre’'s and my name are mentioned, although others are referred to. I mentioned when I was responding to Jaimee’s question about my politics, I talked about how strongly we were, and in my case still am, how strongly we were committed to coalition work.

We saw that letter being published and widely circulated–attacking Adrienne Rich–as being like an intervention that would not just make a rift among different kinds of women, specifically Black and Jewish women, it would make a chasm like the Grand Canyon. We're not just talking about something minor. We were very concerned because we were trying to build something. And the history of the organizing of feminists of color like myself, that history is not written. That's one of the reasons I'm so excited about the book that we are involved in, because some of that history will be revealed, but there are not that many places one can go to find out credible, nuanced stories about what was going on at the time.

So, here's some stuff that's not in any of these articles that are coming out. What was going on is that there was a lot of tension between Black and Jewish women in the early 1980s. There was also a lot of tension between women of color and white women in general, whatever their identities were. Racism in the Women's Movement was a really significant issue and has been from the beginning. I mean, you scratch the surface of anything going on in the U.S. and you're going to find racism. The fact is that the Women's Movement was dealing with issues of racism except that instead of uplifting racism and wanting to preserve it, principled feminists of all backgrounds–all backgrounds–including white ones, including Jewish ones, wanted to do everything possible to if not eradicate racism, to at least interrogate racism in our midst and do better. That's what was going on.

“I really don’t know that I would make the same decision today. And as humans we cannot be perfect. And as Black feminists we are not perfect. I don’t know if I would see it the same way today.”

Combahee did a lot of work towards raising issues of racism in the Women's Movement. Jewish women also were concerned about antisemitism in the Women's Movement, which was of course a legitimate concern and an actual concern. But in any event, those of us who contacted WomaNews felt that the letter attacked Adrienne Rich unrelentingly for a statement written by a group of Jewish women, Di Vilde Chayes, of which she was only one of the signers. It wasn't going to do any of the things that I just talked about. It wasn't going to be helpful toward what we were trying to build, which was a multiracial, accountable Women's Movement that worked on issues that in reality affected everyone on the globe. People don't understand that what real Black feminism to me and some others–that would include Audre–is about all issues that affect humans and also animals, plant life, and the planet as an entity. We’re concerned about all of those things, and we're not narrow.

I wish I had the letter. I wish I had all of this but I’m not doing archival research at this time except with my own papers. But be that as it may, I really don't know that I would make the same decision today. And as humans we cannot be perfect. And as Black feminists we are not perfect. I don't know if I would see it the same way today.

Page 1 of Letter, "Black Women/Jewish Women-Openings for Dialogue" to *WomaNews*. November 9, 1982. Courtesy of Barbara Smith.

Page 2 of Letter, "Black Women/Jewish Women-Openings for Dialogue" to *WomaNews*. November 9, 1982. Other signatories names, with the exception of Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith, have been omitted. Courtesy of Barbara Smith.

JS: How close were you to June Jordan, if you were close at all? Because in Magloire’s piece, she writes that “[b]ased on her cover letter to the editors of WomaNews, Jordan had sent copies to other Black women writers whom she viewed as friends or interlocutors, including Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, and Barbara Smith.” With this, were you a “friend or interlocutor” of Jordan’s?

I also wanted to speak to a paragraph in which Charisse Burden-Stelly wrote in her review: “An important takeaway from the Lorde-Jordan dispute is that it is never too late to take a principled position. Eventually, Rich, Lorde, and Smith became anti Zionists and supported Palestinian resistance. They had Jordan as a model given her ‘uncompromising commitment and… willingness to lose friendships and opportunities by standing against the Israel lobby.’”

Do you mind also speaking about that particular paragraph, or sentence about you becoming anti-Zionist? Did you ever see yourself as a Zionist, or having that positionality? And what does that mean to you with the framing that eventually you became anti-Zionist and supported the Palestinian resistance?

BSmith: June was an acquaintance of mine. We seldom saw each other. I lived in Boston, as I mentioned, during the 1970s. I moved to New York City in 1981 and lived there until 1984. I had met June at a pretty well-known event, which was the Black women's literature panel at Howard University; the National Black Writers Conference (1978). I was invited on the basis of my essay “Toward A Black Feminist Criticism” in which I tried to lay out a Black women's literary tradition. It had not been done previously.

That essay was published in Conditions: Two. I was invited to write that by the editors of Conditions. Three of them were Jewish white women and one was a white woman who wasn’t Jewish. The reason I mentioned that–because usually I wouldn't even bother to say that– I just want people to understand we were not all at each other's throats at that time. There was actual sisterhood. There was actual solidarity. And some of the people that I knew in the 1970s, met in the 1980s–it's now 2024–and these people are still in my life and I'm in theirs. There's that for what that might be worth. To me, it's worth a lot.

But in any event, June was the chair of that panel at the National Black Writers Conference. It was the first time in the history of those conferences that had been going on for some time that they ever had a single panel on Black women writers. But I was basically hung out to dry. It was a really blistering experience that day. Not so much because of what people on the panel said, but what the 500 people in the audience had to say, which was basically I needed to go bury myself somewhere because I was a lesbian. And Dr. Frances Cress Welsing was there, and she said that homosexuality would be the death of the race. A person who I knew who at that time was a book reviewer, and I saw him as I exited the auditorium, and when I was talking about how horrible I felt about the attack that I had just experienced, he said to me–now this is one Black person to another–he said, “Well, at least you weren't lynched.”

