“U.S. Black Women participate in a dialectical relationship linking African-American women’s oppression and activism…As long as Black women’s subordination within intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation persists, Black feminism as an activist response to that oppression will remain needed.”  

– Patricia Hill Collins (2000) 

In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins reflects on the dialectical relationship of Black women’s oppression and activism. Collins (2000) names how Black women’s subordination due to their social location triggers a response of activism and organizing against such oppression. With the rich history of Black women’s organizing both for their communities and others, it is challenging to witness the erasure of their contributions to social movements within social work community organizing curriculum. In response to the dearth of academic analysis of Black women’s organizing in our curriculum, this website seeks to highlight the valuable contributions Black women have made throughout social movements history. We acknowledge that there exists an abundance of academic research outlining the impact of Black women’s organizing, however we will use this website to demonstrate to the Community Organizing department what is being erased. 

Navigating through this website you will find a brief history of Black women’s organizing, uplifting the work of specific Black women organizers we have learned from throughout history. There is also a section where we employ the tools of auto-ethnography to illustrate the impact of this citational erasure on us as Black women-identifying community organizing students. We have included the current Community Organizing curriculum to demonstrate the lack of Black women represented throughout. Lastly, we include a call to action to the Silberman School of Social Work Community Organizing department to incorporate more research and resources about Black women organizers within the curriculum.