This presentation centers on the Black Women’s Liberation Committee (BWLC), an SNCC caucus established in 1968 that evolved into the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA).

Jasmin Young traces and analyzes how the TWWA organized, trained, and developed Third World women to fight capitalism and start a revolution. TWWA directly challenged the discourse of masculinity that permeated much of the Black Power movement. While some groups designated men as warriors for the revolution and formed all-male cadres, TWWA members believed women could play a significant role in armed struggle. They identified Black and Third World women as one of the most revolutionary forces confronting the U.S. ruling class. The TWWA assumed that women were capable and valuable members of the Black liberation struggle—and central to the fight for freedom. Drawing on Triple Jeopardy, the TWWA newspaper, archival materials and oral histories Dr Young discusses the group’s revolutionary feminist vision.

Meet our speaker and chair

Jasmin A. Young is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, working on her manuscript, Black Women in Armed Resistance: SNCC and the Black Liberation Struggle. Dr. Young’s research interests center on the intellectual history of Black women, state violence and resistance, and radical Black feminism. These interests are woven into her scholarship, professional service, and passion projects. Her latest article, “Armed Self-Defense, Gloria Richardson, and the Struggle for Black Liberation in Cambridge, Maryland,” appeared in the Journal of African American History. Her work has also appeared in Souls, the Journal of African American Studies, and the Black Scholar. Dr Young holds an MSc in Gender Studies from LSE Gender Studies, and in 2018, she received her PhD in History from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

SM Rodriguez is Assistant Professor of Gender, Rights and Human Rights in the Department of Gender Studies at LSE. Dr Rodriguez’s research spans concerns of criminalised, queer, and/or disabled people of African descent and relies on engaged methodologies to answer questions of transformative change. They are the author of The Economies of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing for LGBTI Rights in Uganda (2019), in addition to numerous publications for Agenda, GLQ, Comparative Sociology, Oxford University Press, and more. 

More about this event

This event is being hosted by the Department of Gender Studies and is a part of our 30th Anniversary calendar of events. The department pioneers intersectional, interdisciplinary and transnational teaching and research, addressing the tenacity of gendered power relations and gendered inequalities in times of global transformations. Established in 1993, LSE Gender is the largest Department of Gender Studies in Europe.

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