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For black women and other women of color, race and gender are inseparable, and black feminists resist all movements that ignore this reality. While black women’s experiences working within political and social movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries certainly informed articulations of black feminism, black feminisms have never been derivative, nor do they fit cleanly into the “waves” of feminist history. Outside black feminist circles, black feminisms are often described as an outgrowth of other freedom struggles. While late nineteenth century black feminisms were grounded in heterosexual black women’s bodies, by the end of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, radical black feminisms came to center queer and trans black women, girls, and gender nonconforming people.

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They argue that in the struggle for freedom, the people most exposed to different forms of oppression understand best how to dismantle them. In her essays and speeches, Lorde discusses the connected issues of sexism, racism, classism, and heterosexism, while calling for new tactics that centered these intersections.īlack women are often thought to be at a disadvantage because of racism and sexism, but some black feminists view their position as one of possibility. Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde, is one of many foundational womanist writings produced during this period. In 1983, Alice Walker developed the term “womanist” to describe “a Black feminist or feminist of color.” Her term defined a more communal and humanist expression of feminism that acknowledged queer black women and aligned with long-standing traditions of black women’s thought and activism. Throughout her life, Truth linked the movement to abolish slavery and the movement to secure women’s rights, stating that for black women, race and gender could not be separated. Truth reportedly said that she “used to be sold for other people’s benefit, but now she sold herself for her own.” Though expressions of black feminism can be seen in written accounts as far back as the 1830s, Sojourner Truth is the most widely known nineteenth-century black feminist foremother. As a formerly enslaved person, claiming ownership of her image for her own profit was revolutionary. Featuring the slogan “I sell the shadow to support the substance,” Truth capitalized on the popularity of these collector’s items to support herself and fund her speaking tours. In 1864, Sojourner Truth sold cartes-de-visite, small photographs mounted to a paper card, to support her activism. It is a long tradition which resists easy definition and is characterized by its multi-dimensional approach to liberation.

The black feminist tradition grows not out of other movements, but out of the condition of being both black and a woman.