And then when I moved to New York City I would see [Jordan] sometimes. We must have exchanged addresses. At that time, I was working on Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983). I wanted a poem by June to be in the anthology and she had sent work to me. But we did not spend time together. Perhaps we would run into each other at events. But I will say I was friends with Adrienne, and I was friends with Audre. I met Adrienne around the same time that I met Audre. I met Adrienne through her wonderful sister, Cynthia, who lived in the Boston area in Cambridge. I took a writing workshop with Cynthia Rich, and that's how I met Adrienne. But the thing is we were in that wonderful women's cultural literary circle that I never have lived anything like before and never will again. It was an incredible time, and so that's how that happened. Given that I was friends with Audre and Adrienne when the letter came about, and I was with my friends, you know?

Now about being a Zionist, I was very interested in that framing because of course, I've never been a Zionist. It's like, “What?! How did that happen?” I am an anti-Zionist, and I have been involved in solidarity organizing with the Palestinian struggle and with the Muslim community for decades. Not necessarily in New York City but when I moved to Albany, New York, where I still reside, when I moved here in 1984. We have a Palestinian Rights Committee. And I used to go to those demonstrations on a regular basis. That's when I could stand and walk for hours. I refer to those times as “the good ole’ days,” and that would have been in the 1980s, perhaps into the 1990s.

I wasn't a member of the organization because I was still trying to run, and at that time revive, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. So I wasn't really a part of political groups that much in Albany in my early years in Albany either, because I had become the publisher of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. I'll fast forward to the current period. I became a member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in 2019. That was five years ago. We would meet with our Congressperson and our Congressperson was one of the people just a few weeks ago who did not go to Netanyahu's speech, and we did that. Our JVP chapter got our Congress member from this upstate capital district not to go to Netanyahu's speech. That was something that we accomplished. But we were doing that kind of work over the years, and I've been to meetings with that Congressperson and other officials around these very issues.

Part One of Barbara Smith's letter to June Jordan, in response to *WomanNews* letter. November 29, 1982. Courtesy of Barbara Smith.

Part Two of Barbara Smith's letter to June Jordan, in response to *WomanNews* letter. November 29, 1982. Courtesty of Barbara Smith.

And then of course, after October 7th there was so much that was going on. Many protests, many demonstrations, and JVP grew by leaps and bounds, as I'm sure it did in many places around the country, and a lot of new and younger people came into the organization. And really since October 7th, I would say, up until this summer, I was kind of working night and day around stopping the genocide. Albany is the first city in New York state to pass a ceasefire resolution. I was involved in that. A small group of Muslim women and several members of JVP worked together on getting that ceasefire resolution passed out of our Common Council, which is our city council. And that was more than a notion. That was some hard work, and it was coalition work too. Because it was Jewish people, me, and Muslim women, including one who was Palestinian American, working on it. And we got that thing done. And the fact that I had been a member of the Albany Common Council for eight years, two terms, I knew what the council was up to procedurally and could bring that experience to our strategizing.

But speaking of the Common Council, my closest friend and comrade on the Council introduced a resolution in 2010 around preemptive prosecution. If people remember after 9/11 there were Muslims, people of Ara American, and Central Asian identity who were being swept up by the local authorities and by the federal government and put in prisons and the keys were thrown away. It was called preemptive prosecution. We had a major case in Albany. Two gentlemen, one of whom I actually knew, were set up by a government informant and were incarcerated for years in a supermax federal prison far away from Albany. So that their family, their spouses, their children could hardly ever see them. And then eventually they were released.

My colleague, Dominick Calsolaro—he’s like my brother from another mother—introduced the preemptive prosecution resolution. I was the lead co-sponsor on that resolution. It was the first piece of legislation ever passed in the United States that addressed the issue of preemptive prosecution, and it was sent to the Justice Department of the United States from the Albany Common Council. That, of course, was on behalf of people in the Muslim community who were being basically terrorized by our own government.

I just want to say one more thing. I talked about how we had a movement of solidarity with each other across differences. We also had a community with each other, and family. That's really important to understand. The lesbian feminist community of that time was probably one of the more multiracial landing places in the entire United States. We were a beleaguered group, a beleaguered minority as queer women. We found each other, those of us who were feminists. We had a politic that bound us to each other. And as one of our slogans at the time said: “An army of lovers cannot fail.” That was one of our slogans, and it was, as I said, it was a community.

Postscript:

Barbara Smith is currently organizing her papers to be archived. After our August 22nd interview she located her folder containing documents about the events we discussed. She has given us permission to append the November 9, 1982 letter signed by Black and Jewish women that was sent to the editors of Womanews and the personal letter she wrote to June Jordan on November 29, 1982. In her article Magloire quotes from the November 9, 1982 letter to Womanews as well as from the letter that June Jordan wrote on December 3, 1982 in response to Smith’s November 29, 1982 letter, which she addressed to both Smith and Lorde.

On the Record: Barbara Smith on Palestine, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich