From Introduction and Chapter Two:
Internal Political Education

It was the ‘60s and revolution permeated through the air. Numerous political and social justice organizations, too many to count, popped up throughout the United States and declared their rage against the political machinery of the establishment. To build a revolution, radical youth joined leftist organizations to work within the Civil Rights movement, the Black Power movement, the movement against the Vietnam War, and the list goes on. Revolution often involved the destruction of Eurocentric models of social change, replaced by a Third World model opposed to racism and imperialist war. Radicals recognized that such a revolution was linked to the colonized people around the world, including uprisings in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In this context, interracial solidarity became a powerful anthem.

Yet many organizations that embraced the Third World model were locked into narrow nationalist politics. In addition, radical groups like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP), and I Wor Kuen (IWK) were racially homogenous and dominated by male cliques.(1) These groups could only imagine Third World solidarity and had very little to say about Third World women. The disjuncture between movement ideals and movement practices created vast contradictions.

One remarkable exception to this pattern was the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), 1970-1980.(2) Although the organization grew out of SNCC, it developed into an organization for women of color activists within the United States.(3) It was an alliance of Asian American, Black, and Latina women united against racism, sexism, and economic exploitation. The TWWA sought to unify women across racial and ethnic lines and directed all of its attention to the struggles of Third World women both in the United States and internationally. In a press release issued August 26, 1970, the TWWA explained the decision to limit membership to women of color:

"We are the most oppressed group in this society. We are oppressed because we are poor. We are women. And we are not white. Third World women when they are able to get jobs, always have it worst because they are being paid low wages, forced into overtime, and are threatened with the loss of their jobs if they stay out one day. These women are the ones who slave in the garment center, at the Telephone Company, and in factories."(4)

Despite differences among their specific racial and ethnic identities, the TWWA’s members unified for common struggles against oppression. The unifying spirit of interracial solidarity amongst Third World women was the driving force behind their organizing, activism, and way of life. They based solidarity upon consciousness-raising, political education and information sharing. TWWA sisters mobilized women of color around reproductive freedom, civil rights, the Vietnam War and the forced sterilization of Black and Puerto Rican women.

As radical organizations go, the Third World Women’s Alliance was at the forefront. Unapologetically unified as women of color, its members transcended the narrowness of revolutionary nationalism and intensified its commitment to fighting all forms of oppression. In fact, amongst radical organizations the TWWA was one of the earliest examples of people of color organizing across racial-ethnic lines. Nevertheless the TWWA’s history, like that of most women of color, has been largely ignored or unnoticed by dominant narratives of revolutionary activity in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Historiography

The history of the Third World Women’s Alliance has recently been recorded in several books and articles, including Benita Roth’s Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (2004), Kimberly Springer’s Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizing, 1968-1970 (2005), and Stephen Ward’s “The Third World Women’s Alliance: Black Feminist Radicalism and Black Power Politics” (2006).(5)

Sociologist Benita Roth discusses the TWWA in the larger context of the “second wave” feminist movement during the 1960s and 1970s. She challenges the long-held belief that feminism was a white and middle-class movement. Instead, Roth argues “…that the second wave has to be understood as a group of feminisms, movements made by activist women that were largely organizationally distinct from one another, and from the beginning, largely organized along racial/ethnic lines.”(6) She broadens and pluralizes the scope of feminism to include Black women and Chicanas. Here, the TWWA is discussed as a Black feminist organization that was active in the anti-sexist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist movements.

Historian Kimberley Springer also provides insight into the history of the TWWA. Springer discusses the TWWA in the company of four other Black feminist organizations active during the same period, including the National Black Feminist Organization, the National Alliance of Black Feminists, the Combahee River Collective, and Black Women Organized for Action.(7) As she describes it, the TWWA emerged in response to Black women’s marginalization in the Black Power and women’s movements. Like Roth, she uses the TWWA to illustrate a broader definition of feminism that includes Black women.

