By Linda Mashburn

Ella Baker became one of the leading figures of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. Following her early work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she was among the founders of Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. Three years later, she helped launch the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. 
Early Life and Education
Born in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 13, 1903, Baker grew up in rural North Carolina. She was close to her grandmother, a former slave, who told Baker many stories about her life, including a whipping she had received at the hands of her owner. A bright student, Baker attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating class valedictorian in 1927. 
YNCL and NAACP
After moving to New York City in the late 1920s, Baker joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL), which allowed its members to pool their funds to get better deals on goods and services. Before long, she was serving as its national director. 
Around 1940, Baker became a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a role that required extensive travel as she raised funds and recruited new members to the organization. Baker became the NAACP's national director of branches in 1943, though she stepped down from the role three years later to take over care of her niece, Jackie Brockington.
Remaining in New York, Baker worked for a number of local organizations, including the New York Urban League. She became director of the New York chapter of the NAACP in 1952. 
SCLC Beginnings
In 1957, Baker helped launch the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), under the presidency King. She ran its Atlanta, Georgia, office and served as the organization's acting executive director; however, she also clashed with King and other male leaders of the SCLC, who allegedly were not used to receiving pushback from such a strong-willed woman, before exiting the organization in 1960.
SNCC and MFDP Founder
During her time with the SCLC, Baker organized the event that led to the creation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. She offered her support and counsel to this organization of student activists.
After leaving the SCLC, Baker remained active in the SNCC for many years. She helped them form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1964 as an alternative to the state's Democratic Party, which held segregationist views. 
The MFDP even tried to get their delegates to serve as replacements for the Mississippi delegates at the National Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, that same year. While they were unsuccessful in this effort, the MFDP's actions brought significant attention to their cause.
Later Work and Death
Baker continued to fight for social justice and equality into her later years, providing counsel to such organizations as the Third World Women's Coordinating Committee and the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee. 
Baker died on her 83rd birthday, on December 13, 1986, in New York City.
The Enduring Legacy of 'Fundi'
While not as well known as King, John Lewis or other famed leaders of the civil rights movement, Baker was a powerful behind-the-scenes force that ensured the success of some of the movement's most important organizations and events.
Her life and accomplishments were chronicled in the 1981 documentary Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. "Fundi" was her nickname, from a Swahili word that means a person who passes down a craft to the next generation. 
Her name lives on through the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which aims to combat the problems of mass incarceration and strengthen communities for minorities and low-income people. Additionally, her name graces a K-8 public school on Manhattan's Upper East Side.​

By Yogev Von Kundra

For the Appalachian Peace Education Center’s 38th Annual Martin Luther King Remembrance, the theme is Remembering Women of the Civil Rights Movement. Angela Davis stands out for her youth involvement and her continued work in interconnected movements. She embraces intersectionality and has expanded on MLK’s work to go beyond civil rights as MLK did in his later activism addressing labor, class, and peace issues.

During the Civil Rights Movement, Angela Davis began her legacy as one of America’s most influential leaders for human rights. She was 19 years old when Martin Luther King solidified his legacy with “I Have a Dream”. At the time, she was an emerging leader in the movement’s youth wing, organizing with the Black Panther Political Party and the LA Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Her ambitions to build a better world went beyond civil rights to human rights, and beyond the black community to include all people of any race, gender, and identity. She became a prominent leader in the Second Wave Feminist Movement, connecting feminism and racial justice. Angela is still active as a leader for peace and justice with the issues of today including immigration, mass incarceration and police violence.

Angela grew up in Birmingham, AL during segregation. Her mother, Sallye Davis was an activist and organizer, inspiring Angela to stand up for what is right. As a girl, Angela and a group of other youth challenged segregation by sitting in the white section of the bus on several occasions. At 12 years old, she organized an interracial study group that she recalled was “busted up by the police”. As a teenager, she moved to New York, where she joined Advance, a multi-racial youth communist organization, that shaped her political ideology. With Advance, she participated in solidarity actions within the peace and civil rights movements. As a teenager, she found community in groups affiliated with communism, through initial connections from her mother.

Angela may be most well known as the third woman listed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List. She was arrested as an accomplice to a violent courtroom shootout with some of the guns used being registered to Angela Davis. After a dramatic search, arrest, and trial that captivated the attention of the world, she was found not guilty. She then traveled the world including Cuba, Germany, and the Soviet Union for racial liberation, human rights, and freedom. She draws on her personal experiences when advocating for change in the criminal justice system.

