Dan Snow's History Hit - Forgotten Women of the Civil Rights Movement

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

I was delighted to be joined by Keisha Blain, an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She took me far into the past - years before Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks - to the roots of North America's long tradition of Civil Rights activism. We discussed how African American women played a central - albeit overlooked - role in leading this struggle, and what their legacy looks like today. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is an important podcast on the forgotten women of the civil rights struggle. Stretching way back before the famous struggle for civil rights of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King of the late 50s and early 60s, African-American women were leading the struggle for civil and political rights in North America. Keisha Blaine is an Associated Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. I was able to catch up with her and ask about some of these women and about the contribution of women today to the Black Lives Matter movement. If you're interested in the struggle against systemic racism in the US, particularly at the moment, you may want to go

and check out the History Hit Live I did on YouTube, Timeline on YouTube, the biggest history channel on there. I did a Juneteenth Civil Rights Live podcast with the wonderful Christopher Wilson from the Smithsonian about the history of the movement. So that will be available also on History Hit TV, which is my digital history channel. You can become a subscriber if you go over to historyhit.tv. Use the code POD1, P-O-D-1.

You get a month for free and then you get the second month for just one pound, euro or dollar. You can watch hundreds of history documentaries, listen to all these back episodes of this podcast exclusively on there. They're not anywhere else now. And join our weekly live Zoom call, which next week is going to be pretty exciting, everybody. I've warned you and I warn you again, it's going to be awesome. But in the meantime, everybody, enjoy this interview with Keisha Blaine. Keisha, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me.

You've pointed out, we think now it is natural, of course, that activists are on the streets today. Women are very prominent among the leaders of these movements. But there's nothing new in that, as you've pointed out. Absolutely. Women have always been at the forefront of political and social movements for change in the United States, as well as across the globe. And my work just focuses specifically on a group of Black women activists working within Black nationalist movements during the early 20th century.

Did they suffer discrimination both as a result of the color of their skin, but also as a result of their gender as well? Absolutely. I would also add that for the women who I study, they also encountered a lot of resistance and discrimination because of their class status too. And so these are mostly working poor black women. So they were dealing with sexism, they were dealing with racism, and also classism, dealing with individuals who didn't take them too seriously, because they had few material resources, and in many cases, limited formal education. Well, the cards were stacked against them in those societies. The women you've studied, I've noticed that a lot of them come from the northern cities. Are these a different crowd of leaders to the male ones that emerged in the southern states?

Is there geographical importance here? Well, what's interesting is that the women who I study move often. And so many of them were actually born in the south and they relocated to northern cities in the context of the Great Migration around World War I in particular. in the context of the Great Migration, around World War I in particular. Some of them even left the United States, traveled, for example, from Harlem, ended up in London. Others managed to make it to the African continent, whether Liberia or later Ghana. So movement is happening. Certainly migration is happening in these narratives. But primarily we're talking about women from the U South, who find themselves in northern cities and travel extensively across the globe.

Can you tell me about a couple of them, these activist leaders that we've forgotten to remember? So one of them, a woman by the name of Mitty Maude Lena Gordon, she is someone who established an organization in Chicago in December 1932. One of the things that I point out in my work is that this was actually the largest Black nationalist organization established by a woman in the United States. Few people know about the organization, but in Chicago, Mitty Gordon worked to galvanize Black activists, mostly working class, working poor Black activists in the city. And the organization grew extensively. And so by the mid-1930s, there were more than a dozen chapters all over the nation. And they worked extensively to forge collaborations and networks with activists in other parts of the globe. And they were deeply invested in the idea of leaving the United States. They were hoping to

establish a better life in Liberia. So this is just one example. And Midi Malina Gordon was born in the state of Louisiana and traveled and moved from Louisiana first to East St. Louis, Illinois, and then to Chicago. She made a controversial speech at the time on the steps of the Capitol. She did. And so this was in 1939. She traveled with a group of her supporters to Washington, D.C. At the time, they were pushing for a bill hoping to obtain federal support to actually relocate to Liberia. And that didn't work out. But that particular moment, she stood on the steps of the Capitol building and at the time with standing with black activists,

but also members of the white press were there. And she called them out for certainly the history of racism in the U.S. and specifically criticized them for the fact that they were always talking about race mixing and always even critical of black men who had relations with white women at the time. And she said, look, you have a history of doing this. You actually have a history of sexually assaulting black women. And we know this through the context of slavery. And so that was certainly controversial at the time because it was something that you didn't necessarily talk about and in that setting. But I think it was a powerful moment. And in many ways, we see today black women standing up

and denouncing white supremacy in different spaces, and garnering a similar kind of response. Did these prominent women of color suffer discrimination within the movement? Were they able to reach leadership positions within the struggle for liberation? Or do they find it difficult even within that community? They found it difficult even within that community. And here's where I come back to the topic of class, because what's interesting is many of these women, they were truly leaders, they were passionate, they were committed to the struggle for freedom. Yet because they did not have much formal education, and because they were not well tapped into some of the networks of the black middle class and elite, they were not often allowed in those spaces. They certainly

were not given seats at the table, so to speak. So even within their communities, they were marginalized because they didn't quite fit in. You know, this is not a group of activists we might think of as, for example, leaders in the NAACP. I'm talking about a group of women who were not involved in these sort of mainstream political organizations. They were struggling to make ends meet, and they didn't always have access to these kinds of spaces, but they really wanted to be part of the dialogue, and so they found ways to do so. Yeah, I'm very struck by another activist you mentioned, Amy Ashwood Garvey, and it just sounds like she's just talking to people on street corners.

