15 Black Women Civil Rights Leaders You May Not Have Heard of
15 Black Women Civil Rights Leaders You May Not Have Heard of
On August 28, 1963, over 250,000 men, women, and children had made their way to Washington DC to march for civil rights where Dr. Martin Luther King, JR gave his moving “I Have a Dream Speech” that is part of the communal memory of the civil rights movement.
But we never got to hear the voice of the women of the movement, what their hopes and dreams were because the program initially excluded any prominent women from speaking at the march. As a late addition, only Daisy Bates, a leader in the crusade to end segregation in Arkansas gave a brief pledge before the Tribute to Negro Women Fighters to Freedom that was added to quiet women who argued that their voices were being marginalized.
Women were the behind-the-scenes workers of the civil rights movement. They built the grassroots organizations in the small towns and cities of the South as well as the national movement.
According to researchers from the National Museum of African American History & Culture, women were the organizers, and educators who built the infrastructure and mentored young leaders. They participated despite the violence and facing loss of employment and homes as well as fear of sexual assault. But in addition to that, they had to fight sexism by men in the movement they built with their blood, sweat, and tears.
"There were hundreds of unnamed women who participated in the movement," Barbara Reynolds, a journalist and minister whose recordings of King's wife, Coretta Scott King, are the basis of the activist's posthumous memoir, My Life, My Love, My Legacy wrote for the museum. "It was not just a few leaders — it was women ... who really put their mark on history."
Here is a list of 15 leaders but there were many more unsung black women heroes that can be explored during Black History Month.
On August 28, 1963, over 250,000 men, women, and children had made their way to Washington DC to march for civil rights where Dr. Martin Luther King, JR gave his moving “I Have a Dream Speech” that is part of the communal memory of the civil rights movement.
But we never got to hear the voice of the women of the movement, what their hopes and dreams were because the program initially excluded any prominent women from speaking at the march. As a late addition, only Daisy Bates, a leader in the crusade to end segregation in Arkansas gave a brief pledge before the Tribute to Negro Women Fighters to Freedom that was added to quiet women who argued that their voices were being marginalized.
Women were the behind-the-scenes workers of the civil rights movement. They built the grassroots organizations in the small towns and cities of the South as well as the national movement.
According to researchers from the National Museum of African American History & Culture, women were the organizers, and educators who built the infrastructure and mentored young leaders. They participated despite the violence and facing loss of employment and homes as well as fear of sexual assault. But in addition to that, they had to fight sexism by men in the movement they built with their blood, sweat, and tears.
"There were hundreds of unnamed women who participated in the movement," Barbara Reynolds, a journalist and minister whose recordings of King's wife, Coretta Scott King, are the basis of the activist's posthumous memoir, My Life, My Love, My Legacy wrote for the museum. "It was not just a few leaders — it was women ... who really put their mark on history."
Here is a list of 15 leaders but there were many more unsung black women heroes that can be explored during Black History Month.
1. Ella Baker (1903-1986)
Ella Baker is viewed as one of the most influential women in the civil rights movement as a founder and a strategist. She started her work in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1940 as a field secretary and later a director of branches.
Baker moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1957 to help MLK organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and she ran a voter registration program. She left the SCLC after the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins to assist new emerging student activists. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed at a meeting she called for student leaders at Shaw University in April 1960.
Diane Nash was one of the Civil Rights Movement's major organizers, a co-founder of the SNCC and helped orchestrate the Nashville Tennessee campaign to integrate lunch counters. In 1960, Nash attended the founding meeting of the SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina and in 1961 she supported the 10 students in Rock Hill, South Carolina who were arrested in protest activities and refused bail. Nash and three other activists were also jailed in Rock Hill.
In 1961, Nash was a leader in the Mississippi Freedom Rides that were the project of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). From her Nashville base she served as the liaison between the press and the US Department of Justice. In the summer of 1961, she became the head of SNCC’s direct action campaigns.
3. Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)
Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of former slaves and one of 17 children, was an American educator, civil rights activist, stateswoman, humanitarian, and philanthropist. She sought to improve educational opportunities for African-Americans and is best known for starting a school in Daytona Beach, Florida that later became the Bethune-Cookman University.
Bethune served as president of the National Association of Colored Women in 1924 and in 1935 became one of the founders of the National Council of Negro Women. She was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt's and became the highest ranking African American women in government when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt named her director of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration in 1936.
