June 2, 1863: Harriet Tubman led 150 African American Union troops in the Combahee River Raid, freeing 750 enslaved people. This made her the first woman to lead a major U.S. military operation. In the process, Tubman and her troops set fire to numerous South Carolina plantations, burning them to the ground. These events inspired the creation of “The Combahee River Collective” in 1974. The group outlines its approach as follows: “The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.”
Citations: Kahlil Chism, “Harriet Tubman: Spy, Veteran, and Widow,” OAH Magazine of History 19, no. 2 (March 2005): 47, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25163763; Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Collective Statement,” April 1977, https://americanstudies.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Keyword%20Coalition_Readings.pdf; John G. Darby, “Harriet Tubman,” wood engraving (location unknown, c. 1868), Creative Commons https://www.si.edu/object/harriet-tubman:npg_NPG.2006.31.
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