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Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century South
Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi
In Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi , Tiyi M. Morris provides the first comprehensive examination of the Jackson, Mississippi–based women’s organization Womanpower Unlimited. Founded in 1961 by Clarie Collins Harvey, the organization was created initially to provide aid to the Freedom Riders who were unjustly arrested and then tortured in Mississippi jails. Womanpower Unlimited expanded its activism to include programs such as voter registration drives, youth education, and participation in Women Strike for Peace. Womanpower Unlimited proved to be not only a significant organization with regard to civil rights activism in Mississippi but also a spearhead movement for revitalizing black women’s social and political activism in the state.
Womanpower Unlimited elucidates the role that the group played in sustaining the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Consistent with the recent scholarship that emphasizes the necessity of a bottom-up analysis for attaining a more comprehensive narrative of the civil rights movement, this work broadens our understanding of movement history in general by examining the roles of “local people” as well as the leadership women provided. Additionally, it contributes to a better understanding of how the movement developed in Mississippi by examining some of the lesserknown women upon whom activists, both inside and outside of the state, relied. Black women, and Womanpower specifically, were central to movement successes in Mississippi; and Womanpower’s humanist agenda resulted in its having the most diverse agenda of a Mississippi-based civil rights organization.
Womanpower Unlimited elucidates the role that the group played in sustaining the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Consistent with the recent scholarship that emphasizes the necessity of a bottom-up analysis for attaining a more comprehensive narrative of the civil rights movement, this work broadens our understanding of movement history in general by examining the roles of “local people” as well as the leadership women provided. Additionally, it contributes to a better understanding of how the movement developed in Mississippi by examining some of the lesserknown women upon whom activists, both inside and outside of the state, relied. Black women, and Womanpower specifically, were central to movement successes in Mississippi; and Womanpower’s humanist agenda resulted in its having the most diverse agenda of a Mississippi-based civil rights organization.
- GenresHistory
264 pages, Paperback
First published February 13, 2015
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June 3, 2015
I'm so glad that this book came in time for me to read just days before a week-long seminar about women in the Civil Rights Movement. I've been looking forward to this since seeing the author do a talk at a conference and reading her chapter in Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Struggles in America several years ago.
The author discloses the fact that she is the product of an activist family and her favorable assessment of the people she writes about borders on hagiography. That said, this is an engaging story about the kind of women we don't usually imagine about when thinking about the Civil Rights Movement in the dungeon that was Mississippi. Fannie Lou Hamer, the poverty witnessed by Robert Kennedy in "Eyes on the Prize," and the closed society that made Stokely Carmichael's call for "Black Power" be so well received dominate the state's image. Morris enriches the story by telling about how solidly respectable middle aged and middle class women advanced the cause through community building, embracing quality of life issues, and making a difference in the lives of whoever would let them. These aren't peasants in overalls, radical SNCC organizers, or theoretically sophisticated proto Ella Bakers - they are regular people who care about their community.
This book joins Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta After World War II, Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, and Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi as mandatory reading for anyone interested in Black women's activism or the story of civil rights in a state with the reputation of being America's most notoriously racist place.
The author discloses the fact that she is the product of an activist family and her favorable assessment of the people she writes about borders on hagiography. That said, this is an engaging story about the kind of women we don't usually imagine about when thinking about the Civil Rights Movement in the dungeon that was Mississippi. Fannie Lou Hamer, the poverty witnessed by Robert Kennedy in "Eyes on the Prize," and the closed society that made Stokely Carmichael's call for "Black Power" be so well received dominate the state's image. Morris enriches the story by telling about how solidly respectable middle aged and middle class women advanced the cause through community building, embracing quality of life issues, and making a difference in the lives of whoever would let them. These aren't peasants in overalls, radical SNCC organizers, or theoretically sophisticated proto Ella Bakers - they are regular people who care about their community.
This book joins Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta After World War II, Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, and Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi as mandatory reading for anyone interested in Black women's activism or the story of civil rights in a state with the reputation of being America's most notoriously racist place.
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