THE FORMATION OF THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE

What, exactly, is identity politics?

Today, everyone has their own idea and interpretation of what identity politics means. And, some versions of identity politics in practice today vary from its original form and intention. So, in order for us to understand it fully, in this series, we will trace the context and circumstances that the term identity politics was first used.

Timeline

In February 1961, Esther Peterson, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Women's Affairs, suggested the President's Commission on the Status of Women at a women's trade union meeting. In December, U.S. President Kennedy established the Commission to investigate questions regarding women’s equality in education, in the workplace, and under the law.

It was split into four consultative bodies: Employment, Volunteer Work, Media, and Consultation on Negro Women.

A report in 1963 stated: “The consultation held by the Commission on the situation of Negro women emphasized that in too many families lack of opportunity for men as well as women, linked to racial discrimination, has forced the women to assume too large a share of the family responsibility.” [Source]

That lead to the third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in 1966 which birthed the meeting that founded the National Organization for Women (NOW). The founders of NOW, American feminists such as Betty Friedan and Shirley Chisholm had hoped would serve as an “NAACP for women.”

Their founding document stated:

“There is no civil rights movement to speak for women, as there has been for Negroes and other victims of discrimination. The National Organization for Women must therefore begin to speak.

We believe that the power of American law, and the protection guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to the civil rights of all individuals, must be effectively applied and enforced to isolate and remove patterns of sex discrimination, to ensure equality of opportunity in employment and education, and equality of civil and political rights and responsibilities on behalf of women, as well as for Negroes and other deprived groups.”

However, NOW didn’t live up to its goal to treat race seriously—and Black nationalist organizations failed equally to address gender. Black lesbians’ leadership was downplayed in both the (white) feminist movement and (male) Black power/civil rights movements, and they had to deal with the homophobia or Lesbophobia prevalent in both movements. So, activists including Michele Wallace, Margaret Sloan, Flo Kennedy, Faith Ringgold, and Doris Wright formed the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) in 1973 to address the double burden of sexism and racism faced by Black women. NBFO was one of two earliest organizations formed in the Black feminist movement, the other was the Combahee River Collective.

The NBFO elected Margaret Sloan-Hunter, one of the first editors of Ms. Magazine, as their chair. Barbara Smith, whose twin sister Beverly worked at Ms. Magazine, had critical connections, and attended the NBFO's Eastern Regional Conference in 1974. She caucused with women from the Boston area to establish a Boston NBFO chapter, which launched in 1975.

The Boston chapter, including Black feminists Demita Frazier, Cheryl Clarke, Akasha Hull, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Chirlane McCray, and Audre Lorde, held politics that were more radical than the platform of the NBFO. They were inspired by the national liberation and anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa, from the Algerian struggle against the French occupation to the Vietnamese resistance to the American war. So, they decided to split entirely and form a separate group – The Combahee River Collective (CRC).

Combahee is the name of a river in South Carolina where Harriet Tubman led a military raid and freed more than 700 enslaved people during the U.S. Civil War in 1863.

The CRC did not just want to fight for women’s rights in the U.S., they aspired to the overthrow of capitalism. The term identity politics was first used in their 1977 manifesto, establishing themselves as an organization of queer, Black feminist socialists.

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò stressed that:

“The experiences that united these activists—the consistent sidelining and devaluation of their political priorities within different political organizations—were foundational to the stance they developed, which they christened ‘identity politics.’”

That is the origin of the Combahee River Collective, and the first usage of the term identity politics.