AP African American Studies: Black Feminist Movement, Womanism, and Intersectionality (Drill 28)

Question 1. Which of the following best describes the central argument of the Combahee River Collective Statement?

• A) Black women should form a separate political party to advance their distinct interests.
• B) The mainstream feminist movement had successfully incorporated Black women’s concerns by 1977.
• C) Black women should prioritize racial justice over gender equality to maintain solidarity with Black men.
• D) Racial, gender, class, and sexual oppressions are interconnected and must be addressed simultaneously. ✓

Explanation: The Statement explicitly calls for an “integrated analysis” of “interlocking” systems of oppression, race, gender, class, and sexuality, arguing that Black women face all of these simultaneously. (C) is the strongest distractor because it reflects a real historical pressure placed on Black women in some Civil Rights and Black nationalist spaces, where they were urged to subordinate gender concerns to racial solidarity. As written, though, it is a normative prescription, not a verifiable historical fact, so it is plausible because it echoes a genuine historical dynamic, not because the claim itself is true. (B) is historically false, the collective formed precisely because mainstream feminism had not incorporated Black women’s perspectives. (A) invents a claim the document never makes; the collective described a political identity and practice, not a party structure. [Skill 2A, Identifying claims and arguments in a source]

Question 2. Which of the following best explains why the Combahee River Collective Statement was a significant departure from mainstream second-wave feminism?

• A) It centered the experiences of Black women rather than treating gender as the sole axis of oppression. ✓
• B) It called for the dissolution of all existing civil rights organizations.
• C) It was the first feminist document to argue that women deserved equal pay for equal work within this feminist debate.
• D) It firmly rejected the use of any legal strategies to challenge discrimination.

Explanation: Second-wave mainstream feminism (largely led by white women) tended to prioritize gender as the primary, or only, axis of oppression, often marginalizing the specific experiences of Black women who faced racial and class oppression as well. The Collective’s insistence on interlocking oppressions directly challenged that framework. (C) is historically true of earlier feminist organizing but is not what this document addressed; it functions as the true-but-irrelevant distractor. (D) is false, the Collective did not reject legal strategies. (B) is invented, no such call appears in the statement. [Skill 2B, Source perspective and purpose]

Question 3. Alice Walker’s concept of “womanism” is best understood as similar to Black feminism in that both

• A) emphasized electoral politics as the main avenue for achieving racial and gender justice in this period.
• B) argued that class struggle was the primary driver of Black women’s oppression.
• C) rejected any engagement at all with predominantly white feminist organizations.
• D) centered Black women’s experiences and affirmed their agency, beauty, and cultural traditions. ✓

Explanation: Womanism, articulated by Alice Walker in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983), shares with Black feminism the insistence that Black women’s lives, experiences, and cultural traditions deserve affirmation and analysis on their own terms. Walker coined the term partly to capture what she saw as a specifically Black and Southern cultural sensibility. (C) overstates both movements, neither categorically rejected coalition or engagement with other organizations. (B) elevates class above the multi-axis analysis both frameworks employ. (A) is false for both, neither womanism nor Black feminist theory centrally emphasized electoral politics as the primary strategy. [Skill 1A, Applying disciplinary knowledge]

Question 4. Kimberlé Crenshaw developed the concept of “intersectionality” primarily to address which of the following limitations in existing legal and political frameworks?

• A) Black feminist organizations had not produced sufficient scholarship to influence legal theory.
• B) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had explicitly excluded Black women from its protections.
• C) Legal and political frameworks that treated race and gender as separate categories failed to capture the distinct experiences of Black women facing both simultaneously. ✓
• D) Courts had simply not yet issued any ruling establishing that gender discrimination in the workplace was illegal under federal law.

Explanation: Crenshaw introduced intersectionality in her 1989 article examining a case where Black women at General Motors were excluded from discrimination claims because the company employed white women (disproving gender discrimination) and Black men (disproving race discrimination), but not Black women. Single-axis frameworks rendered their specific situation invisible. (D) is historically false, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) had already prohibited sex discrimination. (B) is also false, the Act was broadly worded; the problem Crenshaw identified was in how courts interpreted and applied it. (A) is a distractor that conflates scholarly production with legal recognition, Black feminist scholarship was substantial by the 1980s. Note: (D) and (B) are both false but may seem plausible to students who do not know the exact content of Crenshaw’s argument. [Skill 3A, Formulating and supporting a claim using evidence]

Question 5. Which of the following best illustrates the continuity between earlier Black women’s activism and the emergence of Black feminism in the 1970s–80s?

• A) Earlier Black women's activists worked primarily in Northern cities, while Black feminism emerged in the rural South.
• B) Both earlier activists and Black feminists demanded that racial justice address women’s rights and gender equality as inseparable concerns. ✓
• C) Both earlier activists and Black feminists rejected the idea that Black women could lead political organizations.
• D) Earlier Black women’s activism was focused entirely on electoral politics, while Black feminism shifted toward cultural criticism in this context.

Explanation: Leaders such as Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Sojourner Truth, and Fannie Lou Hamer had all, in different eras, insisted that the struggles for racial justice and women’s rights were intertwined. Black feminism in the 1970s–80s extended this tradition with new theoretical frameworks like intersectionality. (C) is false, both eras featured Black women’s organizational leadership. (D) creates a false contrast, earlier activists engaged in cultural, legal, and community work, not exclusively electoral politics. (A) is geographically inaccurate in both directions. [Skill 1C, Identifying patterns and continuity across time]