MothersMovementWomen Who Made African American History

of the

Ford Motor Company Fund

Charlayne Hunter-Gault (1942-Present)

Mumbet’s life. Hannah Ashley attempted to hit Lizzie, Mumbet’s sister, with a fire shovel, but Mumbet defended her younger sister and was hit instead.

After this, she went to the house of Theodore Sedgwick, and expressed her view that under the independent state’s new constitution she could not be legally held as a slave. Sedgwick was surprised that Mumbet had been lis-tening closely as he had talked of independence with her husband and thatshe understood the new constitution when she heard it read.

Joined by another slave determined to sue for his freedom,Sedgwick, Mumbet and a slave named Brom began the case of Brom and Bett vs. Ashley, which was heard in 1781. A jury decided that Mumbet had been wrong-fully held as a slave, and awarded her com-pensation for the time she had worked. It was then that she took the last nameFreeman. Mumbet’s case was one of two in which Massachusetts slaves suedsuccessfully for their freedom. These lawsuits led Massachusetts to recognizethat slavery was illegal under its constitu-tion, and it became, in 1783, the first state to end slavery.

In 1959, African American studentsCharlayne Hunter (later known by her married name, Hunter-Gault) andHamilton E. Holmes applied to the

University of Georgia (UGA). They wereclassmates at the top black high school

in Atlanta. She was third in her class andhomecoming queen; he was valedictorian.

They were turned down by UGA because of its “whites only” policy.

Hunter-Gault attended Wayne State University in Detroit, yet continued to apply each semester to UGA. After two years of legalbattles and a U.S. district judge’s confirmation that they were “quali-fied” and “entitled” to admission, she and Holmes arrived at theschool in 1961. On their way to register for classes, white protestershurled racial slurs at them. Two days later, a crowd gathered outsideHunter-Gault’s dorm and smashed windows. Despite these obstacles,she graduated in 1963.

Elizabeth Freeman (ca. 1744-1829)

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Long before Hunter-Gault was making headlines, she planned on recordingthem. As a girl, she caught the bug for news reporting by watching her grand-mother read three newspapers a day. In fact, it was UGA’s strong journalismprogram that attracted her to the school.

Now a well-respected television and print journalist, Hunter-Gault has fol-lowed important news stories for CNN, NPR, PBS and other media services. In1985, she created a special series tracking the racist practice of apartheid inSouth Africa. Five years later, she interviewed future South African presidentNelson Mandela. After apartheid had been abolished, she lived inJohannesburg as the African bureau chief for CNN. She has two Emmys and aPeabody — a prestigious award for broadcast journalists.

The University of Georgia has renamed the building where she and Hamiltonregistered for classes. It is now called the Holmes-Hunter Academic Building intheir honor.

Observe Like a Journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault is a world-class journalist. Observing and recording events accurately, as journalists do, is a valuable skill. Read an article on the front page of today’s newspaper.Consider how the writer gives information, including: who was involved, where events took place, what happened, how it happened and why it happened. Then write a short article about your journey from home to school today.

“She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly 30 years. Shecould neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superiornor equal. She neither wasted time nor property. She never violated atrust, nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of a domestic trial,she was the most efficient helper, and the tenderest friend. Good Mother,farewell.”

This is the epitaph on the grave of Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman, writ-ten by her friend Charles Sedgwick.

Mumbet — whose name is sometimes spelled “Mum Bett”— was born in New York. As a girl she and her sister Lizzie were moved toMassachusetts when their master’s youngest daughter Hannah marriedCol. John Ashley, a judge and prominent citizen of that state.

This was around the time of the Revolutionary War, in which theAmerican colonies would gain independence from England. In the housesof many New England people, freedom, liberty, rights and independencewere hot topics. One of the people who visited the Ashley house to dis-cuss these issues was Theodore Sedgwick, a young, white lawyer.

The war came, and it is believed that Mumbet’s husband was one ofmany African Americans killed fighting for American freedom. Yet afterthe war, slaves were still slaves.

At the time, an incident occurred in the Ashley house that changed

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Fannie Lou Hamer was born to a family ofsharecroppers in Mississippi in 1917. She wentto school from age six until she was around 13.Then she had to stop going to school so shecould help her family on the farm. She workedwith her family and then with her husband,growing and picking cotton for many years.

In 1962, things changed for Hamer. Shewent to a meeting hosted by the StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).At that time, SNCC was very focused on get-ting African Americans to register to vote.Even though African Americans were legally

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)allowed to vote, there were many barriers in their way that prevented themfrom registering.

The first time Hamer tried to vote she was given a test that asked her totranslate the constitution. She couldn’t, and wasn’t allowed to vote. On theway back from trying to register, the bus her group traveled in was pulledover because authorities said it wasn’t the right color.

