Frances M. BealFrances M. Beal was born in Binghamton, N.Y January 13, 1940 to a Jewish mother and an African American father. Both influenced her early years with a sense of struggling against both racism and anti-Semitism. Beal watched her mother take up struggles for justice and heard stories from her father about racial injustices and the sense that when something was wrong in society, you should get together with others and do something to change it. As a result, Beal spent her life as an activist, mostly by organizing, writing and speaking about the issue of rights for Black women and racial justice as a whole. She started political activism in college with the NAACP in 1958, but soon ran into conservative restrictions, when she was told to stop picketing in front of Woolworth's in Madison, Wisconsin in support of racist hiring practices in the South. During a stay in France where she attended the Sorbonne, Beal became heavily influenced by student opposition to the colonial status of Algeria. This was reinforced by many a cafe discussion about the decolonization process in Africa, which provided a world outlook of internationalism which came to define her politics at home. Beal met Malcolm X in Paris and was introduced to the works of Simone de Bouvoire. Back in the U.S.A., she worked with SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and then became involved in SNCC's International Affairs Commission. Other influences included meetings with women at the United Nations representing African liberation and anti-colonial struggles. When the Moynihan Report was published (1965) positing that the main problem afflicting the Black community was the Black matriarchy - a view that tried to push Black women into a second class role - Beal became a founding member of the SNCC Black Women's Liberation Committee (1968), which evolved into the TWWA (Third World Women's Alliance (1970-1978). Beal became a national figure upon publication of her most seminal work: "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black & Female (1970), which posed the intersection of race, class and gender as the theoretical and political framework for understanding Black women's condition and the path to struggle for Black women's liberation. Beal is also a lifelong peace advocate, supporting the struggle for Cuba's sovereignty, Puerto Rican independence, African liberation and opposing the war in Vietnam. After her two children were grown, she moved to the Oakland, California where she was the editor and writer for a variety of newspapers and magazines. She also worked for the ACLU (1987-2005) and in 1998, was elected Nat'l Secretary of the Black Radical Congress. Frances Beal retired in 2005 and continues to promote peace and justice through her support of the Women of Color Resource Center (a group that has its roots in the TWWA), and her opposition to war in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
Honored by Linda Burnham |
