Saluting the Women of the Civil Rights Movement - then and now

Women of the civil rights movement

The history of the fight for racial equality has often centered on men like King, Kennedy, Johnson and Evers. But far less attention has been paid to the women who made the civil rights movement possible.

They are women like Ella Baker, a former NAACP national director who worked to integrate schools in New York and improve the quality of education for Black children. Inspired by the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Baker co-founded the organization In Friendship to raise money for the civil rights movement in the South.

In conjunction with a group of Southern Black ministers, Baker helped form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), with King as its first president and Baker as its director. She left the SCLC in 1960 to help organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which became one of the foremost advocates for human rights in the country. She also did much of the behind-the-scenes work for the protests that led to the Civil Rights Act’s passage.

Read more about Women in the Movement HERE.