Eventually, Hamer did register to vote, and became an active member ofSNCC. But, because she registered to vote, and encouraged other AfricanAmericans to vote, she was terrorized by both state authorities and civilians.Houses she stayed in were shot at. She was beaten by police, and she losther job and home when the property owner found she was trying to vote.

Hamer was a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom DemocraticParty (MFDP). This party wanted to show that African Americans has beenprevented from voting, and that the all-white Democratic Party inMississippi did not represent them. The MFDP included black and whitepeople, and they demanded that they be allowed to sit at an all-whiteDemocratic Party meeting in New Jersey. They were not allowed to. At thatmeeting Hamer gave a famous speech, in which she talked about all thethings that were done in the South to prevent African Americans from vot-ing. Soon after her speech, the president of the United States, Lyndon B.Johnson, took steps to help African Americans register to vote in the South.

Coretta Scott was born in 1927 in Alabama. She grewup on a farm with her mother, father, brother and sister.Her parents were enterprising people who encouragedtheir children to succeed in school. In fact, when it wastime for Coretta to attend a high school nine miles awayfrom her parent’s home, her mother rented a bus anddrove all the African American kids in the neighborhoodto school. She went to Antioch College in Ohio and thereshe studied music, and was a talented singer and musi-cian. She joined the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the YoungProgressives while at school.

After college, Coretta made the decision to followmusic, and got a scholarship to the New EnglandConservatory of Music in Boston. In Boston she metMartin Luther King Jr. He was studying for a Ph.D. atBoston University’s School of Theology. They married in 1953 and moved to Montgomery, Alabama.

Though they may not have know it, the Kings stood

on the threshold of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1955, NAACP member Rosa Parks didn’t give up her

seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, and Martin LutherKing Jr. came to the world’s attention as the leader of theboycott of city buses in Montgomery.

Coretta Scott King was a constant supporter of her husband’s vision, before and after his death. Violenceand threats always surrounded the family, and Corettaand her oldest child barely escaped injury when whitesupremacists bombed the Kings’ home in 1956.

Coretta Scott King organized a series of concerts called Freedom Concerts, which supported the SouthernChristian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group foundedon the principles of resisting segregation through non-violence. Martin Luther King Jr. was a leader of the SCLC.

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Coretta Scott King, a brave and talented woman who

helped change the course of history, died at age 78 in2006, just before the start of Black History Month.

Coretta Scott King (1927-Present)

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“Is this America? The land of the free and the home of thebrave? Where we have to sleep with our telephones off thehook, because our lives are being threatened daily?”

— Fannie Lou Hamer to Democratic National Committee, 1964

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As a woman and an African American, Sonia Sanchez has written powerfully about the areas in America that have changed the most. She has given expression to AfricanAmerican life by making poems of the way people talk, walk, love and live.

“Sonia is one of those poets who has kept to the course... to use her work to transform the world, to struggle againstinjustice,” said the great poet and playwright Amiri Baraka.“And she’s continued to do this in ways that... have made a serious impact on American poetry in general.”

“Only a poet with an innocent heart can [overcome] so much pain with so much beauty,” said the noted SouthAmerican author Isabel Allende.

Sonia Sanchez was born Wilsonia Driver in 1934 inBirmingham, Alabama. Her mother died when she was just one and her father later moved with her to New York City.

After attending Hunter College, she was caught up in thesocial activism of the 1960s. She admired Malcolm X, wrotebooks with powerful titles like “We a BaddDDD People” andbecame a leader in the Black Arts Movement. With Baraka and others, she taught the first African American studies classin the country at San Francisco State College.

Her poems, plays and other writings celebrate the beautiesof African American speech, while exposing wider audiences

to African American issues and culture. She wrote a play about man-woman relations with the title

“Uh Huh: But How Do It Free Us?” She collected the writing of her Harlem students in “Three Hundred and Sixty Degreesof Blackness Comin’ at You.”

In later years her poems focused on women’s issues as well as the African American experience. She was a professorof women’s studies and English at Temple University inPhiladelphia for more than 20 years.

In 1985, Sanchez won an American Book Award for her volume “homegirls & handgrenades.” In 1997 she was a finalistfor a National Book Critics Circle award for “Does Your HouseHave Lions?” which examined her brother’s battle with AIDS.City College of New York honored her with its LangstonHughes Medal.

She also received the Governor’s Award for Excellence inthe Humanities in 1988, the Peace and Freedom Award fromthe Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in1989, and the Robert Frost Award for poetry in 2001.

All told, she has written nearly 20 books and plays, including1995’s “Wounded in the House of a Friend” and 1999’s “ShakeLoose My Skin.”

In 2004, she released a CD of spoken word and musiccalled “The Full Moon of Sonia.”

