Daily Life of Women during the Civil Rights Era

262 Pages·2011·3.171 MB·English

by  Danelle Moon

DAILY LIFE OF
WOMEN
DURING
THE CIVIL
RIGHTS ERA
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DAILY LIFE OF
WOMEN
DURING
THE CIVIL
RIGHTS ERA
danelle moon
The Greenwood Press Daily Life Through History Series
Copyright 2011 by Danelle Moon
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moon, Danelle.
Daily life of women during the civil rights era / Danelle Moon.
p. cm. — (The Greenwood Press daily life through history series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-313-38098-3 (hardcopy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-38099-0
(ebook) 1. Women—United States—Social conditions—20th century.
2. Women—United States—Social life and customs—20th century.
3. Women—Suffrage—United States—History—20th century. 4. Feminism—
United States. I. Title.
HQ1420.M66 2011
305.40973'0904—dc23 2011018373
ISBN: 978-0-313-38098-3
EISBN: 978-0-313-38099-0
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
Chronology of Events xiii
1. Women and Early Social Movements 1
2. Women and Reform in the Progressive Era, 1880s to 1930 21
3. From World War I to a New Deal 51
4. World War II to the Cold War 91
5. Civil Rights 127
6. Modern Feminism 155
7. Antiwar Movement, Race, Ethnicity, Religion,
and Sexuality 193
Bibliography 225
Index 235

PREFACE
This book is part of the Daily Life Through History Series, which is
focused on the ordinary experiences of American life.
In 1951, Florence Kitchelt, refl ecting on her lifework to promote
women’s equality, wrote that all politics begins and ends at the local
level and is dependent on local activists to push forward state and
national legislation. Kitchelt’s commitment to end gender discrim-
ination and promote basic human rights for all people serves as a
reminder of the importance of grassroots activism and the role of
ordinary women in pushing for change in their local communi-
ties. Kitchelt committed her adult life to women’s rights and the
peace movement from the early 1900s until her death in 1961. Like
many women of her generation, she became active in the early
settlement house movement and the suffrage movement. After the
Nineteenth Amendment was passed, granting women national
voting rights, she focused her energies on securing world peace
through the League of Nations Association, and following World
War II she shifted her focus from the peace movement to promote
the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the U.S. endorsement of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the Gen-
eral Assembly of the United Nations in 1948. Kitchelt came to the
belief that the promotion of the ERA was a logical extension of the
UN declaration, though she had not always been a supporter of
viii Preface
the amendment. The ERA was fi rst introduced to Congress in 1923
by Alice Paul, leader of the National Women’s Party—the radical
arm of the woman suffrage and postsuffrage movements.
Alice Paul is better known as a national and international leader
of the suffrage and postsuffrage movements, while Kitchelt spent
the majority of her life working at the grassroots level. Like Paul,
she spent her adult life fi ghting for gender equality, but unlike Paul,
she had a much more diverse social justice agenda that included
fi ghting for world peace, human rights, racial equality, and gen-
der justice. Social movements are dependent on strong, charismatic
leaders and rank-and-fi le activists to succeed, as well as diverse co-
alitions that bring together a variety of individuals with new ideas
and strategies that can effectively produce positive change. This
volume looks at the variety of women’s experiences over the course
of the 20th century in promoting social justice and human rights.
Many of the characters of this book are unknown to general read-
ers, though familiar to scholars who have carefully documented the
experiences of the leaders and the rank-and-fi le members of vari-
ous women’s organizations and civil-rights-based organizations.
A primary goal of this project is to bring to life to a more general
audience the diversity of experiences of ordinary women working
for civil rights and social justice causes in the United States from
1920 to the 1980s. The scope is intentionally broad so as to expand
the historical record and to encourage readers to engage in the di-
versity of the American experience, and perhaps for the fi rst time,
have a better understanding of the role that women have played
in challenging the status quo. Moreover, younger readers will dis-
cover how the past struggles for gender and racial equality infl u-
ence the rights we enjoy today, and often take for granted.
These broad categories include a diversity of subjects that in-
clude the ERA, world peace, racial and ethnic equality, human
rights, education, religion, family life, transitions from rural and
urban, employment, sexual preference, health care and reproduc-
tive rights, and domestic violence and rape. All of these issues re-
fl ect the specifi c challenges that women have and continue to face
in American society. By focusing on individual experiences, we can
gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of gender, class, and
race in America. Moreover, this topical narrative approach makes
clear that civil rights and social justice are tied together conceptu-
ally and that women have played a signifi cant role in advancing
democracy.
Preface ix
As a result of the scope of this book, it should be made clear that
the research conducted for this volume is based on the diverse schol-
arship of the social history movement, and specifi cally the research
endeavors into the subfi eld of U.S. women’s history over the course
of the last 30 years. As a women’s historian, this project has led to
new personal discoveries of historical scholarship that introduce
new characters and new histories that have previously been hidden
from view. As exciting as these discoveries are for scholars, I am
more excited about the learning opportunities this volume and oth-
ers of its kind can bring to the classroom and in advancing lifelong
learning of the lessons of history and bring to light the valuable
contributions women have made to American society across time.
This volume is broken into seven chapters, organized chrono-
logically and by broad themes. Each chapter will integrate specifi c
subthemes that touch upon the domestic, economic, intellectual,
material, political, recreational, and religious life of women in the
social movements of that era. Chapters 1–3 will focus on the emer-
gence of early social movements that spanned the early beginnings
of the Progressive Era through World War II, and chapters 4–7 will
continue to build upon the African American civil rights struggle
that slowly emerged following the Civil War and Reconstruction
through the radicalization of the modern civil rights movement
of the 1960s and 1970s. As this volume moves forward, the double
bind of race and gender will rise to the surface in concert with the
second wave of feminism, identity politics, and the anti–Vietnam
War movement. Other emergent themes include labor rights, re-
productive rights, child rearing, family life, courtship and mar-
riage, sexuality, transformations from rural to urban lifestyles,
social and class distinctions, leisure activities, and burgeoning roles
in the economy, communication, education, health and medicine,
literature, science, and art. In this way, readers will have a better
appreciation of the diverse roles that ordinary and not so ordinary
women played in improving society and American democracy.
Before investigating the complexities of women’s social move-
ments in the 20th century, it is fi rst essential to defi ne the terminology.
When referring to civil rights, I use this term to convey the idea of
the struggle for basic social and legal rights that is typically assigned
to the African American struggle for racial justice, but I use it more
broadly to convey basic civil rights that grant full equality to women,
regardless of race, class, religion, and sexual orientation. I also de-
scribe at length the meaning of feminist waves and social movements