Black women civil rights talk

“Black Women are the mules of
the Earth”
Zora Neale Hurston, “Their Eyes were watching God”

Honoring the contributions of the women
who worked tirelessly and selflessly in
support of civil rights.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greatwork/358486858/

The civil rights movement could not have
succeeded without the incredibly hard
work of many women who received little
or no attention for their efforts.
―Women played a major role in the struggle
for civil rights, though most histories don't
tell their stories.‖
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3693/is_200105/ai_n8946685/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

"The most powerful person in the struggle of the
sixties was Miss Ella Baker, not Martin
Luther King."
Stokely Carmichael
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-34799556_ITM

Ella Baker
(1903 - 1986)

―While she was content to work in
supportive roles, she urged African
American women to take up their
struggle for equality. She explained the
social environment of the 1950s and
1960s: "The [civil rights] movement …
was carried largely by women, since it
came out of church groups‖
http://www.answers.com/topic/ella-baker

Ella Baker‘s ‗credentials‘
―She had become discouraged with not only the
failure to place women in leadership roles, but she
disagreed with the leader-centered management
of the organization. She believed that rather than
depend upon one person for leadership, a group-
centered style of leadership should be
implemented.‖
http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/ellabaker/p/bio_baker_e.htm

Ella Baker and Martin Luther King

―In addition, she was also unimpressed
with [Rev. Dr. Martin Luther] King.
Most frustrating to her was his failure
to treat her on equal footing with men
and his disinterest in her ideas.‖
http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/ellabaker/p/bio_baker_e.htm

Ella Baker, left, with actor Ruby Dee

why you‘ve never heard of Ella Baker

… studies of the Civil Rights movement have
focused almost exclusively on the contributions
of male leaders [as opposed] to community
mobilizing, in part because the most visible and
vocal public figures in the movement were men
such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and
Stokely Carmichael.

other than Rosa Parks, have you heard of any
woman civil rights leader?
The grassroots organizing done largely by
women--the "spade work." as Baker called it,
that tilled the ground in preparation for
campaigns such as the Montgomery bus boycott
and the 1963 March on Washington--has
received little attention


Septima Poinsette Clark
(1898 - 1987)

So little has been written about Septima
Clark's life that most Americans have never
heard of her. Those who knew and
worked with Clark remember her as one of
the most influential women in the civil
rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
http://www.answers.com/topic/septima-clark

Septima Poinsette Clark
Clark's passion for racial equality stemmed from
her experiences as a teacher and a mother in the
segregated South; she wrote in her 1962
autobiography ―Echo in My Soul:
There is nothing worse than having to teach a
black child "that none of the pleasant things in
life are for him ... explaining why the native soil
is such a hard place for the native to grow in.‖

http://www.answers.com/topic/septima-clark

Septima means seventh or sufficient

―Septima Clark, one of the most effective and yet
unsung heroes of the civil rights movement,
believed that literacy was the key to
empowerment. After teaching for many years in
the public schools of South Carolina, she went
on to work tirelessly with the Highlander Folk
School in Tennessee and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference in Georgia.

Lanker, Brian. I Dream a World. NYC, Workman Publishing (1989) pp. 164

―I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is
chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider
chaos a gift.‖
Clark, Septima; ed. Brown, C.S. Ready from Within. Navarro, CA: Wild Tress Press, 1986

With her talent for developing leadership, she
established innovative citizenship schools
throughout the South. She recruited hundreds
of teachers who taught thousands of others to
read, to register to vote, and to stand up for
their rights.‖


Septima Clark teaching a
citizen education class

Septima Clark in her own words:

―In those days I didn‘t criticize Dr. King
other than asking him not to lead all the
marches. Like other black ministers, Dr.
King didn‘t think too much of the way
women could contribute. I see this as one
of the weaknesses of the civil rights
movement, the way the men looked at
women.‖


Charlayne Hunter-Gault (1942 - )
―Charlayne Hunter was one of two black students
to desegregate the University of Georgia in
Athens in 1961 … ‗Even in the best high school
in Atlanta, we had hand-me-down textbooks and
our labs were certainly not as well equipped …
We didn‘t want to go to school with white
people – that wasn‘t it. It was those facilities they
had.‖
Lanker, Brian. I Dream a World. NYC, Workman Publishing (1989), pp 62

C. Hunter-Gault …

―You have to assess every situation that
you‘re in and you have to decide, is this
happening because I‘m black? Is this
happening because I‘m a woman? Or is
this happening because this is how it
happens.


C. Hunter-Gault …

Whatever I have faced as a woman is
probably a lot more subtle than what I
have faced as a black person.
… I have never looked on being black or
being a woman as a handicap and,
honestly, I have used those things to my
advantage, in the workplace particularly.