Ella J. Baker was an unsung hero of the Civil Rights Movement.Not only was she part of the group that founded the Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee (SNCC), but she inspired many political organizations,including the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society and feministgroups.

The granddaughter of slaves, Baker challenged school policies she consid-ered demeaning when attending Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. After graduat-ing as class valedictorian in 1926, she moved to New York City and worked forthe Works Progress Administration (WPA) in literacy and consumer education.

In 1930, she joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League, and one yearlater, was elected its first national director. She also was involved with severalwomen’s organizations.

In 1940, Baker became a field director for the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People (NAACP), then its director of branches. Herefforts helped create the grassroots network in the South that provided a basefor the Civil Rights Movement later. Although she resigned from the NAACP

staff in 1946, she stayed on as a volunteer. As the first woman to head its NewYork City branch, she led its fight to desegregate the city’s public schools.

In 1956, Baker moved to Atlanta, Georgia., where she organized MartinLuther King Jr.’s new Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) andran Crusade for Citizenship, a voter registration campaign.

Baker left SCLC, and after a group of students in Greensboro, NorthCarolina, touched off a sit-in campaign, she invited sit-in leaders to a confer-ence at Shaw University. It was there that the Student Nonviolent CoordinatingCommittee (SNCC) was born.

SNCC (pronounced snick) began as a way to give young black students apart in the Civil Rights Movement. At first the group organized more sit-ins,challenging the rules of segregation that tried to keep black Americans out ofrestaurants and other facilities or in restricted areas. In following years, SNCCplayed a big role in getting African Americans registered to vote in the South.

Returning to New York, Ella J. Baker worked for human rights until her deathin 1986.

Sonia Sanchez (1934-Present)

Ella J. Baker (1903-1986)

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KRT

Constance Baker Motley (1921-2005)

“From the first,” said Mary McLeod Bethune, “I mademy learning, what little it was, useful every way I could.”

She certainly did.One of the 17 children of former slaves in South

Carolina, the future educator worked with her family inthe cotton fields — a humble beginning for someonewho made a lasting impact on American education andwas for years the person white America went to foradvice in “Negro” matters.

Her own education, in the late 19th century, wasgained at Maysville (S.C.) Presbyterian Mission School,Scotia Seminary and Moody Bible Institute.

She founded the Daytona Normal and IndustrialInstitute for Negro Girls (now Bethune-CookmanCollege) in 1904 and was its president in the periods1904-1942 and 1946-1947. She was often a delegate and

advisor to national conferences on education, child wel-fare and home ownership.

A leader in the black women’s club movement, shewas president of the National Association of ColoredWomen and founder of the National Council of NegroWomen. She also was a vice president of the NAACP.

A wife and mother, Bethune was director of NegroAffairs in the National Youth Administration from 1936to 1944 and a consultant to the U.S. Secretary of War for the selection of the first female officer candidates.

At the charter conference of the United Nationsafter World War II, Mary Bethune was appointed a consultant on interracial affairs and understanding. Herrenown was international. Haiti awarded her its highestaward, the Haitian Medal of Honor, and Liberia namedher a Commander of the Order of the Star of Africa.

7pageThe Power of the Law

Constance Baker Motley was a lawyer, a state senator and ajudge — three different jobs that have to do with the law. As a class, learn more about justice in this country by finding alawyer, a judge and a senator in today’s newspaper. Find outwhat each person does as part of his or her job to maintain the system of law as set out by the U.S. Constitution.

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)

The 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Educationwas one of the most important rulings in the history of theUnited States. The judgment said that the doctrine of “separate,but equal” was not valid — that the segregation of AfricanAmerican students and white students was unfair.

NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund lawyerConstance Baker Motley of New Haven, Connecticut, wrote theoriginal complaint for the case. She also argued Meredith v. Fairin front of the Supreme Court, the case that forced theUniversity of Mississippi to admit James Meredith, its firstAfrican American student.

She worked to desegregate buses, lunch counters andschools. In fact, Baker Motley presented 10 cases in front of the

highest court of the land — and won all but one, a remarkablerecord to be admired by any lawyer.

Though often working behind the scenes, Baker Motley alsobroke a few barriers of her own. In 1964, she was the firstAfrican American woman to be elected to the New York StateSenate. In 1965, Baker Motley became both the first woman andthe first African American to be Manhattan Borough president.

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson appointed her as a feder-al court judge, a high position she held until her death inSeptember 2005.

A member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame, BakerMotley was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal byPresident Bill Clinton.

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“What I think is really important about the [BlackPanther Party] is that the BPP represented, and the youngpeople recognized, that their most powerful weapon wastheir imagination,” recalled Kathleen Cleaver in a PBS inter-view. “We could imagine how the world could be differentand act to bring it about.”

In the 1960s, the Black Panther Party was made up most-ly of people under 25 years old, and their ideas for changeand their actions were an important part of the Civil RightsMovement.

