BARBARA SMITH

Barbara Smith has played a groundbreaking role in opening up a national, cultural, and political dialogue about the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender. She has been politically active in many movements for social justice since the 1960s. Her extensive writings and activism as an independent book publisher made her among the first to define an African American women’s literary tradition and to build Black women’s studies and Black feminism in the United States. In recognition of her four decades of efforts as an author, activist and independent scholar, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, one of one thousand women from all over the globe who were nominated to call attention to women’s extreme underrepresentation as recipients of this honor. She was co-founder and publisher until 1995 of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, one of the first U.S. publishers for women of color. She resides in Albany, New York, where she is a Public Service Professor in the School of Social Welfare at the University at Albany and served two terms as a member of the City of Albany’s Common Council.  A collection of her essays, The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom, was published by Rutgers University Press in 1998.

"We wanted a women's movement that reflected our own experience."