scholarly journals “Women of Conscience” or “Women of Conviction”? The National Women's Committee on Civil Rights

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
HELEN LAVILLE

This paper explores the history of the National Women's Committee on Civil Rights (NWCCR). Called into being at the behest of President Kennedy, the NWCCR was an attempt to enlist the support of the organized women of America in the advancement of civil rights. The NWCCR had two main goals: first, to offer support for the passage of Kennedy's civil rights legislation, and second, to encourage their branch membership to work in support of integration. However, whilst the majority of the NWCCR's affiliated organizations had passed resolutions in favour of integration both throughout the United States and within their own organization, in practice they were reluctant to threaten the internal stability of their associations by insisting on either integrated membership or active support of civil rights in the local community. This article will argue that whilst the NWCCR were successful in organizing lobbying for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they were unwilling to throw their weight behind efforts to encourage activism in local communities. Whilst key members of the NWCCR saw an important role for women in the implementation of civil rights at the community level, they were forced to conclude that the organizational structure and ethical inertia of the NWCCR did not make it a suitable medium for furthering racial justice.

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-446
Author(s):  
DAVID FARBER

John Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)Richard King, Race, Culture and the Intellectuals, 1940–1970 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2004)Since June 1964, all three branches of the federal government have supported the goal of racial justice in the United States. John Skrentny, in The Minority Rights Revolution, explains how that goal and related ones have been implemented over the last sixty years. He argues that key policy developments since that time were driven less by mass movements and much more by elite “meaning entrepreneurs.” Well before the 1964 Civil Rights Act was made law, in the immediate post-World War II years, a bevy of transatlantic intellectuals responded to Nazi race policy by seeking a universalist vision that would unite humanity. Richard King, in Race, Culture and the Intellectuals, explores how intellectuals pursued that anti-racist universalist vision and then how African and African-American intellectuals in the 1960s, in particular, rejected universalism and began, instead, to pursue racial justice through cultural particularism. King's traditional intellectual history, when combined with Skrentny's sociological analysis of how elites managed ideas to pursue specific policies, reveals how American society, in pursuit of racial justice, moved from the simple stated ideals of the 1964 Civil Rights Act—equal opportunity and access—to the complexities of affirmative action and an embrace of “diversity” in American life.


Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck

The introduction includes Bible verses cited by ministers to defend segregation and verses to oppose segregation. There are slices of the history of the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and African American history. The southern states, where white ministers confronted segregation, are identified. The term “minister” is explained as well as the variety of labels given these ministers ranging from “Liberal,” Progressive,” “Neo-Orthodox,” “Evangelical Liberal,” “open conservative,” ‘Last Hurrah of the Social Gospel Movement” to “Trouble Maker,” “Traitor, “ “Atheist,” “Communist,” “N_____ Lover.” Rachel Henderlite, the only woman minister mentioned in the book, is identified. Synopses of the book’s seven chapters are included. Comments by historians David Chappell, Charles Reagan Wilson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ernest Campbell, and Thomas Pettigrew are cited.


Author(s):  
Adriane Lentz-Smith

This chapter explores grand strategy as an intellectual and cultural project by considering its willful unseeing of race as a political project. To ignore race is to misapprehend how power works in the United States and how domestic formulations of subjectivity, difference, and racialized power imbue American foreign relations. The chapter focuses on African Americans in the era of Cold War civil rights. For Carl Rowan and Sam Greenlee, the two African American veterans who provide concrete cases for thinking about the United States and the world, their blackness and ambitions for their people would color how they interpreted America's role in political and military struggles in the Third World and beyond. As with other people of color, their encounters with white supremacy shaped their understandings of liberation, violence, and the United States security project. Their perspectives challenge scholars’ conceptions of the Cold War as a period of “defined clear national interests” and “public consensus.” Centering the stories of Rowan and Greenlee highlights not simply ongoing contestation over the myth and history of the Cold War, but, more fundamentally, the unthinking whiteness of grand strategy itself.


Author(s):  
Sarah Azaransky

The introduction describes a group of black Christian intellectuals and activists who looked abroad, even in other religious traditions, for ideas and practices that could fuel a racial justice movement in the United States. They envisioned an American racial justice movement akin to independence movements that were gaining ground around the world. The American civil rights movement would be, as Martin Luther King Jr., later described it, “part of this worldwide struggle.”


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 590-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mindy E. Bergman ◽  
Jessica M. Walker ◽  
Vanessa A. Jean

Ruggs et al. (2016) describe paths through which industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology can make a dent in the ongoing policing problems in the United States. These paths include traditional I-O areas such as improved selection models, increased training, and changed organizational climates. However, there might be one fairly straightforward way in which police organizations can quickly reduce use-of-force problems: women. Because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prevents selection based on sex, police departments obviously cannot hire women just because they are women. But police departments can and, we argue, should recruit more women to apply for police officer positions, create work practices and experiences that are attractive to and supportive of women (Hassell & Brandl, 2009), and make efforts to retain female officers because of the evidence that female officers use less force when policing (Bolger, 2015). Additionally, police organizations and I-O psychologists should also work together to discover why women are less likely to use force and, subsequently, determine whether these characteristics can be selected or trained for in either sex.


1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 504-526 ◽  

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and universities. It states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance...." Conflict over the formulation and interpretation of the regulation erupted immediately after the passage of Title IX, and its statutory limits continue to be tested, increasingly in the courts, across the country. This interview explores the effects of Title IX and the controversy surrounding its implementation. Five women, each uniquely involved with the short but volatile history of Title IX, discuss its implications and potential for ensuring a more equitable educational system. The interview participants include The Honorable Shirley Chisholm, Democratic Congresswoman from New York; Mary Jolly, Staff Director and Counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution chaired by Senator Birch Bayh; Leslie Wolfe, Director of the Women's Educational Equity Act Program, and formerly Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Education, who earlier had been Deputy Director of the Women's Rights Program of the Commission on Civil Rights; Cindy Brown, Principal Deputy Director of the Office for Civil Rights in HEW; and Holly Knox, Director of PEER, the Project on Equal Education Rights of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, and former Legislative Specialist in the United States Office of Education.


Author(s):  
E. James West

This chapter situates the early development of Ebony within a longer history of black press engagement with black history and the evolution of the black history movement in the United States. It demonstrates that black history education was an important, if often overlooked feature of Ebony from its creation in 1945 and demonstrates how coalescing civil rights activism pushed the magazine towards a more substantive engagement with both black history and black activism.


Author(s):  
Harold D. Morales

Chapter 1 introduces the history of Islamic Spain and the remembrance of it by the first Latino Muslim group in the United States, la Alianza Islámica, the Islamic Alliance. Although there have been several recorded instances of individual Latinos embracing Islam since the 1920s, no direct historical link exists between Muslims in Spain and Latino Muslims in the United States. Instead, the memory of Islamic Spain has been used to frame Latinos as historically connected to Islam rather than completely foreign to it. Additionally, the Alianza drew from other civil rights organizational models to develop several centers in New York where they worked to propagate Islam, provide social services, and engage in political activism. Additionally, the Alianza experienced marginalization from broader Muslim organizations and sought to develop autonomously from them. Through its unique origin histories and various activities, the Alianza helped to crystalize a first wave of Latino Muslims.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document