Kathleen Cleaver was born and spent her early years in Dallas, Texas. Her parents were highly educated, and her father’s job took the family on international travels to places including India and the Philippines.

Cleaver graduated from high school in Pennsylvania.While in college at Barnard she became involved with theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. SNCC wasinvolved in organizing many of the sit-ins that occurred tofight segregation and discrimination in the early 1960s.

Cleaver left SNCC to join the Black Panther Party, agroup founded in California. The Panthers were looked

at by the U.S. government and much of the media as one of the most extreme groups of the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1967 Kathleen married Eldridge Cleaver, a leader ofthe Black Panthers, and also became the first female mem-ber of the party’s central committee, which was the maindecision-making body.

The BPP said that African Americans must break freefrom America’s white dominated economy and politics. The Panthers ran many programs in communities, such as providing food and tutoring for children.

At the same time, the Black Panthers promoted self-defense and revolution. Party members carried arms andwanted dramatic changes in the United States. This mademany people fear the Party.

In 1980, after a series of arrests and legal battles, theBlack Panther Party ceased to be an active organization.

In 1981 Kathleen Cleaver returned to college, graduat-ing from Yale and Yale’s law school. She and EldridgeCleaver divorced in 1987. She is now a professor at EmoryUniversity in Atlanta. Her writings still focus on racism andthe problems of disempowered people around the world.

Patricia Roberts Harris was a pioneer in the field of politics. Alawyer who graduated summa cum laude (with highest honors) fromHoward University and at the top of her class from GeorgeWashington University Law School, Harris was chosen by PresidentJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy to serve as the co-chair of the National

Women’s Committee for Civil Rights. President Lyndon B. Johnson named her U.S. Ambassador to

Luxembourg, making her the first African American woman to serve as a U.S. Ambassador. Later, President Jimmy Carter named Harris to his

cabinet, first as Secretary of Urban Development and then as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare — the department now known as Healthand Human Services. She was the first African American woman to serve in a president’s cabinet. Interestingly, Harris was also the first to enter theline of presidential succession — the ranked list of people who would takeover the office, should the president be unable to serve. She was 13th.

Harris also served as a professor and dean at the Howard UniversitySchool of Law and later as a full professor at the George WashingtonNational Law Center. She was honored on a U.S. postage stamp in 2000.

Patricia Roberts Harris (1924-1985)

Kathleen Cleaver (1945-Present)

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Be an AmbassadorAmong her many jobs, Patricia RobertsHarris was the U.S. Ambassador to the European country of Luxembourg.Imagine you were chosen as an ambassa-dor for your community. Use today’snewspaper to research and answer the following questions an ambassadormight face. 1. What makes your community special?2. What types of jobs do people have?3. What different ways do people

worship in your community? 4. What different languages do

they speak? 5. What types of problems face people

in your community?6. What do people eat there? Any

local favorites?

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Betty Shabazz was born Betty Jean Sanders in 1936. Shewas adopted and raised by a supportive family in Detroit.After finishing high school, Shabazz went to the TuskegeeInstitute, a college in Alabama. From there, she moved toNew York City to study nursing in Brooklyn.

While she was in Brooklyn, she went to hear the youngspeaker and Nation of Islam member Malcolm X. At that time,the members of the Nation of Islam left their last namesbehind because they were names from the time of slavery.Members took the last name X in memory of the Africannames that they had lost.

Shabazz had been raised Christian, but she was impressedby Malcolm X. Through conversations with him, she began tounderstand some of the racism that she had experiencedwhile at school in Alabama.

In 1958, she graduated from nursing school, and hadalready become a member of the Nation of Islam. Shortlyafterwards, she married Malcolm X.

At that time, the world of the Civil Rights Movement wasfull of different approaches. The Nation of Islam was seen as

extreme by many because it called for a separation of AfricanAmericans from the government of the United States.

Within the Nation of Islam itself there also was disagree-ment. Malcolm X’s goals underwent changes and he devel-oped views different from many other leaders of the Nation.He and Betty eventually split with the Nation, and she tookthe last name Shabazz.

At the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem in 1965 Malcolm X wasgunned down by other members of the Nation of Islam. BettyShabazz, mother of four children and pregnant with twins,witnessed her husband’s murder.

Traumatized by the experience, Shabazz went on the Hajj,the traditional pilgrimage of Muslims to the holy city ofMecca. The journey strengthened her, and when she returnedto the United States she devoted herself fully to raising hersix daughters, and to continuing her education.

Shabazz eventually earned a doctorate in education, andworked as a professor at Medgar Evers College in New York.

In 1997, Betty was horribly burned when her grandson setfire to her house. Weeks later, she died from the burns.

