Name Frances Beal | Role Political activist | |
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Frances M. Beal, also known as Fran Beal, (born January 13, 1940 Binghamton, New York) is a Black feminist and a peace and justice political activist.
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Life and career
Beal was born in Binghamton, NY, to Charlotte Berman Yates and Ernest Yates. Her mother's Russian Jewish immigrant background and father's African American and Native American ancestry, along with their experiences with antisemitism and racism, inspired her later work as an activist.
After her father's death, she moved to St. Albans, an integrated neighborhood in Queens.
In 1958 she began work in political activism with the NAACP. She married James Beal; they had two children. They lived in France from 1959 to 1966 as she attended the Sorbonne.
In 1968 she co-founded the Black Women's Liberation Committee of SNCC.
She wrote "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female" in 1969. That pamphlet was later revised and then published in The Black Woman, an anthology edited by Toni Cade Bambara in 1970. A revised version of "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female" also appears in the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan. Beal later moved to California, and she was an associate editor of The Black Scholar and wrote for the San Francisco Bay View.
Beal is featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry.
Beal now lives in Oakland.