1960s and 1970s Civil rights movement In the second half of the 20th century, Black feminism as a political and social movement grew out of Black women's feelings of discontent with both the civil rights movement and the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the foundational statements of
left-wing Black feminism is "An Argument for Black Women's Liberation as a Revolutionary Force," authored by
Mary Ann Weathers and published in February 1969 in
Cell 16's
radical feminist magazine
No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation. Weathers states her belief that "women's liberation should be considered as a strategy for an eventual tie-up with the entire revolutionary movement consisting of women, men, and children", but she posits that "[w]e women must start this thing rolling" because: Additionally, songwriters like Nina Simone, advocated for Black justice and influenced the Civil Rights Movement, through songs like Mississippi Goddamn. Her songs, conveyed in the form of protest, shed light on the racialized and gendered oppression women of color faced at the time. While some others, like Tammy Kernodle, argue that her songs aligned more with militant black power nationalism than the Civil Rights Movement, her contributions still focused on resisting racism and promoting rights for black people. Overall, expressing the importance of the Civil Rights Movement. Within the movement, men dominated the powerful positions. Black feminists did not want the movement to be the struggle only for Black men's rights, they wanted Black women's rights to be incorporated too. This can be seen in a 1963 speech made to The National Council of Negro Women Convention, in which Pauli Murray states “the Negro woman can no longer postpone or subordinate the fight against discrimination because of sex to the civil rights struggle but must carry on both fights simultaneously”. Murray further argues that Black women’s inclusion in the Civil Rights Movement is required for the success of the Movement and achievement of a fully representative society. In the 1960s, the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was highly active and focused on achieving "a social order of justice" through peaceful tactics. The SNCC was founded by
Ella Baker. Baker was a member of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the
Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). When Baker served as
Martin Luther King Jr.'s SCLC executive secretary, she was exposed to the hierarchical structure of the organization. Baker disapproved of what she saw as sexism within both the NAACP and the SCLC and wanted to start her own organization with an egalitarian structure, allowing women to voice their needs. In 1964, at a SNNC retreat in
Waveland, Mississippi, the members discussed the role of women and addressed sexism that occurred within the group. A group of women in the SNCC (who were later identified as White allies
Mary King and
Casey Hayden) openly challenged the way women were treated when they issued the "SNCC Position Paper (Women in the Movement)". The paper listed 11 events in which women were treated as subordinate to men. According to the paper, women in SNCC did not have a chance to become the face of the organization, the top leaders, because they were assigned to clerical and housekeeping duties, whereas men were involved in decision-making. When
Stokely Carmichael was elected chair of the SNCC in 1966, he reoriented the path of the organization towards
Black Power and
Black nationalism. While it is often argued that Black women in the SNCC were significantly subjugated during the Carmichael era, Carmichael appointed several women to posts as project directors during his tenure as chair. By the latter half of the 1960s, more women were in charge of SNCC projects than during the first half. Despite these improvements, the SNCC's leadership positions were occupied by men during the entirety of its existence, which ended in turmoil within a few years of Carmichael's resignation from the body in 1967. speaking at the
University of Alberta on March 28, 2006 The unofficial symbol of Black feminism in the late 60s, a combination of the raised fist of Black Power, and the astrological
symbol for Venus, denoted an intersection of ideals of Black Power and militant feminism. Some ideals were shared, such as a "critique on
racial capitalism, starting with slavery". Despite this, Black feminism had reasons to become independent of Black nationalism, according to some critics, because it had achieved only a niche within the generally sexist and masculinist structure of Black nationalism.