Similarly, historian Stephen Ward situates the TWWA within the narratives of both feminism and the Black Power movement. Ward claims that “[B]lack feminism is a component of the Black Power Movement’s ideological legacy.”(8) He disputes the notion that Black feminism and Black Power were two separate political trends. Instead, Ward argues:

"[T]he TWWA’s feminism was not simply a critique of Black Power politics but, rather, a form of it. The members of TWWA were simultaneously feminist activists and Black Power activists, and they crafted a multipositional political space through which they fashioned feminist politics that also theorized and enacted central ideological commitments of the Black Power Movement as part of their feminist politics."(9)

While Roth, Springer, and Ward provide valuable examinations of the history of the organization, there is a glaring oversight in their analyses that cannot be ignored. Although they acknowledge the eventual presence of its Asian American and Latina members, they treat the TWWA as a Black women’s organization, exploring its roots in the Black Power movement instead of the independent program it developed and focusing exclusively on the activity of the TWWA’s African American members. This approach ignores what is arguably the group’s most significant achievement --- its pioneering work in defining common ground among women of color. 

Methodology

My involvement with the history of the Third World Women’s Alliance is based on a series of seemingly disconnected but ultimately fortunate events. I was first introduced to the TWWA in Benita Roth’s Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave during my first year of graduate studies. Roth’s work on the “separate roads” women took in the feminist movement is important in its naming of women of color involved in the movement years. This introduction, albeit rather sparse with respect to the TWWA’s history, was the first fortunate event.

The second involved Oakland and the Women of Color Resource Center (WCRC), where I was an intern in the summer of 2006. When my work for the WCRC began, I did not know of its historical connection to the Third World Women’s Alliance.(10) With the help of its director and former TWWA member, Linda Burnham, I soon found myself rummaging through meticulous archival materials and discovering facets of the TWWA’s history that were not mentioned in Roth, Springer or Ward’s accounts.

Yet I would say the most fortunate event was being born a Korean woman. Although I came to this project somewhat unfamiliar with the Third World Women’s Alliance, I could relate to the members’ experiences. Their history of oppression felt very similar to my own history. Racism, sexism and exploitation are as pertinent for me and my generation of women of color as they were for the TWWA. As a result, many of the sisters I interviewed expressed relief and appreciation that I, as a woman of color, am writing this history. My hope then is that these stories will unite several generations of women of color and suggest models for our future organizing.

The bulk of my research was achieved in the archives housed at the Women of Color Resource Center. I was given access to TWWA’s newspaper, Triple Jeopardy, newsletters, working papers, and photos. The archives brought to life an organization where sisterhood was celebrated, political ideologies were sharpened, and leadership skills were developed. Oral histories also were essential to my research. I spoke with seven former sisters of the Third World Women’s Alliance from both the New York and Bay Area chapters. I was able to conduct taped interviews with Frances M. Beal, Linda Burnham, Milagros Huth, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, Patricia Romney, Grace Shimizu, and Zelmo Toro. I also had access to Loretta J. Ross’s interview with Linda Burnham for Smith College’s The Voices of Feminism Oral History Project.(11) The Women of Color Resource Center also gave me access to the video recording of the Seventh Annual Sisters of Fire Awards honoring the Third World Women’s Alliance.(12) The sisters provided various stories and perspectives on how they saw the Alliance. It was compelling to see in what areas they agreed with one another and in what areas they disagreed.

The sisters discussed here tell the story of an organization of Third World women in the United States who believed in, as one working paper noted, “join[ing] together to strengthen the good and contest the bad. Where there is unity there is strength, and where there is strength and unity there is power.”(13)

Post-Graduate Education: “You didn’t learn this at school.”(14)

Learning from their experiences in male-run movements where the atmosphere was at times hostile, the TWWA made a conscious effort to create an environment that cultivated the learning process in order that all of its sisters could participate in the discussions. If they did not take such steps, as Frances Beal remembers, “all the Black women would talk and the Puerto Rican women would just sit there with one or two exceptions. We had to be much more careful about really bringing people [in] and insisting on other points of view. We said, ‘Some of us can think really quick and fast, but that doesn’t mean [we] think more deeply.’”(15) The learning environment was important because it allowed women to, as Cheryl Perry-League observes, “engage in discussion and dialogue [and] for women to feel no matter how they said [it] or which way they said it, it was safe.”(16) The “safety” of the TWWA allowed both experienced and inexperienced activists to get involved without the latter feeling intimidated. The TWWA, for Milagros Huth, “made it easier to learn from each other…and to trust [each other].”(17)

