Beginnings in The NBFO
Author Barbara Smith and other delegates attending the first (1973) regional meeting of the National Black Feminist Organization in New York provided the groundwork for the Combahee River Collective with their efforts to build a NBFO Chapter in Boston.
In her 2001 essay From the Kennedy Commission to the Combahee Collective, historian and African American Studies professor Duchess Harris states that, in 1974 the Boston collective "observed that their vision for social change was more radical than the NBFO", and as a result, the group chose to strike out on their own as the Combahee River Collective. Members of the CRC, notably Barbara Smith and Demita Frazier, felt it was critical that the organization address the needs of Black lesbians, in addition to organizing on behalf of Black feminists.
Read more about this topic: Combahee River Collective
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)