Where Are The Black Rad Fems?

Where Are the Black Radical Feminists? A Historical and Political Reckoning

By Imani Caldwell

Brooklyn, NY - Feminism, simply defined, is the belief in and advocacy for the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. It is not, despite recent distortions, a "white woman's movement" nor an ideology imported to fracture Black communities. Feminism at its core is a liberation project — and Black women have been central to that project from its earliest moments.

Yet today, few Black women openly identify as radical feminists. This reality reflects decades of political manipulation, historical erasure, and community pressures rather than any innate opposition between Blackness and feminism.

First, it must be stated plainly: feminism was not invented by white women. Black women have fought for sex and racial justice long before "first-wave" feminism was even conceptualized. Sojourner Truth’s 1851 "Ain't I a Woman?" speech articulated the intersection of race and sex oppression more clearly than any white suffragette of her era. Anna Julia Cooper's 1892 work, A Voice from the South, argued forcefully for Black women's unique position in the struggle for justice. These are foundational feminist texts.

The lie that feminism is a "white thing" was largely seeded by Black male nationalists during the late 1960s and early 1970s, as part of an effort to consolidate Black political power under patriarchal norms. Leaders in the Black Power movement frequently accused Black feminists of being "race traitors" or "tools of white supremacy," framing gender justice as a distraction from racial solidarity. This framing conveniently maintained male dominance within Black liberation struggles while silencing critiques from women.

Yet Black radical feminists were always present. The Combahee River Collective, a group of Black lesbian feminists formed in 1974, wrote: "We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism." Frances Beal, in her seminal essay "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female" (1970), warned that "Black men must understand that they do not have special privileges over Black women."

The language was clear. The vision was radical. But the backlash was equally fierce.

Today, many Black women still hesitate to identify with feminism — not because feminism "doesn't speak to them," but because the label has been tarnished through decades of community shaming, media misrepresentation, and the sidelining of Black women's voices within mainstream feminist spaces.

Moreover, popular feminism's turn toward neoliberalism — emphasizing individual empowerment over collective liberation — has alienated working-class Black women whose realities are shaped more by survival than by boardroom ambitions. The sanitized feminism marketed today often ignores the systemic violence — medical racism, mass incarceration, economic disenfranchisement — that defines many Black women's lives.

Radical Black feminists of the 1960s and 1970s knew this. They spoke about capitalism, imperialism, racism, and patriarchy as interconnected systems that had to be dismantled together. Audre Lorde said bluntly: "I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own."

The scarcity of openly radical Black feminists today is not an indictment of Black women, but a testament to the political and cultural forces that have sought — successfully, at times — to silence them.

Recovering the true legacy of Black feminism means rejecting the lie that it was ever a white woman's domain. It means reclaiming the lineage of Black women who have always fought for our right to exist fully — as Black, as women, and as human beings deserving of complete liberation.