The sisters of the TWWA felt that to nurture and build a workable Third World women’s organization meant intensive training in revolutionary ideology. This included a focus on Third World politics. The revolutionary parties in the Third World, mainly China, Cuba, and Vietnam, offered a vibrant alternative to the shortcomings of communism based on the model of the Soviet Union. The TWWA felt that Soviet communism represented an old leftist way of thinking. Especially, in communities of color, a pro-Soviet communism signaled feelings of white elitism.(18) Thus, Romney and other sisters of the TWWA defined their politics as socialists:

"We understood was that there would be no real communism until all the world [was] socialist…even though there was a Communist Party in the United States, we considered ourselves socialists and we thought could not advance to the level of communism till all societies around the world became socialists."(19)

Still, the TWWA did not explicitly label itself as a socialist organization. It encouraged its members to study revolutionary thinkers. Works by Mao Tse Tung, Friedrich Engels, and also Karl Marx were all vital to sisters’ course of study. Many of the sisters were given copies of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung, otherwise known as the Little Red Book, and encouraged to read Mao’s various articles on social reform. Several sisters also took classes on Maoism from SNCC’s former executive secretary, James Forman.(20) Forman gave Cheryl Perry-League her first Little Red Book in one of these classes.(21) However, the TWWA did not subscribe to one specific theory; instead it encouraged the study of all revolutionary theories that were pertinent to its anti-racist, anti-sexist,and anti-imperialist program.

The “safety” of the organization did not stymie the members’ growth. In fact, the environment that the TWWA created encouraged them to step out of their comfort zones. In interviews many sisters comment that the history of different peoples and nations was something they were unfamiliar with before joining the organization. Even the history of their own race and culture was difficult to come by. As Linda Burnham states, “Some of us may have gone out of our way to find something about our own histories, but we certainly [didn’t] know squat about anybody else’s.”(22) Patricia Romney further comments, “We never read a book by a person of color all the way through college; I never read a book by any person of color. Nothing. Zilch.”(23) Histories of people of color, let alone those written by people of color, were not commonplace. It is easy to forget that the sisters were active in a period when ethnic studies programs did not exist. It was not until 1969, during the period of the TWWA’s inception, that the first programs were established at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State. Many of TWWA’s sisters, including Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, took part in the demonstrations to establish such programs.

The organization provided the space where members had the opportunity to learn from each others’ histories and struggles and forge solidarity out of commonalities. However, solidarity in any form, much less across racial lines, is much easier to speak of than to establish. The TWWA sisters understood this. As their newsletter noted, they did not simply “assume commonalities and collective understanding.”(24) Instead, solidarity was created through hard work.

In an effort to educate one another, members of the TWWA’s New York chapter met at St. Peter’s Church in Manhattan every Tuesday evening throughout the year. Twice a month the chapter held open meetings that non-members were allowed to attend, including men. At other times, the meetings were reserved for TWWA members only. At these meetings, the sisters wrote and painstakingly laid out their newsletters, prepared for demonstrations, and even watched political films. The meetings were largely informational sessions where various topics were discussed, and at the top of the agenda were the struggles of Third World women and their communities.

The TWWA in New York made a conscious effort to educate members about the struggles of all Third World women in the United States. But struggles of Puerto Rican and Black women got the lion’s share of attention because members of the New York chapter were mainly of Puerto Rican and Black descent.

