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COURAGE // PURPOSE // AUTHENCITY

Black Women Leaders In The Civil Rights Movement Era And Beyond

Ketanji Brown Jackson


University of Michigan Law School MLK Day Lecture
January 20, 2020

I. INTRODUCTION

Good afternoon. I am delighted to be here and to have this opportunity to


celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and civil rights legacy with all of
you. I very much appreciate that kind introduction and warm welcome; it is
always very humbling to hear one’s own accomplishments listed back in that way.
And you should know that I feel extremely fortunate to have had so many
relatively rare professional opportunities thus far in my career.
Of course, the one thing that is perhaps the most fortunate aspect of my
professional success is, actually, the timing of my birth: I was born nearly fifty
years ago, on September 14, 1970. Now, that was well before many of you
existed, so, for context, you should know that 1970 was a particularly exciting time
in American history because it the dawn of the post-Civil Rights Movement era.
Congress had enacted two Civil Rights Acts in the decade before, thereby officially
abolishing Jim Crow segregation and establishing by law that all Americans are
entitled to equal rights. So, for black Americans in particular, 1970 was a time of
hope! There was a general sense that all of the hard work of the previous decade—
the marches, the boycotts, the sit-ins, the arrests—had finally borne fruit for black
people like my parents (who had experienced firsthand the spirit-crushing
limitations that legal segregation by race imposes while they were growing up in
South Florida). I grew up hearing the stories of what life used to be like for black
people of my parents’ generation, yet my life’s circumstances were so different,
that it is still hard for me to believe that strict racial segregation was the law of the
land just a few years before I arrived!
Think about that for a moment: as of 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could
only dream of a day when “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave
owners would be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” But by
1970, less than a decade later, that was the world that I inhabited (as least as a
matter of law). Indeed, so much changed in such a short period of time, that by the
time I was born, black couples in Washington DC, which is where my parents
lived at the time, probably felt invincible for the first time in their lives. And it
showed. My parents proudly gave me an African name; they dressed me in a mini-
daishiki; I was rocking Afro-puffs! And, most importantly, they set out to teach
me that, unlike the many barriers that they had had to face, my path was clear, such
that if I worked hard and believed in myself, I could do anything or be anything I
wanted to be.
So, in a very real sense, I am a lucky first inheritor of Dr. King’s civil rights
legacy, and for that, I am profoundly grateful. I am particularly grateful for the
sacrifices of my foremothers—the black women who faced the seemingly
insurmountable obstacle of existing at the intersection of race and gender in the
middle of the twentieth century, and yet bravely challenged the status quo to push
for their equal rights. It is truly on their shoulders that I now stand, and as the title
of this presentation suggests, my lecture today is a tribute to those women. I have
focused in particular on black women who actively participated in the pivotal
events that comprise what historians call the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s
and 1960s. But, first, a caveat: I am not a historian, so I actually had to do a fair
amount of research, and what I discovered is that historians have only recently
begun to recognize the unique leadership contributions of black women during the
Civil Rights Movement era.
2
In the time that we have together, I hope to introduce to you to some of those
women, and to discuss what historians have now identified as the core
characteristics that black women leaders of that era generally shared. Researchers
have concluded that black women exhibited a certain style of leadership that was
not acknowledged as such, and in this regard, I need to acknowledge that the
observations that I am presenting in this talk are not original; much of the credit
goes to Dr. Janet Dewart Bell, who published a PhD dissertation on this topic in
2015. 1 I have drawn heavily from her excellent insights, and, like Dr. Bell’s work,
this talk relies to some extent on generalizations. But the characterizations that I
am making are drawn from research that Bell and others have done regarding the
individual, lived experiences of many black women civil rights pioneers.
Ultimately, I hope that you will come away with an understanding of not
only what black women did to contribute to the success of the Civil Rights
Movement, but also who these women were in terms of the applicable leadership
paradigms, and why they played such an active role in the Civil Rights Movement
at all. In a sense, their motivation for investing so much in the betterment of
themselves and their community in the midst of a society that did not invest in
them is an interesting question. This talk suggests an answer. And to the extent
that the motivations and leadership qualities of black women leaders during the
Civil Rights Movement era can be reliably characterized, one can presumably
carry those observations forward, and make potentially useful insights about the
role of black women leaders in modern times.

1
Janet Dewart Bell, AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN LEADERS IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT: A NARRATIVE
INQUIRY, Antioch University—PhD Program in leadership and Change (May, 2015)

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II. THE “INVISIBLE LEADERS” OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT

