Emerson College Library: Teach-in on Race 2023: Session 1: Lessons From Combahee

Session 1: Lessons from Combahee: What Black Resistance Can Teach Higher Ed

Thursday, February 16, 1:30pm-2:30pm

Description: A brief oration describing how the black liberation struggle is highly relevant to the current equity challenges facing higher education in the U.S.

Presenter: Shaya Gregory Poku, Vice President for Equity and Social Justice, Emerson College

Spark Prompts

Spark Prompts are a tool to generate curiosity and interest in this year's Teach-In on Race sessions. The presenters have generated the following prompts as a way to spark dialogue while also inviting attendees to deepen their learning by reflecting on the sessions themselves.

Spark Prompt(s)

What does the word resistance mean to you?
How do you maintain your motivation and focus when things feel daunting?
How have you made sacrifices to increase justice in our world?

Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977

In April 1977, a group known as the Combahee River Collective released a statement about Black Feminism. In their opening paragraph, the Collective explains:

"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 synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face."

Read the rest of the statement here.

Authors from the Collective

Books and Media @ Emerson

How We Get Free
The Combahee River Collective, a group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the anti-racist and women's liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to black feminism and its impact on today's struggles.
Schoolhouse Activists : African American Educators and the Long Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Schoolhouse Activists examines the role that African American educators played in the Birmingham, Alabama, civil rights movement from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Drawing on multiple perspectives from education, history, and sociology, Tondra L. Loder-Jackson revisits longstanding debates about whether these educators were friends or foes of the civil rights movement.
Still Brave
Cheryl Clarke, Angela Davis, bell hooks, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker--from the pioneers of black women's studies comes Still Brave: The Evolution of Black Women's Studies, the definitive collection of race and gender writings today. Including Alice Walker's groundbreaking elucidation of the term "womanist," discussions of women's rights as human rights, and a piece on the Obama factor, the collection speaks to the ways that feminism has evolved and how black women have confronted racism within it.
African American Women Educators
This book examines the lived experiences and work of African American women educators during the 1880s to the 1960s. Specifically, this text portrays an array of Black educators who used their social location as educators and activists to resist and fight the interlocking structures of power, oppression, and privilege that existed across the various educational institutions in the U.S. during this time.

Related Resources and Further Reflections

Harriet, the Moses of Her People
In 1869, Sarah Hopkins Bradford published Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. Though often disjointed, this account presented to the public a legendary figure of the Underground Railroad. In 1886, Bradford substantially rewrote the biography at the request of Tubman, who hoped its sales would raise enough funds for the building of a hospital for old and disabled colored people. This second edition, Harriet, the Moses of Her People, provided little new information, but arranged the jumbled narrative of Scenes in chronological order, providing a clearer account of Tubman's life.

Scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman
Sarah Hopkins Bradford's first biography of Harriet Tubman, based on interviews with the subject and published to raise money on her behalf.
Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color / Kimberlé W. Crenshaw
Black feminist scholar Kimberlé W. Crenshaw explores how intersections of oppression, like racism and sexism, compound each other beyond what can be explained by looking at either dimension separately.
Civil Rights Data Collection Data Snapshot: College and Career Readiness
Since 1968, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has conducted the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) to collect data on key education and civil rights issues in our nation's public schools.

This Bridge Called My Back by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (Editors)
Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as coeditor Cherríe Moraga writes, "the complex confluence of identities--race, class, gender, and sexuality--systemic to women of color oppression and liberation.

Racial Battle Fatigue in Higher Education: Exposing the Myth of Post-Racial America
In particular, the essay "Racial (and gender) Battle Fatigue: The Transdisciplinary Applied Social Justice Approach" by Menah Pratt-Clarke
Black Mothers Keep Dying After Giving Birth. Shalon Irving's Story Explains Why
NPR story from December 7, 2017
Sumun L. Pendakur - Publications & Writing
Publications by Dr. Sumun L. Pendakur, a DEI strategist whose work reflects the sentiment "Unless you are designing for equity, you are perpetuating inequity."
About Mrs. Coretta Scott King
The King Center highlights the life and achievements of Coretta Scott King. In her book My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., she wrote "Struggle is a never-ending process, freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation."
Cornel West: Justice is What Love Looks Like in Public
Dr. Cornel West speaks at Howard University's Rankin Chapel, including a reflection on the idea, which he often returns to, that "justice is what love looks like in public." The section involving this quote begins at roughly 26:24.

All the women are white, all the Blacks are men, but some of us are brave : Black women's studies
"Originally published in 1982, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies is the first comprehensive collection of black feminist scholarship. Featuring essays by Alice Walker, the Combahee River Collective, and Barbara Smith, and original resources, this book is vital to today's conversation on race and gender in America."--Publisher
Home Girls
"Home Girls is one of the most important books in the history of Black women's writing". -- Alice Walker
I am your sister: collected and unpublished writings of Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was not only a famous black poet; she was also one of the most important radical black feminists of the past half century. I Am Your Sister collects her non-fiction prose from 1976 to 1990, and it is the first volume to provide a full picture of Lorde's political work (as opposed to her aesthetic work).
Camp Notes and Other Poems
Mitsuye Yamada's family was placed in an Idaho concentration camp during World War II, and these poems recount that experience. Published by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, a feminist press founded by Barbara Smith.
Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories
Classic short stories by a survivor of the US World War II concentration camps for Japanese Americans. Published by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, a feminist press founded by Barbara Smith.

Teach-in on Race 2023

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