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2. Making the Invisible Visible: African American Women in the Texas Civil Rights Movement
- Texas A&M University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
29 During a sermon one Sunday during Black History Month in 2007, the pastor at a predominantly urban African American church in Houston, Texas, told his congregation that “overcoming inequality was not a one-man operation.”1 At that I could not help but change my church lady’s hat to my professor’s hat as I thought, once again, “What about the women?” I considered approaching the pastor about my quandary, but knowing that he was aware of this fact and was merely employing rhetorical technique, I made a mental note to address the disturbing issue later in a more appropriate setting. After all, I did not want to miss the blessing in the sermon. The idea that many women go unnoticed as active participants in the fight for civil rights appears to be the norm in historical analysis and even in sermons on Sunday morning. After all, the modern African American civil rights movement is generally recognized as a male-dominated movement with the key leader of the movement identified as Martin Luther King, Jr., not his wife, Coretta. Unfortunately many individuals have not readily accepted that African American women in the South were more than silent followers or that they contributed to the movement by serving in roles comparable in many ways to those of African American male leaders.2 There are two principal explanations for the exclusion of African American women from discussions of the modern civil rights movement in the South. First, because they are excluded from scholarly and general literature, there is no evidence of their participation. Second, age-old racial subjectivity identifies them as insignificant because of their race. Because this hypothetical two-edged sword cut them off from the mainstream of society, the contributions of African Making the Invisible Visible African American Women in the Texas Civil Rights Movement Yvonne Davis Frear 2 30 YVONNE DAVIS FREAR American women to the modern civil rights movement in the South were unaccounted for or invisible. In the last decade of the twentieth century, however, historical studies suggested that even though African American women were not at the helm of the modern civil rights movement in the South, they were largely responsible for keeping activism brewing at local and state levels.3 Charles Payne explained that males judged women’s grassroots activities—establishing and organizing good working relations within their communities—as respectable and nonthreatening because the women could fulfill those activities while still functioning as followers or assistants who accompanied, organized, mediated, and served the male leadership. More-detailed research about African American women in Texas suggests, however, that often it was they who initiated protest efforts and developed strategies on how change might and should occur.4 This essay explains the roles, strategies, and contributions of African American women in Texas. It asserts that these women are important to the modern civil rights movement and to its ongoing efforts to establish and maintain a racially equitable society. It highlights their involvement and demonstrates that they actually served as agents and intermediaries in larger and more prominent protests and US Supreme Court rulings. It also explains that, as African American women became key trailblazers in the fight for equal rights throughout Texas, they also strove to improve their own social, educational, and political position. On May 18, 1954, a headline in the Dallas Morning News read, “Segregation Ruling Ends an Era.” The headline and accompanying editorial referred to the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. For more than fifty years, African American residents in the Lone Star State and the rest of the South were governed by the doctrine that “separate but equal” is constitutional. On May 17, 1954, however, the law that had mandated de jure segregation in Southern states was ruled unconstitutional and the civil rights struggle received new life.5 The case not only reversed the racist separate but equal doctrine; it signaled the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.6 In Texas, a firmly entrenched, segregated, Southern state, the modern movement appears to have begun a few years before the Supreme Court decision in Brown. During the earliest part of the 1950s, African Americans were aggressively challenging the absence of civil rights in the state. African American women became more prominent in these struggles. Bernice McNair Barnett reports that some moved from their traditional positions behind the male lead- [54.87.90.21] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:11 GMT) Texas 31 ers and...