This Black History Month, The History Project is highlighting the stories, histories, and projects of Black LGBTQ artists, activists, and historians. 

The Combahee River Collective, active in Boston from about 1974 to 1980, was one of the first groups to document the connection between racial injustice and other social inequities. Formed as a radical alternative to the National Black Feminist Organization and named after Harriet Tubman's 1853 raid on the Combahee River in South Carolina that freed over 750 enslaved people, the Combahee River Collective addressed the realities of queer and trans Black women who felt left out of other feminist and activists movements. Although not exclusively for queer black women, most founding members identified as black lesbians. In 1977, the collective released the Combahee River Collective Statement, authored by Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, and Demita Frazier. The statement is one of the infrastructural documents of contemporary black feminism and although they did not coin the term intersectionality, the statement explored the "interlocking oppressions" including race, gender, class, and sexuality.  

To learn more about the Combahee River Collective and its impact, we encourage you to read "How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective," edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, this collection of essays and interviews with founding members of the Combahee River Collective and contemporary activists reflect on its legacy and impact. Learn more about Dr. Taylor's work on her website. 

We also encourage you to explore the work of local artist and writer Arielle Gray. Gray, who has written about the Combahee River Collective and materials found in THP's archives, recently launched "The Roots That Bind," a citywide project where her artwork, with QR codes that link to Black feminist writings, have been posted in public spaces across Boston. Her artwork features Black feminist thinkers including June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara and Audre Lorde. Read more in the Boston Globe.

"The Roots That Bind" is part of the Boston Center for the Arts' yearlong "Combahee's Radical Call: Black Feminisms (re)Awaken Boston," a multi-platform curtatorial project co-curated by Gray, Cierra Peters, and Jen Mergel, and stewarded by the wisdom of original Combahee River Collective member Demita Frazier. Through June 2021, "Combahee’s Radical Call" invites audiences to engage with the artists' histories, present and visions for the future. Gray and Peters are co-founders of Print Ain't Dead, a radical literary platform centering the work of queer and trans Black femmes. 

Image 1: Members of the Combahee River Collective at the March and Rally for Bellana Borde against Police Brutality, Boston, January 15, 1980. Susan Fleishmann, Gay Community News Photograph Collection. Image 2: How We Get Free, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Haymarket Books, 2017. Image 3: The Roots That Bind, Arielle Gray, 2021.