Unsung Heroines: Women in the Civil Rights Era

II. Sexism in The Civil Rights Era Women involved in the civil rights era receive far from their due diligence, in addition to organizing many women involved in this period were used as their peers ‘secretaries when really they should have been seen as equals. The kind of activism that comes from women in the Civil Rights Era is very different from the kind of activism that is associated with slacktivism. The risks that were associated with activism in the 1960’s ranges from run-ins with unhappy counter protesters to possible violence from police or KKK members. Even so, Rosa Parks in known in history books as a passive actor in the role she played by refusing to comply with the bus diver’s demands. Diane Nash is literally remembered as a

Fortunately, Hedgeman “was not naïve enough to think it would be easy to get men to open the march leadership to women, but she was determined to see it happen.” Hedgeman was an organizer to her core and it was entirely frustrating to her that while putting the March on Washington together “women were featured as singers, recruited as marchers, and relied on as organizers, but they were not granted a speaking voice.” This is because the other organizers, the men, feared to give just one women a speaking voice would make all the other women jealous. Never mind, the simple fact that they could have had two or more women speak at the march but to not give women a voice for fear of a jealous rage is the most patriarchal argument that one could use. Unfortunately, “male civil rights leaders, including those who had counted on Hedgeman’s skills and hard work over many decades had great difficulty moving beyond their belief that women were second class citizens.” Even in an oppressed group fighting for civil liberties Black men were in certain ways oppressing Black women, by not giving them their time and space to speak their due diligence was taken from them. As a result of their counterparts taking advantage of their good works, unfortunately “historians have too often follows their lead, finding it remarkably easy to leave African American women out of the civil rights histories they helped shape.” How does one rewrite a whole history and try to include people who have been left out of the narrative for fifty years, when mainstream America would rather not talk about the topic at all? Hedgeman was so hopeful about the impact that women were making in the civil rights era that she sincerely thought “August 28, 1963, might reasonably have been called “Rosa Parks Day.”’ Unfortunately for the memories of both Parks and Hedgeman