
          Writing and Doing: Women in Civil Rights
          By Grant, JoanneJoanne 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 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.
          
        
