BLACK WOMEN ARE LEADERS IN THE MOVEMENT TO END SEXUAL & DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Ida B. Wells The Combahee River Collective Wells, a suffragist and temperance activist, famously and fearlessly This Boston-based collective spoke against lynchings, and also of black feminist lesbians worked to end sexual violence wrote the seminal essay The against black women. Radically, Combahee River Collective Wells identified scapegoating of Statement, centering black black men as rapists as a projection feminist issues and identifying of white men's own history of sexual white feminism as an entity violence, often enacted against black that often excludes or women. sidelines black women. They campaigned against sexual assault in their communities and raised awareness of the racialized sexual Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw violence that black women face. A legal scholar, writer, and activist, Crenshaw famously coined the term Loretta Ross "intersectionality," forever impacting An academic, activist, and writer, the way we think about social identity. Ros s has written extensively on Crenshaw's work draws attention to the topic of reproductive justice the fact that black women exist at the and is a pioneer of reproductive intersection of multiple oppressions justice theory. Her work has and experience the dual violence of brought attention to the ways both racism and misogyny. reproductive coercion, racism, and sexual violence intersect. Harriet Jacobs Tarana Burke Jacobs was born into An activist and public speaker, Burke slavery and sex ually founded the wildly successful assaulted by her owner, #MeToo movement. Specifically and eventually escaped created to highlight violence by hiding undetected in experienced by marginalized an attic for seven years. women, the hashtag brought Writing the classic international attention to the issue narrative Incidents in the of widespread sexual violence. Life of a Slave Girl, she drew attentio n to the gender-based violence that enslaved women Rosa Parks faced, widening the abolitionist conversation to include a broader Known for her leadership in the Montgomery range of issues. bus protests, Parks led the NAACP's investigation into the sexual assault of Recy Taylor, a black woman who was abducted and assaulted by seven white men. Forming the Committee for Equal Justice for Recy Taylor, Parks raised national awareness of the unique challenges black women experiencing violence face. WITHOUT BLACK WOMEN THERE IS NO MOVEMENT 1(800)838-8238.