On Feb. 27, the Matrix Center hosted their monthly Munch and Learn to highlight Black History Month with a discussion led by Nina Monet Reynoso, assistant professor in the Department of Women’s and Ethnic Studies.
This discussion focused on the idea of “Rage as a praxis of love: Black liberation across time and place” and how the 1863 Combahee River Raid inspired the Combahee River Collective of the 1970s.
“The first thing that I wanted to do when I gave this talk was to actually just have everybody scream,” Reynoso said. “I think anger can be such a healthy expression, especially when done collectively, because it sounds like a very powerful message.”
Reynoso defined rage as anger and pain that has been distanced from justice and focused on how justice can amend rage when it’s practiced as a collective feeling of love and progress in Black communities.
The Combahee River Raid was a union military operation led and organized by Harriet Tubman. This major military operation was the first to be led by a woman and brought to the freedom of over 700 enslaved Black people in South Carolina.
Reynoso highlighted Tubman’s achievements in helping enslaved Black people seek freedom through the Underground Railroad and having the strength to pursue the fight for freedom further. She applied Tubman’s heroism to the discussion of practicing rage as love.
In 1974, the Combahee River Collective, named after Tubman’s Combahee River Raid, was formed in Boston to address the needs of Black women and lesbians that were unmet by the Feminist and Civil Rights Movements.
Reynoso shared the historical significance of taking back the name of the Combahee River Raid, in opposition to feminist organizations naming themselves after feminist figures who failed to respect intersectionality and the liberation of Black women.
“[The collective] said, ‘We are primarily concerned with action in our communities. We want things to change, and so we are naming ourselves after an action,’” Reynoso said. “They channeled that rage that they have about the injustices that are going on in their community [into] the love that they have for each other.”
The Combahee River Collective Statement says, “The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women, we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.”
According to Reynoso, the Collective is focused on “direct action for reproductive rights in their community, by educating folks, helping raise money for reproductive justice centers in the community, by doing a lot of the theoretical work that actually lays the groundwork for what [she teaches] today.”
Reynoso concluded the discussion by discussing with the room how anger is metabolized within your body, how that anger can be transformed into collective action and how the stigma of anger can be changed.
In addition to being an assistant professor in WEST, Reynoso is a scholar, artist and advocate for the working class and marginalized communities, focusing on Black Studies, militarism, veterans’ history and rights.
Munch and Learn is held in partnership with the Office of Strategic Initiatives. The next Heritage Month Munch and Learn is on April 17 at 11 a.m. and will focus on Arab American Heritage Month.
Graphic courtesy of Mountain Lion Connect.