Betty Shabazz (1936-1997)

Gang warfare was a terrible problem in some WestPhiladelphia neighborhoods, and community agencieswere struggling to cope with the problem.

When they learned that one of their six sons hadjoined a gang, Falaka and David Fattah made a daringmove. They invited the gang to become part of their fami-ly, promising to help keep the boys alive and out of jail.The Fattahs’ home became House of Umoja Boys Town.

That was in 1968. Today, House of Umoja is an interna-tionally known organization dedicated to the positivedevelopment of youth, reducing violence and abusivebehavior, and providing interventions where needed. Itsgoal is to improve quality of life for boys, 15 to 18 yearsold, from low-income families.

For three years, Umoja operated without private or pub-lic support. Sister Falaka, Umoja’s founder and CEO, raisedfunds and trained staff to provide individual and groupsupervision, counseling, educational support and activities.

More than 3,000 young men and boys have resided at the House of Umoja in 35 years, and the concept hasbeen copied in other cities. Universities and other institu-tions have asked for the Fattahs’ expertise in gang reduc-tion, youth programming and community organizing.

The House of Umoja has been recognized by two pres-idents — Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

House of Umoja has been instrumental in the Peace inthe Hood anti-violence program. In cooperation with theRestaurant School in Philadelphia, it developed theCulinary Art Component, encouraging entrepreneurialindependence through catering. In 1994, it launched aFood of Thought program to provide emergency foodassistance and self-sufficiency services to neighborhoodresidents.

One of the Fattahs’ six sons, Chaka Fattah, is a U.S.Congressman and a former Pennsylvania state legislator.

Falaka Fattah (1931-Present)

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Great VoicesThe voices of Marian Anderson andMahalia Jackson provided a sound-track to important events — theEaster Concert at the LincolnMemorial, JFK’s inauguration andMartin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have aDream” speech. Look through today’snewspaper and find an event that youthink is important. If you were creat-ing a historic documentary of thatevent, what music would you chooseto use in the background? Would youuse pop, rap, rock, soul, gospel, classi-cal, jazz or some other type of music?What specific pieces would you use?Explain your choices in a paragraph.

Marian Anderson (1897-1993)

& Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972)The voices of Marian Anderson and Mahalia

Jackson couldn’t be more different. A classicallytrained musician, Anderson filled opera houses inthe United States and abroad with her rich contraltotones. Jackson’s soul-shaking church-choir-based

gospel sound was as raw and powerful as a force ofnature. But they did have crossover fans — President

John F. Kennedy for one, who invited both to sing at hisinauguration. And both provided a soundtrack to important

moments in Civil Rights history. Born in 1897 in Philadelphia, Anderson had a beautiful voice

that took her to the best classical-music venues in the U.S. andEurope. Renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini told her: “Yoursis a voice that one hears once in a hundred years.” ComposerJean Sibelius dedicated his piece, “Solitude” to her, saying,“The roof of my house is too low for your voice.” As criticallyacclaimed as she was, she was also a crowd favorite — in 1935Anderson was the third-highest concert draw in the U.S.

But, as an African American, Marian Anderson faced racialdiscrimination. She was often turned away from hotels, restau-

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rants and concert halls. The most famous such incident came in 1939, when her manager and Howard University tried to book her in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The owners of the venue, an organization called the Daughters of the American Revolution(DAR), refused to let Anderson sing there because of her color.

When there were protests denouncing the DAR’s decision, FirstLady Eleanor Roosevelt invited Anderson to sing on the steps of theLincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. Marian Anderson’s voice washeard by millions on the radio — and in person by the crowd of75,000 who showed up at the memorial to listen.

Later in life, Anderson became a goodwill ambassador for theUnited Nations and was awarded the U.N. Peace Prize. She died in1993 at the age of 96.

Though Mahalia Jackson had a much shorter time on Earth, shealso touched many lives and hearts. Living from 1911 to 1972, Jacksonis considered by many fans to be the greatest gospel singer ever.According to eyewitness Borden Brown, at the 1958 Newport JazzFestival, her voice kept thousands of cold, soaking wet jazz fanstransfixed for an outdoor after-midnight session. No one moved a muscle. “Jackson was able to transmit her raw belief and joy forher subject,” he says.

As a gospel singer, Jackson’s subject was faith. And she becamefriends with the most famous minister of her time — the Rev. MartinLuther King Jr. Her grandparents had been born into slavery, andJackson was an avid supporter of the powerful Civil Rights organiza-tion, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her songsmotivated Civil Rights workers at meetings and events. Her voicesailed over the crowd at the 1963 March on Washington, beforeKing gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Jackson also sang at King’s funeral after his assassination. Hervoice expressed both grief and strength in that time of mourning.

Marian Anderson

Mahalia Jackson

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The 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miamiwas the first major party convention at which a womanwas considered for the presidential nomination.

