A Teaching Guide to Third World Womens Alliance

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Third World Womens Alliance 1968-1980

• I. Origins
• II. Political Outlook Program
• III. Social Political Action
• IV. Lessons Legacy

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1960s Social Movements
Origins

• The Third World Womens Alliance had its origins
  in the radical political movements of the late
  1960s.
• The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements had
  drawn millions into the struggles against
  segregation and for equality and freedom.
• From 1965 till the early 1970s the movement
  against the Vietnam War mobilized and radicalized
  students, youth, G.I.s, veterans, and
  communities of color.
• Women across the country came to consciousness
  about sexism and gave birth to the modern Womens
  Liberation Movement.
• Radical sectors of all the 60s movements
  identified with the liberation movements in Asia,
  Africa and Latin America, then called the Third
  World.

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The Moynihan Report
Origins
In the late 1960s, public discourse about the
role of black women was shaped by debate over
The Negro Family The Case for National Action,
a 1965 government report authored by Assistant
Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The
report argued that

• The primary barrier to African Americans
  assimilation into the American mainstream was a
  persistent cycle of poverty and disadvantage a
  tangle of pathology.
• At the center of this pathology was the weakness
  of the family structure due to the often
  reversed roles of husband and wife.
• Matriarchal family structure and Black female
  dominance was a fundamental source of weakness in
  the black family and community.
• Black males should reassert or reclaim their
  dominant role within the family.

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The Moynihan Report
Origins
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Black Nationalist Views of Gender Roles
Origins

• Black liberation from oppression was equated with
  the struggle for Black manhood.
• Womens role to support their men, play a
  subordinate role in political organizations, and
  make babies for the revolution.
• Women were not viewed as equals or as independent
  agents of political change.
• Abortion was equated with genocide.
• Gender issues were consider a distraction from or
  betrayal of the struggle for Black power, and a
  threat to Black unity.

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The Womens Liberation Movement
Origins

• The womens movement arose as women who were
  active in the peace, civil rights and student
  movements of the day began to think and talk
  about the discrimination, stereotyping,
  oppression and violence that women experienced.
• Women began to challenge and rebel against male
  domination within progressive, radical and
  revolutionary organizations.
• They created independent, autonomous spaces in
  which they could analyze the workings of sexism
  and strategize towards womens liberation.
• Thousands of groups and organizations were
  formed, some as informal as a consciousness
  raising group composed of a small group of
  friends, others with much larger national agendas
  and ambitions.
• Though their stories are often overlooked, women
  of color participated in this powerful emergence
  of new consciousness and new activism from its
  very beginnings.

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The Role of Women in SNCC
Origins

• African-American women activists played a major
  role in the founding and development of the
  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
• Women leaders included Fannie Lou Hamer, Fay
  Belamy, and Gloria Richardson.
• However, SNCC was not immune to the masculine
  rhetoric and sexist political ideas that were
  part of the Black Power movement
• Some SNCC men promoted or were influenced by a
  more hierarchical, anti-democratic, male-centered
  and militaristic style of work and leadership.
• Many women in SNCC took note of how this line of
  thinking effectively restricted their
  participation and contributions as activists.
• They challenged SNCC and the broader Black Power
  movement to develop a more progressive analysis
  and understanding of gender relations.

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From Black Womens Liberation Committee to Black
Womens Alliance
Origins

• In December 1968, several SNCC women formed the
  Black Womens Liberation Committee (BWLC).
• BWLC aimed to challenge sexism within SNCC and to
  expand the scope of womens role in the struggle
  for black liberation.
• In 1969, BWLC split from SNCC and formed the
  Black Womens Alliance (BWA). The split was
  prompted by BWAs desire to include women from
  other organizations, welfare mothers, community
  activists, and campus radicals.

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From Black Womens Liberation Committee to Black
Womens Alliance
Origins

• BWAs goals were threefold
• 1. Dispel the myth of the black matriarchy.
• 2. Re-evaluate the history of black women in
  slavery to counter the myths that slavery had not
  been as oppressive for women as it was for men.
• 3. Redefine the role of the black woman in the
  revolutionary struggle.

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Women of Color in Other Movements
Origins

• Women in other sectors of the radical and
  revolutionary movements of people of color also
  began to raise issues of sexism and male
  dominance.
• Women in the Puerto Rican movement were advocates
  for Puerto Rican independence, for community
  control, and for the release of political
  prisoners such as Lolita Lebron.
• Women in the Chicano movement were active in New
  Mexico land struggles, the farmworkers movement,
  and battles over urban education and police
  practices.

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Women of Color in Other Movements
Origins

• Native American women mobilized around issues of
  sovereignty, land rights and cultural autonomy.
• Asian American women were radicalized by the war
  in Vietnam and became active in student struggles
  on campuses and in Asian community struggles on
  issues of workers rights and access to health
  care, housing and education.
• In each of these movements, women began to
  question traditions and practices of male
  domination.

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From Black Womens Alliance to Third World
Womens Alliance
Origins

• In the summer of 1970, BWA, based in New York
  City, expanded to include all third world
  sisters. New members joined from the Puerto
  Rican movement.
• The name was changed to the Third World Womens
  Alliance (TWWA) to reflect its new composition.
• The term third world also reflected the
  organizations identification with the
  anti-imperialist struggles of Asia, Africa and
  Latin America.
• TWWA expanded to the West Coast in 1971. Many of
  the organizations West Coast members were
  activists with the Venceremos Brigade, a group
  that sought to break the US blockade against Cuba
  by sending young people to harvest sugar cane and
  construct housing.

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Afterword

• Paving the Way was produced by Women of Color
  Resource Center, an organization that traces its
  direct line of descent to the Third World
  Womens Alliance. Two of WCRCs founders, Linda
  Burnham and Miriam Ching Louie, were TWWA members
  in the Bay Area. WCRCs mission is to
• promote the political, economic, social and
  cultural well-being of women and girls of color
  in the US. Informed by a social justice
  perspective that takes into account the status of
  women internationally, WCRC is committed to
  organizing and educating women of color across
  lines of race, ethnicity, nationality, class,
  religion, sexual orientation, physical ability
  and age.
• WCRCs program areas, influenced by TWWAs
  political outlook and program, include
• Economic Justice and Human Rights
• Peace and Solidarity
• Popular Education and Leadership Development
• Research, Social Analysis and Documentation

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Acknowledgments

• Written and Edited by Linda Burnham and Erika
  Tatnall
• Research Erika Tatnall
• Editorial Consultant Frances M. Beal
• Design Guillermo Prado, 8point2 Design
• Production Erika Tatnall and Elisa Gahng
• Poster Graphics Juan Fuentes
• Sharon Davenports diligent and dedicated work
  collecting, organizing, cataloguing and archiving
  newspapers, meeting notes, flyers, photographs,
  posters and pamphlets made it possible to produce
  Paving the Way. We are deeply indebted to her. We
  also appreciate the work of those scholars who
  have made TWWA and women-of-color activism their
  subject of inquiry. The work of Maylei Blackwell,
  Kimberly Springer and Stephen Ward has been
  particularly insightful and useful.
• Paving the Way would not have been possible
  without the members of TWWA who contributed their
  papers to the TWWA archive, and whose passion for
  social justice continues to resonate in
  contemporary movements.