Alright, so, to start, I want to establish a common base of knowledge about


what is meant by the Civil Rights Movement. Generally speaking, the Civil Rights
Movement is a defined historical period during which great legal and social
transformation occurred with respect to race relations in the United States. That
period was between approximately 1954, when the Supreme Court handed down
its unanimous landmark decision in Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka
Kansas, and 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis
Tennessee. During this timeframe, [slide] the country shifted from a system of
legalized segregation by race and the subjugation of black Americans based on the
notion of white supremacy to [slide] widespread adoption of the fundamental
principle of equal rights for all notwithstanding racial difference.
That was a dramatic change. And, as Bell emphasizes in her dissertation,
this transformation of law and society did not occur as the result of “a singular
united campaign with top down authority” (Bell at 5), but, instead, “consisted of
[the] accumulated actions and ideas of many different people in many different
places” throughout the United States (id.). Furthermore, the changes were not
inevitable or evolutionary. They were demanded; in effect, they were forced into
being through the visible, collective action of African Americans and their allies.
And so, when most people think about the civil rights movement, they think
about either its most notable collective-action demonstrations: [slide] the marches,
the sit-ins, the motivational speeches; or, the notorious instances of white
resistance to change: [slide] the dogs, the fire hoses, the arrest and firebombing of
the Freedom Riders. As far as leadership is concerned, [slide] our mental images
of the Civil Rights Movement are often associated with outspoken and eloquent
black men, who were indisputably leaders of various aspects of the Movement, and
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they get, and deserve, an enormous amount of credit for what they accomplished.
Dr. King, has his own monument [slide]—and rightly so. His leadership, and
legacy, and are certainly unparalleled.
But what I would like to emphasize today is the fact that [slide] black
women also played a significant role in the various events that comprise the Civil
Rights Movement! Indeed, by the numbers, more black women participated in the
Civil Rights Movement than did black men (Bell at 4 (quoting Payne)), and
historians now believe that black women between the ages of “roughly thirty to
fifty . . . were three or four times more likely to participate than [black] men.” (Bell
at 28 (quoting Payne).) Thus, although men were unquestionably the ‘face’ of the
Civil Rights Movement, commentators have characterized women as its backbone,
and to a certain extent its heart, because it was only through their persistent
involvement that the push for equal rights gained, and kept, its momentum.
So, what, exactly, did black women do to power the Movement??? [slide]

A. Propelling Change Through Organization, Mobilization, and


Collective Action

1. General Role

Generally speaking, black “women were responsible for the actual building”
of the Civil Right Movement as an enterprise, “for doing the everyday [day-to-day]
work” of it. (Bell at 29 (quoting Payne).) Both Bell and historian Charles Payne
observe that “[w]hile men served as spokespersons, work traditionally recognized
as leadership, women led by ‘mobilizing already existing social networks around
the organizing goals, mediating conflicts, conveying information, coordinating
activity, [and] creating and sustaining good relations within the group.’” (Bell at 29
(quoting Payne).) Put another way, black women essentially served as the

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Movement’s chief operating officers: they generated ideas for how to dismantle
legalized segregation in its various forms, and they also got it done, primarily by
attending to the operational and administrative aspects of coordinating the
necessary meetings, protests, and activities.
Now, the context in which black women did this work is an important part of
the story. As I mentioned previously, Jim Crow segregation was a system of laws
and norms that preferenced white people in almost every aspect of life and placed
insidious restrictions on the freedoms of African Americans. (In the South, black
folks were subjugated by law, and elsewhere across America rank discrimination
on the basis of race operated to impose similar limitations.) For example, in many
places, black people were required to pay special poll taxes or take literacy tests
before they were permitted to exercise their right to vote. Black Americans did not
have full and equal access to public transportation—they were relegated to certain
cars on trains and certain seats on buses—and could only take advantage of public
accommodations such restaurants and theaters on the specific terms that white shop
owners dictated, usually that they had to sit at separate tables away from white
patrons. There was segregation in housing, and, of course, black children were not
allowed to attend public schools alongside white children, as a practical matter,
even after the Brown v. the Board decision. In the South, there was also the ever-
present threat of physical harm and even death to black people (men especially)
who stepped out of line as far as white society was concerned.
As part of the Civil Rights Movement, black women addressed themselves
directly to these various social ills, and took on a variety of tasks related to forcing
change with respect to these restrictive laws and practices.

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a. The Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is one prime example of women’s work in


this regard. [slide] That boycott began in Montgomery, Alabama on December 5th
1955—four days after a seamstress named Rosa Parks, who was seated in the front
row of the “colored” section of a full public bus, refused to give up her seat for
white passengers when asked by the bus driver to do so. Parks (who had a history
of civil rights activism, by the way) was arrested and fined, and in response, the
local black community rallied to support her and to oppose the city’s transportation
ordinance, which required black people to enter public city buses only through the
rear door, to sit only in a designated section in the back of the bus, and to give up
their seats for a white person if asked to do so.
As relevant here, a local organization of black women called The Women’s
Political Counsel, among others, called for a boycott of the bus system, which was
the primary mode of transportation for black Montgomery residents at the time.
The women circulated flyers to spread the word; black ministers announced the
effort in churches across the city; and when the boycott began four days after Rosa
Park’s act of civil disobedience [slide], 40,000 African American bus riders—the
majority of the city’s ridership—stayed off the buses, opting instead to walk or
carpool. Getting that many people to where they needed to go without using the
buses was a herculean task, and it was black women who took up the charge. For
an entire year, black women provided the practical support that was necessary to
sustain the effort [slide]: they arranged carpools, they held bake sales, they gave
people rides, and they themselves walked, everywhere, no matter how far. It was
also five black women who filed the lawsuit in federal district court that eventually
went all the way up to the Supreme Court and resulted in a decision in December
of 1956 that required the city to integrate its buses.

