The Combahee River Collective disbanded in 1980, but their emphasis on a written record helped the collective’s work find a home within academia, contributing to its continued popularity. In the intervening decades, though, the surviving members have seen their statement get chopped and screwed into morsels, divorced from its context. Notably, Okazawa-Rey points to the statement’s most quoted line, “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression,” as a point of common misunderstanding. “There’s a line about for Black women to be free, the institutions would have to be changed,” Okawaza-Rey said. “So if you change the institutions to be non-misogynist and non-racist, then all women would be free. This is what we’re saying: not that we’re the most oppressed, and if we are free, then everybody will be free.”
They were not precious: Smith started our conversation by announcing, “We are facing horrors, horrors untold.” But so many of them are, sadly, the horrors we already know, the same ones the Collective had sought to address. (Each of them pointed to issues that they had failed to cover, like trans rights, land reclamation by Native peoples, and disability justice.) When I asked about the efficacy of the text, its ability to endure, Okawaza-Rey turned it around on me — the Statement wasn’t just an ideology; it was a blueprint. As soon as it stopped serving me, it would be time to pick up my pen. “My question, Jazmine, to you and people of your generation is: What’s the statement you would write now?”