Wonderful description of the importance of the Highlander trainings and Septima Clark's emphasis on involving the people for whom the fight for social justice most affected (not just influencing those around them or persuading others on their behalf). The NAACP's Crusade for Citizenship in the late 1950s with the organizational skills of Ella Baker showed this kind of work could be done in the deep South, but needed more cross-organizational support infrastructures to stave off the violent reactions of segregationists. The greatest impact would have to happen at the local grassroots levels -. and this meant empowerment of local leaders.
Visible, but unsung
But scan historical images of the most dramatic moments of the civil rights movement — protesters blasted by fire hoses and dogs lunging at blacks — and women and girls are everywhere.
There is a 1964 image of Mississippi beautician Vera Piggy styling hair and educating her customers on voter registration.
Most were “volunteers — women in the churches who cooked the meals and made sure all the preparations were made, the ones who cleaned up after the rallies and got ready for the next one,” Kennedy said. “Most women who are sincerely interested in making a difference are not looking for the publicity for it. ... Making a true difference doesn’t always come with fanfare.”
Most women in the movement played background roles, either by choice or due to bias, since being a women of color meant facing both racism and sexism.
“In some ways it reflects the realities of the 1950s: There were relatively few women in public leadership roles,” said Julian Bond, a civil rights historian at the University of Virginia and chair of the NAACP. “So that small subset that becomes prominent in civil rights would tend to be men. But that doesn’t excuse the way some women have just been written out of history.”
nd there’s a 1963 photo of students at Florida A&M University, a historically black college, in which hundreds of people, mostly women, answer court charges for protesting segregated movie theaters.
The women arranged car pools and sold cakes and pies to raise money for alternate transportation.
Countless women in the movement could have spoken:
Ella Baker was a charismatic labor organizer and longtime leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She believed the movement should not place too much emphasis on leaders.
Septima Poinsette Clark, often called the “queen mother” of civil rights, was an educator and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People activist decades before the nation’s attention turned to racial equality.
Woman had key roles in civil rights movement is an article on msnbc.com which discuses what we have been discussing in class. How woman with in the civil rights movement are largely unknown and remained in the background. It names several woman involved nationally in civil rights including Ella Baker, Septima Poinsetta Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Vivian Jones.
I think this article reiterates exactly what our class has been talking about how women were overlooked and more behind the scenes in this movement. The women were not really given the credit they deserve and this article realizes that and touches on important aspects that our class has talked about.
A great article highlighting some of the behind the scenes roles of women. It also describes how many women, which were involved in the movement are still unknown.
UNC's wonderful open educational resource offers up transcripts and .mp3 files of oral history interviews by such great historians as Jacquelyn Hall Dowd and Sue Thrasher.