In honoring Anegla Davis as one of the Women of the Civil Rights Movement, we are celebrating that the Civil Rights Movement is a part of a larger movement that spans beyond, from the Abolition Movement to the modern day Black Lives Matter Movement and more. As a young girl, she learned from her mother and black elders, the wisdom and power of nonviolent political movements. As a leader of the past and present, we can learn from her how to apply lessons from the Civil Rights Movement to our present day movement for peace and justice.

Author of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
By Peggy Cowan

    Jo Ann Robinson was born in Georgia in 1912. A stellar student, she graduated as valedictorian of her high school class and from Fort Valley College with the first degree in her family. While teaching in Macon Public Schools, she earned an MA in English at Atlantic University and later spent a year in graduate study in English at Columbia University in New York. From there, she moved to Montgomery, Alabama to teach at Alabama State College and joined Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. 

    After being verbally abused by a white bus driver for sitting in the “whites only” section of a bus, Ms. Robinson, who had not been politically active before, joined the Women’s Political Council. The WPC had been organized to encourage women to be civically engaged, increase voter registration in the black community, and help women who had been raped or assaulted. Her treatment by the bus driver motivated her to work with city leaders to try to improve life for black citizens. While officials were open to some ideas, they rejected requests to improve the bus-riding experience for black people by expanding black seating areas, making more stops in black neighborhoods, and allowing blacks to enter and pay at the front of the buses. The lack of cooperation led her to begin planning a bus boycott. After three years of planning, the arrest of Rosa Parks provided the occasion for putting her plan into action. 

    When she learned about Parks’ arrest, Robinson contacted leaders of three WPC groups in Montgomery and the men who had supported then, all of whom agreed that it was time to put the boycott into place. The date was set for Monday, December 5, 1955. During the week before the boycott, Robinson prepared flyers to be distributed throughout her network, which included someone at each of the schools. After typing the information at home, she took the stencils to Alabama State after hours and spent the night making 35,000 copies with the help of John Cannon who had access to the business office. The next morning, Friday, she taught her class at 10:00 am and then took two College seniors in her car to help with distribution. They drove onto school campuses, where a student was prepared to receive them, and handed them the bundled flyers. Once this task was competed, Robinson went back to campus to teach her 2:00 pm class. That afternoon, she delivered flyers to the Ministerial Association, which was meeting at Dr. King’s church. The women had created the plan and organized the community before bringing the male religious leaders on board.

    The boycott was originally planned for a single day, December 5, 1955. When the black community gathered at the end of the day to debrief, the overwhelming success encouraged them to continue the boycott until changes were made by the bus company. As part of the preparation for the extended boycott, black citizens in Montgomery formed the Montgomery Improvement Association. Because she was afraid of losing her teaching job, Ms. Robinson declined to serve as an officer for the group. However, she accepted a position on the executive committee and, at Dr. King’s request, wrote the newsletter. In addition to her work as an organizer, she joined in the carpooling that provided rides to people who participated in the boycott. Martin Luther King, Jr., by this time pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was elected President of the MIA. Speaking about Ms. Robinson, King said "Apparently indefatigable, she, perhaps more than any other person, was active on every level of the protest" (King, Stride Toward Freedom, 1958 quoted in “Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/robinson-jo-ann-gibson).

    The boycott ended up lasting until December 20, 1956 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated seating on buses was unconstitutional. Although she tried to remain in the background, Ms. Robinson was recognized as a leader of the effort. She was arrested once, but never tried, and was harassed by the police through such actions as throwing stones through her window and pouring acid on her car. She was proud of the leadership provided by women. In her words: “Women's leadership was no less important to the development of the Montgomery Bus Boycott than was the male and minister-dominated leadership” (https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/jo-ann-robinson-heroine-montgomery-bus-boycott).

    After the boycott, Ms. Robinson continued teaching at Alabama State until 1960 when she resigned in support of student sit-ins and left to teach at Grambling. In 1976, she moved to Los Angeles where she taught in public schools, wrote her memoir The Montgomery Boycott and the Women Who Started It, and remained politically active until her death in 1992. 



Carver, Rita White. “Trouble’s Clarion Call for Leaders: Jo Ann Robinson and the Montgomery Bus 
Boycott.” https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=jvbl.

