Our HerSTORY

 Assata’s Daughters (“AD”) first formed in 2015 as a volunteer-based collective of Black women, femmes, and gender non-conforming people, to address a shortage of programming and community for women-identified, femme, and gender non-conforming young Black people in Chicago.

AD was founded, planned, and operated by Black women, femmes, and gender non-conforming people to carry on the tradition of radical liberatory activism encompassed by Assata Shakur, to train up others in the radical political tradition of Black feminism, and to learn how to organize on the ground around the demand for Black liberation, particularly a demand for abolition.

In 2018, AD shifted from a collective-model to a formal organizational structure with a board and staff. At the bequest of those we served, the organization has now broadened its scope to provide lessons to young men and boys on toxic notions of masculinity, dismantling patriarchal systems of oppression, and understanding the impact of both on interpersonal relationships.

AD continues to be an abolitionist organization led by Black women using a Black queer feminist lens and relationship-based tactics to organize bases of young Black people in divested-from areas of Chicago.