Abstract
Women, especially black women, but also some key white women, played important roles, both as leaders and as mass participants, in the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and the 1960s. This was especially true in the early phases of the movement, although their roles varied somewhat in different organizations. Nevertheless, women rarely gained national recognition or the formal leadership positions in the major civil rights organizations, nor did they necessarily seek them.
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Notes
Marion Bromley, “Feminism and Nonviolent Revolution,” in Pam McAllister ed., Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Non-Violence (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1982), p. 147.
Sara Evans, “Women’s Consciousness and the Southern Black Movement,” in Reweaving the Web of Life, p. 121.
Joyce Ladner, “A Sociology of the Civil Rights Movement: An Insider’s Perspective,” Paper presented at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 27, 1988, Atlanta, GA.
Lewis M. Killian, The Impossible Revolution: Phase 2: Black Power and the American Dream (New York: Random House, 1975), pp. 5–7.
Ibid.
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–1963 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).
Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter. . The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1984), p. 258.
Branch, Parting the Waters, p. 159.
Juan William, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Viking, 1987), p. 69.
Septima Clark, Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement (California: Wild Trees Press, 1986).
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1987), p. 168.
Clark, Ready from Within, pp. 36, 46–76.
Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir (New York: David McKay Co., 1962), pp. 170–178.
Mary King, Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement (New York: Morrow, 1987).
Branch, Parting the Waters, p. 149.
E. Francis White, “Listening to the Voices of Black Feminism,” Radical America 1984, p. 8.
Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott; King, Freedom Song.
Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: The Free Press, 1984), p. 103.
King, Freedom Song.
Rhoda Lois Blumberg, “Careers of Women Civil Rights Activists,” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 8, pp. 708–729; Blumberg, “White Mothers in the American Civil Rights Movement,” in Helena Z. Lopata ed., Research in the Interweave of Social Roles: Women and Men.
See, for example, N. J. Demerath, G. Marwell, and M. T. Aiken, Dynamics of Idealism (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1971); James M. Fendrich, “Keeping the Faith or Pursuing the Good Life: A Study of Consequences of Participation in the Civil Rights Movement,” American Sociological Review 42 (February), pp. 144–157; and Mary Aickin Rothschild, “White Women Volunteers in the Freedom Summers: Their Life and Work in a Movement for Social Change,” Feminist Studies 5 (Fall), pp. 466–495.
Blumberg, “Careers of Women Civil Rights Activists,” ibid.; and August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1973).
King, Freedom Song, p. 465.
Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females (London: The Women’s Press, 1983).
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Blumberg, R.L. (1998). Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Reform or Revolution?. In: Diamond, M.J. (eds) Women and Revolution: Global Expressions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9072-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9072-3_5
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