The Combahee River Collective (CRC) (/kəmˈbiː/ kəm-BEE)[1] was a Black feminist lesbian socialist organization active in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1974 to 1980.
[5][6] The Collective was a group that met to discuss the intersections of oppression based on race, gender, heteronormativity, and class and argued for the liberation of Black women on all fronts.
[16] The Collective's name was suggested by Smith, who owned a book called Harriet Tubman, Conductor on the Underground Railroad by Earl Conrad.
"[2] The name commemorated a military operation at the Combahee River planned and led by Harriet Tubman on June 2, 1863, in the Port Royal region of South Carolina.
"[19] In her 1995 essay "Doing it from Scratch: The Challenge of Black Lesbian Organizing", which borrows its title from Frazier's statement, Barbara Smith describes the early activities of the collective as "consciousness raising and political work on a multitude of issues", along with the building of "friendship networks, community and a rich Black women's culture where none had existed before.
[22] Its purpose was to assess the state of the movement, to share information about the participants' political work, and to talk about possibilities and issues for organizing Black women.
[2] "After these retreats occurred, the participants were encouraged to write articles for the Third World women's issue of Conditions, a journal edited by Lorraine Bethel and Barbara Smith.
"[2] The importance of publishing was also emphasized in the fifth retreat, held July 1979, and the collective discussed contributing articles for a lesbian herstory issue of two journals, Heresies, and Frontiers.
[2] "Participants at the sixth retreat...discussed articles in the May/June 1979 issue of The Black Scholar collectively titled The Black Sexism Debate...They also discussed the importance of writing to Essence to support an article in the September 1979 issue titled I Am a Lesbian by Chirlane McCray, who was a Combahee member...The seventh retreat was held in Washington, D.C., in Feb.
It mentions how this genesis is inherently a personal one for black women, tying into childhood experiences where one realizes the harsh reality of both racism and sexism.
The CRC's meaning of the term is that Black women had a right to formulate their own agenda based on the material conditions they faced as a result of race, class, gender, and sexuality.
Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.This chapter also details the CRC's belief that the destruction of capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy is necessary for the liberation of oppressed peoples.
Ultimately, the entire purpose of the important anti-discrimination movement is inclusion rather than differentiation or exclusion, and it is the only way through which Black women can effectively tackle oppression and destroy it from its core.
[23] The CRC also believed that because of its position as Black lesbian women, its members could not rely on having access to racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privileges.
It notes that the group experienced a period of inactivity and disaccord due to a “lesbian-straight split” as well as differences in class and politics.
Its members have worked on many projects dealing with abortion rights, abuse of sterilization, health care, physical and sexual violence against women.
The CRC believed that white women involved in the feminist movement had made little effort to combat or understand their own racism.
In this final chapter it includes that they do not support stepping others to achieve progress, as this would go against their vision and create a process as a nonhierarchical collective towards their revolutionary society.
The Combahee River Collective Statement is referred to as "among the most compelling documents produced by Black feminists",[10] and Harriet Sigerman, author of The Columbia Documentary History of American Women Since 1941, calls the solutions which the statement proposes to societal problems such as racial and sexual discrimination, homophobia and classist politics "multifaceted and interconnected.
[29] In Roderick Ferguson's book Aberrations in Black, the Combahee River Collective Statement is cited as "rearticulating coalition to address gender, racial, and sexual dominance as part of capitalist expansion globally".
The Combahee River Collective mentions that "We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously".
In the encyclopedia Lesbian Histories and Cultures, contributing editor Jaime M. Grant contextualizes the CRC's work in the political trends of the time.
[32] Grant believes the CRC was most important in the "emergence of coalition politics in the late 1970s and early 1980s...which demonstrated the key roles that progressive feminists of color can play" in bridging gaps "between diverse constituencies, while also creating new possibilities for change within deeply divided communities..."[32] She notes that, in addition to penning the statement, "collective members were active in the struggle for desegregation of the Boston public schools, in community campaigns against police brutality in Black neighborhoods and on picket lines demanding construction jobs for Black workers.
"[34] In a 1979 journal entry, Barbara Smith wrote: That winter and spring were a time of great demoralization, anger, sadness and fear for many Black women in Boston, including myself.
[35]Smith developed these ideas into a pamphlet on the topic, articulating the need "to look at these murders as both racist and sexist crimes" and emphasizing the need to "talk about violence against women in the Black community.
Having an event to respond to and to collectively organize around gave them a cause to focus on..."[37] The CRC emphasized a fundamental and shared belief that "Black women are inherently valuable, that...(their) liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's but because of (their own) need as human persons for autonomy..."[18] and expressed a particular commitment to "working on those struggles in which race, sex, and class are simultaneous factors in oppression..."[7][18] The CRC sought to "build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression.
[7] Often, the feminist movement focuses on white, upper-class women and does not include other races, ethnicities, sexualities, economic classes, and other axes of oppression.
The collective consisted of diverse voices and perspectives, and over time, disagreements arose regarding political strategies, priorities, and ideologies.