Dorothy Height was called the "Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement" because of her all-embracing involvement in the fight for civil rights that began in the 1930s. Height met Mary McLeod Bethune at a New York YMCA and became her right-hand woman. She joined the national staff in 1944. Height helped organize events for the movement including the March on Washington for MLK.
She was a strong advocate for women's rights, and served as president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). Height, and with other black women leaders, held a parallel march of women down Independence Avenue, while the men marched down Pennsylvania. Her affiliation with the NCNW continued into the 1990s.
Roasa Park's refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery Alabama bus in December 1955 led to the organized bus boycott and the end of bus segregation. But Park's involvement was not an accident of history, she had spent years working with the NAACP and was an investigator for the brutal gang rape of Recy Taylor in 1944. Parks was a lifelong activist for the civil rights struggle.
6. Jo Ann Robinson (1912-1992)
Jo Ann Robinson was active in the Dexter Ave Baptist church and the Women's Political Council (WPC) in Montgomery, Alabama. She had experienced harassment on the city's buses first-hand and when she became president of the WPC, she made bus segregation a top priority of the organization.
The organization repeatedly told the city about the seating practices and harassment on the buses and warned that a bus boycott could occur if things did not change. After Park's arrest, Robinson helped make the boycott a reality. That night, Robinson along with three others distributed over 52,000 flyers calling for the bus boycott.
Coretta Scott King was a leader in her own right. After having experienced discrimination and segregation at Antioch College in Ohio where she studied music, Scott King joined the NAACP.
She married MLK in 1953 and helped to raise awareness and funds for the cause both nationally and internationally. After his death, she continued to fight for civil rights and founded the MLK Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change to continue his legacy.
Pauli Murray was a legal scholar and activist who coined the term "Jane Crow" for the sex discrimination black women faced. She worked with MLK but was critical of the lack of female leadership in the movement.
Her book States’ Laws on Race and Color helped lead to the Brown v. Board of Education landmark ruling by the US Supreme Court in 1954 that ruled that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional.
9. Daisy Bates (1914-1999)
Daisy Bates was active in the civil rights movement and, along with her husband, was the publisher of a weekly paper The Arkansas Press that advocated for civil rights. Bates became president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP and she was involved with the desegregation of schools in Arkansas after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Bates organized the students – the Little Rock Nine – who integrated the Little Rock Central High school in 1957.
Ruby Bridges became a pioneer when she, at age six, was the first African American child to integrate a public school in Louisiana. She had to be escorted to William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans by her mother and three US marshals because of threats of violence. Only one teacher was willing to teach her, and she was the only child in her class. She could not eat lunch in the cafeteria or participate in recess because of threats but this brave beyond her years child never missed a day of school.
11. Septima Clark (1898-1987)
Septima Poinsette Clark was an educator from South Carolina who developed the Citizenship Schools at the Highlander Folk School that taught African Americans the immense power of literacy and education to win civil rights. She taught in South Carolina schools for more than 40 years and participated in a class action lawsuit filed by the NAACP that led to pay parity between black and white teachers. In 1965, the state passed a law that prohibited city and state employees from belonging to civil rights organizations. Her employment contract was not renewed when she refused to resign from the NAACP.
Fannie Hamer fought for civil rights in rural Mississippi by working for voter registration. She was one of the leaders of the 1964 Freedom Summer Campaign and she worked for SNCC focusing on racial segregation and injustice in the South. Hamer also co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party to bring African Americans into the Democratic party and attended the 1964 Democratic national convention in that capacity.
Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman to be elected to congress in 1968 for the 12th district in New York. She became the first black candidate from a major party to run for president in 1972 but did not receive the nomination. Chisholm served on several congressional committees and was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971, as well as a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus. She had many achievements in the house until her retirement from politics in 1983.
14. Elaine Brown (1943- )
Elaine Brown attended her first meeting of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther party in April 1968 after the assassination of MLK. She took over the leadership from founder Huey Newton in 1974 when he fled the country. She held that position until Newton returned in 1977 to face murder charges (he was acquitted). Brown continued to work for the community and helped to develop a free breakfast program, free legal and medical clinics, and the Oakland Community Learning Center.
Angela Davis joined the civil rights movement in 1963 after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church that killed four young girls in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. She is best known for her participation in the Black Panther Party and the American Communist Party in California.
She was charged conspiracy to murder because she bought the firearms that were used in an armed takeover where four people were killed in Marin, California in 1970 but was acquitted of the charges. Davis has worked as a professor, author and activist.