Second-wave feminism The second-wave feminist movement emerged in the 1960s, led by
Betty Friedan. Some Black women felt alienated by the main planks of the mainstream branches of the second-wave feminist movement, which largely advocated for women's rights to work outside the home and the expansion of reproductive rights. For example, earning the power to work outside the home was not seen as an accomplishment by Black women since many Black women had to work both inside and outside the home for generations due to poverty. The second-wave feminist movement emerged in the 1960s, led by
Betty Friedan, whose work
The Feminine Mystique centered on “the problem that had no name”—referring to housewives with no right to work. Black women felt alienated by the main planks of the mainstream branches of second-wave feminism, since gaining the right to work outside the home was not viewed as an accomplishment for them; being a housewife was a middle-class problem, and women of color had been working both inside and outside the home for generations due to poverty. Frances Beale wrote, “Another major differentiation is that the white women’s liberation movement is basically middle class. Very few of these women suffer the extreme economic exploitation that most Black women are subject to day by day. If they find housework degrading and dehumanizing, they are financially able to buy their freedom—usually by hiring a black maid.” Black Feminist scholars such as Shirley Chisholm and Dorthy Roberts have brought attention to the fact that Black women are disproportionately affected by reproductive, sterilization, and abortion laws. Before Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, Chisholm was a proponent of reproductive rights and stated “we must put an end to compulsory pregnancy”. In 1999, Roberts' work focused on debunking the so-called “crack baby epidemic” which criminalized and incarcerated Black pregnant mothers—despite the fact that white mothers were just as likely, if not more likely, to engage in substance use while pregnant. These cases resulted in mandating birth control as an alternative to incarceration, and prosecuting Black women at higher rates than their white counterparts. Researchers disproved claims of a “crack baby epidemic” as evidence of alleged catastrophic health conditions was not found. Some Black feminists who were active in the early
second-wave feminism include civil rights lawyer and author
Florynce Kennedy, who co-authored one of the first books on abortion, 1971's
Abortion Rap;
Cellestine Ware, of New York's
Stanton-Anthony Brigade; and Patricia Robinson. These women "tried to show the connections between racism and male dominance" in society. Fighting against racism and sexism across the White dominated second wave feminist movement and male dominated Black Power and
Black Arts Movement, Black feminist groups of artists such as
Where We At! Black Women Artists Inc were formed in the early 1970s. The "Where We At" group was formed in 1971 by artists Vivian E. Browne and Faith Ringgold. During the summer of that year, the group organized the first exhibition in history of only Black women artists to show the viewing public that was not synonymous with . In 1972, Where We At! issued a list of demands to the
Brooklyn Museum protesting what it saw as the museum's ignoring of Brooklyn's Black women artists. The demands brought forth changes, and years later, in 2017, the museum's exhibit "We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-1985" celebrated the work of Black women artists who were part of the Black Arts and Black Power movements. During the 20th century, Black feminism evolved quite differently from mainstream feminism. In the late 1900s it was influenced by new writers such as
Alice Walker whose literary works spawned the term
womanism, which emphasized the degree of the oppression Black women faced when compared to White women and, for her, encompassed "the solidarity of humanity". Black lesbian women were often unwelcome in male-dominated Black movements, and tended to be marginalized not only in mainstream second wave feminism (as exemplified by Betty Friedan who held off making lesbian rights part of her political agenda) but also within the lesbian feminist movement itself. Here the problem was perhaps one more of class than of race. Among lesbian feminism's largely White, middle class leadership, the
butch/femme sexual style, fairly common among Black and working class lesbian pairings, was often deprecated as a degrading imitation of male dominate heterosexuality. During the 1970s lesbian feminists created their own sector of feminism in response to the unwillingness of mainstream second wave feminism to embrace their cause. They developed a militant agenda, broadly challenging homophobia and demanding a respected place within feminism. Some advocated and experimented with as complete a social separation from men as possible. These separatist notions were off-putting to Black lesbian feminists involved in
Black Power movements and tended to deepen their feelings of alienation from a largely White-led movement. As
Anita Cornwell stated, "When the shooting starts any Black is fair game. the bullets don't give a damn whether I sleep with a woman or a man". In 1970, a defining moment for Black lesbian feminists occurred at the
Black Panther's Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Several Black lesbian feminists confronted a group of White lesbian feminists about what they saw as a racially divisive agenda. Following this event, several groups began to include and organize around Black lesbian politics. For example, in 1973, the
National Black Feminist Organization was founded and included a lesbian agenda. In 1978, the
National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays was founded.