That woman was the late U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York. She did not win the nomination, but she did receive the votes of 151 delegates.

Shirley St. Hill Chisholm represented the 12thCongressional District in New York City from 1968 to 1982. Outspoken in her advocacy for Civil Rights, women’s rights and the poor, she vigorously opposed the Vietnam War.

Before entering Congress, she had served in the NewYork State General Assembly, during which she proposeda bill to provide state aid to day care centers and spear-headed the campaign to increase funding for schools.

Born in Brooklyn to a father from British Guiana and a mother from Barbados, she was educated in Barbados,where she lived with a grandmother, before returning toNew York to attend Girls High School in Brooklyn. Shemajored in sociology at Brooklyn College, and led a

campaign there against campus racism.Although she had graduated with honors, it was tough

for black college graduates to obtain appropriate employ-ment, and she was rejected by many companies beforegetting a job at a Harlem childcare center. She worked in that field for 13 years.

She and her husband, Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaica-born private investigator, became active in local politics,helping to form the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League.In 1960, she founded the Unity Democratic Club, whichmobilized black and Hispanic voters.

Rep. Chisholm was a co-founder of the NationalOrganization for Women (NOW). A sought-after publicspeaker, she urged women to “become revolutionaries...[and to] refuse to accept the old, traditional roles andstereotypes.”

Among the many honors she received was Alumna of the Year at Brooklyn College, the Key Woman of theYear and Woman of Achievement awards.

Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005)

Carol Mosley Braun was born in Chicagoin 1947. Her parents placed a high value oneducation, and Mosley Braun herself provedto be talented and hard-working. She gradu-ated from college at the University of Illinoisin 1969, went to law school at the Universityof Chicago, and began practicing law in 1973.

She was elected as a Democrat to theIllinois House of Representatives in 1979.From 1978 to 1988 Mosley Braun was a pow-erful force in the Illinois House. In 1992, shewas elected to the United States Senate.

In winning that election, she became thefirst African American woman ever elected

to the Senate, and the second AfricanAmerican overall.

During her time in the Illinois House andSenate, Mosley Braun worked for betterfunding of schools in cities, gun control, andto combat discrimination. She was not re-elected to the Senate in 1998.

Mosley Braun ran for president in 2004,but withdrew and put her support behindHoward Dean. Whatever the future holds for her, Mosley Braun has been a pioneer of representation for the African Americancommunity throughout her political career.

Carol Mosley Braun (1947-Present)

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Barbara Easley Cox was a social worker for 27 years with thePennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, serving in Philadelphia’sRidge District. Many of the clients and their families she served in thoseyears were probably unaware that “BC,” as her friends know her, hadbeen an important part of the Black Panther Party (BPP).

She was a student at San Francisco Community College in 1967. Atthat time she met her future husband, BPP Field Marshal Donald Cox,and joined the black rights organization.

She worked for the party out of its headquarters in Oakland,California, as well as in New York, Philadelphia and overseas. In June1970, she was assigned by the party to work in North Africa and Europe.When her then-husband was indicted on a variety of charges, he went to Algiers, and she went with him. She also went to North Korea, settingup a nursery and a library, and becoming “a kind of guerrilla ambassadorto the other African liberation movements there,” she recalled in a 2004interview.

In the U.S., Easley Cox raised money for Panthers survival programs,served in the Free Breakfast for Children Program and solicited donationsfor the Free Clothing Program.

She initiated and joined organizations addressing issues of povertyand social injustice. She was a co-founder of Sisters Remember Malcolm,a group whose aim was to preserve the legacy of Malcolm X. She alsohas been active in the Advocate Community Development Corporation(ACDC), which has rehabilitated or constructed almost 400 housingunits in North Philadelphia. Elected to ACDC’s board of directors in the mid-1980s, Easley Cox was elected chairperson of the board in 1998.

Tragedy propelled Myrlie Evers-Williams into the publiceye, and she has remained a major figure in the Civil RightsMovement.

Her first husband, Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers, waskilled by a sniper in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963.

Evers-Williams went on to a career as a leader in the CivilRights Movement and as a public speaker, but she never gaveup her campaign for justice in her husband’s murder.

The killer, Byron De La Beckwith, was indicted for the mur-der, but in two separate trials, all-white juries deadlocked andhe was set free.

Although she had left Mississippi, Evers-Williams kept upthe pressure. In 1990, more than 25 years after the murder,she convinced Missisippi prosecutors to reopen the case.

In 1994, the 73-year-old Beckwith was found guilty by ajury of eight African Americans and four whites. He died in prison in 2001.

Myrlie Beasley met Army veteran Medgar Evers in 1950 at

Alcorn A&M College, where he was an upperclassman.Married in 1951, they worked together in the Civil RightsMovement in Mississippi, becoming targets for violence.