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Significantly for present purposes, historians have now concluded that the
success of the Montgomery Bus boycott (which, by the way, was how a local
Baptist preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got his start as a national civil
rights leader) would not have been possible without the commitment of black
women, who apparently understood from the beginning that the boycott was about
much more than one woman’s right to remain seated. Instead, according to one
women who was quoted in an article posted by the Library of Congress’s Civil
Rights History Project, the boycott was, [QUOTE] “a rebellion”—“a rebellion of
maids, a rebellion of working-class women, who were tired of boarding buses in
Montgomery, the public space, and being assaulted . . . and abused by white bus
drivers.” And, according to that commenter, “that’s [precisely] why that
Movement could hold so long. If it had just been merely a protest about riding the
bus, it might have shattered. But it went to the very heart of black womanhood,
and [as a result] black women played a major role in sustaining [it].” [END
QUOTE]

b. Nashville’s Lunch Counter Sit-Ins

A similar story of black women’s rebellious and sustaining activities during


the Civil Rights Movement emerges from the historical record concerning the
coordinated black student lunch-counter sit-ins that took place in Nashville,
Tennessee in 1960. [slide] At that point in time, there were thousands of middle-
class black college students in attendance at a cluster of historically black colleges
in Nashville, and on February 13, 1960, 124 such students simultaneously walked
into six area restaurants and department stores, and sat down at lunch counters that
had been reserved for white people. The black student-protesters repeated this
action daily for weeks [slide], and at times, their silent protests were met with

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jeering assaults and harassment. Then, on one fateful day a couple weeks later
(February 27, 1960), the protesters who had sat down at two of the restaurants were
physically attacked [slide]—white men grabbed them, pulled the from their seats,
and punched, kicked, and spat on them; yet, when the Nashville police arrived, they
arrested only the black students, who were permitted to post bail, but decided to
take a principled stand and thus refused. Ultimately, the black student protesters
spent 33 ½ days in jail.
Now, this story should be somewhat familiar as a general matter, because
the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins are a relatively well-known part of the Civil
Rights Movement. But what is less well known is the fact that women students
were among the most active participants in these and other similar instances of non-
violent civil-disobedience by college students. [slide] In an article entitled
“Always the Backbone, Rarely the Leader,” which was published in 2010, Amanda
Hughett explains that
[i]n 1960 Nashville, change came from an unexpected place. As
their mothers watched in horror, black college women renounced
the protective environment of their campuses to participate in,
and often lead, civil rights demonstrations alongside their black
brothers. Frustrated by slow progress and encouraged to join in
the movement by female friends, young black women could no
longer tolerate sitting on the sidelines while black men led the
way in the fight for first-class citizenship. (Hughett at 1, 2.)

2. Marginalization

Now, it is important to acknowledge the impact of gender on the recognition


of black women’s crucial contributions. Some historians now consider black
women to be the “invisible leaders” of the Civil Rights Movement, and their
marginalization was consistent with the treatment of all women in the 1950s and

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60s, whowere generally considered subordinate and subservient to men. (Bell at
23)
As it relates to black women, the March on Washington was one prime
example of this phenomenon. [slide] Women Marched on Washington in the
thousands on August 23, 1963, but no woman was asked to give a speech as part of
the official program on that day, and none was invited to the White House as part
of the delegation of civil rights leaders that visited with President Kennedy after
the day’s events. And, of course, [slide] once a narrative has formed about the
relative significance of the roles that various people played in important historical
events such as the March on Washington, it is hard to change that perception as
time goes by. Thus, even in modern times, historical reflections the Civil Rights
Movement often omit the unique voices and perspectives of the black women
participants and leaders. (Bell at 3)

3. Individual Profiles

The good news is that recent scholars have begun to focus more intently on
the black women who were leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. So, we now
know much more about their contributions, and, again, part of my goal here today
is to introduce you to some of those women. I have a whole list of folks whom you
should know, and there are many others that I don’t have time to mention here
today. I am going to go through these quickly, and, for ease of discussion, I have
organized these profiles into four categories, based loosely on the scope of the
roles that these women played, as I understand them.
There are four groups.2 First, there were a handful of women in formal,
visible, national positions of authority within established civil rights organizations.

2
(Bell at 5 – 6) (explaining that some people were “on the line”—i.e., were involved in direct action—while others
supported civil rights activities in other ways).

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Second, there were women who served as regional leaders, organizing civil rights
initiatives in primarily one geographic locale or with respect to a particular issue.
Third, there are the front-line troops: women who are primarily known for a
particular instance in which they put themselves on the line directly. Fourth, and
finally, are the women who facilitated the collective actions of others, through
financing or legal support.
Okay, so I am now going to run through these profiles quickly with those
four categories in mind.

(1) Category One

Dorothy Height was a social worker, an educator, and a civil rights


activist who rose to national prominence as a leader of the Civil Rights
Movement when she became the President of the National Council of
Negro Women in 1957. She was actively engaged in promoting civil
rights in various ways, and was often the only woman involved in high-
level strategy meetings with Dr. King and others. According to Andrew
Young, Dr. King’s chief strategist, “the men had a hard time getting
along with each other because they were all young and each had a
different approach to civil rights. Ms. Height “sat in on all the
meetings” and “basically kept the peace amongst the six civil rights
organizations.” (Capeheart interview)

Ella Baker was an advisor and mentor to many well known civil rights
leaders, including Dr. King and Thurgood Marshall, and is considered
to be the most influential woman in the Movement. Baker believed
strongly in grassroots activism, and stressed the importance of the
participation of young people and women; to that end, she was
responsible for actively recruiting and mentoring the college students
who formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—known
as “<SNICK>”—which was a major player in the organized student-led
sit-ins and other demonstrations throughout the South.

