By Evette Dionne
The Greensboro Four are synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement. A southern revolution was ignited when Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond asked for coffee at the segregated Woolworth’s counter. The four freshmen from Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, which is now North Carolina A&T State University, agreed to risk their health and academic livelihoods to integrate a community staple.
Even with the presence of the police department and constant intimidation from opponents, the Greensboro Four remained stoic, dignified, and determined. The students stewed in leftover food tossed at them and saliva tarnishing the smoothness of their skin. But their sacrifice magnified the indecencies of the “separate but equal” argument. Their act of rebellion sparked a wildfire: Dozens of lunch counters closed, President Dwight Eisenhower issued a statement of support, and Nashville students used similar tactics three months later to attain citywide desegregation.
More than 50 years later, a statue has been erected on the campus of North Carolina A&T State University to honor the courage displayed by the Greensboro Four. On the 50th anniversary of the initial sit-in, the historic Woolworth’s counter was transformed into a Civil Rights museum with a section dedicated to the events of February 1, 1960. All recognize and appreciate the heroism exhibited by those fearless freshmen.
But where is the gratitude for the women that were influential in organizing the sit-ins? There are no statues or mentions in history books of the Bennett College* students who were responsible for forming the movement. In November 1959, students at Bennett, a historical black institution for African-American women, recognized the disparities of segregation and decided to stage a meeting to discuss action. The Greensboro Four and others from neighboring colleges attended and with the encouragement of the Bennett Belles, planned to begin the sit-ins before Christmas vacation.
Willa B. Player, Ph.D., Bennett College president from 1956 to 1966, was adamant in her discouragement of beginning before the holiday vacation. Legend whispers that Dr. Player asked the Greensboro Four to place their heads on the chopping block to protect her students from imminent harm. Her encouragement was misconstrued as permission to strip the Belles of credit, which is what later happened. Proper credit was never given, but Bennett College remained silent and supportive to avoid conflict. The chagrin of their removal haunts the campus; even the Greensboro Four have denied the instrumental role of Bennett Belles.
But the plight of those women who sacrificed with no acknowledgment is common. Historical notoriety paves the path for access to power and privilege, so women are often removed from the overarching Civil Rights narrative. Most women’s efforts have been disregarded, with the exception of Rosa Parks, who’s been honored with a federal stamp and worldwide gratitude. Black Americans are fed a false discourse of our struggle and we digest it without complaint or rebuttal.
The exclusion of estrogen has enabled (his)tory to discount the work of influential women like Ruby Dee and Maya Angelou, Ph.D., who used entertainment to heighten awareness for civil rights in the 1950s. It demotes Dr. Player, who was the first black American woman to lead a four-year college, to the margins.
In 1958, Dr. Player made the historic decision to permit Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak at Bennett’s Annie Merner-Pfeiffer Chapel after all other local colleges and organizations refused to host him. She justified her decision by telling the News & Record: “Bennett College is a liberal arts school where freedom rings, so Martin Luther King Jr. can speak here.” We rarely hear this tale during Black History Month.
Julianne Malveaux, Ph.D. is the second Black American woman to attain a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of her beloved quotes is: “History belongs to she who holds the pen.” Using that instrument to excise women from the Civil Rights Movement keeps Dr. King at the forefront of national memory while Sojourners for Truth and Justice, an African-American women’s social protest organization, never garners media coverage during our 28 days of national celebration.
Long before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 60 Black American women stormed the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice demanding an end to racial injustice. It was October 1, 1951, and the Sojourners were the sole group in the Communist Left that was assembled and led by Black American women.
Over the course of one year, the radical group mobilized black women to protest Jim Crow, demand an end to the Cold War, and request freedom for those unjustly imprisoned, including Rosa Lee Ingram. Ingram was sentenced to death in Georgia, but after immense public pressure from the NAACP and women’s rights organizations, her sentence was commuted to life in prison. Black women progressives organized the National Committee for the Defense of the Ingram Family, which fought tirelessly for amnesty on her behalf.
The emergence of the Sojourners for Truth and Justice was directly related to the development of “black left feminism.” The Sojourners, which was organized by Louise Thompson Patterson, poet and actress Beulah Richardson, newspaper editor Charlotta Bass, activist Dorothy Hunton, writer Eslanda Robeson, and playwright Shirley Graham Du Bois, developed a “black left feminism,’ which according to the literary critic Mary Helen Washington is a political focus that centers working-class women by combining Communist Party positions on race, gender, and class with Black nationalism and Black radical women’s life experiences. Black left feminism paid special attention to the intersectional, systemic nature of African American women’s oppression and understood their struggle for dignity and freedom in global terms.”
The Sojourners and thousands of other women gathered in the 1940s and the early 1950s to protest human-rights indecencies, including the Martinsville Seven and the Trenton Six according to Erik S. McDuffie, author of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism. One of these social activist groups was Wednesdays in Mississippi, an organization that examined the intersections of gender and class on the movement. Wednesdays in Mississippi was created by the National Council of Negro Women along with a larger coalition of other women’s organizations to target Black and white women in Mississippi, particularly those working with the Freedom Summer projects according to Debbie Z. Harwell, author of the “Wednesdays in Mississippi: Uniting Women Across Regional and Racial Lines, Summer 1964” report. I’ve never watched a commercial celebrating their efforts.
Though other women’s organizations, including Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Hadassah, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom lobbied for progression, Harwell writes that Wednesdays in Mississippi was the sole civil rights program “organized by women, for women, as part of a national women’s organization.” Despite this distinct purpose, Wednesdays is Mississippi is absent from the historiography of the Civil Rights Movement.
Like the dainty Bennett Belles with their elegant pearls, white gloves, and empowerment manifestos, the work of women in the Civil Rights Movement is often dismissed in order to give credit to those that benefited from their sacrifices.
One exhibition is aiming to alter the construction of the narrative. Freedom’s Sisters, a collaborative effort between the Cincinnati Museum Center and SITES, provides perspective to the Civil Rights Movement by highlighting the work and lives of 20 influential Black American women. Freedom’s Sisters, sponsored by Ford Motor Company Fund, uses interactive exhibits to bring Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune, Septima Poinsette Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dorothy Height, Coretta Scott King, Parks, and 13 other women to life.
A modern leader honored as a sister of freedom is Sonia Sanchez, Philadelphia’s poet laureate. Sanchez is commemorated for using poetry to raise political awareness and introducing black studies departments to various universities.
Sanchez understands the importance of Freedom’s Sisters and advocates its importance in modern context. “Young women (and men) need to know these ‘herstories’ because they need to know where they are at this point in history,” Sanchez told WeNews.
The role of women in the struggle for equality matters. We must collectively acknowledge those sacrifices this Black History Month to keep her(story) vibrant.
Sanchez best surmises the importance of this knowledge: “Whatever young people have in jobs, in universities … it’s because of the work of many of these women that you didn’t even hear about.”
*Full disclosure: Evette Dionne is an alumna of Bennett College.
The post No Girls Allowed: The Removal of Women from the Civil Rights Narrative appeared first on UPTOWN Magazine.