Barbara Smith is one of America's most formidable activists, educators, and authors. As a co-founder of the Combahee River Collective — a Boston-based black lesbian feminist organization — and co-founder of the black-owned and -run publishing house Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press (which she started in 1980 at the suggestion of her friend, poet Audre Lorde), Smith has given generations of women a road map for black feminism, creative expression, and political progress. Through her work as an educator and coalition builder, she's encouraged communities to consistently question and challenge oppressive power structures, and to reject the pervasive greed of capitalism.

Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the Combahee River Collective Statement, which laid out the group's beliefs and intersectional feminist practices. Smith contributed to the statement, and published it as the first installment of Kitchen Table's "Freedom Organizing Series." In 1983, she would go on to edit the groundbreaking " ." Her introduction read, in part: "Black women's ability to function with dignity, independence, and imagination in the face of total adversity — that is, in the face of white America — points to an innate feminist potential... Black women as a group have never been fools. We couldn't afford to be."

Though written 35 years ago, Smith's words are as valid today as they were then. And both anniversaries are a timely reminder of how vital Smith's work continues to be. She is part of a persistent legacy of feminists of color who emerged during the '60s and '70s and boldly paved the way for future generations. Hers is an essential voice in documenting a history of feminism in which women of color aren’t marginalized.

The 71-year-old currently resides in Albany, New York, where, although recently retired, she continues to fight for progress through her work with the Poor People's Campaign as a speaker and collaborator. I spoke with Smith about Kitchen Table, Home Girls, and her life as an activist and writer. Her words are a living testament to how living one's truth, in addition to speaking it, can set into motion a series of events that can alter the course of history for the better.

Black women as a group have never been fools. We couldn't afford to be.

Dianca London Potts: Last year was the 40th anniversary of the Combahee River Collective Statement, and this year marks the 41st anniversary of its publication. Can you talk a bit about what that collective meant to you?

Barbara Smith: It was very much the center of my life during the time that we were actually organizing in Boston in the 1970s, and I think what I would like people to know is how incredibly difficult and challenging it was to declare that one was a black feminist during that period, unlike now, when famous people can announce that and perform in front of mile high letters saying "feminist." Unlike this period, when that can happen in a very commercial and mainstream context, that wasn't the way it was 40 years ago. The [Combahee] collective was a lifeline for those of us who created it.

We also always were involved in political organizing, so we were not just black feminists because we believed that black women should be treated equally and they deserve to have rights and black women were just as important as black men. We were black feminists because we believed we had to work to make change in the actual world, as opposed to just embracing a set of ideas. We were not doing any work at the time because we thought it would help to build a reputation. We were consciously building a black feminist movement. I’m very happy to have been one of the members and co-founders of the Combahee River Collective because when we were doing the work, including writing the statement, we certainly weren’t thinking that 40 years into the future people would still be reading it, appreciating it, and using it as a catalyst for further social, economic, and racial and gender justice.

We were black feminists because we believed we had to work to make change in the actual world.

In " How We Get Free ," you mention that you felt that at the beginning of the second wave of feminism, "white women were… taking the names of black women and using them for different projects." When I read this I couldn’t help but think about the way appropriation and the failure to fully credit women of color for their contributions occurs in the current wave of feminism. Do you feel like things have gotten better?

BS: White women don’t take up a lot of space in my consciousness at this point. I find it interesting when there's a lot of resentment expressed around this particular hashtag #NotAllWhiteWomen. I think that's some white women's way of saying not all women are culpable for the horrors [Trump’s] administration is visiting upon the entire nation. Because I have always worked with people whose politics are in alignment with what I consider to be important — whatever the race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity or class or ethnicity of those individuals — I’ve generally worked with people who share political perspectives that are supportive to ones that I hold. I don't make decisions about who I can or can't work with based on their demographic identities solely.

I know I’m not naive in thinking that, in living under a system of white supremacy, most white people have very misguided and often extremely hostile perspectives about black life and black people. Therefore, they would not be appropriate to be allies. But I also can make distinctions and always have between those people that I consider worthy of coalition and working across differences versus those that we’ll just have to leave alone. When I see what women of color are saying about the issues that you raised, about relationships with white women, they are in some cases reacting to the reality of white women’s racism, elitism, and classism on a kind of one-on-one interaction basis.

DLP: Over the past few years, intersectional feminism — as a term and a concept — has become much more integrated into our cultural lexicon, yet the optics of mainstream feminism have yet to reflect the very essence of what intersectionality means. Could you talk a bit about why intersectionality matters and how contemporary feminists can make space for those who are still being pushed to the margins?

BS: Intersectionality is not a laundry list of identities. That's one thing to understand. It's the intersection of various identities, experiences, perspectives, and various oppressions others face [because of those things] that you have to take into account. Kimberlé Crenshaw, the legal scholar, she's the one that coined the term. What she made a case for was that the intersection of [people's] identities characterized and defined the types of discrimination they experienced.

Intersectionality is not a laundry list of identities.



In the collective statement, we talked about interlocking oppressions and the simultaneity of oppression. That was quite similar to what was later termed intersectionality. If you're talking about the violence against women, for example, women of color have a different relationship to that because our communities have been terrorized by the state and by the police.

