Black Feminism: The Civil Rights and Black Power Era (Part 2) Section Overview

The fourth intimate covered passageway amplifies the stories of Black feminists in DC during the latter part of the Civil Rights and Black Power Era and their commitment to reproductive justice. Overflowing collages of larger-than-life images, books in cases, and quotes cover the two interior walls of the passageway. Light filters through holes punched in a metal and wood panel above that cover the passageway, creating a light-dappled, intimate space.

A vivid blue introduction label spans floor to ceiling and sets the scene in the first panel on the right. The story then progresses further down the passageway from right to left in a larger-than-life collage of images and objects in cases. If you turn around, the rest of the story is told through a larger-scale collage of images and objects on the opposite side from left to right.

Introduction Label: Black Feminism: The Civil Rights and Black Power Era

By the 1960s, Washington, DC, had become the country's first predominantly Black major city. In the mid-1960s, Black feminists responded to Black Power’s call for independent Black institutions. Mary Treadwell’s connection to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Free DC movement positioned her as a founding member of Pride, Inc., an organization focused on Black empowerment. She used her leadership position at Pride, Inc. to advocate for the decriminalization of abortion—viewing reproductive freedom as fundamental to Black Power.

Nkenge Touré, a member of DC’s Black Panther Party, and Loretta Ross, who was involved in Black nationalism at Howard, developed their Black feminism in conversation with DC’s Black Power struggle. In the 1970s, they led DC’s Rape Crisis Center, the only Black women-led rape crisis center in the country. Touré and Ross defined reproductive freedom to include not only the decriminalization of abortion, but also the end of sterilization abuse, access to safe affordable housing, and equal access to health care for everyone.

Collage 1: Mary Treadwell and Nkenge Touré

Description:

Photographs and objects from the lives of Mary Treadwell and Nkenge Touré span the wall after the introduction label. On the far left is a large photograph of Mary Treadwell in her office, looking straight at you as if you were also in her office. Mary Miller Treadwell (1941–2012) attended Fisk University, where she met SNCC organizer Marion Barry. They are pictured getting married in the background of the collage. Moving to DC in 1966, she joined the Free DC movement, which supported home rule and full enfranchisement of the District’s residents. Treadwell, Barry, and other community leaders founded Pride, Inc., which provided job training for DC’s Black youth; an historic photograph of Pride, Inc. fills the background at the bottom of the collage. Treadwell advocated for the decriminalization of abortion. In 1975 in the wake of attacks on Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision legalizing the procedure, she testified before the U.S. Congress that Black women’s access to reproductive choice is foundational to their liberation. Treadwell’s career ended after she was convicted of conspiring to defraud the federal government and the tenants of an apartment complex and pleaded guilty to stealing from a neighborhood group.

To the right of Mary Treadwell’s story, you’ll find a side profile portrait of Nkenge Touré. Nkenge Touré (1951–) was born Anita Stroud in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to DC to lead the Black Panther Party’s health clinic and education programs. In 1973 she opened the Education for Liberation Bookstore on 9th and H streets; a photograph of Touré teaching at the bookstore fills the space behind her portrait. After a series of sexual assaults against Black women, the bookstore became a vital community meeting place. Herself a survivor, Touré became a leader of the DC Rape Crisis Center, the only Black women-led rape crisis center in the country, and conducted antiviolence campaigns. Touré became a close collaborator of Loretta Ross. A photograph of them together at Smith College is found at the top right of the collage. Touré also hosted her own radio program. As a Black feminist, Touré rejected the idea that anyone had to choose between Black liberation and feminist politics. Her Black feminism combined and expanded the two. A quote by Touré hovers above the rest of the collage, reaffirming her politics.

“[Resist] the urge to try and make people split and choose [between movements]. [It’s not true that] if you are Black you can’t be a feminist, [and] if you are a feminist, you are not Black.” Nkenge Touré

You can find more details about each image and object in the text labels below. Or you can skip to the next collage in this section, “Loretta Ross.”

