Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi by Tiyi M. Morris (review)

In Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi, author Tiyi Morris argues that Black women’s activism was instrumental to the successes achieved during the civil rights movement by virtue of Black women’s humanistic life philosophy. As a result of their unique position within society, Black women, generally, and Womanpower Unlimited, in particular, developed a diverse agenda of strategies and programming that provided unique advantages to the Black freedom struggle. Of the many books on the civil rights movements and various organizations active during that era, Womanpower Unlimited is the only book of its kind to provide an in-depth focus on a Black women’s political organization, demonstrating how it enlisted an expansive corps of individuals to participate in civil rights activism and the ways in which it worked independently of and collaboratively with other organizations, all in the name of justice for all people.

Founded by Clarie Collins Harvey on May 29, 1961, Womanpower Unlimited (WU) initially tasked itself with providing much needed material, emotional, and psychological support to Freedom Riders during the 1960s. Organized by the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), Freedom Riders were comprised of an interracial group of individuals who purposefully and strategically rode Greyhound and Trailways buses as a form of protest to segregated transportation facilities made illegal by US Supreme Court case Boynton v. Virginia (1960). Facts of the case reveal African American law student Bruce Boynton was arrested for refusing to leave a “Whites only” section in a Richmond bus station restaurant. However, the court found in the petitioner’s favor and held that Boynton’s arrest was unconstitutional and that it violated the Interstate Commerce Act, which forbade discrimination in interstate passenger transportation. It is the Boynton case that provided the impetus for the initiation of the Freedom Rides and propelled the creation of Womanpower Unlimited.

Through WU, Morris illuminates the political activism of Black women during the civil rights era by highlighting their resolve in supporting the movement rather than a particular organization and their collaboration with other organizations and movements. That Black women were uniquely located within society allowed them to understand the extent and magnitude of oppression. Multiply marginalized on account of their raced, gendered, and classed identities, Black women understood that the struggle for freedom from all forms of oppression would require the collaborative work of all peoples regardless of race, class, gender, religious affiliation, or age and an approach grounded in love and humanism. This humanist perspective enabled Womanpower Unlimited to enlist working-class women and women not officially affiliated with a religious institution into their operations.

Womanpower Unlimited, the organization, officially disbanded in 1968, closing the chapter to seven years of active resistance and grassroots organizing in and beyond Mississippi. Just as the organization itself, Womanpower Unlimited, the book, is a labor of love. Recognizing the invisibility borne by Black women in virtually all spheres of life, but especially with respect to their activism within the patriarchal nature of civil rights historical and contemporary literature, Morris succeeds in claiming space for underexplored movements led by Black women with strictly political orientations. Her deference to and copious citations of the foremothers of Black women’s activism—illustrated in the inclusion of quotes to start each chapter—models exactly one of the book’s arguments. That the civil rights movement was able to be sustained and supported throughout its life cycle is owed to the intentional, strategic, humanistic, and political work of Black women.

Womanpower Unlimited makes its contribution to the extant literature on the role Black organizations’ played in the civil rights movement by centering political organizations led by Black women. However, it is not without its limitations or challenges. Though Morris notes in the introduction that Harvey is foregrounded in the book because she was the only member to ensure a public record of her work, the disproportional focus on Harvey makes...