Her husband was Mississippi state field secretary for the NAACP, and Evers-Williams was his secretary. Together,they organized voter registration drives and Civil Rightsdemonstrations. In 1962, during a boycott of Jackson’s whitemerchants that they had organized, their home was fire-bombed. A few months later, Medgar Evers was murdered.

Evers-Williams and her three children moved to Claremont,California. There, she enrolled at Pomona College, andmajored in sociology, graduating in 1968. In 1975, she marriedWalter Williams.

Evers-Williams was the first black woman to serve on thefive-member Los Angeles Board of Public Works, overseeing a budget of nearly $1 billion.

In 1995, the year her second husband died of cancer, Evers-Williams became the first woman to chair the NationalAssociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Barbara Easley Cox

12A Work of Inspiration Barbara Easley Cox founded an organization to preservethe legacy of Malcolm X. Malcolm X was a leader whoinspired many African Americans in the quest for socialjustice. Who inspires you in an important aspect of yourlife? Look through today’s newspaper for an inspirationalperson. It can be a famous person, or someone not-so-famous who has done something interesting or beneficialfor the community. Create a short poem, a rap or anotherartistic expression inspired by this person.

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Myrlie Evers-Williams (1933-Present)

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Josephine Ruffin (1842-1924)

The late C. DeLores Tucker’s entire career was one of“firsts,” but one of her proudest moments was her partici-pation in the historic Selma-to-Montgomery March in1965 with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

A few years later, she was named secretary of state in Pennsylvania, the first African American woman in thenation to hold such a high state position. In that job from1971-77, she instituted the state’s first Commission on theStatus of Women and was responsible for the governor’sappointment of more women judges and more womenand African Americans to state boards and commissionsthan ever before.

In Philadelphia, Tucker was founder and president ofthe Bethune-DuBois Institute to promote the culturaldevelopment of African American youth through scholar-ships and educational programs. She was founding presi-

dent of the Philadelphia Martin Luther King Jr. Associationfor Non-Violent Change.

In later years, she achieved national attention for a crusade against gangsta rap. This effort made her manyenemies as well as friends, but she continued her fight.

An alumna of Temple University and the WhartonSchool of the University of Pennsylvania, Tucker receivedthree honorary doctorate degrees and many awards.

Tucker was convening founder of the NationalCongress of Black Women, and succeeded U.S. Rep.Shirley Chisholm as its president in 1992.

She was a former chair of the Democratic NationalCommittee Black Caucus and the first African American to be president of the National Federation of DemocraticWomen. Tucker launched and was publisher of Vital Issues:The Journal of African American Speeches.

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Josephine Ruffin and EqualityAs an abolitionist, Civil Rights leader and a suffragette, Josephine Ruffin fought forhuman rights and equality. It’s been more than 160 years since her birth — slavery isgone and women vote — but human rights and equality issues are still top news. As aclass, read an article in today’s newspaper about human rights. Discuss any words orevents that seem unclear. As a class, discuss what you think should happen next. It’sOK to disagree, but be sure to back up your ideas with well-thought-out reasons.

C. DeLores Tucker (1927-2005)

Josephine Ruffin spent her life serving freedom and democracy. Born inBoston in 1842, she married George Lewis Ruffin, the first African Americanman to graduate from Harvard Law School.

Ruffin fought to abolish slavery in the Southern states. She and her hus-band also helped to recruit African American soldiers for the Union Army.

After the Civil War ended and slavery was history, Ruffin continued towork for Civil Rights — both for African Americans and for women. Shehelped form the American Woman Suffrage Association in Boston.

In 1897, Josephine Ruffin founded Woman’s Era, the first magazine for and by African American women, with her two daughters.

In 1895, she organized the National Federation of Afro-American Women,which merged with the Colored Women’s League to become the National

Association of Colored Women. Other founders of this group includedHarriet Tubman. The NACW campaigned for women’s suffrage (the right to vote) and against lynching and Jim Crow laws.

The organization’s motto was “Lifting as We Climb.” By the 1910s, theNAWC had more than 300,000 members.

Ruffin also was instrumental in the beginnings of the NAACP, and herfriends included legendary figures such as Booker T. Washington, ElizabethCady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

So when you start voting when you turn 18, give a thought to JosephineRuffin and other Civil Rights leaders, who helped make this country thedemocracy that it is.

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Dorothy Height was involved with the Civil RightsMovement from its beginnings, as an advisor to presidentsand a friend of powerful Civil Rights leaders such as MaryMcLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt.

She also was an early and influential voice promoting therights of women in America. Born in Virginia in 1912, Heightdemonstrated she was destined for great things at an earlyage. An exceptional student and speaker, she won a scholar-ship to New York University and earned both bachelor’s andmaster’s degrees in just four years.