She's literally grassroots. Yes, grassroots. And this is someone who has an interesting story because she was born in Jamaica and she relocated in the early 20th century to Harlem. She's a co-founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and just played a key role in leading the Garvey movement during that time. And even before she at some point

relocated to London and later in her life, she lived in Liberia. She traveled extensively. But at the time that she was in Harlem, she spoke on street corners, she would recite poetry, she would talk about white supremacy openly, and really try to reach each person one by one. And that's the kind of movement that I think is most powerful. And even today, we see how people are coming together in their local communities and pushing for change. It's certainly reminiscent of this earlier period that I write about. Is there something distinctive about the role of female activists? I think women activists are often shedding light on the kinds of topics that might otherwise be sidelined in narratives.

So I think immediately, just as one quick example, education. What's noticeable in how Black women engage in political activity is they're oftentimes, and as much as they're interested in talking about the vote, certainly political rights, the importance of casting a ballot, they're oftentimes shedding light on the importance of Black education. They're demanding that people pay attention to the need to educate not just their sons, but their daughters. They're oftentimes thinking about just general concerns that relate to their roles as mothers, often as wives. And so here's where they broaden the scope, so to speak. And their voices, I think, are key because they

help us see that we can't necessarily talk about politics without also grappling with some of the personal concerns, some of the concerns that we might confine to the home. But as they show us, there's no way to divorce the two. With your research, it's impossible to think about the present day when black women have become the base, the most reliable activist and voting group for the Democratic Party. Does that make you think we've come a long way in 100 years? Or do you think that black women are still taken for granted by democratic leadership? I do think that black women are taken for granted. Within the context of the Democratic Party, I was just reflecting on the most recent

election where I'm estimating, but somewhere around 94% of black women voted for the Democratic nominee. And at the time, right after President Trump was elected, there was this hashtag that started trending on Twitter and people started going back to this phrase, listen to black women. And they were saying listen to black women because they were trying to make the case that if everyone had followed the way that black women voted, we would not be in the position that we're in. And in a similar way, when we look at the historical context, we see black women leading. They're often very involved politically. We see black women leading. They're often very involved politically. Even when they're shut out of the formal vote, they find ways to shape national politics and global politics.

And today they're just continuing in that trend. And it is unfortunate that I do think they are often taken for granted because they represent a vital voting bloc. When you look back at the demands of these first female activists 100 years ago, how much has been achieved in terms of, you know, voting, access to healthcare, education, how much of those early set of demands of reforms have been met, would you say? Well, I think what's unfortunate about the history is oftentimes we draw a direct line between past and present, and we're able to talk about progress. But this is a story where we can certainly talk about progress, yet we also have to talk about ways that we're going backward too. And so what do I mean just to think about voting rights? And so Black women did not have

access to the vote. And even after the passage of the 19th Amendment, black women still did not have access to the vote. And it would take several decades later, not until the 1960s, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, that black women would have full access to the vote. The reality is that even after the 60s, what we find over the last few decades are efforts to curtail the vote, efforts to suppress the vote. So what's unfortunate is even as there are significant gains, we're finding steps being taken to pull back some of these gains. And this is partly why I think we have to always remember that the struggle

continues and partly why so many activists are taking to the street in this moment, because they're saying, yes, we have accomplished a lot. But we're also losing some of the political gains that we've celebrated over the past few years. That's a depressing thought. When you're watching the protests today, how significant do you think are Black women in that activism today? They're very significant. In fact, I was just thinking about this within the context of the discussion we're having at a national level about defunding the police. One of the key figures within just this stream of thought is an activist that we all know, within just this stream of thought is an activist that we all know, Angela Davis.

Also, we can point to the work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, theorists like Joy James. And so we see all of these Black women activists, but also writers, who have been talking about this topic for a while. And we're now discussing it at a national level and going back to their work to understand how we could potentially move in this direction as a nation. So they're absolutely vital. Black Lives Matter, three black women who came together in 2014, started using the hashtag on social media to bring attention to the issue of state-sanctioned violence. And here we are talking about state-sanctioned violence at a national level and a global level. So in just those two examples, we see how critical black women have been to political and social movements. 2020 looks like it's going to have record numbers of women running and women of colour running. Do

you think this is going to be a huge year for people of colour, women of colour in the US? I think so. I certainly hope so. I think with everything that just experienced in the last few months, certainly the current uprisings, but even the challenges associated with the COVID-19 virus. I think now is a moment where people are more open to the possibilities. So many times we've had women leaders emerge and people would say, oh, I don't think the U.S. is ready. For example, they'll say, I don't think the United States is ready for a woman as president or serving in various leadership capacities. I think this is a moment where people are certainly more open to seeing women as leaders to acknowledging their gifts, their abilities, and really just to listen, you know, willingness to

listen to them. So I think we will see some radical changes happening this year. Well, I hope so. Thank you very much, Keisha Blaine, for joining us on today's podcast. Thanks for having me. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money.

Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there,

and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.