You Must Be from the North: Southern White Women in the Memphis Civil Rights Movement

Chapter 1 “YOU MUST BE FROM THE NORTH.” “YES, NORTH MISSISSIPPI”: Women and Direct Action Protests, 1955–1964

11 Chapter 1 “You Must Be from the North.” “Yes, North Mississippi” Women and Direct Action Protests, 1955–1964 Often labeled the “most northern city in Mississippi,” Memphis has historically attempted to distinguish itself from the rest of the Deep South. Pointing to its position as a business center, a city with a large black middle class, and a culturally thriving metropolis, Memphis prided itself on its progressivism throughout the racial struggles of the twentieth century . The first protests of the 1960s civil rights movement in Memphis mimicked those of Greensboro, Nashville, Atlanta, and Birmingham, in that participants were primarily young, black college students. While there were isolated instances where white individuals contributed to the demonstrations, white participation did not occur in the southern United States en masse early in the decade. Still fewer examples emerged of southern white women becoming involved in these protests. An examination of the involvement of southern white women in direct action protests—such as sit-ins, freedom rides, and economic boycotts— across the South yields an amalgamation of ages and educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. Southern women such as Casey Hayden, Sara Evans, Joan Browning, and Mary King (activists known to scholars of white women’s participation in the civil rights movement, yet who did not participate in Memphis’s struggle) entered the movement while college students. Radicalized by realizations that their white southern experience contrasted with the harsh brutality of life for black southerners , these women joined specific religious, charitable, and student Women and Direct Action Protests, 1955–1964 12 political organizations that focused on leveling the social, political, and economic playing fields for African Americans.1 These initial steps into social reform began lifelong careers in civil rights work for all of these women. For the older generation of activists such as Sarah Patton Boyle, Virginia Durr, and Anne Braden, realizations of the hindrances that the nation’s racial hierarchy engendered for black Americans came through similar channels, although these awakenings occurred later in life.2 The face of the average sit-in participant in 1960 appeared youthful and African American; it did not appear white and middle-aged, let alone female . Although a minority, several key figures in Memphis’s civil rights history, women such as Margaret Valiant, Marjorie Cherry, and the members of the Saturday Luncheon Group (SLG) began their journey into civil rights activism through participation in physically challenging segregation by moving into all-black housing projects and slowly yet steadily integrating Memphis’s restaurants. Their stories add a different perspective on the contributions of white southern women to the civil rights movement, debunking the stereotype that only young white southerners participated in the movement’s sit-ins. High-profile challenges to segregation began with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that unleashed efforts to desegregate facilities, public and private, in Memphis, much as it did throughout the entire South. Attempts to desegregate facilities receiving public money were the first targets for Memphis activists in the 1950s. A challenge to Memphis’s Jim Crow laws occurred nearly two years prior to the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955. On December 18, 1953, two “special officers” of the Memphis Railway System (MRS) boarded a trolley and “demanded ” that two black passengers give up their seats to standing white men. A witness to the event—a “white photographer”—claimed that the officers used “abusive language” toward the black men.3 When challenged by city officials and local black leaders, a spokesman from MRS said the officer in question had been “reprimanded” after an investigation into the incident—prompted by press coverage of the event—yielded positive evidence that the men had used “unnecessarily harsh language,” and that said officer’s handling of the event was “wrong.”4 Nonetheless, Memphis’s Mayor Frank Tobey pressured MRS officials to investigate the incident as rumors began to develop that a leading African American community organization was planning a boycott of the trolley system. Women and Direct Action Protests, 1955–1964 13 Maxine Smith, executive secretary of the Memphis branch of the NAACP from 1962 through the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike, asserted that Memphis was right in step with—if not a step or two in front of—the rest of the South during the civil rights movement. She put the NAACP squarely at the center of these protests in the 1950s—as well as those in the early 1960s—and credited...