Taking these conditions into consideration, for decades, everyone from Ntozake Shange to Maya Angelou to Alice Walker have pushed for a free Palestine. “You can’t talk about Angela Davis or Audre Lorde or Toni Morrison or Barbara Ransby or Shirley Graham Du Bois or Winnie Mandela being your fave Black feminist but then in the same breath ask, ‘what does Black liberation have to do with Palestine?’” Dr. Swift said. “All of these people I mentioned were thoroughly enmeshed in the struggle for Palestinian liberation and freedom.” In addition to her work as an educator, Swift is the founder and executive director of Black Women Radicals, a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting Black feminist leadership. In the weeks since Israel’s violent onslaught on Gaza following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, Black Women Radicals has amplified archival evidence of progressive Black women’s historic commitment to anti-Zionism. Writers like June Jordan who, in 1991, defined Palestine as a “litmus test for morality.” Likening it to the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, Jordan said that what someone is prepared to do on behalf of the Palestinian people speaks volumes about one’s commitment to justice.