Puerto Rican history was a topic of discussion from the group’s earliest meetings. As Frances Beal recalls, “We began working with each other, having classes…some of our Puerto Rican sisters would give us presentations relative to Puerto Rican history.”(25) Beal continues:

"[W]e learned about the history of Spanish colonialism, the war of 1898, and how Puerto Rico became a protectorate of the United States along with Cuba and the Philippines. You know, we didn’t know anything about these things before then, and we learned about the Puerto Rican people’s struggle for independence and liberation. So starting with the Spanish and then through the years of United States rule and then there was a very active independence movement at that time. People were calling for Puerto Rican independence, and that is where we learned about some of the Puerto Rican heroes... We didn’t know anything about these types of things."(26)

As Beal emphasizes, much of this history was not written or talked about outside Puerto Rican communities. Because many TWWA sisters continued to be active within the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, the struggles of Puerto Rican people were a persistent topic in the TWWA’s political discussions.

The TWWA focused especially on Puerto Rican women’s history of oppression, however. This was an eye-opening topic for the organization’s Black sisters, who saw familiar patterns in Puerto Rican women’s experiences. When Puerto Rican sisters brought to light the sterilization of Puerto Rican women, Black sisters learned astonishing statistics. As Beal remembers, “At the point when we were dealing with [those issues], over one-third [of] Puerto Rican women had been sterilized.”(27) In turn, one of the things Puerto Rican women learned from their Black sisters was the similar pattern of sterilization abuse of Black women that went on in the South.(28)

The sisters also identified commonalities in the ways Black and Puerto Rican women were perceived in their communities. Recalling TWWA discussions of the Catholic Church’s impact on Puerto Rican women, Frances Beal comments that Catholicism encouraged dichotomous thinking about female sexuality: “Mary Magdalene versus the Virgin Mary. [Puerto Rican women] were either a whore or were a virgin. There was nothing in between those two.”(29) And, she adds, “The same thing pertained within the Black community too….”(30)

The TWWA’s Bay Area chapter also had meetings, consciousness-raising sessions, and study groups that sought to forge solidarity by educating sisters about one anothers’ histories and struggles. At these gatherings, Asian, Black, and Chicana sisters spoke about their cultures and women’s struggles within those cultures. It was a “voyage of discovery,” as Linda Burnham calls the learning process.(31) “[I]t was a powerful learning community. It was kind of like a little voyage of discovery, trying to find the texts that reveal that stuff and working at summarizing it and bringing it back to people.”(32)

Many of the sisters interviewed described political education meetings as the best part of their participation in the TWWA. Miriam Louie fondly remembered the history lessons were “one of the strongest points about the Alliance. It provided [a] place to work very closely [with] women from other communities and learn about their struggles and they would be able to do that with you and your community.”(33) Zelma Toro concurs: “I think…what I really loved about the Alliance is that whenever we were going to take up some issue there was always some kind of a study, there was always some kind of group, always some kind of a meeting together.”(34) These meetings were certainly helpful in raising consciousness around histories and issues that were foreign to many of the sisters before joining the organization. Toro speaks about the migration of Blacks to California and the Bay Area as one example of the many things she learned from the TWWA.(35)

Besides holding meetings and organizing study groups, the TWWA’s Bay Area chapter produced extensive essays exploring Black, Asian America, and Chicana women’s role in U.S. history and handed them out for the sisters to read. One purpose of these essays was to present an overview and brief analysis of Third World women’s participation in the U.S. labor force and the larger society. But these essays served mainly as educational tools that helped TWWA members from different racial-ethnic communities to understand the histories of racism and women’s oppression that shaped one another’s lives. Published by the TWWA Bay Area chapter in 1978, the essays were part of a series that placed Black, Chicana, and Asian women within the overall history of the United States.

The first essay, entitled “Black Women’s History,” was published in two parts in September and October.(36) The essay highlights the importance of Black women’s roles in U.S. culture and society. It recounts the history of Black women in slavery, through the Reconstruction period, as laborers during World War I and World War II, and through the Civil Rights movement and Black Freedom struggle. What this essay tries to emphasize is the inseparability of gender oppression and racial oppression in the lives of Black women and, by implication, all Third World Women. In fact, Black women’s history was particularly important to the non-Black sisters. Many Asian and Chicana sisters, including Miriam Louie and Zelma Toro, identified with the struggles faced by Black women, seeing Black women’s struggles mirroring their own. They drew lessons from the Black women’s experiences because of the longer history of Black people in the United States and the longer history of Black struggles. As Louie comments, “There is a lot of experience in there…there is a lot of work [that] has been done.”(37)

