Writing and Doing: Women in Civil Rights

By Joanne Grant

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, pp. 6

A spate of recent conferences has a common purpose: to assess the civil rights movement and place it in historical perspective. They have a common thesis as well–la lutta continua, the struggle goes on.

Clayborne Carson, historian at Stanford University, described as “long-distance runners” the participants at a session of the June colloquium at the University of Virginia on women in the civil rights movement. The colloquium, sponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Institute, brought together a hundred activists and academics for an exchange on “The Roles of Women in Civil Rights Struggles.”

Almost every speaker–panelists, commentators, and participants–linked what had gone before to the present and talked of their continued concern for social issues.

The concept of continuous struggle was brought home from the opening session, when panelists Virginia Durr, Modjeska Simkins, Johnnie Carr, and Anne Braden recalled the civil rights struggles of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. From the floor Oliver Hill reminded participants that in 1904 blacks in Richmond, Va., walked for a year rather than ride segregated buses. “We have to stand on the shoulders of those who went before,” he said, “and do our part while we are here.”

Another theme running through the conference was summarized by Mary Frances Berry of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: “Government doesn’t do anything unless you push it.”

Despite the common themes, however, there were two major areas of disagreement. One was the question of whether women had played a subordinate role in the civil rights movement which led to discontent and hence to the development of the feminist movement. This concept has been discussed at several civil rights conferences over the past year and and [sic] seems to be based in a retrospective assessment in which historians view the earlier movement through the prism of the much later feminist viewpoint.

The second area of disagreement was over the question of whether racism or economic inequities lies at the root of social problems. Anne Braden, the veteran activist from Louisville, Ky., said, “Racism, and the struggle against it, is the key to understanding this society and changing it.” Others argued that the issue of class is paramount.

Notably, several conference speakers pointed to the contributions of Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party leader, and Ella J. Baker, a founder of he Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and an organizer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Joyce Ladner, a sociologist at Howard University, said, “It can be argued that there are some women whose public service and leadership careers transcend the boundaries of feminism, as it is popularly defined…Perhaps Ella Jo Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer can be cast within such a tradition.” Many others cited the work of these two women as exemplars of the role of women in the movement including Raymond Gavins of Duke University and Martha Prescott Norman of the University of Michigan.

The work of Southern black women, it was pointed out, is largely underrated in historiography. Activist Cora Tucker of Halifax County, Va., in detailing the civil rights struggles in her area, said the work done by local people is just as important as that of national leaders. Her own contributions have stretched over three decades [Southern Changes, October-December 1985], but what seems significant is that today she is developing young leadership and has stretched the boundaries of the civil rights struggle to include concern for the Third World, world peace and the environment.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the colloquium, as Victoria Gray–a leader in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party–put it, was providing a setting in which “the people doing the writing are exposed to the people who are doing.”

In general there was agreement that historiography needs the insights of activists and that local organizers could benefit from a historical perspective.

Joanne Grant is a writer and filmmaker. She edited the anthology, Black Protest, and produced the film, Fundi, on the life of Ella Baker.

Sisters of Another Era

Reviewed by Joanne Grant

Vol. 16, No. 2, 1994, pp. 26-27

Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, by Sarah and A. Elizabeth Delany; with Amy Hill Hearth (Kodansha, 1994, 210 pages).

Having Our Say is a folksy, feisty tale of growing up black over a hundred years of our tumultuous history of race relations. Told in the voice of two remarkable women, the Delany sisters, now 100 and 102 years old, the book provides easy access to that history and charmingly details their struggle for independence. Because of that facileness it is particularly valuable for giving the young, who, sad to say, know little about the scourge of racism, some insights into the struggle against it.

Though the Delany sisters were sheltered, growing up in a financially secure family and living for many years in the rarefied atmosphere of St. Augustine’s School in Raleigh, North Carolina, where both their parents were employed, they did not completely escape the barbs of racism. Sometimes they succeeded in deflecting them and sometimes they simply went home and cried.

The two women moved to New York to continue their education; both attended Columbia University. Sarah, or Sadie, the elder, earned a master’s degree in 1925 and taught in New York City public schools for over thirty years. Through hard work and grit Sadie became “the first colored teacher in the New York City system to teach

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domestic science on the high school level.” A. Elizabeth Delany, or Bessie, became the first black female dentist.

Their achievements did not come without struggle. As Bessie put it: “This race business does get under my skin. I have suffered a lot in my life because of it. If you asked me how I endured it, I would have to say it was because I had a good upbringing. My parents did not encourage me to be bitter.”

The sisters met many leading black figures during their long lives, including Booker T. Washington, Paul Robeson, and the sociologist E. Franklin Frazier. One longs for more details about these relationships, yet the book should entice young readers into further exploration of the contributions made by blacks.

Amy Hill Hearth, who interviewed the sisters and compiled Having Our Say, writes in her introduction: “Their story, as the Delany sisters like to say, is not meant as ‘black’ or ‘women’s’ history, but American history. It belongs to all of us.”

Joanne Grant is the author of Black Protest and director of the documentary film Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. Her written biography of Ella Baker will be published by John Wiley and Sons.