Summary: The Combahee River Collective

In the 1970’s African American women created the Combahee River Collective to address the unique struggles that African American women face in their day-to-day lives. In 2016, black activists founded The Movement of Black Lives to advocate for all black people more generally. Both groups incorporated at least some intersectional ideas into their arguments and used similar stylistic strategies to communicate their ideas. However, these groups differed in the ways that they established target audiences, the breadth of institutions that they addressed, and in the ways they used word choice to further their causes. Both The Combahee River Collective and The Movement for Black Lives incorporated intersectional ideas into their arguments by acknowledging

In “A Vision for Black Lives,” The Movement for Black Lives also acknowledges the interaction between race and author characteristics by pledging to stand with “[Black people who are women, queer, trans, femmes, gender nonconforming, Muslim, formerly and currently incarcerated, cash poor and working class, differently abled, undocumented, and immigrant.” The Movement for Black Lives is generally more inclusive than was The Combahee River Collective because in addition to acknowledging the interaction between race, gender, and sexuality, The Movement for Black Lives acknowledges the interaction between race and transgender identity, queer identity, incarceration status, income, legal status, religion, disability, and immigrant status. However, in spite of this this difference, both organizations were intersectional in at least some

The Combahee River Collective repeatedly uses “us,” “we,” and “sisters” in “Why Did They Die.” These terms emphasize what the reader and the members of The Combahee River Collective have in common. By emphasizing their shared identity with the reader, members of The Combahee River Collective call their audience to action by appealing to the reader’s sense of community and kinship. In contrast, the members of The Movement for Black Lives separate themselves from their audience and make extensive use of anaphora. In “A Vision for Black Lives,” the members of The Movement for Black Lives use the phrase “we demand” to frame their requests from the audience on eight separate occasions. By explicitly “demanding” change, the members of The Movement for Black Lives emphasize the extent to which African Americans suffer under the status quo, thereby creating a sense of urgency surrounding