While Black women’s struggles were, as Louie states, “more visible” and enjoyed “a longer history,”(38) the Bay Area TWWA made it a point to learn about the histories of its Chicana and Asian American women as well. These topics were less familiar than the history of Black people, especially for those sisters who were not from California. Linda Burnham commented that:

"[As] somebody from New York, I had some sense of [the] Puerto Rican community, maybe a little about that community’s history, but then coming out to California I knew nothing about Mexican Americans, the Chicanos, nothing at all about the history of migration, the histories of conquest in the Southwest, nothing about Asian immigration and the waves of immigration and anti-immigration movements and legislation…."(39)

Although written information on Asian America women and Chicanas was practically non-existent, the TWWA was still able to piece together their histories. “Chicana History,” the second essay of the historical series, and “Asian Women’s History,” the third essay, sought to situate their subjects within the narrative of U.S. history, particularly looking at their roles as laborers and experiences as immigrants.(40)

“Chicana History” focuses especially on Chicanas in the labor force and in anti-racist struggles. It brings to light their roles as low-wage workers in U.S. factories and fields. The essay also highlights important women who were active in strikes and labor struggles, including Luisa Moreno, a community and agricultural organizer for the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America, and Emma Tenayucca, an organizer who demanded unemployment benefits and higher wages for pecan workers.

“Asian Women’s History” looks at the role of Asian women, primarily Chinese and Japanese women, in the United States. Because information on Asian American women was not readily available, the essay focuses on immigration and various exclusion acts that barred Asian women from entering the United States. Ultimately, what the TWWA members learned from Asian sisters was about the immigrant experience. To quote Frances Beal, Asian sisters brought the TWWA the “immigrant question…of how people come to this country.”(41)

It is a testament to the TWWA’s success at forging solidarity that these sisters are still friends. However, this does not mean differences did not exist. When differences came up, the TWWA members readily asked each other, “How do we understand them?” As Miriam Louie observes:

"Where there [was] a strong focus on anti-racism, there [was] a strong focus on communities of color, but not to…where it [was] like “My group is the only group that knows what is happening”…I think what the TWWA tried to focus on what are some areas of common ground."(42)

The TWWA did not take it for granted that each sister carried experiences unique to her culture. Even though the specifics of their various histories were different, there were common themes and threads that united the sisters. Patricia Romney concludes, “This is where we learned this stuff, [from these] people who [were] writing, thinking, and doing.”(43)

Building Leadership

The TWWA sought not only to raise awareness of the histories of Third World women in the United States, but it also trained its sisters to be leaders in social justice and national liberation movements. The TWWA created an environment conducive to learning and, in the process, built a network of strong and effective female leaders. The political training they received was one of the reasons women were attracted to the organization. As Frances Beal recalls, “The reason women who were talented were attracted to the Third World Women’s Alliance [is] because we recognized the need [for] training amongst women in order for them to take leadership positions.”(44) This was especially significant in an age when training and preparing women of color for leadership roles was virtually unheard of. Cheryl Perry-League remembers that “in the early days of me trying to organize the Alliance in [the Bay Area], I remember [women of color] would come because there wasn’t time or attention paid to women in this work.”(45) The roster of classes, meetings, and discussions that the TWWA held were aimed at preparing its sisters for leadership positions.

The sisters realized that if they wanted to organize Third World women they would have to deal with the circumstances in which they lived, and that included the family. Childcare was incorporated into the meetings so that women could participate at all levels of leadership. They became models of strength and power of Third World women to their communities, to their families, and especially to their children. They were, as Grace Shimizu states, “trying to impart our values and our spirit to our kids because they’re our future leaders.”(46)

The TWWA believed that cultivating all sisters’ leadership skills allowed for greater unity in the organization. As Frances Beal comments, “reliance on the mass mobilization of our people as opposed to getting a few top names in good places” was critical to the TWWA’s strength.(47) The rotating leadership committees were one important way of producing strong female leaders. Miriam Louie recalls, “You know we used to have a rotating leadership. There was a lot said about developing women; every woman had the possibility [of] being the leadership, had the leadership potential, [and] we just needed to learn these different skills.”(48)

