Without the contributions of women of color, the social justice movements that spread across the United States in the 1950s and ’60s would have ground to a halt. That’s because women played crucial roles in organizing protests, voter registration drives and letter-writing campaigns. Rosa Parks may be one of the few women that history textbooks name as a civil rights heroine, but the reality is that countless women—from domestic workers to trained activists—helped the grassroots movements of the mid-20th century take off and succeed.
Highly educated and politically active, Jo Ann Robinson had an influential role in making the Montgomery Bus Boycott a success. Born in Georgia in 1912, Robinson was a professor at Alabama State College and a leader in the Women’s Political Council (WPC) of Montgomery when the bus boycott began. Robinson and countless other blacks in Montgomery had all experienced degrading episodes on Montgomery city buses. Although the WPC had reported these incidents to city officials, the group’s concerns were ignored. Robinson and other activists began to consider boycotting the city buses as a result. After Rosa Parks’ arrest in December 1955 for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white man, the WPC circulated leaflets about a boycott to protest Jim Crow on Montgomery city buses. Robinson joined the board of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group formed for the precise purpose of overseeing the boycott. After 381 days, the boycott ended in triumph for the black community. Her memoir about the boycott, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, debuted in 1987. Robinson died in 1992.More »
Born in Mississippi in 1917, Fannie Lou Hamer was reportedly first exposed to the civil rights movement in 1944 when she met activists who sought to register African Americans to vote. Eighteen years later Hamer attended her first activist meeting and decided to help register blacks to vote herself. She did so by participating in SNCC and in spite white supremacists’ efforts to suppress her work by threatening, beating and arresting her. In 1964, Hamer cofounded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the exclusively white group of Democrats represented at the national convention. This move allowed the country to see the need to counteract Jim Crow in the South. In addition to campaigning for civil rights on a national level, Hamer worked to better the economic situations of poor Mississippi families. She also launched a failed run for Congress. She died of cancer in 1977.More »
Born in New Mexico in 1930 and raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Dolores Huerta’s experiences as a teacher motivated her to fight for civil rights. “I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children,” she reportedly said. Huerta became a founding member of the Community Service Organization in Stockton, which opposed racial segregation and police brutality. A decade later she founded the Agricultural Workers Association. She helped pave the way for Spanish speakers to vote and take driver’s license examinations in their native language. Huerta’s activism led to her meeting community organizer Cesar Chavez. Together, they formed the National Farm Workers Association, which eventually became the United Farm Workers. The UFW and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led a grape workers strike, pairing up to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in 1966. The strike went on for five years. In the end, the farm workers received contracts that provided health benefit plans, higher wages and less exposure to pesticides. Huerta negotiated a number of the new contracts.More »
•Ella Baker
Born in Virginia in 1903 but raised in North Carolina, Ella Baker developed a taste for social justice at a young age. As a Shaw University student, she protested school policies she considered unjust. As a young adult, Baker took on active roles in the Young Negroes Cooperative League, the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She also co-founded an organization called In Friendship and ran a voter registration outfit called Crusade for Citizenship. Baker arguably left her biggest mark on the civil rights movement when she gathered together the North Carolina students who staged lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro on Feb. 1, 1960, to challenge racial segregation in accommodations. At that gathering the organization known as SNCC, or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, got its start. In partnership with the Congress of Racial Equality, SNCC helped organized 1964’s Freedom Summer, a mobilization to register African Americans to vote. Freedom Summer went on to make international headlines and SNCC became one of the most well-known civil rights groups in the world. Baker died in 1986 at the age of 83.More »•Jo Ann Robinson
Highly educated and politically active, Jo Ann Robinson had an influential role in making the Montgomery Bus Boycott a success. Born in Georgia in 1912, Robinson was a professor at Alabama State College and a leader in the Women’s Political Council (WPC) of Montgomery when the bus boycott began. Robinson and countless other blacks in Montgomery had all experienced degrading episodes on Montgomery city buses. Although the WPC had reported these incidents to city officials, the group’s concerns were ignored. Robinson and other activists began to consider boycotting the city buses as a result. After Rosa Parks’ arrest in December 1955 for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white man, the WPC circulated leaflets about a boycott to protest Jim Crow on Montgomery city buses. Robinson joined the board of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group formed for the precise purpose of overseeing the boycott. After 381 days, the boycott ended in triumph for the black community. Her memoir about the boycott, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, debuted in 1987. Robinson died in 1992.More »
•Fannie Lou Hamer
Born in Mississippi in 1917, Fannie Lou Hamer was reportedly first exposed to the civil rights movement in 1944 when she met activists who sought to register African Americans to vote. Eighteen years later Hamer attended her first activist meeting and decided to help register blacks to vote herself. She did so by participating in SNCC and in spite white supremacists’ efforts to suppress her work by threatening, beating and arresting her. In 1964, Hamer cofounded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the exclusively white group of Democrats represented at the national convention. This move allowed the country to see the need to counteract Jim Crow in the South. In addition to campaigning for civil rights on a national level, Hamer worked to better the economic situations of poor Mississippi families. She also launched a failed run for Congress. She died of cancer in 1977.More »
•Dolores Huerta
Born in New Mexico in 1930 and raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Dolores Huerta’s experiences as a teacher motivated her to fight for civil rights. “I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children,” she reportedly said. Huerta became a founding member of the Community Service Organization in Stockton, which opposed racial segregation and police brutality. A decade later she founded the Agricultural Workers Association. She helped pave the way for Spanish speakers to vote and take driver’s license examinations in their native language. Huerta’s activism led to her meeting community organizer Cesar Chavez. Together, they formed the National Farm Workers Association, which eventually became the United Farm Workers. The UFW and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led a grape workers strike, pairing up to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in 1966. The strike went on for five years. In the end, the farm workers received contracts that provided health benefit plans, higher wages and less exposure to pesticides. Huerta negotiated a number of the new contracts.More »
•Elaine Brown
Elaine Brown demonstrates that not only did women participate in the fight for civil rights but in more radical movements as well. Born in 1943 in Philadelphia, Brown learned about social injustices firsthand via her upbringing in an impoverished community. In 1974, Brown became the first and only woman to lead the Black Panther Party. She wrote about her rise to the top of the organization in her memoir A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story. She continues to participate in social activism today, especially in regards to the criminal justice system.More »
SHARE
