Barbara
Smith (born December 16, 1946) in Clevelandis an American, lesbian
feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining
Black Feminism in the United States.

This
is the sixty second post in a series highlighting the best gay and
lesbian authors from the 20th century (with a few before and after that
period) who have recorded in fiction, and nonfiction, the history of gay
people telling what life is, and was, during an important time of
history.

  

Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic,
teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black
feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and
universities over the last twenty five years. Smith's essays, reviews,
articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range
of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black
Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice,
Conditions (magazine) and The Nation. Barbara has a twin sister, Beverly
Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.

   





History and activism

In
1975 Smith reorganized the Boston chapter of the National Black
Feminist Organization to establish the Combahee River Collective.
As a socialist Black feminist organization the collective emphasized the
intersectionality of racial, gender, heterosexist, and class oppression
in the lives of Blacks and other women of color. Additionally, the
collective aggressively worked on revolutionary issues such as
"reproductive rights, rape, prison reform, sterilization abuse, violence
against women, health care, and racism within the white women's
movement," explains Beverly Guy-Sheftall in her introduction to Words of
Fire: An Anthology of African-Feminist Thought. After working for the
National Observer in 1974, Smith committed herself to never again being
"in the position of having to make [her] own writing conform to someone
else's standards or beliefs," (Smith 1998).
Soon thereafter Smith felt the growing need for women of color to have
their own autonomous publishing resource and in 1980, along with Audre
Lorde and Cherríe Moraga, co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color
Press, the first U.S. publisher for women of color. During her time as
the publisher for Kitchen Table, Smith continued to write and a
collection of her essays, articles and reviews can be found in The Truth
That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender and Freedom.

Smith's article "Toward a Black Feminist Consciousness" (1982),
first published in All the Women Are White, All the Blacks are Men, But
some of Us Brave: Black Women's Studies is frequently cited as the
breakthrough article in opening the field of Black women's literature
and Black lesbian discussion. She has edited three major collections
about Black women: Conditions (magazine) : Five, The Black Women's Issue
(with Lorraine Bethel), 1979; All the Women Are White, All the Blacks
Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (with Gloria T.
Hull and Patricia Bell Scott), 1982; and Home Girls: A Black Feminist
Anthology, (first edition, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983;
second edition, Rutgers University Press, 2000).

"What I really feel is radical is trying to make coalitions with
people who are different from you. I feel it is radical to be dealing
with race and sex and class and sexual identity all at one time. I think
that is really radical because it has never been done before," (Smith
as cited in Hill Collins, 2000).



Smith and the Combahee River Collective have been
credited with coining the term identity politics, which they defined as
"a politics that grew out of our objective material experiences as Black
women.[4] To those who would criticize her commitment to understanding
and continuing discussion around identity, Smith noted in an interview
in off our backs, a feminist magazine, that "I have been called an
essentialist. By `essentialist' [people] mean that when I look in the
mirror and see a Black woman, I think it means something. It's not just a
representation. I share a political status with other Black women
although my history is unique."
Continuing her work as a community organizer, Smith was elected to the
Albany NY Common Council (city council) in 2005, representing Ward 4.
She was reelected in 2009.

Awards

Smith was made a Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College Fellow in 1996, and received a 1994 Stonewall Award for her activism.
Barbara is an alum of the Ragdale Foundation and a graduate of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Writings

Bethel, Lorraine, and Barbara Smith, eds. Conditions: Five, The Black Women's Issue 2, no. 2 (Autumn, 1979).
Bulkin, Elly, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Barbara Smith. Yours in Struggle:
Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Firebrand Books, 1984, 1988.
Hull, Gloria T., Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. All the
Women Are White, All the Blacks are Men, But some of Us Brave: Black
Women's Studies. New York: The Feminist Press at The City University of
New York, 1982.
Mankiller, Wilma, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, Barbara Smith, and
Gloria Steinem, eds. The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History.
Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Smith, Barbara, and Beverly Smith. "Across the Kitchen Table: A
Sister-to-Sister Dialogue." In This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by
Radical Women of Color, eds. Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa.
Watertown, Massachusetts: Persephone Press, 1981
Smith, Barbara. "’Feisty Characters’ and ‘Other People's Causes’:
Memories of White Racism and U.S. Feminism." In The Feminist Memoir
Project: Voices from Women's Liberation, eds. Rachel Blau DuPlessis and
Ann Snitow. New York: Crown Publishing, 1998.
Smith, Barbara. ed. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.
Smith, Barbara. Writings on Race, Gender and Freedom: The Truth that Never Hurts. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
Smith, Barbara. "Where Has Gay Liberation Gone? An Interview with
Barbara Smith." In Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian
and Gay Life, eds. Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed. New York and London:
Routledge, 1997.