Various TWWA meetings and classes taught women how to construct a sentence, how to write a leaflet, how to stand and speak in front of an audience, and how to chair a meeting. Zelma Toro states, “You would go to a meeting, you would be prepped, and you learned how to set an agenda…how to raise questions and how to lead discussions, how to get people to talk about issues, how [to] agree, [and] how do you deal with disagreements.”(49) These may seem like very simple and elementary skills, but they were vital to the sisters’ development as leaders.

Toro, who was relatively new to activism before joining the TWWA, had received some training through the I-Hotel demonstrations; but, as she notes, “the Third World Women’s Alliance [made] a conscious effort to train [me] to be a better organizer.”(50) It was a step-by-step process. As Toro states, “Sometimes you felt you were being thrown into the water, ‘Now swim sister. Swim or sink.’ Sometimes it felt like that, but when you really think about it, when you think back on it, no it really wasn’t. There was a real consciousness about how you were being trained as an organizer.”(51) For both novices and experienced activists, the training helped them learn to become more effective organizers and leaders.

The TWWA also had fun with the training process. Frances Beal fondly remembers a form of role playing or “guerilla theater” involving the TWWA’s Puerto Rican sisters:

"They would put out a sketch, and people would kind of do it, and they would have discussion afterward. Some guy would be a woman coming home, working a job, and her husband’s at home, and he wants her to do the cooking, cleaning this [and] that, and they are both working. That’s the scene; they have an argument. She sits him…down and tells him some home truths about [doing] double duty and [how] it’s not fair."(52)

These “guerilla theater” scenarios taught women how to handle difficult situations that came up in family or work environments. The sisters would act out what they should do when such situations arose, and they were taught to fight back. It was an effective training method that the TWWA developed as part of the leadership development process.

Sisters in this network exchanged ideas about organizing and, in the process, became effective leaders inside and outside the organization. The TWWA could send sisters to represent the group at coalition meetings and know that they were trained enough to handle any situation that arose. For Linda Burnham, the ultimate importance of the organization rested with its leadership building: “I think the ways in which it was successful is that it really did serve as a training ground to develop women’s leadership skills and a sort of confidence in their leadership.”(53)

Today, in an age when racial and national identity often pits people of color against each other, the Third World Women’s Alliance serves as an example of solidarity across such lines. With U.S. imperialism out in full force, as seen in the multiple wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, unity amongst women of color and for all people of color is potentially powerful. This solidarity cannot wipe away all evils, but it can influence the way in which we see the world and how we define “us” and “them.” Therein lies the significance of the Third World Women’s Alliance. As Grace Shimizu explains, “We were fighting for the democratic rights of Third World women in our communities. We were consciously identifying ourselves as part of the left and that we wanted to move Third World women and communities to the left. This was for fundamental social change.”(54) This is a legacy from which we all can learn.

---

(1) Students for a Democratic Society were made up of white students. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was made up of Black radicals. The Puerto Rican Socialist Party was made up of young Puerto Rican Americans. I Wor Kuen was mainly (but not entirely) composed of young Chinese Americans. Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (London & New York: Verso, 2002), 20, 31, 77.

(2) The Third World Women’s Alliance acronym is TWWA and this abbreviation was often used within their publications. However, most of the women I interviewed refer to the organization as “the Alliance.” For the purposes of this thesis, I use the acronym TWWA, while retaining the use of “the Alliance” when directly quoting from former TWWA members.

(3) The first hint of the TWWA actually began to take form in 1968 within SNCC, but did not officially develop as a separate organization until 1970. Chapter 1 will discuss the origins of the TWWA.

(4) “Press Release,” August 26, 1970, box 1 folder 15, Third World Women’s Alliance’s Papers, Women of Color Resource Center, Oakland, California.

