How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Author:Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, Social Science
ISBN: 9781608468683
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2017-11-19T23:00:00+00:00

DEMITA FRAZIER

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: To begin with, when did you begin to start identifying as a feminist?

DEMITA FRAZIER: This question is so interesting to me because I did not have a word for the way I was feeling, or my thoughts, but when I was sixteen, I left high school after being involved in the antiwar effort at my high school, and being essentially one of a handful of students of color who were sent back to their home high schools for being seditious, basically. So in Chicago—this is post-Brown, so this is ten years after Brown v. Board of Education. Chicago, I guess, was finally getting around—and I think two classes before mine—so the eighth-grade graduating class of ’64—and maybe going back as far as ’62—there was this program that they created—the board of education created the permissive transfer program. And this was set up to desegregate the—for all intents and purposes—we took a test. It was a citywide test, and it was like the Boston Latin test. If you passed the test, you would be permitted to transfer out of your neighborhood Black school—your neighborhood Black middle-class school, by the way—and go to the white upper-middle-class and upper-class schools on the North Side. You know, Chicago is a pretty segregated town. So, this meant going to schools in areas that were completely foreign and new to me. So through the permissive transfer program, I got accepted in four, and chose Nicholas Senn.

And why did you choose Senn?

I don’t know. I can’t remember. I think—I want to say it was because of two things. They had a very strong music program. They were known in the city as having won all these choral competitions. They had a full orchestra. A full band. And they also had a very, very strong academic status—I would have to say it was like a Boston Latin, in that like 99 percent of the students who graduated were accepted into college. And it was in Rogers Park, which was, at that time one, of the largest concentrations, outside of New York, of Holocaust survivors. So the heavily Jewish community. And for African American people, that awareness that these people had survived so much—knowing that these are smart people and they, like us, really cared about their children’s education and about their school—that was another reason why I’m pretty sure my family was—not my family, but I think my mom—and I don’t—you can’t quote her because she’s dead, but I’m pretty sure it was—all of that was in the mix. Also, from my grammar school, I think there was a cohort of the graduating class, probably a cohort of more than twenty-five of the hundred of us, who were accepted in these fancy schools. My elementary school, Park Manor, was firmly in the Black lower middle class, with a good teaching staff and a solid administration—was kind of you know—did you read the book, by the way, Negroland by Margo Jefferson?

No.

You should—I mean, I would invite

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