The Combahee River Collective open their treatise by surmising that, “Black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been Black women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown—who have had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique. Contemporary Black feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters.” They remind us that Black women have always resisted and always been away that they have suffered from multiple oppressions.  

They go on to remind us that Black men and White women have unconsciously/consciously  excluded us from their dreams of liberation. "It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white men."


Finally, the authors call us to remember the strength of our identity as Black women."We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression." Once we obtain freedom every other person in the world would be. It's important for everyone to acknowledge that our potential for freedom it bound to everyone else, in particular Black women's.


Reading Combahee  as A Dream Statement 
The mere audacity for these fly Black lesbian women to dream of what a world with liberation for Black women could offer is a deep exercise of radical imagination. To not be confined by the oppressive attributes of the systems of patriarchy and white supremacy, and rather tap into ancestral wisdom and strength to actualize freedom. While all the co-authors, were activists and used direct action the act of writing down their vision towards freedom offered a roadmap for themselves and generations after them to follow. Even today, The Combahee River Collective Statement is one of the most powerful dreams of freedom Black Girls can convoke.
 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video with Demita Frazier, Beverly Smith and Barbara Smith. But this video features one co-author, Barbara Smith. She drops some dope wisdom on this panel that explain their intentionally behind writing their statement.