The National Black Feminist Organization’s Statement of Purpose, 1973
The distorted male-dominated media image of the Women’s Liberation
Movement has clouded the vital and revolutionary importance of this movement to
Third World women, especially black women.
The Movement has been characterized as the exclusive property of
so-called white middle-class women and any black women seen involved in this
movement have been seen as “selling out,” “dividing the race,” and an
assortment of nonsensical epithets. Black
feminists resent these charges and have therefore established The National
Black Feminist Organization, in order to address ourselves to the particular
and specific needs of the larger, but almost cast-aside half of the black race
in Amerikkka, the black woman.
Black women have suffered cruelly in this society from living the
phenomenon of being black and female, in a country that is both racist
and sexist. There has been very little
real examination of the damage it has caused on the lives and on the minds of
black women. Because we live in a patriarchy, we have allowed a premium to be
put on black male suffering. No one of us would minimize the pain or hardship
or the cruel and inhumane treatment experienced by the black man. But history, past or present, rarely deals
with the malicious abuse put upon the black woman. We were seen as breeders by the master; despised and historically
polarized from/by the master’s wife; and looked upon as castrators by our
lovers and husbands. The black woman
has had to be strong, yet we are persecuted for having survived. We have been called “matriarchs” by white
racists and black nationalists; we have virtually no positive self-images to
validate our existence. Black women
want to be proud, dignified, and free from all those false definitions of
beauty and woman hood that are unrealistic and unnatural. We, not white men or black men, must
define our own self-image as black women and not fall into the mistake of being
placed upon the pedestal which is even being rejected by white women. It has been hard for black women to emerge
from the myriad of distorted images that have portrayed us as grinning Beulahs,
castrating Sapphires, and pancake-box Jemimas.
As black feminists we realized the need to establish ourselves as an
independent black feminist organization.
Our above ground presence will lend enormous credibility to the current
Women’s Liberation Movement, which unfortunately is not seen as the serious
political and economic revolutionary force that it is. We will strengthen the current efforts of
the Black Liberation struggle in this country by encouraging all of the
talents and creativities of black women to emerge, strong and beautiful, not to
feel guilty or divisive, and assume positions of leadership and honor in the
black community. We will encourage the
black community to stop falling into the trap of the white male Left, utilizing
women only in terms of domestic or servile needs. We will continue to remind the Black Liberation Movement that
there can’t be liberation for half the race.
We must, together, as a people, work to eliminate racism, from without
the black community, which is trying to destroy us as an entire people; but we
must remember that sexism is destroying and crippling us from within.