Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

In the fifth essay, Kelley focuses on the vision and contributions of Black women to Black radical movements for liberation. He opens the essay with a discussion of how Black women have often been ignored by the American Left in general and the Black radical movement specifically. The American Left often treats the Black community as a monolith, a vision Kelley describes as “ostensibly gender-neutral” (137). While early Black feminists did push back against this conception, it wasn’t contested more systematically until the late 1960s and early 1970. Kelley clarifies that he views Black feminists as distinct from the broader feminist movement not because they didn’t engage with the movement as a whole, but rather because they have racial, class, and gender critiques specific to their experience.

In the section entitled “Smashers of Myth […] Destroyers of Illusion,” Kelley details the contributions and struggles of Black women during what is known as “second wave” feminism, a period spanning from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, which was focused on equality and gender discrimination. He notes that despite figures like Florynce “Flo” Kennedy being founding members of the National Organization for Women (NOW), a key second-wave feminist organization, mainstream and radical feminist groups at this time, such as the New York Radical Women group, did not specifically address the concerns of Black women.