1980s and 1990s In the early 1990s, AWARE (African Woman's Action for Revolutionary Exchange) was formed in New York by Reena Walker and Laura Peoples after a plenary session on Black women's issues held at the Malcolm X Conference at the
Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) entitled
Black Women and Black Liberation: Fighting Oppression and Building Unity. In 1991, the
Malcolm X Conference was held again at BMCC, and the theme that year was "Sisters Remember Malcolm X: A Legacy to be Transformed". It featured plenary sessions, a workshop on "Sexual Harassment: Race, Gender and Power", and was held in a much larger theater that year. Black women were a central focus and not an aside as they were prior. Speakers included
Sonia Sanchez,
Audre Lorde,
Verniece Miller,
Reena Walker,
Carol Bullard (Asha Bandele), and
Vivian Morrison. At the same time, Reena Walker, along with the members of AWARE, also worked in coalition with AWIDOO (American Women in Defense of Ourselves), formed by Barbara Ransby, to sign a full-page ad in
The New York Times to stand in support of
Anita Hill. In 1995, Reena Walker went on to put out the call to various women and organized the group African Americans Against Violence that effectively stopped a parade that a group of reverends led by
Al Sharpton were attempting to hold in Harlem for
Mike Tyson. The group, including Eve and Kathe Sandler, Nsia Bandele, and Indigo Washington, worked successfully to stop the parade from happening, bringing attention to the struggle of Black women against sexism and domestic violence. A supporter of Mike Tyson, social worker Bill Jones, exclaimed "The man has paid his debt" (in regards to Tyson's rape conviction), and joined a large group of other Tyson supporters in heckling the African Americans Against Violence group, accusing them of "catering to white radical feminists". Scholars, including
Amina Mama,
Filomina Chioma Steady, and
Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, critiqued the dominance of
Women-in-Development (WID) models, which portrayed women as passive recipients of aid, and instead called for feminist research grounded in African contexts. Mama emphasized that feminist scholarship in Africa must address the continued marginalization of women despite decades of development policy. Steady argued that research agendas imposed by global institutions often recolonized African social science through Eurocentric priorities. At the same time, Ogundipe-Leslie’s concept of
Stiwanism (Social Transformation Including Women in Africa) linked gender equality with post-colonial nation-building. African feminist thought has also examined how historical and archival practices shape collective memory. By addressing gaps and silences in historical records, African feminist researchers and curators have sought to recover women’s experiences that were long excluded from official narratives. In community archives, educational programs, and museum initiatives, these approaches treat documentation as a form of social justice and collective care, emphasizing local stewardship and the ethical responsibility to represent women’s histories accurately. Contemporary feminist institutions and scholars in Ghana have continued this work through leadership in local governance, education, and public culture. These initiatives frame women not as subjects of development but as active participants and curators of their own historical futures. In this sense, African feminism operates simultaneously as scholarship and as public history, transforming the archive from a site of omission into one of collective visibility and care.
Hip-hop culture A medium of oppression for Black women in the 1980s and '90s was hip-hop music. The
New York hip-hop scene was mainly dominated my men and most producers were focused on rap superstars such as
Notorious B.I.G. and
Sean "Diddy" Combs. A number of female emcees can be credited for having expanded Black womanhood in music during this time; notable artists in the '80s such as
MC Lyte,
Queen Latifah, and
Salt-N-Pepa carved out space for later black female artists. In the 1990s,
Lil' Kim who was signed to Biggie Smalls' Junior M.A.F.I.A. Imprint, expressed her message. She achieved an image of fierce independence and comfort with her body. She defied the presumption in hip-hop that women are there to humble the presence of men. Within the culture of hip hop, Lil’ Kim challenges the stereotype of Black women’s invincibility given she “was never one to shy away from expressing her insecurities and struggles”. Lil' Kim's outspokenness and unprecedented lyrics were rejected by many people who believed in the traditional sound of hip-hop. Lil' Kim stood behind her words and never apologized for who she is.
Faith Evans is another female emcee who broke barriers in the hip-hop world. At just 21 years old, she was the first female artist signed to Bad Boy Records. Faith Evans spent more than 20 years in the music business fighting gender discrimination and harassment in an industry where men were the dominant content creators and producers. Author
Gwendolyn D. Pough described hip-hop feminists as people who are "immersed in hip-hop culture" and actively advocate against gender discrimination within that culture. She asserts that hip-hop feminists share the same predecessors as black feminists and womanists, inherently connecting the missions and goals of the two communities and grounding them both in the examination of racial, class, and gender-based discrimination. The shifting political landscape of the 1980s and 1990s helped shape hip-hop feminism. Specifically, the elimination of welfare programs and affirmative action, the emergence of the AIDS epidemic, and the increasing size of the racial wealth gap served as catalysts for the formation of a new, distinct form of Black feminism: hip-hop feminism. Dr. Whitney A. Peoples argues that examples of Black women being sexually objectified in hip-hop are hyper prominent due to deep-seated racist ideologies and stereotypes that deem Black women as sexually and morally deviant. The #SayHerName social media campaign, launched through the African American Policy Forum has been used to amplify the stories of Black women who have been victims of police brutality, as their stories are often overlooked in mainstream media. In addition to social media activism, digital Black feminism has also evolved into a broader practice of community documentation and participatory archiving. African feminist scholars have emphasized how digital technologies can strengthen women’s civic participation and preserve social memory. Across Ghana and other African contexts, women’s organizations have incorporated storytelling, oral histories, and digital media into programs that document lived experiences of inequality and resilience. These projects link gender activism with public history by transforming records of everyday life into shared resources for education and advocacy. Together, these developments illustrate how digital Black feminism operates not only as a mode of political mobilization but also as a living archive of collective memory and care, bridging global and African feminist movements through digital and historical work. Building on these curatorial and archival approaches, online platforms continue to serve as dynamic spaces for activism and community-making. Using hashtags and social media content on digital platforms has broadened the black feminist movement's reach and increased their accessibility. As a result, platforms such as "Black Twitter" have developed new spaces for education and activism on Black women's experiences, pushing for systemic change.
