Kimberlé Crenshaw is the legal scholar who introduced the term "intersectionality" in the 1990s, a framework for understanding how Black women's experiences are shaped by the interaction of their social, economic, and political identities with systems of inequality and privilege (Topic 4.13).
Kimberlé Crenshaw is the scholar who gave a name to something Black women activists had been describing for over a century. Her term, intersectionality, is a framework for understanding how a person's overlapping identities (race, gender, class) interact with overlapping systems of inequality. The core insight is that Black women's experiences can't be explained by racism alone or sexism alone. The two combine into something distinct, which means a movement that only fights one form of oppression can leave Black women behind.
In AP African American Studies, Crenshaw appears in Topic 4.13 as the capstone of a long tradition. The Black feminist movement of the 1970s, including the Combahee River Collective, had already argued that systems of oppression are interlocking. Crenshaw's contribution was turning that activist insight into a named analytical framework that scholars, courts, and movements could actually use. Think of it this way: the Combahee River Collective described the problem in 1977, and Crenshaw handed everyone the vocabulary for it.
Crenshaw lives in Unit 4 (Movements and Debates), Topic 4.13, and supports learning objective AP African American Studies 4.13.A, which asks you to explain how the twentieth-century Black feminist movement drew inspiration from earlier Black women's activism. That word "inspiration" is the whole game. Per EK 4.13.A.1, the Black feminist movement of the 1970s built on activists like Jarena Lee, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman, who resisted racism and sexism as enslaved and free women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Crenshaw is the modern endpoint of that lineage. If the exam asks you to trace continuity in Black women's activism from Truth to the present, Crenshaw's intersectionality is the term that closes the arc.
Keep studying AP® African American Studies Unit 4
Combahee River Collective (Unit 4)
This is the closest connection on the exam. The Collective's 1977 statement argued that racism, sexism, and class oppression are interlocking and can't be fought separately. Crenshaw's intersectionality built directly on this idea, giving the activist argument a scholarly name and framework. Practice questions regularly ask how Crenshaw built on the Collective's work.
Womanism and Alice Walker (Unit 4)
Walker's womanism and Crenshaw's intersectionality both respond to the same problem: mainstream feminism centered white women's experiences. Womanism is a cultural identity rooted in Black women's traditions, while intersectionality is an analytical tool for examining overlapping oppressions. Same topic, different jobs.
Sojourner Truth and early Black women's activism (Unit 4)
Per EK 4.13.A.1, activists like Truth, Jarena Lee, and Harriet Tubman highlighted Black women's unique experience of racism and sexism long before anyone had a word for it. Crenshaw's framework is essentially Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" argument translated into modern scholarship, which makes this a ready-made continuity argument.
Crenshaw shows up in multiple-choice questions in three predictable ways. First, the straight ID: who introduced the term "intersectionality"? (Crenshaw, in the 1990s.) Second, the continuity question: how did her theory build on earlier activism, like Mary Church Terrell's work or the Combahee River Collective's 1977 statement? Third, the analysis question: what made intersectionality a challenge to previous feminist scholarship? The answer is that earlier feminism treated gender as a single axis and overlooked how race and gender combine in Black women's lives. No released FRQ has used Crenshaw's name verbatim, but intersectionality is exactly the kind of framework that strengthens a source-analysis or argument response about Black women's activism across periods. Don't just name-drop her. Be ready to explain what intersectionality does and whose earlier work it built upon.
Students mix up who said what first. The Combahee River Collective articulated the idea of interlocking systems of oppression in its 1977 Collective Statement. Crenshaw came later and coined the actual term "intersectionality" as a scholarly framework. If a question asks who introduced the term, the answer is Crenshaw. If it asks about the 1970s Black feminist movement naming itself after Harriet Tubman's raid, that's Combahee.
Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term "intersectionality" in the 1990s as a framework for how Black women's overlapping identities interact with systems of inequality and privilege.
Intersectionality challenged earlier feminist scholarship by showing that analyzing gender alone misses the distinct experience of facing racism and sexism at the same time.
Crenshaw named an idea that Black women activists had already lived and argued, from Sojourner Truth in the nineteenth century to the Combahee River Collective in 1977.
She appears in Topic 4.13 (Unit 4) and supports learning objective AP African American Studies 4.13.A on how the Black feminist movement drew inspiration from earlier Black women's activism.
On the exam, the strongest move is connecting Crenshaw to the Combahee River Collective: they described interlocking oppressions, she gave the concept its name and analytical framework.
Crenshaw is the scholar who introduced the term "intersectionality" in the 1990s, a framework for understanding how Black women's social, economic, and political identities interact with systems of inequality. She appears in Topic 4.13 on the Black feminist movement, womanism, and intersectionality.
No. She coined the term, but the underlying idea has deep roots. The Combahee River Collective described interlocking systems of oppression in its 1977 statement, and activists like Sojourner Truth highlighted Black women's dual experience of racism and sexism in the nineteenth century. Crenshaw gave that long tradition a name and a scholarly framework.
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for examining how overlapping identities meet overlapping systems of oppression. Womanism, Walker's term, is a cultural and social identity rooted in Black women's history and traditions. Both respond to mainstream feminism's blind spots, but one is a tool of analysis and the other is an identity.
The Combahee River Collective was a 1970s Black feminist organization, named after Harriet Tubman's raid that freed over 700 people, that argued oppressions are interlocking in its 1977 Collective Statement. Crenshaw is an individual scholar who later coined "intersectionality" to name and develop that idea.
It's the framework that ties Topic 4.13 together and supports learning objective AP African American Studies 4.13.A. Exam questions ask you to explain what intersectionality means, how it challenged single-axis feminist scholarship, and how it built on earlier activism from figures like Mary Church Terrell and the Combahee River Collective.
Connect this key term to the AP exam workflow: review the course, practice questions, and check related study tools.
Review units, study guides, and course resources.
Check this vocabulary in multiple-choice context.
Apply key concepts in written AP responses.
Estimate the exam score you are working toward.
Review the highest-yield facts before practice.
Put the full course together before test day.