Fresh Air Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s path from ‘Backtalker’ to legal scholar
6 snips
May 5, 2026 
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a legal scholar who coined intersectionality and helped shape critical race theory, reflects on her memoir Backtalker. She recalls Canton dinner-table lessons, the night Martin Luther King Jr. died, and sketching an intersection to explain Black women’s legal invisibility. She discusses urban renewal, Anita Hill, and how ideas like critical race theory have been weaponized.
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Origin Story Of Intersectionality
- Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw drew two crossing roads on a legal pad to explain how a Black woman at the intersection of race and gender was invisible to the law.
- She placed the plaintiff at the X to show courts that discrimination can overlap and require combined legal recognition.
How Neutral Law Facilitated Racial Wealth Loss
- Urban renewal legally displaced Black property owners and stripped generational wealth despite neutral language.
- Crenshaw's mother received pennies on the dollar for inherited apartments after city redevelopment and highway planning depressed property values.
Family Loss Revealed By Later Records
- Crenshaw's brother was shot as a bystander at college and the promised investigation vanished, leaving her mother with no accountability.
- Only later, via digitized archives, did Crenshaw find press reports of a suspect and an investigation that then disappeared.
