Liberation for racialized and marginalized people represents apocalypse, or a radical change, for the Western world. We would be remiss if we did not invoke the Combahee River Collective’s 1974 statement: “We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy.”
The Combahee River Collective laid the groundwork for intersectional politics and Black feminism. “You could trace the collective’s start back to the early ’70s in New York City. Future members, including co-founder Barbara Smith, attended the regional meetings of the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) in 1973. The next year, these women left NBFO to define their own politics,” writes Arielle Gray in WBUR, “They took their name, the Combahee River Collective, from a book Smith owned detailing the historic raid on Combahee River and the instrumental part Harriet Tubman played in the military operation that freed 750 slaves.”
The group was active in and around Massachusetts for almost a decade. “Members of the collective were actively involved in political struggles across Massachusetts, including desegregation in Boston schools and community campaigns against police brutality. In 1979, the collective was spurred to action when 12 black women were murdered in Boston within the span of five months. … This culminated in a 500-person march on April 28, 1979, at the Boston Common where women protested racial and sexual violence.”
The Boston-bred collective’s landmark essay mapped the margins of organizing, political-economic systems and identity. The group’s political and analytical contribution represented an important interruption in popular discussions about freedom. What we’ve learned from the Collective is the importance of shared definition and intersectionality. Our definition of liberation must include, and center, those at the periphery in order to truly create change.
Spirituality has also undergirded some of the most powerful liberatory movements across the world. When we speak of spirituality broadly, we are referring to the spectrum of religious experiences. Spirituality has existed for generations as a mechanism for working with and against daily struggle, as well as oppressive systems.
“[F]aith in a system of belief — religious belief — enabled endurance, forged leadership, and revealed opportunity to be seized. Although for freed men and women, prosperity, ownership, safety and self-determination were thinkable, hungered-for goals, desire alone could not, did not animate the treacherous journey they took into unknown territory to build cities,” observes Toni Morrison in her 2019 book of essays The Source of Self Regard, “The history of African Americans that narrows or dismisses religion in both their collective and individual life, in their political and aesthetic activity, is more than incomplete — it may be fraudulent.”
In the early 15th century, scores of Africans captured and placed aboard ships awaiting departure from the coast of West Africa were unable to carry any tangible item or relic with them. Though they were disconnected from their homelands, their relationship with indigenous religions and culture endured. Their cultures were a way to conjure hope. They were healing medicines and practices. They were an escape. Spirituality offered emotional support and guidance. According to Harvard professor Dr. Jacob Olupona indigenous spiritualities are, “a way of life, and it can never be separated from the public sphere. Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death.” Today, these lifeways are regularly practiced both on the continent and in the diaspora.
Though these practices differ greatly in their methods and beliefs, the outcomes are similar. In his bestselling book, “Race Matters,” Dr. Cornel West asserts that nihilism is a threat to survival and liberation. “Nihilism,” West describes, “is to be understood here not as a philosophic doctrine … it is, far more, the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaningless, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness.” According to West, the way to fight national oppression is through hope and self-love.
“What are we talking about when we speak of revolution if not a free society made up of whole individuals?” In her pivotal essay, “On the Issue of Roles,” Toni Cade Bambara explains that if we want to have a revolution, we have to craft revolutionary relationships, in action, not simply in rhetoric. Furthermore, a revolution cannot be created by conforming to existing roles in relationships already defined by the systems we want to overthrow. We have to practice creating new relationships. Though the essay primarily focuses on gender its thesis speaks to the heart of our argument today. As we continue to remake society through liberatory action we must remember that no matter our tool or method, we are the first frontier toward the world we want and need.
Cierra Peters is an artist and writer currently based in Boston, Mass. and Brooklyn, NY. She is the Director of Communications, Culture, and Enfranchisement at the Boston Ujima Project and an MFA candidate at Yale School of Art.
