“Backbones” of the Movement

One of my self-proclaimed duties that I have taken on as a studying Historian, as a woman, has been to highlight within my academic and personal research the role of Black women in the Civil Rights Movement. Not in negligence of the men who also were on the frontlines of the movement, the men who as activists were apart of many of the movements across the country that brought about the improved reality we live in today as Black Americans, but to correct the concept of misogyny that created continued forms of erasure for the women who were also just apart of the movement as the men. With the final blogpost, I wanted to commit to this newfound “duty” as a soon graduating Black Woman Historian to highlight the women within the Digital Archive who’ve added and led in the movement.

One of the negligences I’ve noticed during research of women’s roles within the Civil Rights Movement, was the placing of importance on certain cities and states. Within the surface learning of the Civil Rights Movement, we always hear about the infamous cities of Montgomery, Topeka and Atlanta but other areas such as New Orleans, Houston and others are continually left out of the conversation.

Historian and educator Merlin Pitre (1943 -) spoke eloquently on the privilege of news coverage on states like Mississippi over states like Texas as it pertains to women of the Civil Rights Movement:

“Some were, you know, organizers, some were mobilizers and whatever, and a lot depended upon the environment, the state in which they was because you would have somebody like Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi that everybody knows about and the role she played. But some of those other women in other states, you would never know about. So decided that maybe we should look at state by state because you would find that, as I said, here in Texas, you would have integration coming much more quietly or overtly [sic.] than in Mississippi where you--where the camera and everything was there, so, but still, these women were playing a very important role and pushing, so this is why we wanted to look at those individual states.”

One of the areas of gender discrimination as it relates civil rights organizations, found a pattern in the organization of SNCC ( Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), with was a student-led organization made up of mostly Black college students that took part in peaceful protests across the countries. Playwright Pearl Cleage (1948-)spoke on her female experience of SNCC and her frustrations with the hierarchy of the organization. “Cleage has been involved in the Pan-Africanist Movement, the Civil Rights Movement and Feminist Movement. She has also been a pioneer in grassroots and community theater.”

“You know it's just all of those things are so--were so terrible because these were very wonderful, dedicated, charismatic guys. And as a young woman I loved them. They were wonderful. But as a woman who was also beginning to develop a feminist consciousness I was angry at them for thinking that we were always gonna be the ones in the background, making a coffee, running off the fliers, doing all the hard work but never the one who gets to articulate the position, who gets to make the strategy, all of those things. So that it was, really I came into a group of women because the SNCC women were really the ones that took on all of these issues very, very early, so that being friendly with Karen [Spellman] and then getting to know all of these SNCC women was wonderful for me, because we were always talking about that.”

“And at the same time as the political activities were going on there was also the lives of the cultural nationalism, where people were beginning to really think about Africa, and beginning to wear African clothing and take African names and all of that, which was not necessarily a good thing for us getting these progressive black men to think about feminism, because they were beginning to leak into a mythical kind of African past where we were then not only supposed to wear African clothes, but walk three paces behind, and all of that, when LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka] was saying things, like women should be seen and not heard and all of those kinds of things. So it made for someone like me who was born to agitate and raise questions-”

In the American educational curriculum, Black history as a whole falls through the cracks in History class. With that in mind it is important to also know of the Black women who fell through the cracks of recognition. Women such as Coretta Scott King and Rosa Parks are continually mentioned, but women like Dorothy Height, referred to as the “Godmother of Civil Rights”, are seldom given the recognition within classrooms as they deserve. “Civic leader Dorothy Height (1912 - 2010 ) was the president of National Council of Negro Women for over forty years. Leaders of the United States regularly took her counsel, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and President Lyndon B. Johnson.” In the Digital Archive, Height spoke passionately on the strength of women of the Civil Rights Movement.

“Perhaps, one of the little known fact for recognition is that women, children, youth were indeed the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. We had strong male leadership. We had strong male participation. But the, I think that's one thing that we have to have recognition. And that there were many women who, who would be known, but many who will never be--whose names will never be known, without whom the Civil Rights Movement could not have succeeded. If you look at any one of the areas, you'll find that, that there--and especially when we went to meeting, that often the, the platform was predominate male and the auditorium, audience, predominately female. And I think that--I, I see several historians researching now to be able to tell their story cause I think it needs to be told.”

She also spoke on the prevalence of women’s civil rights activist Ella Baker, who was a force within lots of the civil rights organizations and protests we know of.

”Yes, they--both. And I think Ella Baker did a great job in organizings, particularly students and, because she worked well with young people. And I think the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee [SNCC] thrived because of her help. And, of course, Dr. King [Martin Luther King, Jr.] helped them too. But I think that when we talk about the Civil Rights Movement, we often forget the role that the freedom rides, the sit-ins, the role that youth played at so many levels to give that movement its vitality.”

Though the feelings of anger for lack of recognition that Cleage spoke of were I’m sure very real, the solution to continue to amplify and recognize the women of the Civil Rights Movement is brought about by the men, who do have that pedestal in the movement, to speak up on the matter and continue to uplift their women counterparts.

Within the digital archive, known civil rights activist John Lewis spoke on the presence of sexism and how it affected the Black women of the Civil Rights Movement.

'“Many of the women never get the credit that they should have received. 'Cause the male--the [Civil Rights] Movement was male chauvinism. It was the height of it--maybe at its worst or at its best--I don't know which way to put it. Because it was dominated by Baptist--church--well not just Baptist. But black church people. And Ella Baker had her own problem with Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] and others. And I think that's one reason Jim Lawson said--you couldn't just fight for equality. But you need equality within the Movement itself. We fought for equality, but in the movement, you had the women getting out there doing all of the nitty-gritty work. Picketing, making the signs, sitting in, getting beaten, going to jail. But very few of them were allowed to play major leadership roles. But there were people like a Diane Nash, Gloria Richardson in Cambridge [Maryland], Fannie Lou Hamer , Ella Baker, Daisy Bates. The other lady I was thinking about, Ruby Doris Smith, she was from Spelman [College, Atlanta, Georgia].”

One of those women John Lewis spoke on that I didn’t know of was Ruby Doris Smith. Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from its earliest days in 1960 until her death in October 1967. She served the organization as an activist in the field and as an administrator in the Atlanta central office.

Here is a mugshot of Robinson, getting in what John Lewis would call “good trouble”.

One of the reasons I wanted to highlight the stories of the women in the Civil Rights Movement, because I feel that it’s important, in History, especially Black History, to leave no stone unturned and as a Historian to live up to my duty as a Black Women to make sure their stories are heard with the same amplification as their male counterparts.