each other’s

overshadowed gender issues in the minds of most African-American fe-

male civil rights activists of this era.”67 This was particularly true as the
Black Power movement made headway among young black activists.
The debate in SNCC at the time and subsequently was also about sex.
Ruby Doris Smith Robinson’s concerns about the confusion that white
women might bring to the project related in part to the specter of interra-
cial romantic relationships. They were disruptive and hurtful to black
women and dangerous for black men. And, of course, Carmichael’s joke
suggested that SNCC women should be available and prone for sex. Un-
surprisingly, one of the most explosive boundaries tested during Freedom
Summer was that of sexuality. In the midst of the danger and close prox-
imity in which movement workers lived, heterosexual sexual attraction
and curiosity thrived. Heterosexual romance and sexual involvements,
particularly between black male southerners and white female volunteers,
usually northern, generated tensions.68 Interestingly, this is one of the few
s stories where white men are present but effectively absent or side-
lined. White men undoubtedly had romantic attachments with black
women, but I have found almost no written evidence.69 Given white
southerners’ obsession with interracial sex, these romantic and sexual en-
counters represented real danger for civil rights workers and the people
they were trying to organize. The history of this fixation on interracial
sex, particularly black men’s desire for white women, dates back to slavery
when white slave owners imagined that their male slaves desired white
women. The creation of ideologies in which African Americans were
oversexed and desirous of whites obfuscated whites’ oppression of and
interest in blacks. Racist whites, particularly white men, developed a
virtual panic and pathology about interracial sex, convinced that, above
all, what black men wanted was “their” white women. Summarizing Free-
dom Summer volunteers’ letters home, SNCC volunteer and author Eliza-
beth Sutherland wrote that southern whites were afraid of each other,
afraid of Negroes, afraid of the volunteers, and haunted by sex and the
nearness of whites and blacks: “Entwined with the fear was the obsession
of sex; almost every conversation between the volunteers and local white
people came around to that theme in the end. It seemed to run so deep
that the Mississippians could not bear the sight of physical nearness be-
tween Negro and white even when the sexes were not mixed.”70
Racial mores in the south enforced rigid segregation, and any breach
was dangerous. One of the points of , a film about
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Old Mole
135
the racial tensions that plagued the city during the decade, the group’s
emergence was remarkable. In and , the citywide busing crisis
had developed when whites in South Boston violently taunted and at-
tacked black children who were being bused from their neighborhoods to
school there, based on a court order to desegregate the public schools. Po-
lice had to escort the buses and children to school. Reminiscent of hateful
white southern segregationists defending their white turf, it suggested
that virulent racism thrived just under the surface of public life. Boston’s
busing problem confirmed the city’s blatant racism and created serious
enmity toward and fear of whites among African Americans, a situation
reminiscent of white southern segregationists’ attacks on the civil rights
movement. Barbara Smith remarked that when she moved to Boston in
, “It was absolutely known that as a Black person you did not go to
South Boston. You did not go to East Boston. You did not go to Chelsea.
. . . It was really frightening, if one got lost in those neighborhoods try-
ing to go from one place to another.”13
In , twelve black women and one white woman were murdered be-
tween January and May in the predominantly black Boston neighborhoods
of Roxbury and Dorchester. In late winter, black feminists and female com-
munity activists, with white feminist support, mobilized out of fear and
rage at the police and the media, which had downplayed the murders. They
were especially incensed that the police maintained that most of the
women were prostitutes, whose cases were not linked, and at the media’s
unquestioning acceptance of this story. Activist women called a meeting at
Women, Inc., a community-based substance abuse program for women
and their children in Roxbury led by Kattie Portis, the community activist.
Portis was one of the central organizers of the Coalition for Women’s
Safety.14 Her acceptance of a multiracial women’s group influenced the
coalition, which met often at Women, Inc. Most of the white women in-
volved were from community-based groups, such as Green Light in Dorch-
ester, a safe house program for abused women; feminist Take Back the
Night demonstration organizers; and City Life, a racially mixed commu-
nity organization in Jamaica Plain organized by New Left and feminist ac-
tivists. The group, based on local grassroots participation and comprising a
spectrum of the community, eventually became the Coalition for Women’s
Safety, a multiracial, multiethnic, almost entirely female activist group. It
was designed to publicize the cases, the police inaction, the danger to
women, and the racism and sexism of those in power.
 supportive, non-judgmental atmospheres to deal with our
racism through an exploration of personal issues around racism.
We can no longer afford to deal with racism at arm’s length, nor
can we continue to ask women of color to help us with a
problem which is uniquely our own. All workshop facilitators
will have participated in similar anti-racism workshops in recent
months in preparation for these sensitive meetings.

Tia Cross was one of the trainers for and leaders of the morning work-
shops. Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Demita Frazier, Mercedes Tomp-
kins, Margo Okazawa-Rey, and Evelynn Hammonds were among the
Combahee-affiliated women involved, as were many white women who
had been in Bread and Roses. Women of color used the morning time
for the “Women of Color: Barriers and Bridges” workshop to “discuss the
barriers that separate us such as: racism, class privilege, educational privi-
lege, color, language, culture and sexual preference” and to “bring out the
positive links and bridges that exist and can be used to build networks
among women of color.”58
Boston NEWSA coordinators Professors Laurie Crumpacker, Marcia
Folsom, and Ann Froines expected about attendees and were over-
whelmed when double that number showed up. Attendees had to impro-
vise in terms of process and space, sitting on floors, windowsills, any-
where they could find. For the morning session, hundreds of women
“who could not fit into the pre-planned groups heard a presentation on
the learning of racism by whites, and then formed self-assigned groups
for white working class women, Jewish, Catholic, Italian women, women
who grew up in the South, or who were raised by black women, or
were/are part of multi-racial families.” Coordinators, planners, and atten-
dees remember the conference as “intense, sometimes fruitful, sometimes
frustrating” but “extremely productive.” Folsom noted that one measure
of the conference’s success was the “unexpectedly high level of atten-
dance,” which was also reflected in the “excitement and intense involve-
ment throughout the conference. Sometimes this intensity boiled over
into tears or anger, but for the most part the volatile and deeply emotional
topic of racism evoked a seriousness of purpose and a sense of ardent lis-
tening to each other.” People remember their nervousness, anger, interest,
and efforts to identify themselves. They recall impassioned talking in
packed classrooms and sitting on a floor or standing in a classroom listen-
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 

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225
 The
Feminist Memoir Project

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical

Women of Color

We
Conditions: Five
Living for the Revolution
Further to Fly: Black Women and the
Politics of Empowerment

The Future of Differ-

ence

On Our Own Terms: Race, Class and Gender in the Lives of

African American Women

Signs
Too Heavy a Load
When and Where Living for the
Revolution
Too Heavy a Load
Living for the Revolution
Black
Scholar
A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story
Women’s Review of Books
Sojourner
sic
Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman

“Together” Black Women

Signs

Home Girls
Index