DLP: You’ve always been very vocal about black feminists and non-people of color feminists’ failure to support, include, and advocate for queer women. Do you feel like the current wave is more inclusive? Have we as black feminists come to terms with homophobia and discrimination within the movement?

BS: It's really interesting to be an out lesbian for as long as I've been. I use the term lesbian because as I used to say, it doesn't mean anything else, except for perhaps a person who’s a resident of the island of Lesbos. Lesbian means a woman who has primary relationships, including sexual relationships, with other women. Those of us [who] were out in the early days wanted to make a distinction between us and gay men. We weren't gay. [The term] gay erased us, [and] I like to mention that there's particular kinds of oppression that lesbians experience that gay men do not and I think that needs to be brought to the forefront.

It's really interesting to live in a time where it seems to be fine to be a part of the LGBTQ community. There’s people who are quite famous who are known to be a part of the community, [and] gay marriage is legal in every state. That's something we never thought would happen — that wasn't even on the table of demands! But at the very same time we have discrimination, oppression, and hate crimes and people committing suicide because of the level of oppression they face. We need to use our intersectional perspective to look at who [in] our LGBTQ community is experiencing the most targeting. Who is more likely to be poor or homeless? Who is more likely to experience hate crimes? We have to always fight for all the people who share an identity and a community, not just be satisfied with the success of a few.

DLP: 2018 is the 35th anniversary of Kitchen Table’s publication of " " and "Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology." How did Kitchen Table get started?

BS: My friendship with Audre Lorde was significantly and singularly important in my life. It was a conversation between Audre and me that was kinda the birthing of Kitchen Table. We basically said, "We've got to create a press of our own, we need to be able to control what is published, the message, and we need to do it our way." For historical context, it's really important that people know how little interest there was in the writing of women of color in those days.

White women don’t take up a lot of space in my consciousness at this point.

In the early '70s, I was teaching my first courses on black women writers. The books were dependably out of print, so I never actually knew what I was able to teach any given semester until I heard from the book store [as to] whether the books could be obtained. That was because nobody cared if [ Zora Neale Hurston 's] "Their Eyes Are Watching God" or Ann Petry’s "The Street" was available. People did not care because they were considered to be marginal and unimportant writers. The fact that I went in my life from "Their Eyes Are Watching God" being out of print and unavailable in the 1970s to [Zora's] picture on a postage stamp is just amazing to me.

There wasn't much for us [then]. Now, this many years later, we see an incredible blossoming. Whenever I pick up something that has info about what's being published, I see new black women! I used to know all the black women who were writing. I wasn’t friends with all of them, but I knew the work of almost all the black women writers in the nation, and I’d met quite a few of them. Now I don’t know who they are. We are just tearing it up, and it’s so exciting because I think Kitchen Table was a catalyst for getting the work out and asserting that this work is of great value.

DLP: In the introduction to "Home Girls," you wrote that you wanted the anthology to convey the meaning of black feminism as you've lived it and understood it. As a reader, I definitely feel this rings true throughout the pages of the anthology. Of the many writers whose work and words have defined your life and activism, who are some of the voices that have kept you going over the years?

BS: James Baldwin was pivotal for me thinking that I could ever write, so he’s always at the top of the list. It was not lost on me that he was a gay man, and I was very lucky to grow up at a time when his career was unfolding at its peak. People are getting to know him now through the film "I Am Not Your Negro," but I got to know him in real time as his career unfolded. It was remarkable. He was also so politically conscious.

There’s also Alice Walker. I had done a review of "In Love & Trouble," her first collection of short stories, and I got to read "The Color Purple" as a bound galley. I was one of the few people who had read the book, and talk about mind-blowing… It was a remarkable experience and she's quite peerless.

We have to fight for all people who share an identity, not be satisfied with the success of a few.

And Toni Morrison, of course. Both my sister Beverly and I each had our own hardback copies of "The Bluest Eye." This was so long before these authors were famous. That does not apply to Baldwin because his career was peaking during the 1960s, but Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston — nobody knew who these people were, but we were finding them and reading them and their books. It was so inspiring and so wonderful to read work [by] the people who made it possible for you to survive to adulthood. It was like family reunions in some ways, reading their work.

DLP: If you could give a piece of advice to current and future feminists, what would it be?

BS: Understand the power of [the] realities that make your life what it is. Understand that we have institutionalized, systemic oppression and that the challenges you face are not necessarily your own fault or your own doing. Understand power and understand how power can be eroded and toppled through collective action.

And also, if you're not enjoying the political, artistic, or humanitarian work that you're doing — and I don't mean your day job — then that's not the right place for you to be. With the very short amount of time we have here on this earthly plane, you need to do things that fill your soul and fill your heart. If that's not the case, then shift gears and figure out what does.



Dianca London is the author of the forthcoming memoir Planning for the Apocalypse: Meditations of Faith and Being the Only Black Girl at Your Party. Her writing can be found in The Village Voice, Lenny Letter, the AV Club, The Toast, and The Establishment, among others.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io