WChakaia Booker is an internationally renowned and widely collected American sculptor known for creating monumental, abstract works for both the gallery and outdoor public spaces. Booker’s works are contained in more than 40 public collections and have been exhibited across the US, in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Booker was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Art in 2001. Booker has lived and worked in New York City’s East Village since the early 1980’s and maintains a production studio in Allentown, PA.
WKimberlé Williams Crenshaw is an American lawyer, civil rights advocate, philosopher, and a leading scholar of critical race theory. She is a full-time professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues. Crenshaw is also the founder of Columbia Law School's Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies (CISPS) and the African American Policy Forum (AAPF), as well as the president of the Berlin-based Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ).
WRokhaya Diallo, is a French journalist, author, filmmaker, and activist for racial, gender and religious equality. According to The New York Times, she is “one of France's most prominent anti-racism activists.” She is a BET-France host and has produced and/or directed documentaries, television and radio programs. She has published: Racism: a guide, France Belongs to Us, France: One and Multicultural and How to talk to kids about racism, a graphic novel Pari(s) d'Amies, and Afro! featuring Afro-Parisians who wear natural hairstyles.
WDemita Frazier is a Black Feminist, thought leader, writer, teacher, and social justice activist. She is a founding member of the Combahee River Collective (CRC). While it has been more than forty years since the Combahee River Collective released their Black Feminist Statement, Frazier has remained committed to the "lifetime of work and struggle" for liberation for all.
WAmandine Gay is a French feminist, filmmaker, researcher and actress. Her first film Ouvrir la Voix is a documentary giving voice to Black women in France that aims to give an other approach of feminist movements.
WDuchess Harris is an African-American academic, author, and legal scholar. She is a professor of American Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, specializing in Black feminism, Law of the United States, and African American political movements.
WOlive Elaine Morris was a Jamaican-born British-based community leader and activist in the feminist, Black nationalist, and squatters' rights campaigns of the 1970s. Morris was a key organiser in the Black Women's Movement in the United Kingdom, co-founding the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent in London and support groups in Manchester. She joined the British Black Panthers and squatted 121 Railton Road in Brixton.
WSAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women was a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal which was published by the Sage Women's Educational Press. It was established in 1984 by co-editors-in-chief Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Patricia Bell-Scott. It was "the only journal of its kind devoted exclusively to the experience of black women", and its operations had been completely overseen by black women. The journal was published from 1984 until 1995.
W#SayHerName is a social movement that seeks to raise awareness for black female victims of police brutality and anti-black violence in the United States. Black women are 17% more likely to be stopped by police and 1.5 times more likely to be killed than their white counterparts. #SayHerName aims to highlight the gender-specific ways in which black women are disproportionately affected by fatal acts of racial injustice. In an effort to create a large social media presence alongside existing racial justice campaigns, such as #BlackLivesMatter and #BlackGirlsMatter, the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) coined the hashtag #SayHerName in December 2014.
WBarbara Smith is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in Black feminism in the United States. 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.
WKeeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an American academic, writer, and activist. She is a professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016). For this book, Taylor received the 2016 Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book from the Lannan Foundation. Taylor is an activist for Black lives and focuses her work in this area, which has included several articles and books.
WGloria Daisy Wekker is an Afro-Surinamese Dutch emeritus professor and writer who has focused on gender studies and sexuality in the Afro-Caribbean region and diaspora. She was the winner of the Ruth Benedict Prize from the American Anthropological Association in 2007.
WWomanism is a social theory based on the history and everyday experiences of black women. It seeks, according to womanist scholar Layli Maparyan (Phillips), to "restore the balance between people and the environment/nature and reconcil[e] human life with the spiritual dimension". Writer Alice Walker coined the term "womanist" in a short story, "Coming Apart", in 1979. Since Walker's initial use, the term has evolved to envelop varied, and often opposing, interpretations of concepts such as feminism, men, and blackness.