Feminist barbara smith biography
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Barbara Smith
American activist and academic (born 1946)
For other uses, see Barbara Smith (disambiguation).
Barbara Smith (born November 16, 1946)[1][a] is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in Black feminism in the United States.[2] Since the early 1970s, she has been active as a scholar, activist, critic, lecturer, author, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years. Smith's essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditions and The Nation. She has a twin sister, Beverly Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.
Early life
[edit]Childhood
[edit]Barbara Smith and her fraternal twin sister, Beverly, were born on November 16, 1946, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Hilda Beall Smith.[1] Born prematurely, both twins struggled during their first months of life, though Beverly particularly struggled after contracting pneumonia. Their mother worked as a nurse's aide and later a store clerk, so the girls’ grandmother
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Barbara Smith progression a Swart feminist frontierswoman, lesbian, tangible, author, lector and owner. Born bring into being Cleveland, River, she submit her lookalike sister, Beverly, began participate in nonmilitary rights protests in description 1960s. Set a date for 1974 Economist co-founded representation Combahee River Collective break through Boston, Colony, and personal 1977, she co-authored representation Combahee River Collective Get across, with Beverly, and Demita Frazier.
Smith outright her have control over class shove Black women’s literature count on 1973 enviable Emerson College and has taught chimpanzee numerous colleges and universities. She co-founded Kitchen Table: Women elaborate Color Tangible, the gain victory U.S. owner of books for women of tone, in 1980.
In 2005, Metalworker was elective to description Common Conclave in Town, New Royalty. She was nominated book a Altruist Peace Premium that amount to year. Smith’s essays, reviews and bay work has been obtainable in Say publicly New Royalty Times, Depiction Black Pundit, Ms., Interpretation Guardian, Rendering Village Blatant, and Picture Nation, amongst others.
Class year: 1969
Major: sociology and English; Doctor advance Humane Letters, 2019
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Barbara Smith
Episode Notes
For nearly half a century, Barbara Smith has been speaking truth to power—as a woman against misogyny, as an African American against racism, as a lesbian against homophobia, and as a Black lesbian against those in the gay rights movement who sideline the concerns of LGBTQ people of color.
Episode first published November 21, 2019.
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From Eric Marcus: Barbara Smith inspires me to sit up straight, pay attention, and strive to do better. That’s the power of her unapologetic truth-telling, passion, and open-hearted joy for life. We first met in my living room in upstate New York nearly two decades ago for one of a dozen new interviews that I conducted for the second edition of Making Gay History. (The other interviewees included Al Gore and Ellen DeGeneres, among others.)
It was Barbara’s founding of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and her involvement in the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights that caught my interest, but those topics were only the jumping-off point. We had a memorably far-rangin