Hello, My name is Barbara Smith. I’ve been trying to remember when I met Melanie and here’s one way of figuring it out…I met her when her name was Melanie Kaye.

I met Melanie because of the women’s movement, specifically that part of the women’s movement where radical, anti-racist, Lesbian feminists were doing revolutionary work and carving out a place to survive.  A lot of us here know how tough it was to be out as a Lesbian in the 1970’s.

There is an untold history of feminists who challenged white supremacy, who did anti-racist organizing often in places where we were far from welcome.  Our political activism and practice formed the roots of intersectionality, before the word was invented.  Melanie was at the forefront of this work, which is embodied in both her beautiful writing and activism. 

Her inclusive political vision was nowhere more clear than in her leadership of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. Look at the name of that organization. It says, Jewish people are challenging racism and class oppression. It says that Non-Jews can too! People of color and Jews can work together.  There are Jews who are people of color and people of color who are Jewish.  Melanie was far more than an ally.  She was an incomparable co-conspirator.

I really need to say something about Leslie and to Leslie. How long ago, or when did I meet Melanie? Well, one way of marking it is that I met Melanie and Leslie before they knew each other. It was called the 1970’s. I certainly knew Leslie in the 1970’s and I’m pretty clear I met Melanie then through our shared interests as activists and writers. There’s so much history that is unknown, so much history that we share. There’s so much integrity and courage that Melanie embodies and always will. We need to share that with others who think that it may have been easy and who don’t necessarily know the streets that we walked and the battles that we fought.

At the end of Sula, this is for you Leslie and for all others that this might apply, at the end of Toni Morrison’s Sula, Nell says, about Sula, and, as I said, this is on the very last page of the novel Sula, one of the most beautiful lines that I think exists in literature, which is, and I say it to you now, “We were girls together.”