10 Civil Rights Women Activists You Should Know

Overlooked Civil Rights Leaders During slavery, Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement, Black women endured segregation, discrimination, white terrorism and verbal abuse. Women were just as involved in the Civil Rights Movement as men. However, their contributions are often overlooked. Civil Rights scholars acknowledge that women were the backbone of the movement, some arguing that women laid the foundation for the movement. Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 – Jan. 30, 2006) As an undergraduate at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, King took an active interest in the Civil Rights Movement and joined the Antioch chapter of the NAACP and her college’s Race Relations and Civil Liberties committees. She worked side by side with her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She took part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and worked to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She used her singing talent to perform and raise money at freedom concerts to tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement. She became the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard. King participated in a Women Strike for Peace protest in January 1968, in Washington, D.C., with more than 5,000 women. She also was behind the 15-year fight to have her husband’s birthday instituted as a national holiday. In 1983, President Ronald Regan signed Martin Luther King Day into law. Anna Arnold Hedgeman (July 5, 1899 – Jan. 17, 1990) Her career spanned more than six decades as an advocate for civil rights. While teaching in Mississippi, she experienced racial segregation and discrimination, which led to her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1944, she became the executive secretary of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission in Washington, D.C. From 1954-1958, she was the first African-American woman to hold a mayoral cabinet position in New York City. Hedgeman was also the only woman on the executive committee that organized Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous March on Washington in 1963. When she realized there were going to be no female speakers at the event, she protested the minimal recognition of women who were civil rights heroes. She persuaded the committee to invite civil rights activist Daisy Bates to speak at the Lincoln Memorial. Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (Nov. 11, 1914 – Nov. 4, 1999) As the head of the NAACP’s Arkansas branch in 1952, Bates played a crucial role in the fight against segregation. After the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that prohibited Southern states from segregating schools by race, Bates and her husband chronicled the educational battle as Black students were still being turned away from schools. Bates and the Little Rock Nine gained national and international recognition for their courage and persistence during the desegregation of Central High when the Arkansas National Guard was called out to prevent the Black students from entering the school in 1957. Her account of the school integration battle was published as The Long Shadow of Little Rock, which earned her a 1988 National Book Award. She and members of the Little Rock Nine were recipients of the 1958 Spingarn Medal, which is an annual award given out by the NAACP for outstanding achievement by African-Americans. Bates also received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Arkansas in 1984. The Rev. Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray (Nov. 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) In 1938, Murray began a campaign that received national attention to enter the all-white University of North Carolina. Her application was rejected. In 1940, Murray was arrested with a friend for violating Virginia's segregation laws after they sat in the whites-only section of a bus. A published author, one of Murray's books, States’ Laws on Race and Color, in 1951 was described as a "bible" for civil rights lawyers by the head of the legal department of the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall. She was also a founding member of the National Organization for Women founded in 1966 and located in Washington D.C. Diane Judith Nash (born May 15, 1938) Nash attended Howard University before transferring to Nashville’s Fisk University in 1959. Shocked by the extent of segregation she encountered in Tennessee, she became a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. From her base in Nashville, she coordinated student efforts to continue the rides into Mississippi and served as a liaison between the press and the U.S. Department of Justice. During the spring of 1961, Nash played a crucial role in sustaining Freedom Rides initiated by the Congress of Racial Equality. Nash later played a major role in the Birmingham desegregation campaign of 1963 and the Selma Voting Rights Campaign of 1965. In 1965, Martin Luther King awarded Nash and her husband, James Bevel, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Rosa Parks Award for their work. Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3,1898 – Dec. 15, 1987) During the 1950s and 1960s, Clark developed literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. She was an active member of several social and civic organizations, including the NAACP, where she campaigned for equal pay for Black teachers. Activist Rosa Parks participated in one of Clark’s workshops just months before she helped launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Clark was given a Living Legacy Award by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. In 1987, her second autobiography, Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement (1986), won the American Book Award. Mary Church Terrell (Sept. 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954) Terrell was a founding member and the first president of the National Association of Colored Women. She was also one of the founding members of the NAACP. In 1895, Terrell, a teacher and principal, was appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education, the first Black woman in the country to hold such a position. In 1948, she became the first black member of the National Association of University Women. In 1950, she worked to desegregate the John R. Thompson Restaurant in Washington, D.C., and her efforts came to fruition with a 1953 Supreme Court decision banning discrimination in public places in the District of Columbia. In 2009, Terrell was one of 12 civil rights pioneers commemorated in a U.S. Postal Service postage stamp series. She was also recognized as one of Oberlin College’s “Top 100 Alumni” in 1933. Fannie Lou Hamer (Oct. 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) Hamer worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Her bravery came at a high price when in 1963 she was beaten so badly in a Mississippi jail that she suffered permanent kidney damage. She was responsible for bringing attention of the civil rights struggle in Mississippi to the entire nation during a televised session at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. In 1964, with the support of the MFDP, she ran for Congress, saying “I’m showing the people that a Negro can run for office.” Although she was unsuccessful, she went on to appear at rallies and visit colleges and universities around the country to speak to students. In 1972, a unanimous resolution praising Hamer’s statewide and national contribution to civil rights was passed by the Mississippi House of Representatives. Ella Josephine Baker (Dec. 13, 1903 – Dec. 13, 1986) Baker worked mostly behind the scenes with some of biggest civil rights leaders, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Diane Nash and Stokely Carmichael. She was a founding member of the Young Negroes Cooperative League in Harlem in 1930. The goal was to develop Black economic power through collective planning. She was also a founding member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 in Montgomery, Alabama. She also helped organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960 at Shaw University in North Carolina. Baker spoke out against apartheid in South Africa and allied herself with a number of women's groups, including the Third World Women's Alliance and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She remained an activist until her death in 1986 on her 83rd birthday. Dorothy Irene Height, (March 24, 1912 – April 20, 2010) She was dubbed the “Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement.” Height became a young leader in the National Youth Movement of the New Deal era in the 1930s-1940s and a YWCA caseworker in Harlem. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years (1957-1997). She was an activist for civil rights, as well as women's rights. Height took part in the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. In the 1960s, she brought together women of different races and faiths for "Wednesdays in Mississippi" to open communication. Height often has been called an unsung figure of the Civil Rights Movement. However, her humanitarian efforts did not go unnoticed. President Bill Clinton presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award in 1994. In 2004, President George W. Bush presented her with the Congressional Gold Medal. Both are the highest civilian honors in the United States.

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