In conjunction with identity politics, Smith created Black feminist criticism. In her groundbreaking piece "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism," Smith identifies the rich literary tradition of Afro-descended women in America. She claims that these Black female authors have been largely ignored in literary history. When they have not been overtly ignored, they have been devalued and stripped of political and feminist meaning. Because there was no political movement for Black feminism, Black women's work was relegated to African-American literature and stripped of an analysis of sex or gender, meaning that all the works that defined "feminism" at that time related it only to white women's experience. Along with providing a theoretical framework by which to evaluate literature by Black women, Smith was also perhaps the most influential force in popularizing authors like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, and other female authors of color through her Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.