![]() Working in collaboration with countless feminist pioneers such Lorde, June Jordan, and Gloria Anzaldúa, Smith spearheaded and published works such as This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities and Cuentos: Stories by Latinas. In 1980, Smith, at the urging of her friend, Audre Lorde, co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first national publishing company run by and for women of color. Moreover, the Combahee River Collective Statement has paved the way for what we know, understand, and interrogate as intersectional feminism. Stating that “the most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking”, the Combahee River Collective Statement ushered in a intersectional, radical Black feminist analysis that examined and emphasized the simultaneity of oppression in the experiences, perspectives, and identities of Black women. Named after the Combahee Ferry Raid, a military operation led by freedom fighter, Harriet Tubman, along the Combahee River in South Carolina during the Civil War in 1863, members of the collective including Smith, her twin sister, Beverly Smith, and Demita Frazier, wrote and published one of the most important and significant Black feminist texts: the Combahee River Collective Statement. Internationally recognized and known for her groundbreaking work in building, fostering, and sustaining Black feminism as a field, study, a theoretical framework, and political praxis, Smith is the co-founder of the Combahee River Collective, a Boston-based Black lesbian feminist and socialist organization established in 1974. At age 73, Smith is still just as committed to dismantling oppressive systems and structures and in catalyzing coalitions and solidarities to create a world where people can truly be free. A prolific writer, educator, author, organizer, and socialist, Smith has been dedicated to the struggle for freedom since her teenage years starting her organizing work in school desegregation during the Civil Rights Movement in her native Cleveland, Ohio. Barbara Smith is most certainly an icon––a Black feminist icon.
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