These next two women—Dorothy Cotton and Septima Clark—were


educators who worked through the Southern Christian Leadership

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Conference in Atlanta to encourage African Americans to learn to read
and to harness the power of education. They both held the philosophy
that “literacy means liberation,” and they joined forces to direct SCLC’s
citizenship education program, which brought regional civil rights
leaders to Atlanta for training. Many African Americans at the time
had never learned to read or write, including many of the trainees who
came to the Academy. Clark and Cotton taught the leadership trainees
to read, which, in turn, facilitated their ability to advocate for voting
rights and other causes in their home communities.

Mamie Till Mobley was thrust into national prominence in August of


1955, when her 14 year-old son, Emmett, was abducted, beaten, and
murdered while visiting family in Mississippi, allegedly for whistling at
a white women. Till-Mobley had Emmett’s funeral back in their
hometown of Chicago, and she insisted on an open casket, with his
disfigured face revealed, so that the world could see what had been
done to him. After Emmett’s murderers were quickly acquitted by an
all-white jury, Till-Mobley became a national civil rights
spokeswoman, who often offered powerful words about the values of
redemption and forgiveness in finding peace. She is known for having
said, “I have not spent one minute hating.”

Josephine Baker was a famous black American actress of film and


stage in the 1920s—one of very few. She moved to France in 1925,
began advocating for civil rights after the Second World War, and by
the time the Civil Rights Movement took hold, she was routinely using
her platform to highlight the comparative mistreatment of black people
in the United States versus elsewhere in the world. Baker also got
involved with the NAACP, and she was the only women who was
officially allotted time to say anything from the stage at the March on
Washington.

Like Baker, Ruby Dee was also a famous American actress, who used
her platform as an entertainer to motivate people to advocate for civil
rights. Dee and her husband, Ossie Davis, were well-known equality
activists, and were active members of several of the most prominent
black civil rights organizations.

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(2) Category Two

With respect to the regional-influencer category . . .

Jo Ann Robinson, who was president of the woman’s group that


staged the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Robinson was the primary
coordinator of that effort, and as a result, she was personally targeted
several times, including having rocks thrown through the windows of
her home and acid poured on her car. In her memoir, Robinson wrote
that “an oppressed but brave people, whose pride and dignity rose to the
occasion, conquered fear, and faced whatever perils had to be
confronted.”

Diane Nash was a student at Fisk University in Nashville in the early


1960s, and led the wing of the Movement that coordinated the
Nashville sit-ins. I discussed those sit-ins previously—Nash was one of
the jailed students, and she is credited for being the impetus behind the
desegregation of Nashville’s lunch counters. (She publicly confronting
the mayor during a press conference, and got him to admit that
discrimination on the basis of race was wrong. Nashville’s lunch
counters were desegregated three weeks later.) Nash proceeded to co-
found SNCC, and subsequently took over responsibility for
coordinating the Freedom Riders, as well several of the large protest
marches that took place in southern states during the early 1960s.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a community organizer in Mississippi, who


was fired from her job for attempting to exercise her right to vote.
Hamer then motivated thousands of black Mississippians to become
registered voters. She was also nearly fatally beaten by police officers
when she was jailed after an altercation between Mississippi activists
and a local cafe owner who had refused to serve them. And that
incident fueled her determination to coordinate civil rights volunteers
and to run for a seat in Congress. Hamer once said, “[t]here is so much
hate. Only God has kept the Negro sane.” And she also famously
remarked, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Amelia Boynton is another great regional leader, who worked tirelessly


to plan demonstrations for civil and voting rights under challenging
circumstances in Selma, Alabama. Most notably, Robinson played a
key role in coordinating, and participating in, the historic Selma to
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Montgomery march that historians referred to, in retrospect, as “Bloody
Sunday.” During that march, Boynton and other activists, including
John Lewis, were beaten to unconsciousness by state police as they
walked across the Edmund Pettit Bridge.

Daisy Bates, a black newspaper owner in Arkansas, served as the


president of the Arkansas state chapter of the NAACP. But Bates is
perhaps best known for her pivotal role in planning for the
desegregation of Little Rock’s public schools. She personally
supervised and shepherded the nine black students who entered Little
Rock Central High School in 1957, and whose attempts to enroll
prompted a confrontation with angry mobs of white parents and the
state’s governor. It was Bates who arranged to have local ministers
escort the children into school, and throughout the ordeal, she took
personal responsibility for the Little Rock Nine.

Shirley Sherrod co-founded a collective farm in Southwest Georgia


with her husband, in order to advance the rights of black Georgians
with respect to self-sufficiency and agricultural development. Sherrod’s
team pushed for the right of African American farmers to farm land
securely and affordably throughout the state.

