Womanism, is a term originally coined by Alice Walker in her seminal book, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens.  Walker felt feminism to be too white and wanted a term that fully embraced the complexity of gender and race as uniquiely experienced by Black women in America.  

Womanism is also a term that Black women theologians of the Christian tradition have explored in context to their experiences with their faith.  

Womanism, as embraced by Black women of the Christian tradition, "...was born in [their] refusal to choose between their racial and gender identities" (Source: Cannon, Williams, and Womanist Survival).  The term womanist theology was first publicly used by Delores S. Williams in the late 1980s and emerged as a field of study.