Black feminism holds that the experience of black women give rise to a particular understanding of their position in relation to sexism, class oppression, and racism. The experience of being a black woman, it maintains, cannot be grasped in terms of being black or of being a woman, but must be elucidated via intersectionality.

A black feminist lens in the United States was first employed by black women to make sense of how white supremacy and patriarchy interacted to inform the particular experiences of enslaved black women. Black activists and intellectuals formed organizations such as the National Association of Coloured Women (NACW) and the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). Black feminism rose to prominence in the 1960s, as the civil rights movement excluded women from leadership positions, and the mainstream feminist movement largely focused its agenda on issues that predominately impacted middle-class white women. From the 1970s to 1980s, black feminists formed groups that addressed the role of black women in black nationalism, gay liberation, and second-wave feminism. In the 1990s, the Anita Hill controversy brought black feminism into the mainstream. Black feminist theories reached a wider audience in the 2010s, as a result of social-media advocacy. via Wikipedia