The final woman in this category is Gloria Richardson, who was a


SNCC field officer in Cambridge, Maryland, and the co-founder of a
local organization aimed at economic equality for black Americans.
Richardson planned and participated in sit-ins and other acts of civil
unrest locally, and she took part in several protests that ended in violent
clashes with white residents. Richardson, who indirectly challenged
SNCC’s non-violent ideology, later observed that most of the
demonstrators in her organization were women, and commented that,
“[w]hen we were attacked at demonstrations, [we women] were the
ones throwing stones back at the whites.”

(3) Category Three

Most of the bios in the boots-on-the-ground category focus on a particular


pivotal event, and are thus fairly straightforward.

There is well-known civil rights advocate Rosa Parks, whose story was
the impetus for the Montgomery bus boycott, as I previously explained.
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Earlier that same year, 15 year-old student Claudette Colvin had also
been arrested on a Montgomery bus for that same kind of defiance, and
Colvin then went on to become one of the five female plaintiffs in the
federal civil rights lawsuit that the led to the Supreme Court striking
down segregation on the city’s buses.

Vivian Malone Jones was one of the first two black students to try to
enroll in the University of Alabama in 1963, after it was legally
desegregated by court order. When she arrived to register, the governor
of Alabama (George Wallace) and a phalanx of state troopers
physically blocked her entry, and she was not allowed to pass until
President John F. Kennedy sent in the Alabama national guard to escort
her into the building. Jones graduated from the University of Alabama
two years later, and was the first black student ever to do so.

Winson Hudson, was a teacher in rural Mississippi, who also focused


on solving the difficult problem of resistance to school desegregation.
She and her sister initiated several lawsuits as a member of the local
chapter NAACP, and due to their activism, the Hudson sisters and their
families were terrorized by the Klan for nearly a decade.

There is also Gwendolyn Simmons, who was essentially kicked out of


Spelman College (an all-women’s historically black college in Atlanta)
in the early 1960s, for she insisting on wearing her hair natural and
actively participating in grassroots civil rights demonstrations.

Finally, in this direct action category, is Ruby Bridges, who was six
years old in 1960, when her parents responded to a request from the
NAACP in New Orleans for participants in a push for school
integration. Bridges tested into a white elementary school, and was
allowed to transfer in, but had to be escorted into school by federal
marshals amidst angry crowds that formed to try to prevent her entry.
She was in kindergarten. And that aspect of her experience was
captured [slide] in a famous Normal Rockwell painting called “The
Problem We All Live With.” What is less well known is that Ruby was
the only student in her classroom for more than a year—she was taught
alone by a single teacher, because no other teacher would do so, and all
of the white parents had pulled their children out of the school.

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(4) Category Four

The last category is the facilitators and financiers.

Georgia Gilmore was a cook from Montgomery Alabama who started


a food-service business out of her home as a fund-raising effort after
she was fired for participating in the bus boycott. She and her friends
produced meals, and them sold them out of beauty parlors, laundry
mats, and other places, and she then donated all of the profits to sustain
the boycott as long as possible.

I put Coretta Scott King in this category, because she was a classically
trained musician—a vocalist—who was active in the Civil Rights
Movement herself, apart from her husband, and often incorporated
music into her civil rights work. And after Martin Luther King’s
assassination in 1968, she developed her own civil rights agenda, which
included a push for women’s and LGBT rights.

Pauli Murray and Dovey Johnson Roundtree were lawyers who did
extraordinary work to further civil rights causes at a time when few
women had the privilege of practicing law. Murray graduated first in
her class at Howard Law School in the 1940s, and went on to become
the first black student to receive a doctorate of juridical science at Yale
Law School. She wrote a book that examined and critiqued state
segregation laws, which Thurgood Marshall called the bible of the civil
rights movement. She also worked with Ruth Bader Ginsburg to do
pioneering work on gender equality.

Inspired by Pauli Murray and others, Dovey Roundtree, who was also
a Howard Law graduate, represented black litigants in civil rights cases,
beginning in the early 1950s. In one noteworthy effort, she sued to
challenge the right of private bus carriers to impose Jim Crow
segregation on passengers who were traveling across state lines, and in
1955, won a precedential administrative decision before the Interstate
commerce commission that eventually put a permanent end to
segregation in interstate travel.

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Last, but certainly not least, is a woman whose life and
accomplishments have been extremely inspirational for me, personally:
Constance Baker Motley. Motley was a lawyer who got her law
degree from Columbia University in 1946, and she was a protege of
Thurgood Marshall. Motley was the only female attorney at the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund during that organization’s coordinated
legal assault on state-sponsored segregation, and she was the lead
attorney on several significant civil rights cases—for example, she
drafted the original complaint in Brown v. Board, and represented
James Meredith in well-publicized his effort to desegregate the
University of Mississippi. She was also the first African American
woman to argue a case in the Supreme Court—she eventually argued
ten SCt cases, and won nine of them outright (the tenth was eventually
overturned in her favor).

In the mid-1960s, Motley turned to state politics, becoming the first


black women to be elected to the NY State Senate. And in 1966,
President Johnson nominated her for a seat on the United States District
Court for the Southern District of NY—when the Senate confirmed her
later that year, she became the first black female federal judge in the
United States.

(As a point of personal privilege, I want to note two quirky


coincidences: Judge Motley and I share a birthday—September 14th—
and we have now both given lectures at this esteemed Law School on
Martin Luther King Day; it appears from the program that she was the
first person who was invited to speak at this event!)

