Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was an activist feminist press that was closely related to the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) which was started in 1980 following a phone conversation between Barbara Smith and at the suggestion of her friend, poet Audre Lorde. Beverly and Barbara Smith and their associate Demita Frazier together cofounded the Combahee River Collective (CRC). The Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was most active beginning in 1981, but the Press became inactive soon after Audre Lorde's death in 1992. Smith explains how the motivation for starting a press run by and for women of color was that "as feminist and lesbian of color writers, we knew that we had no options for getting published, except at the mercy or whim of others, whether in the context of alternative or commercial publishing, since both are white-dominated." Background In the early 1970s, Barbara Smith was teaching courses about black women writers at Emerson College. However, she found that the books she required for her courses were often out of print and it was difficult to obtain specific novels. She has said that, "That was because nobody cared if [Zora Neale Hurston's] "Their Eyes Were Watching God" or Ann Petry's "The Street" was available. People did not care because they were considered to be marginal and unimportant writers." Another main factor that ultimately led to the development of Kitchen Table was the racism within the mainstream women's movement during the late 1970s and early 1980s. As a result, women of color decided to come up with their own alternative. Beginnings In her essay "A Press of our Own: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press", founder Barbara Smith describes the beginnings of the press this way: "In October 1980, Audre Lorde said to me during a phone conversation, 'We really need to do something about publishing.'" Smith recounts how "it was at that meeting that Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was born. We did not arrive at a name or announce our existence until a year later, but at that initial meeting we did decide to be a publisher for all women of color." In an interview with Joseph F. Beam in Blacklight Magazine, Lorde spoke to the need to "develop those structures (like Kitchen Table) that will present and circulate our culture." As a result of Lorde's suggestion, Smith assembled a group for a meeting on