In her 20s, she joined the National Council of NegroWomen founded by Mary McLeod Bethune, launching acareer with the NCNW that lasted more than 60 years. Shealso worked with the Young Women’s Christian Association(YWCA), and in 1965 founded theYWCA’s Center for Racial Justice,one of the group’s major initiatives.

With both organizations Heightworked to strengthen the blackfamily, integrate schools and bringwomen from different countriesand races together.

In 1957 she became president of the NCNW, placing herat the heart of activities in the Civil Rights Movement. Sheserved as president for 40 years until 1997.

In 2004 she received the Congressional Gold Medal forlifetime achievement, just one of many awards and honorsshe has been given for her commitment to equality.

Throughout her life, she broke down barriers for womenas well as for African Americans. In the 1960s and 1970s, shewas often the only woman present at meetings that involvedthe powerful male leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.

In a PBS interview Height said she welcomed the chal-lenge that was presented.

“I think I was born a feminist,” she said, “because I thinkall my life I’ve been proud to be a woman.”

Dorothy Height (1912-Present)

Barbara Jordan became a national celebrity in 1976,when she was the first African American to keynote a major political convention. Because she was a greatspeaker, the Democrats invited her back to keynote their convention 16 years later.

But there was even more to the late U.S. Rep. BarbaraJordan than the talent to electrify a convention hall. Shewas considered by President Jimmy Carter for attorneygeneral or ambassador to the United Nations, but chose toremain in the U.S. House, where she represented the 18thCongressional District in Houston, Texas, from 1972 to 1978.

As a member of Congress and of the Texas stateSenate before that, Jordan was a champion of the poorand the disadvantaged. In the state Senate — where sheserved from 1966 to 1972 — she sponsored the Workman’sCompensation Act, increasing maximum benefits paid to

injured workers. In Congress, she sponsored legislation to broaden the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to cover MexicanAmericans whose rights had been restricted by unfairvoter registration practices.

As a young student, Jordan had wanted to study political science at the University of Texas, but it was stillsegregated, so she attended Texas Southern University,majoring in political science and history and graduatingmagna cum laude in 1956. After getting a law degree at Boston University, she taught political science at theTuskegee Institute in Alabama, then returned to Houstonand set up a private law practice.

She twice ran unsuccessfully for the Texas House of Representatives, but in 1966 she was elected to theTexas Senate — the first black since 1883 and the firstblack woman ever.

Barbara Jordan (1936-1996)K

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Your Congressperson, Your ViewsAs a U.S. Congresswoman, Barbara Jordan represented her district to the rest of the Congress. In doing so, she brought theconcerns of her region to the attention of other movers and shak-ers in Washington D.C. Find out who your congressperson is. Thenlook through today’s newspaper and do research into the past and see if he or she is representing your views on an issue that is important to you. If so, write a thoughtful letter expressing whyyou support his or her stance. If not, write a well-thought-out letterthat explains why you feel your opinion is better.

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Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (1914-1999)Daisy Lee Gatson was born in a small town in Arkansas. Though she did not

know it until she became older, the people who raised her were not her birthparents. They had adopted her after her mother had been killed by three whitemen. Her father had fled town for fear that he would be attacked.

When Gatson was only 15, she met a man named L.C. Bates. Several yearslater they married. L.C. Bates had gone to school for journalism, and worked as a reporter, but when the Great Depression came in the 1930s he had towork as an insurance salesman to make enough money.

He always felt the call back to journalism though, and in 1941 he and GatsonBates printed the first issue of a newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, and calledit the Arkansas Free Press. The Arkansas Free Press became popular quickly.But it ran into trouble financially when advertisers with the paper becameangry that many articles focused on the unequal treatment African Americansreceived in the segregated South. In particular, stories on brutality and evenmurder of African American soldiers who had returned from World War IIcaused many people to stop advertising in the paper. Without the financial support of advertisers, the couple struggled to make a living.

In 1952, Gatson Bates took on another leadership position, when she becamepresident of the Arkansas branches of the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Brown v. Board of Educationmade segregation in schools illegal. But the white leaders of Little Rock did not want to see their schools integrated, and delayed by saying that they wouldintegrate them slowly, over time. Gatson Bates formed a now famous groupwith nine African American students who should have been able to attend the formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock.

In 1957 military troops, under the order of President Dwight D. Eisenhower,escorted Gatson Bates and the Little Rock 9 into Central High School.

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates died in 1999, having spent her entire adult lifefocused on achieving equality for African Americans.

CreditsThe Newspapers In Education supplement “Mothers ofthe Movement” was commissioned from Hollister Kids forThe Detroit News. Copyright © 2006. All rights reserved.The program was made possible by the support of FordMotor Company Fund.The writers were Sara Shahriari, Martha Michaela Brownand Don Harrison. The graphic designer was Renee Guie.

Thank You