C. Hunter-Gault on the U.S.
Whatever you say about this country, we do
have a Constitution where equality of
opportunity is a basic principle … If
people are informed they will do the right
thing. It‘s when they are not informed that
they become hostages to prejudice.‖


Fannie Lou Hamer (1917 – 1977)
―I‘m sick and tired of being sick and tired‖

She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi
Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later
became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964
Democratic National Convention in Atlantic
City, New Jersey, in that capacity.
http://www.wanabo.com/the-raw-feed/fannie-lou-hamer

photo: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9862643/

Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the
Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a
reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant
champion of civil rights.

http://www.wanabo.com/the-raw-feed/fannie-lou-hamer

―And ultimately, MLK brokered the deal with LBJ to seat
the Mississippi delegation and made some other
concessions, but in a way that, again, really made Fannie
Lou Hamer and the women and men that she brought
with her feel that the overall Civil Rights Movement
had sold out the interests of the poorest and the most
vulnerable that the movement was meant to help …
invoking her helps us to remember that even the Civil
Rights Movement was not a moment of pure unity of
race, that there was always these questions of class and
of gender that complicated the racial movements in
America.‖
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/28/melissa_harris_lacewell_urge
s_obama_to

Rosa Parks (1913 – 2005)

The only well known female of
the civil rights movement,
Rosa Parks‘ refusal to give up
her bus seat to a white male
passenger on 01 December,
1955 ―sparked the
Montgomery bus boycott.‖
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

―the mother of the civil rights movement‖
―After the bus boycott got going and
(Martin Luther) King got involved, they
wouldn‘t even let Rosa Parks speak at the
first mass meeting,‖ she said. ―She asked
to speak, and one of the ministers said he
thought she had done enough.‖

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9862643/

Rosa Parks was proactive,
not a docile ―good girl‖

Olson added that Parks is often depicted as a
deferential woman who defied segregation laws at
the urging of movement leaders, but in fact she had
for years quietly pushed for racial justice — and she
had carefully planned the actions that led to her
arrest.
―She was not just a symbol,‖ Olson said. ―She was an
agent.‖

Olson, Lynne. “Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil
Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970.” Scribner. 2002.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9862643/

Mrs. Parks was the first woman to lie in state in the U.S.
Capitol‘s rotunda

Rosa Parks‘ death
highlights the fact
that she was one
of the very few
female civil rights
figures who are
widely known

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/i
d/9862643/

E.D. Nixon, former president of the Alabama N.A.A.C.P,
escorts Mrs. Parks to her trial on March 19, 1956.

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (1924 – 2005)
Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman
elected to the United States Congress.
―Developing a keen interest in politics, she began
to learn the arts of organizing and fund raising.
She deeply resented the role of women in local
politics, which consisted mostly of staying in
the background, sponsoring fund raising events,
and turning the money over to male party
leaders who would then decide how to use it.‖
http://www.answers.com/topic/shirley-chisholm

Shirley Chisholm‘s 1972 presidential campaign

―One of the four founders of the National
Women's Political Caucus in 1971, she often
said that during her twenty years in local politics
"I had met far more discrimination because I
am a woman than because I am black." Indeed
Shirley Chisholm was so outspoken in favor of
women's rights that she was often criticized for
not paying enough attention to black issues.
http://www.jofreeman.com/polhistory/chisholm.htm

Shirley Chisholm in her own words …

―When I was about six or seven … even then I
was beginning to show signs of leadership. At
that time it was called a rebellious little girl … I
moved into the Presidential bid and that was the
worst campaign I ever went through in my life in
terms of almost being destroyed by men. They
never attacked me in terms of my ability and
articulation. It was always an attack based on my
gender.
Lanker, Brian. I Dream a World. NYC, Workman Publishing (1989), pp. 106

―Why should black men be any different from white
men, brown men, pink men, whatever? They‘re all part
of the male gender, who for so many years had
preconceived notions and stereotypical thinking about
the role of women …
Nobody calls on black women to find out what they‘re
thinking about because we‘re always part of somebody
else‘s agenda … I want to organize black women in this
country so that they‘ll become a force to be dealt with.‖


Rachel, Jackie Jr and Jackie Robinson at home in 1956.

Rachel Robinson
Jackie Robinson foundation chairperson,
psychiatric nurse and businesswoman

―It is very easy to be drawn into being a
professional widow. People want to preserve
the widow of a great man in that role and I saw
it as a trap – one that I recognized long before
Jack died, because it was also a potential trap to
be just Mrs. Jackie Robinson. It was important,
but I had to work at becoming Rachel
Robinson, too.‖

―If I have one motto for myself, it‘s ‗Fight
Back.‘ I almost pin it on the walls around
my house. We‘re engaged in a struggle
that will be on-going for generations, I
fear. So the willingness to fight back and
the psychological stamina and disciplien to
keep focused on basic goals is essential.‖


Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell
Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies
at Princeton University

―In a recent piece in The Nation magazine titled
―Obama and the Sisters,‖ Melissa Harris-Lacewell
describes these women as the lost prophets of
American democracy. Harris-Lacewell writes,
‗The Obama candidacy is built on the
organizational foundation laid by these women at
least as much as it is on the oratorical
showmanship of black male preachers.‘‖
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/28/melissa_harris_lacewell_urges_obama_to

Dr. Harris-Lacewell‘s thoughts on Ella Baker
―Ella Baker is an African American—first of all,
everyone should read Barbara Ransby‘s book about Ella
Baker, which returns her really to public discourse.
She‘s an African American woman who, again, was a
community activist and organizer, was brought up in a
family of organizers, and was not a speechmaker.
And she was consistently silenced by Martin King. She
was consistently marginalized by the male preachers of
the Civil Rights Movement. Most of us don‘t remember
Ella Baker‘s name, even though we benefit from her
work.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/28/melissa_harris_lacewell_urges_obama_to

Questions … comments?
Myra Michele Brown
Information Resource Officer (regional)
U.S. Embassy, Accra
Accra office: 233 021 741172
mobile phone: 233 024 432 2007
Sierra Leone; Liberia; Cote d‘Ivoire; Ghana;
Togo; Benin; Gabon & Cameroon
brownmm4@state.gov

Black women civil rights talk

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