Barbara Smith is a leading figure of Black feminism in the United States, and is one of the founders of the Black Lesbian Feminist group The Combahee River Collective. Smith is the editor of the book Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983), an anthology of lesbian and Black feminist thoughts by foremost Black feminist writers.
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
In 1980, encouraged by a conversation with her friend Audre Lorde, Smith founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in Boston, aiming to be a publisher for all women of color. In “A Press of Our Own Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press,” Smith states that Kitchen Table’s main goal is to inform and educate people of color with a high priority to focus on women of color. Smith considers the Kitchen Table as a “revolutionary tool” that empowers the “most dispossessed people” who possess “the greatest potential.”
In the interview on August 6, 2023, Smith explained how Kitchen Table laid the groundwork for subsequent successes of the women’s movement and of the LGBTQIA+ movement in the 1980s.
