Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, and: Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, DC (review)

In recent years, the history of second-wave feminism has taken yet another new turn. Starting in the 1990s and early 2000s, frequently drawing on oral history, a second generation of feminist scholars began to challenge the notion of a hegemonic feminism dominated by white women (see Feminist Studies 28, no. 2 (2002) and especially Becky Thompson, “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism,” pp. 337–61). They both problematized the accepted classification of different feminisms of mainly white women (reform, radical, cultural, socialist, anarchist, etc.) and began to document the vibrant feminismS of women of color. Most recently, this new generation of historians of second-wave feminism is writing another chapter in the challenge to the earlier somewhat uncomplicated histories, documenting the ways in which diverse feminists were engaged in coalition building. Feminist Coalitions documents some of this history, with several of the essays authored by scholars who have produced book-length studies, including Valk, whose book is featured in this review.

Neither Valk’s book nor Feminist Coalitions is an “oral history book” that places oral history narratives at the center; nor do any of the authors widely quote or, with just one exception, precisely reference their interview sources. The forty-three interviews that Valk lists in her bibliography seem to serve mainly to steep her in the worlds of the groups she was studying, occasionally drawing directly on them to round out the backgrounds of some of the key players. Although an oral history is cited here or there in various essays in Feminist Coalitions, I will focus on the three that do draw explicitly on interviews and the oral history projects of their authors.

In “Reconsidering Violence Against Women: Coalition Politics in the Antirape Movement,” Bevacqua notes that although rape was first articulated in consciousness-raising sessions of radical feminists in 1970, it ultimately “served as a bridge issue that brought together radical, liberal, African American, and white feminists in a shared struggle to address sexual violence” (166). Combining interviews with archival sources, she traces how the links were first made in various parts of the country between radical and liberal feminists and the significant role played by rape crisis centers.

To elaborate the role of African-American women and the alliances that were made, Bevacqua draws especially on her interviews with Nkege Toure and Loretta Ross of the DC Rape Crisis Center, the two black staff members brought in by the “politically minded” white women who founded the center (171). By taking information about rape and the center to their communities, these two community organizers helped to create a safe space in the center for women of color to meet and organize. Bevacqua’s essay does not oversimplify the process of building alliances across political and racial lines, nor does she assume that all it takes are “a few good women.” Rather, her essay challenges scholars of the women’s movement “to reconsider the historical focus on division over cooperation,” harking back to a comment by one of her narrators, Loretta Ross, that failure to do so “amounts to inaccuracy in the historical record” (174).

Like Bevacqua, Tamara Carroll explicitly notes that she bases her essay, “Unlikely Allies: Forging a Multiracial, Class-Based Women’s Movement in 1970s Brooklyn,” on organizational records and oral history interviews, which she quotes extensively. Additionally, she is the only author of the four discussed here who both correctly and completely cites the interviews (noting not only when and where they were conducted but also where they are deposited). Unlike the groups studied by Nadasen, Bevacqua, or Valk, the cross-race working class National Congress of Neighborhood Women...