Developing The Statement
The Combahee River Collective Statement was developed by a "collective of Black feminists...involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while...doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements...."
Members of the collective describe having a feeling of creating something which had not existed previously. Demita Frazier described the CRC's beginnings as "not a mix cake", meaning that the women involved had to create the meaning and purpose of the group "from scratch." In her 1995 essay Doing it from Scratch: The Challenge of Black Lesbian Organizing, which borrows its title from Frazier's statement, Barbara Smith describes the early activities of the collective as "consciousness raising and political work on a multitude of issues", along with the building of "friendship networks, community and a rich Black women's culture where none had existed before."
Read more about this topic: Combahee River Collective
Famous quotes containing the words developing the, developing and/or statement:
“Developing the muscles of the soul demands no competitive spirit, no killer instinct, although it may erect pain barriers that the spiritual athlete must crash through.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“The hearts of Afro-American women are too warm and too large for race hatred. Long suffering has so chastened them that they are developing a special sense of sympathy for all who suffer and fail of justice.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“The most distinct and beautiful statement of any truth must take at last the mathematical form.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)