Image: “Where SNCC Is” flier, 1965

Judy Richardson Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University
This flier demonstrates the importance of Washington, DC, as a center for SNCC activism, along with better-known chapters throughout the South.

Image: Mary Treadwell and Marion Barry at their wedding, 1972

Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post

Image: Mary Treadwell in her DC office, 1979

Photograph by Pete Copeland/Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post

Image: Headquarters of Pride, Inc., c. 1968

Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post

Image: Free DC poster in a window, 1966

Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Made possible by the Ford Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Smithsonian Institution
In 1966 Marion Barry, head of the DC chapter of SNCC, created the Free DC movement to promote home rule. Mary Treadwell first became involved in local political organizing when she joined the DC chapter of SNCC and dedicated herself to the Free DC movement.

Image: Nkenge Touré at a Save the People class at the National Arboretum, Washington, DC, 1972–74

Nkenge Touré Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

Image: Loretta Ross and Nkenge Touré in the Smith College Reading Room looking at archival materials, 2013

Nkenge Touré Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Nkenge Touré teaching at the Timbuktu Youth Developmental Learning Center, run by her organization Save the People, northwest Washington, DC, 1975.

Image: Elbert "Big Man" Howard holds a press conference outside the DC Black Panther Party Community Center, 17th Street, Washington, DC, 1970

Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post

Image: “Black Sisters Unite!” flier promoting the Black Women’s Contingent and the National Women’s March on Washington, DC, and San Francisco, November 20, 1973

Patrick Frazier Political and Social Movements Collection, American University Archives and Special Collections
In 1973 Treadwell was a part of DC’s Black women’s task force of the Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign (WONAAC). Black feminists continually expanded the demand for reproductive rights beyond abortion to include ending forced sterilization of women of color. The WONAAC alliance eventually dissolved because of a failure to include the issues central to Black women.

Image: SNCC office meeting in Atlanta, c. 1965

Photograph by Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos
Many of the activists pictured at the SNCC office in Atlanta, including Marion Barry, Jean Wheeler, and Judy Richardson, moved to Washington, DC, in the 1960s in order to work in a majority-Black community, support the DC chapter of SNCC, and create autonomous Black institutions.

Image: Stokely Carmichael (seated), chairman of SNCC, and Congressional Representative Adam Clayton Powell (D-NY) during a conference on Black Power, Washington, DC, 1966

Bettmann/Getty Images
In 1966 Adam Clayton Powell and Stokely Carmichael co-chaired the first Black Power Conference, which was held in DC. The Black Power conference was among several political moves that signaled a shift away from racial integration and toward a Black Power agenda, both locally and nationally.

Image: National Black Women’s Health Project Self-Help Developers’ Manual, 1990

Nkenge Touré Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
In 1983 the National Black Women’s Health Project was founded by Byllye Avery, a reproductive justice activist, to address the specific healthcare needs of Black women. The group offered intergenerational educational programs to mothers and daughters and campaigned for healthcare equity. Touré was the DC chapter president from 1987 to 1994.

Image: Education for Liberation Bookstore run by Save the People, 9th and H streets, c. 1976

Nkenge Touré Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Nkenge Touré and her husband, Patrice Touré, founded Save the People in 1973 and ran the Education for Liberation Bookstore. Under her leadership the bookstore became a central meeting space for Black women from DC after a series of sexual assaults in the community.

Collage 2: Loretta Ross

Description:

On the opposite wall to the left of where you entered the passageway, a collage of images and objects in cases dedicated to Loretta Ross fills the wall. A scaled-up portrait of Ross from 1987 looks out from the left side of the collage while Ross’s voice seems to speak to you through a quote at the top of the collage:

“My activism in the women’s and civil rights movement has rewarded me with invaluable experience and the faith to truly believe ‘We Shall Overcome.’ As a result of each assault against abortion rights, thousands of new activists join our movement, proving that when women are screwed, we do multiply.”

