While their names all too often go unrecognized, many women were an integral part of the advancements made during the civil rights movement in the United States. Among many others, key leaders of the movement included Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Daisy Bates, Dorothy Height, and Viola Liuzzo.
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist, civil rights leader, and philanthropist. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi's Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1964, and later became the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
On August 31 of 1962, Hamer traveled on a rented bus with other activists to Indianola, Mississippi, to register to vote. In what would become a signature trait of Hamer's activist career, she began singing Christian hymns, such as "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and "This Little Light of Mine", to the group in order to bolster their resolve. The hymns also reflected Hamer's belief that the civil rights struggle was a deeply spiritual one. That same day, upon Hamer's return to her plantation, she was fired by her boss, who had warned her against trying to register to vote.
Mississippi Freedom Summer
On June 9, 1963, Hamer was arrested on false charges along with other activists and nearly beaten to death by police in the cell. Though the incident had profound physical and psychological effects, Hamer returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives, including the "Freedom Ballot Campaign", a mock election, in 1963, and the Freedom Summer initiative in 1964. She was known to the volunteers of Freedom Summer — most of whom were young, white, and from northern states — as a motherly figure who believed that the civil rights effort should be multi-racial in nature. In addition to her Northern guests, Hamer played host to Tuskegee University student activists Sammy Younge Jr. and Wendell Paris. Younge and Paris grew to become profound activists and organizers under Hamer's tutelage.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
In the summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, or "Freedom Democrats" for short, was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention, which failed to represent all Mississippians. Hamer was elected Vice-Chair. The Freedom Democrats' efforts drew national attention to the plight of blacks in Mississippi and represented a challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for reelection; their success would mean that other Southern delegations, who were already leaning toward Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, would publicly break from the convention's decision to nominate Johnson — meaning in turn that he would almost certainly lose those states' electoral votes. Hamer, singing her signature hymns, drew a great deal of attention from the media, enraging Johnson, who referred to her in speaking to his advisors as "that illiterate woman".
Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964
Fannie Lou Hamer was instrumental in organizing Mississippi's Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1964, and later became the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
In 1964 and 1965 Hamer ran for Congress, but failed to win. Hamer continued to work on other projects, including grassroots-level Head Start programs, the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign. Hamer died of complications from hypertension and breast cancer on March 14, 1977, aged 59. Her tombstone is engraved with one of her famous quotes: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Ella Baker
Grassroots civil rights activist Ella Baker was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned over five decades. She worked alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders and mentored many emerging activists of the time, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Rosa Parks, and Bob Moses. She was a critic of professionalized, charismatic leadership and a promoter of grassroots organizing and radical democracy. Baker instead pushed for a “participatory democracy” that built on the grassroots campaigns of active citizens instead of deferring to the leadership of educated elites and experts. As a result of her actions and direct organizing of students on campus at Shaw University, in April of 1960, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed to carry the battle forward. During the summer of 1964, Baker worked together with Hamer and Robert Parris Moses to formally organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as an alternative to the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party.
Ella Baker
Ella Baker was an integral activist in the Civil Rights movement, championing the idea of participatory democracy.
Daisy Bates
Daisy Bates was an American civil rights activist, publisher, journalist, and lecturer who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. In 1952, Daisy Bates was elected president of the Arkansas Conference of NAACP branches. She became President of the Arkansas Conference of NAACP Branches in 1952 at the age of 38. She remained active and was on the National Board of the NAACP until 1970. Due to her position in NAACP, Bates' personal life was threatened much of time.
In this role, Bates became deeply involved in the issue of desegregation in education. Bates and her husband published a local black newspaper, the Arkansas State Press, which publicized violations of the Supreme Court's desegregation rulings. The plan for desegregating the schools of Little Rock was to be implemented in three phases, starting first with the senior and junior high schools; then, only after the successful integration of senior and junior schools, the elementary schools would be integrated. After two years and still no progress, a suit was filed against the Little Rock School District in 1956. The court ordered the School Board to integrate the schools as of September 1957.
As the leader of NAACP branch in Arkansas, Bates guided and advised the nine black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, who were to be integrated into the previously all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The students' attempts to enroll provoked a confrontation with Governor Orval Faubus, who called out the National Guard to prevent their entry. The guard only let the white students to pass the school gate and white mobs gathered to harass and threaten the black students. Bates used her organizational skills to plan a way for the nine students to get into Central High, using ministers to escort the children and speaking with parents.
Nevertheless, the pandemonium at Central High School caused superintendent Virgil Blossom to dismiss school that first day of desegregation, and the crowds dispersed. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened by federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and dispatching the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to ensure that the court orders were enforced. The troops maintained order, and desegregation proceeded. In the 1958-59 school year, however, public schools in Little Rock were closed in another attempt to roll back desegregation. That period is known as "The Lost Year" in Arkansas.
101st Airborne at Little Rock Central High
Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division escort the "Little Rock Nine" African American students into the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Dorothy Height
Dorothy Irene Height was an American administrator, educator, and civil rights and women's rights activist specifically focused on the issues of African-American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957-1997, and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.
During the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, Height organized "Wednesdays in Mississippi," which brought together black and white women from the North and South to create a dialogue of understanding. Height was also a founding member of the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership. Height encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to desegregate schools and President Lyndon B. Johnson to appoint African-American women to positions in government. In the mid-1960s, she wrote a column called "A Woman's Word" for the weekly African-American newspaper the New York Amsterdam News.
Height served on a number of committees, including as a consultant on African affairs to the Secretary of State, the President's Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped, and the President's Committee on the Status of Women. In 1974, she was named the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published the Belmont Report, a response to the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study and an international ethical touchstone for researchers to this day. In 1990, Height, along with 15 other African Americans, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom.
Dr. Dorothy Height
Height was the president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957-1997.
Viola Liuzzo
Viola Liuzzo was a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist from Michigan. In March of 1965, Liuzzo, then a housewife and mother of 5 with a history of local activism, heeded the call of Martin Luther King, Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan to Selma, Alabama in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Liuzzo participated as a white ally in the successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with coordination and logistics. Driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was shot dead by members of the Ku Klux Klan. She was 39 years old. In addition to other honors, Liuzzo's name is today inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama created by Maya Lin.