B. Exhibiting Servant Leadership

So, there you have it: those are some of the black women leaders of the Civil
Rights Movement, and I hope that that quick overview gives you a sense of their
wide-ranging and significant contributions. Turning now to the more academic
part of this talk, it is also important to understand that what these women did to
instigate and advance civil rights reform is actually an established, albeit generally
unrecognized, form of leadership. Historians have classified these and other black

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women civil rights advocates participants as “servant leaders,” which is a
philosophy of leadership that has actually been around for ages, but the somewhat
oxymoronic term for it was first coined in 1970 (of all years), in a totally different
context, by philosopher Robert K. Greenleaf. [slide]
1. Servant Leadership Defined
The hallmark of servant leadership is the belief that “the main goal of a
leader is to serve” others; that is, instead of the traditional paradigm, in which
people work to serve the leader, the servant leadership model posits that the leader
exists to serve the people. Thus, servant leaders operate consistent with what Bell
calls “strong altruistic ethical overtones” (Bell at 158), and they are generally
focused on the greater good—i.e., they are “more concerned with the collective
interests of the group, organization, and society as opposed to their own self
interests.” (Bell at 20, quoting Avolia) These types of leaders set out to make a
difference rather than to seek fame or fortune (Bell at 160), and the strength of
their leadership is measured by the quality of their impact on the lives of people
and polities”—in other words, its transformative effect (Bell at 24).
Importantly, servant leadership is generally considered to be leadership
without authority. These leaders are not usually anointed or officially appointed,
and they don’t necessarily hold any titles; instead, they emerge due to the quality
of their contributions to people’s lives. (Bell at 19). Put another way, they have
“person power” rather than “position power,” and many undervalue their own
leadership skills precisely because they have a servant mentality (Gyant at 642 –
44); they view themselves as merely doing what needs to be done. Thus, according
to Greenleaf, servant leadership is best conceived of as “leadership . . . bestowed
upon a person who was by nature a servant” (Bell at 158). “It begins with the
natural feeling that one wants to serve, [and] to serve first. Then conscious choice
brings one to aspire to lead.” (Bell at 19)
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2. Core Traits of Black Female ‘Servant Leaders’ In the Civil
Rights Movement

As relevant here, the particular servant-leadership paradigm that researchers


have identified with respect to the black women leaders of the Civil Rights
Movement also corresponds with certain core qualities (Bell’s dissertation calls
them “themes”) that these women leaders broadly shared. (Bell at 95 – 99) These
qualities appear in the title of this presentation, and I will explain them briefly
now, before discussing the circumstances that likely gave rise to these
characteristics, and how they manifested themselves in the lived experiences of the
black women leaders they describe.
The first is [slide] courage. As Bell defines it, courage is the will “to
continue when one is apprehensive or scared, especially in the face of seemingly
insurmountable obstacles[.]” (Bell at 97). These women were human, and they
often had to put themselves in danger by doing this work; therefore, they certainly
had fear. But they knew that they had to conquer their fears in order to do what
was necessary to propel the Movement forward, which, in turn, was necessary for
their long-term survival. Dr. King put it this way: “courage is an inner resolution
to go forward despite obstacles”; and, by contrast, “cowardice is submissive
surrender to circumstances.” These women leaders were far from submissive; to
the contrary, they were determined to persevere despite the dangers.
The second core quality of these women’s particular brand of servant
leadership is [slide] purpose. In this context, purpose is the belief that one exists,
or has survived thus far, for a reason, and therefore, that one has a solemn duty to
fulfill one’s own personal destiny. (Bell at 98) As will be explained momentarily,
the black women leaders of the Civil Rights Movement era operated within tight
social networks, and generally had a moral sense of responsibility to others, which

19
motivated them to hone their skills and direct their talents toward the common
interests of the black community. And many strongly believed that they were
called to do this work.
Third, and finally, the black women leaders who actively pushed for civil
rights reforms generally exhibited what Bell calls [slide] authenticity, which she
defines as “the condition or quality of being genuine, free from hypocrisy[,]” and
“of being oneself—transparent and confident and self aware” (Bell at 95). The
women leaders she researched knew were well aware that, as black people, they
had been mistreated, but they were also proud Americans, who felt deeply about
their country’s need to, as Dr. King once said, “rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed” that “all men (and women) are created equal.”
* * *
So those are the core characteristics that, according to Bell, commonly
characterized the manner in which black women pursued civil rights gains and
supported others in achieving those goals. What bears emphasis is the fact that
these common qualities appear to have been a function of black women’s specific
social circumstances at that time. What I mean by this is that there were certain
aspects of black women’s lives that were universal and that contributed to what
some academics call their “cultural preparation for resistance.” And I think these
circumstances actually shed substantial light on how and why these women
responded to the challenges of their time. [slide]

C. Making A Way Out Of No Way

1. Black women were on the bottom of the bottom rung of society

The first significant social circumstance is the fact that black women in the
1950s and 60s were literally on the bottom of the bottom rung of American society.