Loretta J. Ross (1953–) came to Howard as an unwed teenage mother and quickly became active in Black nationalist and socialist groups. In college, Ross received a Dalkon Shield from the student health clinic, but the birth control device made her sterile. So that what “happened to me shouldn’t happen to nobody else,” she sued the manufacturer and won. Ross, who, like Nkenge Touré, was a survivor of sexual assault, led DC’s Rape Crisis Center in the late 1970s and early 1980s and also organized numerous pro-choice marches and conferences. In 1994 Ross helped to develop the Black feminist “Reproductive Justice” framework to broaden conversations beyond the single issue of abortion to include involuntary sterilization, medical abuse, police violence, and access to quality health care. Some of Ross’s reproductive justice pamphlets and documents appear in the collage above a large, brightly colored image of the March for Reproductive Rights in Washington, DC, in 1989 that Ross helped to plan. A copy of Radical Reproductive Justice, edited by Ross and collaborators, is set in a case just below a photograph of Yulanda Ward, who was a Howard student and community activist in several organizations (including DC’s Rape Crisis Center) when she was murdered in November 1980 in an apparent robbery. Ross thought the murder was politically motivated because of Ward’s Black feminist activism.

You can find more details about each image and object in the text labels below. Or you can skip to the next section, “Black Feminism: Where Do We Go from Here?”

Image: Loretta Ross, c. 1987

Photograph by Charlene Eldridge Wheeler/Loretta J. Ross papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

Image: Yulanda Ward, undated

Unknown photographer/Loretta J. Ross papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass./courtesy of Loretta J. Ross
Yulanda Ward was a Howard student and community activist in several organizations, including DC’s Rape Crisis Center when she was murdered in November 1980 in an apparent robbery. Ross thought the murder was politically motivated because of Ward’s Black feminist activism. It triggered mass activism against gender-based violence and the indifference of the criminal justice system.

Image: The March on Washington for Women’s Reproductive Rights, c. 1989

Unknown photographer
Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

Image: Black student activists occupy Howard University’s administration building demanding the resignation of President James Nabrit and a greater emphasis on African American history and culture, 1968

Bettmann/Getty Images
Loretta Ross was a student at Howard in the late 1960s and was influenced by Black Power and socialist activism on campus and throughout DC.

Image: "Why a Black Woman Fights for Abortion Rights," paper by Loretta Ross, 1992

Loretta Ross Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass./courtesy of Loretta J. Ross
Loretta Ross penned this personal reflection on her work for Black liberation and women’s liberation as a call to Black feminist action. Ross defined reproductive freedom as “the right to have, or not to have, children and the right to raise them free from racism, sexism and poverty.”

Object: Radical Reproductive Justice, edited by Loretta Ross, Lynn Roberts, Erika Derkas, Whitney Peoples, and Pamela Bridgewater Toure, 2017

Published by The Feminist Press, CUNY
On the 20th anniversary of the establishment of SisterSong, an organization for reproductive justice, Loretta Ross and other activists published the book Radical Reproductive Justice. Through this text they attempted to go beyond “the inadequate and imprecise pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy.” Ross and other women of color feminists created a comprehensive and powerful new framework called Reproductive Justice.

Image: We Remember: African American Women are for Reproductive Freedom, statement organized by Loretta Ross and signed by Eleanor Holmes Norton, and others, 1989

Illustrations by Clyde Gilliam/text by Women of Color Partnership of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice/reproduction courtesy Planned Parenthood Federation of America
This statement calling for reproductive freedom was organized by Loretta Ross in 1989 and signed by several of DC’s leading Black feminists, including Eleanor Holmes Norton and Dorothy Height. They vowed to remember the many Black women who died after back-alley abortions and to protect Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973.

Image: SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective pamphlet, undated

Nkenge Touré Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Lorretta Ross and Nkenge Touré have been members of SisterSong since its founding in 1997. The Atlanta-based organization seeks to strengthen the voices of women of color in the campaign for reproductive justice, including access to safe contraception, abortion, infertility treatments as well as an end to involuntary sterilization.

Next Section

As you leave this covered passageway, you’ll travel immediately to your left to enter the very center of the exhibition. The next QR code will be on the first wall to your right.