How We Get Free : Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Nonfiction - 305.4209 How

In the last several years, Black feminism has reemerged as the analytical framework for the activist response to the oppression of trans women of color, the fight for reproductive rights, and, of course, the movement against police abuse and violence. The most visible organizations and activists connected to the Black Lives Matter movement speak openly about how Black feminism shapes their politics and strategies today. The interviews I have compiled in this book—with the three authors of the Combahee River Collective Statement, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, and Demita Frazier, #BlackLivesMatter cofounder Alicia Garza, and historian and activist Barbara Ransby—are an attempt to show how these politics remain historically vibrant and relevant to the struggles of today. As Demita Frazier says, the point of talking about Combahee is not to be nostalgic; rather, we talk about it because Black women are still not free.


Antiracist Reading List

  • Hood Feminism : Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot


  • Overground Railroad : the Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America


  • Towards Collective Liberation : Anti-racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy


  • I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness


  • Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race


  • How We Get Free : Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective


  • Stony the Road : Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow


  • So You Want to Talk About Race


  • Stamped from the Beginning : the Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America


  • How to be an Antiracist


  • Me and White Supremacy : Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor


  • They Were Her Property : White Women as Slave Owners in the American South


  • "Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" : and Other Conversations About Race


  • White Rage : the Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide


  • The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness


  • How to be Less Stupid About Race : on Racism, White Supremacy and the Racial Divide


  • The Color of Compromise : the Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism


  • How We Fight White Supremacy : a Field Guide to Black Resistance


  • The Color of Law : a Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America


  • When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir