The Emerald City in Technicolor: Second-Wave Feminism, Solidarity Practices, and the Seattle Third World Women, 1971–1976

Abstract: This article examines the intellectual and organizational history of a Black-led, women-of-color collective called the Seattle Third World Women (STWW), active from 1971 to 1976. Tracing the ideological origins of the group, this article begins with founder Mary Ellen Stone’s radicalization in Cuba and the Third World Women’s Alliance, one of the first multiracial feminist organizations of the 1970s. It then explores how Stone spearheaded an affiliated branch in the Pacific Northwest, which followed the alliance’s ideological tenets but implemented these ideas appropriate to local community needs. Whether hosting consciousness-raising sessions or circulating the group’s newsletters, STWW members bridged Black, Asian, Chicana/o, and Native American Seattleites’ political activities to global decolonization and antiwar movements and inserted gender-conscious approaches to radical solidarity practices. In excavating the STWW from the margins of historical inquiry, this article complicates dominant narratives of where US–Third World activism takes place and who leads these movements.