Winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction
“If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free.”
—Combahee River Collective Statement
The Combahee River Collective, a pathbreaking group of radical Black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women’s liberation movements of the 1960s and ’70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members and contemporary activists reflect on the organization’s contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today’s struggles.
This expanded second edition features a new introduction by Taylor and a powerful new interview with Angela Y. Davis.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and the co-founder of Hammer & Hope. Her book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, which won the Lannan Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book, was recently published in an expanded second edition by Haymarket Books, with a new foreword by Angela Y. Davis. Her book Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership was a semi-finalist for the National Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and a former Contributing Opinion Writer for The New York Times. In 2021, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. With Colin Kaepernick and Robin D. G. Kelley, she edited Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies. Her latest book is the expanded and updated edition of How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, featuring a new introduction by Taylor and a powerful new interview with Angela Y. Davis.
ISBN: 9798888903643
Publication date: January 13, 2026
Introduction
The Combahee River Collective Statement
Barbara Smith
Beverly Smith
Demita Frazier
Alicia Garza
Angela Davis
Comments by Barbara Ransby
Acknowledgments
Contributor Biographies
“This new collection of a four-decades-old text reminds us that black women have long known that America’s destiny is inseparable from how it treats them and the nation ignores this truth at its peril.”
—The New York Review of Books
“A striking collection that should be immediately added to the Black feminist canon.”
—Bitch Media
“An essential book for any feminist library.”
—Library Journal
“The publication of How We Get Free marks the 40th anniversary of the Combahee River Collective statement, which is often said to be the foundational document of intersectional feminism. As white feminism has gained an increasing amount of coverage, there are still questions as to how black and brown women’s needs are being addressed. This book, through a collection of interviews with prominent black feminists, provides some answers.”
—Rachael Revesz, The Independent
“For feminists of all kinds, astute scholars, or anyone with a passion for social justice, How We Get Free is an invaluable work.”
—Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal
by Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, et al.
Edited by Alisa Bierria, Jakeya Caruthers, et al.
One of the best ways you can support Haymarket is by becoming a member of our subscription program. Receive up to 40 books per year and help ensure the future of radical publishing.
Join today and start your subscription with one or more of these new books!
