Bettye Collier-Thomas - Sisters in the Struggle

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Sisters in the Struggle

African American Women in the
Civil RightsBlack Power Movement

EDITED BY
Bettye Collier-Thomas
and V. P. Franklin

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London

2001 by Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sisters in the struggle : African American women in the
civil rightsblack power movement / edited by
Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-1602-4 (acid-free paper)
ISBN 0-8147-1603-2 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
1. African American women civil rights workersHistory
20th century. 2. African American women civil rights workers
Biography. 3. African American women political activists
History20th century. 4. African American women political
activistsBiography. 5. African AmericansCivil rights
History20th century. 6. Black powerUnited States
History20th century. 7. Civil rights movementsUnited
StatesHistory20th century. 8. African American leadership
History20th century. 9. United StatesRace relations.
I. Collier-Thomas, Bettye. II. Franklin, V. P. (Vincent P.), 1947
E185.61 .S615 2001
323.11960730922dc21 2001001550

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

in memory of

Gwendolyn Brooks
Gladys Collier Oden
Gail Lynetta Franklin

In 1987, the Ford Foundation awarded Bettye Collier-Thomas, the founder and Executive Director of the Bethune Museum and Archives (BMA), a grant for research and sponsorship of a conference on black women in the Civil Rights Movement. Collier-Thomas was involved in surveying the important role that Mary McLeod Bethune, the National Council of Negro Women, the National Association of Colored Women, the Alpha Kappa Alpha Non-Partisan Council, and other womens organizations had played in the Civil Rights Movement. She was also involved in reviewing the emerging scholarship, which rarely mentioned the women or organizations.

Without the support of Lynn Walker and Sheila Biddle, program directors at the Ford Foundation, the project would not have been launched. In 1989, the project moved to Temple University when Collier-Thomas joined the History Department and became Director of the Center for African American History and Culture (CAAHC). In 1995, V. P. Franklin became co-director of the project to develop a national conference on African American Women in the Civil RightsBlack Power Movement which was held at Temple University on November 2021, 1997. Special thanks are due to the Bethune Museum and Archives for administration of the grant.

We also thank James Turner and Sharon Harley, who served as members of the conference planning committee, as well as Julian Bond, Diane Bevel Nash, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Dorothy Cotton, Clayborne Carson, Kathleen Cleaver, Aldon Morris, Gloria Harper Dickinson and others who participated in a roundtable discussion and suggested approaches and ideas for the project. Researchers Marya McQuirter, Michael Collins, Jerry Bjelopra, Danielle Smallcomb, Richard Woodland, and Fatima Aliu followed up research leads and identified sources for the bibliography. The work of CAAHC administrative assistant Joanne Hawes Speakes was indispensable to organizing the conference. We also thank Charlotte Sheedy and Neeti Madan, our agents, and Stephen Magro, our editor at NYU Press.

We are especially thankful for our families, in particular Charles J. Thomas, Thelma and Joseph Collier, Vincent F. Franklin, Jack Franklin and Garland Franklin, who continue to help us endure the stresses that accompany our efforts to balance professional and family lives, and help to anchor us in the realities of daily life. We appreciate the personal perspectives and scholarly insights of friends and colleagues Ed Collins, Bernice Johnson Reagan, Lillian S. Williams, Sandra Bowen Motz, Linda M. Perkins, June Patton, Charles Payne, Elsa Barkley Brown, Bernice McNair Barnett, Francile Rusan Wilson, John Hope Franklin, C. Eric Lincoln, Paul Coates, Sylvia Jacobs, Janet Sims-Woods, Alexa B. Henderson, Tony Montiero, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Mary Frances Berry, Kenneth Kusmer, Wilbert Jenkins, Olga Dugan, Thomas Battle, Diane Jacox, Gloria Richardson, and Margaret Coleman.

The time

cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face

all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.

Whose half-black hands assemble oranges

is tom-tom hearted

(goes in bearing oranges and boom).

And there are bells for orphans

and red and shriek and sheen.

A garbage man is dignified

as any diplomat.

Big Bessies feet hurt like nobodys business,

but she standsbiglyunder the unruly scrutiny,

stands in the wild seed.

In the wild weed

she is a citizen,

and, in a moment of highest quality, admirable.

It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud.

Nevertheless, live.

Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the

whirlwind.

Gwendolyn Brooks, from The Second
Sermon on the Warpland

From the time that African women arrived on the shores of what came to be known as the New World, they have been caught up in a whirlwind of forces oftentimes beyond their control. Having survived the horrors of the Middle Passage was not enough; these mothers, grandmothers,

Over the last two decades historians and other scholars have begun to document and interpret the unique experiences of African women in the New World in general, and in the United States in particular. Through narrative histories, encyclopedias, anthologies, monographs, biographies, articles, and reviews, we have a better understanding of the conditions for African American women during slavery, the social and economic changes that came with Reconstruction, the role that African American women played in progressive social reform movements, the origins and activities of the black womens club movement, black womens contributions to American war efforts, and the great advancements they made in the first half of the twentieth century in the fields of education, business, sports, and entertainment.

Historians of U.S. history are beginning to define the years from 1954 to 1965 as the Civil Rights Era. From the U.S. Supreme Courts Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 declaring segregation in public education unconstitutional to the famous Selma to Montgomery, Alabama March in 1965, the demand for an end to legal segregation and discrimination in voting, housing, education, employment, and public accommodations was the dominant social and political issue facing the American population. Civil rights protests and demonstrations were organized in all sections of the United States, not just in the South; and the civil rights legislation passed during these years changed the social and political status of the majority of American citizens, not just African Americans. With the emergence of the student rights, antiwar, womens liberation, and Black Power movements after 1965, a new era of social protest and activism was launched in American society.