In 1980, the conceptual artist Lorraine O’Grady created an alter ego and named her Mademoiselle Bourgeoise Noire. She wore a dress composed of 180 pairs of white gloves and carried a white cat-o-nine tails constructed of sail rope and white chrysanthemums, as she invaded various art museums and galleries around New York City. When O’Grady’s character entered a room, she would throw down her whip and shout out poems with forceful lines such as “Black art must take more risks!” and “Now is the time for an invasion!” Other times, she would beat herself with her delicately constructed whip, a pointed demonstration of her oppression as a black person in America. Her dress of white gloves communicated the inward oppression of middle class black women understandably desperate for respect.

Mademoiselle Bourgeoise Noire, French for Miss Black Bourgeoisie, was a performance piece located at the intersection of race, class, and gender. “In that era,” O’Grady said, “even though black feminists may have admired the energy, even the delirium, of white feminist rhetoric, not to mention the bravery of many of its actions, they still felt alienated by and even a bit derisive toward it.” She represented an imagined reality, a world filled with women like herself—black, maybe middle class, and bold. Photographs of her 1981 performance, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Goes to the New Museum, show O’Grady strutting down an empty corridor, on her way to infiltrate another exclusive art space. She wears a wide grin, typical of a beauty pageant winner. But her eyes hint at a different, more radical agenda: Every performance reflected her determination to create space and visibility for black women in a movement—and more broadly a world—that, at that point, preferred to remain exclusive and blind.

“Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Goes to the New Museum” by Lorraine O’Grady, 1981. Courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates. © 2017 Lorraine O’Grady / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

This effort to make visible the experiences of black women also lies at the center of the Brooklyn Museum’s new exhibition We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985. Focusing on the work of more than 40 black women artists from the second-wave feminist movement, the exhibition recognizes the work of these artists committed to activism at a time of intense social change. From Emma Amos to Lorraine O’Grady and Lorna Simpson, these women created work addressing issues at the intersection of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the Gay Liberation Movement, and the Women’s Movement. We Wanted A Revolution offers a rare look at this moment in time, placing the history of these black women artists and activists at the center of a historical narrative rarely told from their perspective.

But the exhibition’s resonance with our political moment also makes it a resource for understanding feminism now. The activism of the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements have prompted many to become more socially conscious about issues of class- or race-based privilege. Civic engagement in opposition to Trump has also required conversations about the conditions of those most affected by destructive policies. With that the narratives and experiences of black women have adopted a new glow, a particular sheen bestowed upon those who become culturally relevant. Yet these conversations, which are most critical to maturing the definition and understanding of feminism, are diluted and remain exclusive to a particular, “woke” type of white woman, often overlooking real inclusion altogether.

We Wanted A Revolution presents an expansive vision of an ideal feminist society: Faith Ringgold’s “For the Women’s House,” a vast mural the artist painted for the Women’s House of Detention in Riker’s Island. The mural has eight scenes, each showing a woman at the center of various tasks. One scene shows a black female doctor from the Rosa Parks Hospital teaching a class on drug rehabilitation. Another shows a woman officiating a wedding and the mother of the bride giving her daughter away. Another scene depicts a blonde white woman, whom Ringgold later identified as a lower class woman in her fifties, driving a bus. In the far right corner is the image of a young white woman with her black son reading from a book with quotes from Coretta Scott King and Rosa Parks.