Black Feminism in Media Digital age feminism involved the use of
Facebook,
Twitter,
Instagram,
YouTube,
Tumblr, and other forms of
social media to discuss
gender equality and
social justice. According to
NOW Toronto, the internet created a "call-out" culture, in which
sexism or
misogyny can be called out and challenged immediately with relative ease. Social media served as a medium for Black feminists to express praise or discontent with organizations' representations of Black women. Lizzo, for example, has been using social media, especially Instagram, to promote diverse black bodies. She often speaks against the racism and pushback she gets as a powerful, fat, black woman musician She has stated: "I make Black music, period... I'm doing this sh*t for the big Black women in the future who just want to live their lives without being scrutinized or put into boxes".
Black Girl Magic (#BlackGirlMagic) is a movement that was popularized by CaShawn Thompson in 2013. The concept was born as a way to "celebrate the beauty, power and resilience of Black women". Thompson began to use the hashtag #BlackGirlsAreMagic in 2013 to speak about the positive achievements of Black women. It also emphasises the idea that black girls thrive and prevail while enduring blockages and structural walls daily. Although it was popularized on social media, the movement has inspired many organizations to host events using the title, along with support from celebrities and politicians globally. Alleged instances of the "
appropriation" of Black culture were commented on. For example, a 2015
Vogue Italia photo shoot involving model
Gigi Hadid wearing an afro sparked backlash on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Some users claimed it was problematic and racist to have a non-Black model wear an afro and a fake tan to give the appearance of Blackness when the fashion magazine could have hired a Black model instead.
Kearie Daniel wrote that White people wearing certain hairstyles is a particularly touchy subject in Black feminism because of the perceived double standard that when White women wear Black hairstyles, they are deemed "trendy" or "edgy", while Black women are labelled "ghetto" or "unprofessional". Black feminists also voiced the importance of increasing "representation" of Black women in television and movies. According to a 2014 study by the University of Southern California, of the 100 top films of that year, "nearly three-quarters of all characters were white", NPR reports, and only 17 of those 100 top movies featured non-White lead or co-lead actors. That number falls further when only looking at non-White women leads, considering only one-third of speaking roles were for women, according to the same study.
Conjure Feminism A new form of Black feminism has emerged with the publication of the article "Conjure Feminism: Toward a Genealogy" published in a special issue on conjure feminism in Hypatia Journal in 2021. The conjure feminism theory incorporates Black women's knowledges of African derived spiritualities to guide their methods of survival in the U.S. and the African diaspora more broadly. Black feminist scholars Kinitra Brooks, Kameelah Martin, and LaKisha Simmons co-wrote the Hypatia journal article on conjure feminism and co-edited the special issue. Other publications on conjure feminist themes include Kameelah Martin's (2012)
Conjuring Moments in African American literature: Women, Spirit Work, and Other Such Hoodoo and
Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics: African Spirituality in American Cinema (2019);
The Lemonade Reader (2019) edited by Kinitra Brooks and Kameelah Martin; and Patricia Coloma Peñate's
The Erotic as a Marvelous Real Paradigm: Hurston and Conjure Feminism (2023).
Black Lives Matter The activist movement
Black Lives Matter was initially formed by
Opal Tometi,
Alicia Garza, and
Patrisse Kahn-Cullors as a hashtag to campaign against racism and police brutality against African Americans in the United States. The movement contributed to a revitalization and re-examining of the Black feminist movement. While the deaths of Black men played a major part in the Black Lives Matter movement,
Rekia Boyd, Michelle Cusseaux, Tanisha Anderson, Shelly Frey, Yvette Smith,
Eleanor Bumpurs,
Sandra Bland, and other women were also killed or assaulted by police officers. While Black Lives Matter has been critiqued for a failure to focus on Black women's treatment by the police, Black feminists within the movement have fought to highlight the interconnected systems of oppression that disadvantage Black women in particular. Activism of Black feminists in Black Lives Matter has included protests against political candidates such as
Bernie Sanders,
Donald Trump, and
Hillary Clinton, and they have used hashtags such as #oscarssowhite and #sayhername to challenge both racial and gender injustices. In addition to traditional protests, black feminists have developed community-based workshops, offered mental health resources, and educated people to advocate for institutional change. These are impactful efforts that cultivate supportive spaces and provide tools to address the trauma Black women experience. == Black feminist identity politics and safe spaces ==