Boycotts, Buses, and Passes: Black Women's Resistance in the U.S. South and South Africa

Introduction

.{ 1 }. INTRODUCTION I’m going to stay right here and help these things straighten out. —Mrs. Idessa Redden, Montgomery, Alabama all those campaigns kept us working and saying,“Freedom in our lifetime.” —Mrs. Bertha M. Gxowa, Johannesburg, South Africa IN the heart of montgomery, alabama, mrs. Idessa redden, a slender eighty-four-year-old, sat comfortably in her well-appointed living room. a lifelong activist in the Black freedom struggle, mrs. redden recounted stories of how she joined the National association for the advancement of Colored People (NaaCP) in her mid-twenties, made repeated attempts to register to vote during the 1940s, and finally succeeded in registering in 1949. By the 1950s she was working with rufus lewis, a respected local activist, helping to register voters. In early December 1955, mrs. redden’s cousin informed her that the Black riders of montgomery had decided to boycott the city buses and that a meeting would be held at the Holt street Baptist Church on monday night, December 5. mrs. redden recalled the promise she felt at this first,hugely successful mass meeting of the 1955–1956 montgomery bus boycott: When I heard Dr. king speak that night, I was amazed. I never screamed louder in a church before in my life.But that night I screamed to the top of my voice, “lord, you have sent us a leader.” It was just something about him that was different from all other men. and I was willing to follow him. Because I had walked the streets of montgomery and wondered to myself, “Why do Black people have to live in places like this? Why do Black people have to throw their dishwater out the back door?” I didn’t know all about the sewage system then,’cause mostly where Black folks lived there were no sewers.1 an ocean away in Johannesburg, south africa, mrs. Bertha mashaba Gxowa, a member of Parliament from the district of Gauteng, recalled a time when a seat in the legislature was unattainable for any african, let alone for an african woman. This exclusion from political life and the apartheid regime’s liberal use of force against the Black population spurred .{ 2 }. INtroduCtIoN her activism. By 1952 she had become a top-flight organizer among a host of outstanding women activists. During the mid-1950s, twenty-year-old Bertha mashaba combined her work as an employee of the african Clothing Workers’ Union with her work as a member of the african National Congress (aNC) Youth and Women’s leagues, volunteering her time to participate in the 1955 Congress of the People, among other campaigns. From that two-day meeting came the eloquently articulated vision of a truly democratic south africa, the Freedom Charter. mrs. Gxowa recalled the struggle: of course, one of our slogans was “Freedom in our lifetime.” all the campaigns that were important, the writing of the Freedom Charter . . . all those campaigns kept us working and saying, “Freedom in our lifetime” and saying, “This is what we want the country to be governed under.This is what we want for the people. This is how we want the people to live. There shall be houses for all; the door to learning and education shall be open; all shall be equal before the law; there shall be security.”I mean,all of the parts of the charter we kept in the campaign for the internal government to [use to] draw a constitution for everybody—a constitution that protects every man, woman, and child in the country.These are the rights of the people.2 although mrs. redden and mrs. Gxowa lived in different countries, were subjected to different systems of racial oppression, worked on different issues , and engaged in different campaigns, the resonances of their activism and the broader struggles that they represent inspire a compelling comparison .The histories of oppression, the role of historical memory in their politicization , and their demands for human and economic rights connect the struggles within the african diaspora—struggles that emerged separately, but coterminously, in a world in which the racial and colonial balance was under siege.During the 1970s and 1980s,these and other similarities helped establish useful common ground that united U.s. and south african exiles and activists in the demand for U.s. sanctions against apartheid. During the 1950s, however, before african americans and Black south africans had more vigorously begun their collaborative assaults against the apartheid state, Black women in both countries had initiated a...