The Combahee River Collective Statement: The Black Feminist Movement

Words: 572
Pages: 3

The Combahee River Collective Statement, is a collective where women involved in the black feminist movement. The purpose was explain their main reasoning for the movement during the sixties, for example, they were wanted other to know this issue that they were fighting for. African American women during this time were not fighting against the majority but they were also fighting within their own race. “They were fighting racial, sexual, hetersexaul, and class oppression (circuitius.org pg 1).” In the article is states “As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face (circuitius.org pg 1 ).” The article is broken into sections the first …show more content…
In the text it states that white males have always used their race and gender to gain power over others. For example, for years how white men would rape black women just to control them. These women wanted to take their control back and they did that creating the feminist movement and fighting for their cause.
When most activist groups are forming there are always problems that they will face. Even with the black feminist movement they are are many issues that the women believe that had to fight for because no one else would do so. The black feminist did not have support of the others and they could not count anyone else to fight for them.
Throughout the movement women apart of the collective had ideas that they would focus on. One of the issues that they focused on was how white women didn’t help fight racism in the movement but they encouraged it. They knew that they would have to fight oppression alone because men did not see women as equal. In the collective “that the value of men and women can be seen as in the value of gold and silver, they are not equal but are of some great value (circuitius.org pg 4)” This quote is on of the main reason why black feminist movement was started. Because black women knew