Important Women and their Roles in the Civil Rights Movement
From the earliest days of the earliest colonies in North America, people of African descent in the United States have fought for their rights. ... Although the civil rights movement could not overcome all the obstacles that stood in the way of full citizenship, it achieved some stunning success. The men, women and children of courage are permanently etched into the nation’s history. ... For the entire struggle in African American history, the years between 1945 and 1970 represented a new movement (Kosof,1989). ... Black Americans were determined to be architects of an inclusive America, one that championed human rights for all. ... The fight for economic and racial justice in Baton Rouge, Montgomery, and other Southern towns and cities became part of a worldwide fight for human rights (Kosof,1989). ... Many individuals were involved in the long struggle of the civil rights movement. These individuals risked their lives to fight in the struggle for human rights. ... The women of the civil rights movement were often in the shadows of many great men. These women of the movement could be found putting their bodies along side the men in protest, but were often disregarded. Women played important and key roles in the struggle for racial equality. Womens experience in the Civil Rights movement and their ability to access and be denied power in a movement for black liberation that was based on the idea of equality (Collier, 2001). There was an inherent contradiction within the movement for although many women were doing much of the organizing work they still remained largely invisible while the men shone in the spotlight. Women of all different social classes and racial backgrounds participated in many different capacities throughout the black liberation movement Evan,1980) . Women were an indispensable part of the movement that could often be found working behind the scenes or in the trenches along side the men helping to bring about social change through the movement (Harding, 1997). These revolutionary women could be found putting their bodies on the line along side the men in protest at segregated lunch counters in small towns, on buses for the Freedom Rides traveling throughout the segregated south, as well as working door-to-door on voter registration drives throughout the South (Evan, 1980). It is invariable true that women organizers throughout the movement no matter if they were working with the male public and private leaders of the movement or men at the grassroots level, at some time or another had to face the opposition and ridicule of many of the men whom they worked along side of in the movement simply because they were women (Evan,1980). Men were certainly not opposed to females being active in the movement. Far from it, they were well aware of the fact that women’s active participation in the movement was crucial to its success, but they were certainly reluctant to give up their positions of authority in the movement. The fact of the matter is that due to the climate of the times the civil rights movement from the start was culturally biased towards men and it essentially ended up mirroring many of the social conventions of the larger society even though these groups were supposedly revolutionary in nature (Potter and Clayton, 1997). We must be careful to avoid the construction of a monolithic experience of women in the civil rights movement, for clearly women’s experiences within the movement were as differentiated as the number and types of organizations that participated in the movement. Nonetheless, when we hear the stories of women who encountered male chauvinism within the movement we should not be too surprised considering the history, constituency, and structure of some of the major organizations of the movement.