“Eyes on the Prize; American, They Loved you Madly; Interview with Jo Ann Robinson.”
https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_151-wh2d796b02

“Jo Ann Robinson.” http://www.alabamalegacy.org/jo-ann-robinson/

“Jo Ann Robinson.” https://www.biography.com/activists/jo-ann-robinson

“Jo Ann Gibson Robinson.” https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/robinson-jo-ann-gibson

“Jo Ann Robinson: A Hero of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” National Museum of African 
American History and Culture.
https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/jo-ann-robinson-heroine-montgomery-bus-boycott

“Jo Ann Robinson.” Alabama Legacy Moments. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5pH9tAKKHY&t=60s

Robinson, J. A. G. (1987). The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo 
Ann Gibson Robinson (David J. Garrow, Ed.). Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. 

By Ellen Elmes

By Don Elmes

At the corner of Bramble and Church Streets in Norfolk, Virginia, stands a historical marker commemorating Evelyn T. Butts and her contributions to the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Running north and south within the city lies Evelyn T. Butts Avenue. Within the Hampton Roads Transit Service sits a transfer center named in her memory. Evelyn T. Butts was a trailblazer whose dedication to equal rights for all people led to change within her community, within her city, and within the nation.

Born on May 22, 1924, she was raised by her father, a laborer, and her mother until the
age of ten. When her mother died, she went to live with an aunt who influenced her life-long interest in political action. She dropped out of school in the 10 th grade and married Charles Herbert Butts on September 7, 1941, when she was 17. Together they raised three daughters. Her husband, a WWII disabled veteran, worked at Norfolk’s Naval Air Station until his wartime disabilities left him unable to work. Needing more income than her husband’s pension, Evelyn Butts became the primary wage earner in the family by continuing as a seamstress and renting out rooms in their home.

While handling all the responsibilities required to manage a home and provide
necessities, Butts began political activism by becoming President of the Oakwood Civic League. In this position, she led a movement to build a nearby middle school for African American students so they would not have to be bused across town to attend a segregated school. Because of this action, Rosemont Middle School was established in the community. She continued her activism in the 60s by conducting voter registration campaigns with the NAACP and working with the Democratic Party. She established the Concerned Citizens for Political Education and helped elect the first Black Norfolk City Council member in the 20 th Century and Norfolk’s first African American to the House of Delegates. Also concentrating on local problems, she protested a local grocery store for not having African Americans in management positions, and she protested segregation in football stadiums.

Evelyn T Butts’ most important contribution to the civil rights movement began in November of 1963 when she filed the first lawsuit in federal court challenging the poll tax system in Virginia. Although the poll tax had been declared, Virginia and other states continued the practice. In November of 1963, Butts challenged that practice by filing a lawsuit, Butts v Harrison, Governor. In March of 1964, Annie Harper and three other residents of Fairfax County filed a similar lawsuit, Harper v Virginia Board of Elections. The judge of the US Court of Appeals for the 4 th Circuit referred both cases to a three-judge panel. Butts’ case was dismissed in May of 1964 because of “failure to prosecute the case with due diligence.” Butts immediately filed an appeal in U. S. District Court where her case was combined with Harper’s case. On October 21, 1964, the Court upheld the poll tax. After that decision, the case was appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court and was argued January 24 and 25 of 1966. On March 24, 1966, in a 6-3 vote, poll taxes were declared unconstitutional. Because of the early lawsuit submitted by Evelyn T. Butts, no voter in the United States can be denied the right to vote by being unable to pay a tax.

Evelyn T. Butts died on March 11, 1993, at the age of 68, but her legacy continues. In 2009, the library of Virginia honored her by naming her an African American Trailblazer. In 2019, a doctoral student wrote his dissertation entitled, The Evelyn T. Butts Story – Developing and Sustaining Political Citizenship for Poor and Marginalized People. Two years later, the student, Kenneth G. Alexander published his book, Persistence – Eveyln Butts and the African American Quest. She stands out as a leading female figure in the fight for civil rights within Virginia and the nation.

To Learn More

“City of Norfolk Dedicates Historical Marker…” The City of Norfolk Dedicates Historical
Marker…”
www.norfolk.gov/civicalerts. Accessed 30 November 2024.
“Evelyn Butts.” Education @ Library of Virginia. https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/changemakers.
Accessed 29 November 2024.
“Evelyn Butts.” Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org. Accessed
02 December 2024.
“Evelyn Butts – Civil Rights Warrior.” Virginia Museum of History and Culture.
Virginiahistory.org.
Accessed 02 December 2024.

