Women and Civil Rights

Women played a great part in the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. For example, Rosa Parks started the movement on December 1, 1955. Women were mostly as “the men” when it came to this civil rights movement and so forth. Often, the women were called “feminists” for what they were doing. Women were very active, which was said they had to do, according to Beale. For example, Ida B. Wells called out Martin Luther King, Jr. because he was talking about something he knew nothing of. Woe was Fannie Lou Hamer! She was one courageous fed-up black woman. In an article we read about her, she spoke up and let her feelings out towards issues. She was basically saying she was fed up about how she, as a woman, was to feel "lower" than a white woman, and she wanted everyone to be on the same level, no upper class, middle class, white, black, woman, man, etc. I really admired her in this article because she had to be real bold to actually speak up and say the words that she said! She said that she wasn't fighting for equality nor to be liberated, but rather recognized just like any other person in the world, rather than a black woman being at the bottom of the chain. In my opinion, she wasn't really bashing or putting down others, but rather speaking her mind and telling the truth about things that people were afraid to say. This whole article to me basically tells me that in the end, we're all human beings trying to make a living, so why can't we just be that? [human beings making a living with no hierarchy.] It was hard for the black women to align themselves with the Women’s Lib because they didn’t want to do all that working and in the end, getting no credit for what they’ve done, according to Morrison.