We Know Our Rights – Black Women

Farah Tanis is a women’s human rights activist and co-founder, Executive Director of Black Women’s Blueprint working nationally and at the grassroots to address the spectrum of sexual violence against women and girls in Black/African American communities, and working with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the nation on issues of gender, race, sexuality, anti-violence policy and practice. Tanis was the national co-chair of the 2017 March for Black Women. She chaired the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the U.S. ever to focus on Black women and their historical and contemporary experiences with sexual assault. She is the national Co-Chair and lead organizer for the 2017 March for Black Women. She is founder and is lead curator at the Museum of Women's Resistance (MoWRe), which in 2013 became internationally recognized as a Site of Conscience. Tanis is a NoVo Foundation - Move to End Violence Program, Cohort 3 Movement Maker, a U.S. Human Rights Institute Fellow (USHRN) and a member of the Task Force on the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Until 2017, Tanis served on the Advisory Board of SurvJustice, a national organization providing legal assistance to survivors to enforce their rights on campus; and Faculty Against Rape, dedicated to getting faculty involved in confronting campus sexual assault as researchers, teachers, survivors' advocates, and policy reformers. Tanis is the recipient of several awards for her human rights work, including a 2014 Feminist Majority Foundation and Ms. Magazine Wonder Award, and a 2016 Visionary Voice Award.