This Bridge Called My Back

Updated and expanded edition of the foundational text of women of color feminism.

The Wretched of the Earth

A distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique who took part in the Algerian Nationalist Movement, Frantz Fanon was one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. Fanon's masterwork is a classic alongside Edward Said's Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers. The Wretched of the Earth is a brilliant analysis of the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in effecting historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of postindependence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other. Fanon's analysis, a veritable handbook of social reorganization for leaders of emerging nations, has been reflected all too clearly in the corruption and violence that has plagued present-day Africa. The Wretched of the Earth has had a major impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world.

"City College Takes Fugitives' Names Off Campus Center"

A day after the Daily News reported that City College had allowed a campus center to be named after two controversial figures on its cover, complete with scorching editorial criticizing the school, City College's chancellor Matthew Goldstein had the sign taken down. The center was called the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community Center. Guillermo Morales was a radical for Puerto Rico's independence and made bombs, including one that killed four people at Fraunces Tavern in 1975. His fingers blown off while making a bomb, but he escaped from Bellevue to Mexico and now lives in Cuba. Shakur, born Joanne Chesimard, was a member of the Black Liberation Army. In 1973, she killed NJ State trooper Wayne Foerster, she escaped from prison in 1979, headed to Cuba and now goes by Assata Shakur. There is still a $1 million reward for her capture.

The Souls of Black Folk

The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history.To develop this groundbreaking work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African-American in the American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.

Assata

On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local, state, and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper. Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover's campaign to defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and their leaders, Shakur was incarcerated for four years prior to her conviction on flimsy evidence in 1977 as an accomplice to murder. This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials. The result is a signal contribution to the literature about growing up Black in America that has already taken its place alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou. Two years after her conviction, Assata Shakur escaped from prison. She was given political asylum by Cuba, where she now resides.

Black Power (National Archives)

This portal highlights records of Federal agencies and collections that related to the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The selected records contain information on various organizations, including the Nation of Islam (NOI), Deacons for Defense and Justice, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). It also includes records on several individuals, including Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, Amiri Baraka, and Shirley Chisholm. This portal is not meant to be exhaustive, but to provide guidance to researchers interested in the Black Power Movement and its relation to the Federal government.

Darkwater

The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. Du Bois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually nearly 80 years ago in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. Part essay, part autobiography, Darkwater explicitly addresses significant issues, such as the oppression of women and Eurocentric standards of beauty, the historical rise of the idea of whiteness, and the abridgement of democracy along race, class, and gender lines. Reflecting the author's ideas as a politician,historian, and artist, this volume has long moved and inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reforms for black Americans.

"Protests as City College Closes a Student Center"

"To outside critics, a symbol of campus politics gone berserk"

"How It Feels to Be Colored Me"

Hurston describes a tendency for African-Americans to minimize or exoticize their racial identities to escape such discrimination or force others to treat them as individuals. The fact that claiming different ancestry is common and sometimes effective illustrates how vague and malleable racial identity can be.

Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee(SNCC) & Jane Stembridge

The white students who committed to SNCC in its beginning days were usually southerners. Jane Stembridge was the first among that small number. A petite blond woman in her early twenties with “hypnotic blue eyes,” she was persuaded by Ella Baker to leave her graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and work for SNCC. She was SNCC’s first staff person. “I came here because I, too, needed to be free, respected, understood … Being white doesn’t answer your problems, being able to go in anywhere does not end your needs,” she wrote to a friend.

"A Press of Our Own
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press"

Barbara Smith is a Black feminist writer and activist who has been committed to the movement of women of color since 1973.
She has written numerous essays, articles, and reviews that have appeared in a variety of periodicals, including Ms., The Black
Scholar, The Radical Teacher, Conditions, Callaloo, and The Village Voice. She has edited three major anthologies on African
American women, including Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983), and is also
the coauthor, with Elly Bulkin and Minnie Bruce Pratt, of Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and
Racism (Firebrand, 1984). She is currently completing a collection of her own short stories.

Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism

In the speeches and articles collected in this book, the black activist, organizer, and freedom fighter Stokely Carmichael traces the dramatic changes in his own consciousness and that of black Americans that took place during the evolving movements of Civil Rights, Black Power, and Pan-Africanism. Unique in his belief that the destiny of African Americans could not be separated from that of oppressed people the world over, Carmichael's Black Power principles insisted that blacks resist white brainwashing and redefine themselves. He was concerned not only with racism and exploitation, but with cultural integrity and the colonization of Africans in America. In these essays on racism, Black Power, the pitfalls of conventional liberalism, and solidarity with the oppressed masses and freedom fighters of all races and creeds, Carmichael addresses questions that still confront the black world and points to a need for an ideology of black and African liberation, unification, and transformation.

But Some of Us Are Brave

This ground-breaking collection provides hours of enjoyment for the general reader and a wealth of materials needed to develop course units on black women; political theory, literary essays on major writers, guidelines for consciousness-raising about racism, and surveys of black women's contributions to the blues. "Important and innovative."--Feminist Bookstore News

A Voice from the South

"Only the BLACK WOMAN can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.' (31)

"How the Black Panthers’ Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government:"

The Panthers’ popular breakfast programs put pressure on political leaders to feed children before school.

Summer of Soul

In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary—part music film, part historical record created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture and fashion.

"I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities"

The piece is based on a speech Lorde gave at the Women's Center of Medgar Evers College in New York City. It addresses divisiveness in the feminist movement, specifically in relation to heterosexism and homophobia which Lorde names as “two grave barriers to organizing among Black women” (3).

Black Panther 10-Point Program

The Ten-Point Program
We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine
The Destiny Of Our Black Community.

"Kakuya Collective: A Visionary Daughtering Webinar"

They wanted Assata Shakur to spend the rest of her life in jail. And Assata herself didn’t see any way out. Her daughter Kakuya was of a different opinion. Barely more than a toddler, Kakuya expressed her outrage at her mother’s imprisonment and her belief in her mother’s power. “You don’t have to stay in prison. You just want to stay in here,” she screamed. According to Assata Shakur in her autobiography, this was the determining factor in her decision to escape prison. And Kakuya won. Thanks to a coalition of brave freedom fighters Assata Shakur escaped prison and eventually moved to Cuba where she and Kakuya could be together.

"Alexis Pauline Gumbs Talks About Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press"

Over at the City Lights blog: Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the founder of BrokenBeautiful Press, talks about Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, founded circa 1980 by Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, "and other Black feminists after a meeting of African American and African Caribbean women in Boston."

Black Skin, White Masks

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today. "[Fanon] demonstrates how insidiously the problem of race, of color, connects with a whole range of words and images." -- Robert Coles, The New York Times Book Review

"Barack and Trayvon"

On Obama's official reaction to the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

Apartheid U.S.A: Our Common Enemy, Our Common Cause: Freedom Organizing in the Eighties

In #2 of the Freedom Organizing Pamphlet Series, "an African American and an Asian American poet make the connections between South African apartheid and North American racism. Woo chronicles the divestment movement at the University of California, Berkeley, and the wide-ranging [coalitions] that have grown out of student anti-apartheid organizing." --Lesbian Poetry Archive

Notes on Stokely's speech class; March 1965

Transcription of a classroom discussion between Stokely Carmichael and several students; the topic of discussion is "proper English," who defines it, and what the implications are for black Americans.