By Buckey Boone

Diane Nash was one of the most important leaders of the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. While she is best known for leading the successful Nashville sit-ins, she was instrumental in many of the most important and successful actions in the South during that time.
 
“There is no greater invention of the 20th Century than nonviolence.” -Diane Nash
​ 
Diane Nash didn’t start out as an advocate for nonviolence. She simply hated segregation. Growing up in Chicago, she had never been exposed to the blatant signs of “Whites Only” racism. So when she moved to Nashville, TN in 1959 to attend Fisk University those racist signs felt like a slap in her face; not just an inconvenience, but as a powerful message dismissing her humanity. When she heard about James Lawson’s classes on nonviolence she went to fight segregation. Lawson had spent two years in India learning about Gandhi’s Satyagraha (“truth force”) and a year in federal prison for draft resistance had just arrived in Nashville to organize against segregation and he taught non-violence as the best way to change society. The students soon took the opportunity to use that tool.
 
When the students learned of the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, they decided to begin sit-in’s. The group, composed of soon-to-be national leaders such as John Lewis, James Bevel, and Bernard Lafayette, chose Diane as their leader. The students went day after day and sat at the lunch counters of city department stores waiting to be served. At least 150 people were arrested. When their head attorney’s home was bombed, Diane led a march of at least 3,000 to City Hall where they were met by the city’s mayor, Ben West. Diane, on the steps of the city hall asked him a simple question, "Do you think it's wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of his race or color?" He replied that he did. This led to negotiations with the city department stores and the lunch counters were desegregated within weeks.
​
Next the Nashville students took on the segregated bus system of the South. When CORE (Congress on Racial Equality) sent a busload of blacks and whites from DC to Alabama to challenge the system, the Nashville students decided to travel by bus from their city. The bus of CORE volunteers was bombed and passengers beaten on May 14, 1961 in Alabama. Fearing loss of life, CORE called off any more freedom rides. However, the Nashville group decided to go ahead. When Attorney General Attorney Robert Kennedy learned of this, he ordered his assistant, to call their leader, Diane Nash, and convince her to end the ride. John Seigenthaler had just managed to help the CORE Freedom Riders escape Birmingham by airplane when he called her. He told her that people would die. She replied that the riders had left her their wills in sealed envelopes and others would take her place. He gave up and the Nashville Freedom Riders continued. Many were beaten and imprisoned but none were killed and the federal government soon forced the integration of the buses.

In 1961, Diane Nash and her new husband, James Bevel, left college to work as field organizers for the King led organization, SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Council). They moved to Mississippi where she soon, again, got into “good trouble”. She was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for “contributing to the delinquency of minors” – she was organizing teenagers to protest the local segregated buses. Six months pregnant, she appeared in court and sat at the front of the courtroom for her trial. When ordered to go to the back of the room, she refused and the judge sentenced her to 10 days in jail for contempt of court. He had second thoughts about sending a nationally known pregnant woman to prison and, so, never carried out the two year term.

She and her husband went next to North Carolina to organize voter registration. But when four young girls were murdered in Birmingham’s church bombing, she and her husband decided that they needed to go to Alabama to register Blacks to vote. They appealed to Andrew Young, then head of SCLC, to transfer them to Alabama. He refused because it was too dangerous; they went anyway, initiating the Birmingham campaign.

King eventually joined the campaign in Birmingham and was arrested. Nash and Bevel realized that the best way to continue the protests in the street were to involve teenagers, who up until then had been asked not to protest. King and other leaders resisted endangering children but when TV cameras focused on youngsters being beaten and bitten by police dogs, it changed the national reaction to the protests.

Later, Nash and Bevel helped organize the famous Selma to Montgomery March where John Lewis and others were brutally beaten on the Edmond Pettis Bridge.

After Diane Nash and James Bevel were divorced, Diane, now a single mother with children to support, moved back to her home in Chicago. There she worked as a public school teacher and as a fair housing advocate. In 1966, she traveled with other women to North Vietnam and was an outspoken opponent of that war.
 
To learn more about Diane Nash:
Read “The Children” by John Halberstam     
          “Love is Loud” by Sandra Neil Wallace (a children’s book)
          “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Pivotal Moments in American History) by Raymond Aresenault 
View:
Diane Nash Interview, The Power of Non-violence

Walk the Walk, A Conversation with Civil Rights Leader, Diane Nash