(5) Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Kimberley Springer, Living For the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980 (Duke University Press, 2005); Stephen Ward, “The Third World Women’s Alliance: Black Feminist Radicalism and Black Power Politics,” in The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era, ed. Peniel E. Joseph (New York & London: Routledge, 2006).
Springer, 1.

(6) Roth, 3.

(7) Springer, 1.

(8) Ward, 120.

(9) Idem.

(10) Founded in the Bay Area in 1990 by Linda Burnham and Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, both former sisters of the TWWA, the WCRC provides services and networks to women of color. The conclusion of this thesis looks at its significance as one of the TWWA’s legacies.

(11) Linda Burnham, interviewed by Loretta J. Ross, The Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Smith College, March 18, 2005. Hereafter cited as Burnham, interviewed by Ross.

(12) The Sisters of Fire Awards program is held by the Women of Color Resource Center in Oakland, California. Each year the WCRC honor women of color in the arts, academia, media and social justice causes. The Seventh annual awards in 2005 honored the former members of the Third World Women’s Alliance as well as Angela Davis, Beckie Uta Masaki, Suheir Hammad, and Teresa Mejia. A day before the celebrations, the WCRC hosted a panel with some of the TWWA’s former members, including New York chapter founder Frances M. Beal and Bay Area chapter founder Cheryl Perry-League. The panel discussed the organization’s history and legacy during the first hour, while the second hour was dedicated to reaching out to young women of color activists. Seventh Annual Sisters of Fire Honoring the Third World Women’s Alliance, produced by the Women of Color Resource Center, 2 hours, 2005, videocassette. Hereafter cited as Seventh Annual Sisters of Fire Honoring the Third World Women’s Alliance.

(13) “Seattle Third World Women,” unknown date, box 4 folder 4, Third World Women’s Alliance’s Papers, Women of Color Resource Center, Oakland, California.

(14) Romney interview.

(15) Beal interview.

(16) Ibid.

(17) Huth interview.

(18) The pro-Soviet Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was widely regarded by radicals (i.e New Leftists) as politically and culturally conservative. It was the symbol of the Old Left. The CPUSA had quite a few Black members and a smaller number of Latino and Asian American members. Angela Davis, for example, was a CPUSA member. However, the majority of its members were white and male. Elbaum, 49-51.

(19) Romney interview.

(20) James Forman (October 4, 1928-January 10, 2005) left SNCC in the late 1960s due to increasing factionalism within the organization, which was discussed briefly in Chapter 1. James Forman, a leading Civil Rights activist, was the executive secretary of SNCC. See James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1972), 146.

(21) Seventh Annual Sisters of Fire Honoring the Third World Women’s Alliance.

(22) Burnham, interviewed by author.

(23) Romney interview.

(24) “Committee Reports,” Third World Women’s Alliance Newsletter 1, no. 1 (June 1976), 6.

(25) Beal interview.

(26) Ibid.

(27) Ibid.

(28) Ibid.

(29) Ibid.

(30) Ibid.

(31) Burnham, interviewed by author.

(32) Ibid.

(33) Louie interview.

(34) Toro interview.

(35) Ibid.

(36) “Black Women’s History,” September & October 1978, box 2 folder 3, Third World Women’s Alliance’s Papers, Women of Color Resource Center, Oakland, California.

(37) Louie interview.

(38) Ibid.

(39) Burnham, interviewed by author.

(40) “Chicana History,” November 1978, box 2 folder 4, Third World Women’s Alliance’s Papers, Women of Color Resource Center, Oakland, California; “Asian Women’s History,” December 1978, box 2 folder 2, Third World Women’s Alliance’s Papers, Women of Color Resource Center, Oakland, California.

(41) Beal interview.

(42) Louie interview.

(43) Romney interview.

(44) Beal interview.

(45) Seventh Annual Sisters of Fire Honoring the Third World Women’s Alliance.

(46) Shimizu interview.

(47) Beal interview.

(48) Louie interview.

(49) Toro interview.

(50) Ibid.

(51) Ibid.

(52) Beal interview.

(53) Burnham, interviewed by author.

(54) Seventh Annual Sisters of Fire Honoring the Third World Women’s Alliance.