National Black Feminist Organization

National Black Feminist Organization

Formation	1973 (1973)
Dissolved	1980 (1980)
Region	United States

The National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) was founded in 1973. The group worked to address the unique issues affecting black women in America. Founding members included Florynce Kennedy, Michele Wallace, Faith Ringgold, Doris Wright and Margaret Sloan-Hunter. They borrowed the office of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women. According to Wallace, a contributing author to the anthology All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some Of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies, Wright "called (the first) meeting to discuss Black women and their relationship to the Feminist Movement."

History

One of two earliest organizations formed in the Black feminist movement, the National Black Feminist Organization clearly reflected the goals put forth in the Combahee River Collective Statement, which was being developed at around the same time by some of the same women. The 1973 Statement of Purpose for the NBFO declared the organization was formed, "to address ourselves to the particular and specific needs of the larger, but almost cast-aside half of the black race in America, the black woman."

Important events

November 30th-December 2nd

400 women attended the first regional conference of NBFO in NYC at the cathedral of St. John the divine. This date is important because it was at this conference where ten chapters were established. The ten chapters went on to spread over across other areas in the United States making the NBFO a more successful organization.

1974-Boston Chapter: Combahee River Collective

The Boston chapter of the NBFO breaks away from the main organization to form the Combahee River Collective to work in a smaller group to more successfully approach issues, such as sexuality and economic development. The C.R.C. wrote in their 1977 statement that they "had serious disagreements with NBFO's bourgeois-feminist stance and their lack of a clear political focus."

Predecessor movements

The group, now defunct, stopped operating on a national level in 1975 with the last local chapter ending in 1980. In her Feminist history, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975, cultural critic Alice Echols quotes E. Frances White's essay Listening to the Voices of Black Feminism, "Some attribute the National Black Feminist Organization's demise to its inability to reach any workable consensus around what constituted a Black feminist politic." After the NBFO was dissolved in 1975, Brenda Eichelberger continued her activism with the Chicago chapter of the NBFO by starting the National Alliance of Black Feminists in 1976. The new organization worked to further the goal of achieving full equality for black women whilst accepting diversity in its membership. It quickly expanded with a strong membership base and operated through 1997

See also

• Black feminism
• Womanism
• second-wave feminism

External links

• The NBFO's 1973 statement of purpose