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Dr. Janet Bell’s late husband, Professor Derrick Bell, who was a civil rights lawyer
and the first tenured African-American professor at Harvard Law School, wrote a
book in the early 1990s about the persistence of racism in American life that he
entitled “Faces At the Bottom of the Well.” [slide] My parents had this book on
their coffee table for many years, and I remember staring at the image on the cover
when I was growing up; I found it difficult to reconcile the image of the person,
who seemed to be smiling, with the depressing message that the title and subtitle
conveyed. I thought about this book cover again for the first time in forty years
when I started preparing for this speech, because, before the civil rights gains of
the 1960s, black women were the quintessential faces at the bottom of the well of
American society, given their existence at the intersection of race and gender—
both of which were highly disfavored characteristics.
Black women had less status than both black men and white women, and it
didn’t help that many of them were relegated to domestic service jobs [slide],
meaning that they worked in white people’s homes as servants, and were thereby
constantly reminded of their own subservience to white privilege. And there was
no realistic prospect of upward mobility; the very fabric of society was designed to
keep them in their place. (Bell at 171) [slide] There were some black families who
managed to accumulate some wealth. But as far as their social status in the overall
society, there was no relevant class distinction, and most people in the black
community, with or without money, recognized their common fate (Bell at 19 -
20).
The “double (or triple) consciousness” of the limitations of race and sex and
class (Bell at 154) that many black women had gave rise to a certain moral clarity
grounded in the value of respect for others (Bell at 155). It is not surprising that
people who are persistently oppressed develop a keen sense of what justice
requires. And being at the bottom of the well also breeds courage. [slide] There is
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a certain resilience that is borne out of constantly having to face seemingly
insurmountable barriers. If nothing else, already being at the bottom means that
you don’t have far to fall, and that, in turn, can generate a fighting spirit and a
nothing-to-lose “freedom” to risk everything when the opportunity to improve
one’s lot arises. [Gyant article at 629, 632]

2. Black women leaders had strong cultural bonds of community &


faith

The second circumstance that I think is important to mention is the fact that
black women leaders had strong cultural bonds that helped them to find the
strength to persevere. [slide] Black churches, for example, were, and have always
been, pillars of the community. [Bell at 26 – 28] Black women also formed social
and community groups [slide], and these organizations often mirrored the
messages that black women received in church: lessons about long-suffering
endurance, self-sufficiency, and hope; including, the belief that, whatever one was
going through, God works all things together for good. The core value of faith in
God and in humanity provided a sense of purpose, and indeed, in an academic
article entitled “Passing the Torch: African American Women in the Civil Rights
Movement,” which was published in the Journal of Black Studies in 1996,
LaVerne Gyant reported that “many black women [sincerely] believed that their
role as leader was “a God-given quality’ although they had ‘to hone it and shape it
and work with it.” (Gyant at 641) Dorothy Height identified another source of
purpose—empathy—when she said that black “women have what I call a humane
sense. They’re concerned about what is going on with children, with the sick, with
the elderly. They have learned. And they will join hands—they might have their
disagreements and whatnot—but when it comes down to it, I always say, women
know how to get things done.” (Capehart at 15)

22
Now, admittedly, to some, a person who stands up for themselves and
others, and portrays such a steadfast belief in her own self-worth (an “I can do all
things” mentality) can come across as arrogant. But, again, context is important.
Black women’s enduring faith in their own ability to impact their circumstances,
with God’s help, was not only fodder for the will to challenge the status quo but
also a coping mechanism that made it possible for them to get out of bed every day
and face a society that scorned them. In this sense, having unwavering faith in
one’s own God-given talents and abilities was actually crucial to black women’s
survival, and research demonstrates that black women civil rights leaders almost
uniformly led self-directed, faith-filled, purpose-driven lives.

3. Black women leaders had an unshakable commitment to the


ideals of American society

The third and final circumstance that I want to highlight here today, is the
fact that black women civil rights leaders appeared to have an unshakable
commitment to the ideals of American society. [slide] Black women routinely
“contribute[d] toward a better quality of life in Black communities and in society at
large” during the Civil Rights Movement, and Gyant’s article posits that, more
than anything else, “it was their commitment to uplift the community that
motivated women to assume a leadership role.” (Gyant at 641)
I think that commitment is actually a species of the authenticity that Bell’s
dissertation identifies. In short, the black women who endured Jim Crow
segregation were not big on hypocrisy: they knew what freedom meant, and they
knew that it was being denied to black Americans, even as this country purported
to promote the core values of liberty and equality. Their refusal to accept anything
less is emblematic of their deep commitment to these principles, as well as their
ability to “focus[] on the present while also holding a strategic vision for the future

23
of the black community.” (Bell at 158). In Bell’s view, the authentic contribution
of African American women leaders is that they were somehow able to “hold in
their hearts and minds the brutality of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation,” but not
be defeated or [hopelessly] embittered as a result, and instead to “forg[e] ahead
with hope, determination resiliency, and vision.” (Bell at 153) Thus, as Bell
observes, for many of these women, the Civil Rights Movement was “not just one
isolated event after another, but a series of events tied to one idea”: the betterment
of black people and society. (Bell at 158)
This same theme resounds throughout “1619,” the popular new historical
accounting published by the NYTimes. [slide] In the series—which has also been
published as a podcast—acclaimed investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones
(who happens to be a black woman) explains that the men who drafted and enacted
the Constitution founded this nation on certain ideals: freedom; equality;
democracy. Yet, at the time they formulated these principles, the institution of
slavery already existed in the colonies—ever since the year 1619, when 20-to-30
Africans who had been captured in their homeland arrived in the colonies by ship
and were exchanged for goods. Jones highlights the irony of the situation even
further when she notes that at the very moment that Thomas Jefferson penned the
self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, a black relative—a slave—
had been brought into his office to serve him.
Thus, it is Jones’s provocative thesis that the America that was born in 1776
was not the perfect union that it purported to be, and that it is actually only through
the hard work, struggles, and sacrifices of African Americans over the past two
centuries that the United States has finally become the free nation that the Framers
initially touted. In one especially poignant segment of the podcast, Jones says:

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[W]e are raised to think about 1776 as the beginning of our
democracy. But when that ship arrived on the horizon . . . in
1619[, the] decision made by the colonists to purchase that
group of 20 to 30 human beings—that was a beginning, too.
And it would actually be those very people who were denied
citizenship in their own country, who were denied the
protections of our founding documents, who would fight the
hardest and most successfully to make those ideals real, not
just for themselves, but for all Americans.

(Podcast, Episode 1, at 39:24 – 40:00) And, indeed, as Jones points out in the
podcast, not only the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments to the
Constitution and the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, but all subsequent civil rights
gains—from women’s rights to gay marriage—rely, in part, on the trailblazing
work of black civil rights leaders, including black women like the ones I have
profiled.

III. BLACK WOMEN LEADERS TODAY

In the time I have remaining, I want to touch briefly on modern times, which
also undoubtedly reflects the legacy of black women civil rights pioneers like the
ones I have discussed. Although progress has been slow, and, as one historian
remarked in 1980, “the full leadership potential of Black females throughout our
history in this country has remained a relatively untapped—or at best,
underutilized—resource” (Gyant at 641(quoting Dumas)), this country has
progressed quite a bit, thanks to the hard work of those who have come before.
For example, we have gone from the appointment of one black female
federal judge to scores of them [slide]: by my count, there have been 57 black
female judges appointed to the federal bench since Constance Baker Motley’s
appointment in 1966. And it was striking to hear that [slide] every single judge
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who was recently elected to the state courts in one Houston, Texas county was a
black woman!
[slide] Black women have also been elected to powerful positions in
Congress, and [slide] are political players in their own right with platforms that
permit them to address pressing social issues. [slide] They are also the bona fide
leaders of mass social movements, such as #Me Too and Black Lives Matter, and
[slide] are routinely called upon offer cogent commentary on the workings of
government, on television and elsewhere, and, of course, they have also persisted
in authentically and courageously [slide] speaking truth to power, standing in the
gap between the powerful and the powerless, and providing crucial civil-rights
litigation support. (Sherilyn Ifall, head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
warrants her own slide.)
[slide] Black women financiers also make significant contributions—these
women head major corporations, and give of their time, and resources, to support
causes of significance within the black community.
Thus, it is clear that black women have now assumed positions of authority as
legal and political officials, litigators, entrepreneurs, and other social influencers,
in far greater numbers than before. Yet, they are still demonstrating courage,
purpose, and authenticity in various ways, and are still doing the heavy lifting that
is necessary to propel our society forward. Professor Derrick Bell acknowledged
this, and also touted the limitless potential of black women’s leadership, in 1996,
when he dedicated one of his final books to his mother and wife, and in the
inscription, unflinchingly declared his [QUOTE] “belief in the potential of women
to save us all.” [END QUOTE]

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IV. CONCLUSION

So, with that, I have reached the end of my remarks. I have two remaining
slides to show you: one of which, actually brings us back full circle—to 1970, the
year that I was born. [slide] As it turns out, the very first issue of Essence
Magazine was published in May of that year, and one of the articles aptly
summarizes the core characteristics of black women leaders in the Civil Rights
Movement era in terms similar to those that I have less artfully articulated in this
talk. The article states that black women leaders are “bound together by race, by
sex, by impatience, [and] by the simple yet complex proposition that Black people
shall have dignity in America [and] in the world.” It salutes several of the black
women who took up the mantle and maintained the struggle for civil rights just a
few years prior, and describes them as steadfastly believing that “whatever is
required to obtain that dignity shall be done. And whatever forces combine to
deny that dignity shall be removed forthwith.”
And I will finish with what might be my favorite civil rights photograph of
modern times. [slide] This iconic image, which was taken by Reuters
photographer Jonathan Bauchman during a 2016 protest of the police-involved
fatal shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, has won several awards and
has name: it is called “Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge.” The picture features a
nurse from Pennsylvania named Ieshia Evans, who had traveled to Louisiana to
attend her first protest. She was arrested by the two heavily armed officers you see
in that photograph, and spent the night and most of the following day in jail.
Not surprisingly, this photo of the moment of her arrest was a viral
sensation, and in my view, it is worthy of that acclaim, because just like the
description of black women leaders in Essence, it captures perfectly the very
essence of black women’s civil rights stewardship over the years. Ms. Evans is

27
unflinchingly courageous, purposeful, and authentic. She persists despite what
appears to be nearly insurmountable obstacles, and clearly believes in her own
power to effect change. Above all, she exudes and demands dignity, and as such,
much like the black women leaders of the past, reminds us all to strive for our
better selves in fulfillment of the promise of our great Nation.

Thank you very much!

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