www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, March 2004Woman as ReasonWomen in the Civil Rights Movementby Olga Domanski The convergence of two events--the publication of two Marxist-Humanist studies of the revolutionary Black dimension, AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL and DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES, and the beginning of Women's History Month--at the moment I was reading a short article about Mary Hamilton, who had been a Freedom Rider in the 1960s, became a powerful reminder for me of the crucial role women had played in the Civil Rights Movement that changed the face of the U.S. It inspired me to take a new look at the pamphlet News and Letters Committees (N&LC) had published in 1961, FREEDOM RIDERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES, coauthored by two Marxist-Humanist women, one Black, Mary Hamilton, and one white, Louise Inghram, together with other fellow-Freedom Riders with whom they had shared the prison sentences meted out for daring to challenge the segregation laws of the deep South. The 1960s initiated a new epoch of youth revolt, white and Black, throughout the land as new forms of struggle from sit-ins and teach-ins to Freedom Rides, Freedom Marches and Freedom Schools were created to challenge racism in the U.S. There was no question that Black was the color that made the 1960s so exciting and fired the imagination of the whole nation and, indeed, the whole world. What was not as quickly recognized was the crucial form of Women's Liberation that arose in this battle against the South's century-old segregation laws. WOMAN POWER UNLIMITED One of the most powerful sections of FREEDOM RIDERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES is the discovery recorded there of an organization that called itself Woman Power Unlimited. It was formed by Black women in Jackson, Miss., to make life a little easier for the Freedom Riders in Hinds County Jail, and when they were released to give them food and clean clothes and a place to wash. It destroyed the lies spread in the press that the Southern Black population was "hostile" to the Freedom Riders. What stands out in the way this pamphlet was written are not only the horrors of the conditions the Riders suffered, but the new relations they were forging within the Black South. Unseparated from that, it focuses not only on the concrete battles all these courageous fighters were engaged in, but also on the theories of liberation they were searching for. It is what you see in the section that reports the enthusiasm with which the riders greeted the issue of N&L devoted to their struggle, not because the stories were about them, but because the editorial in that issue on "The State of Civil Rights, USA 1961" had connected their struggles to the history of Abolitionism and made it clear that Marx's Marxism is the absolute opposite of the Communism the riders were accused of espousing. SUPREME COURT VICTORY After that Freedom Ride had ended, Mary became a field secretary for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), organizing everywhere throughout the South. She later became CORE's first woman southern regional director. She wound up serving a month in jail in Gadsden, Ala., charged with contempt of court for refusing to answer when she was called by her first name and insisting on the courtesy of being addressed as "Miss Hamilton"--the honorific by which white defendants were addressed. The case won national attention when the Supreme Court, ruled for her in the 1964 landmark case (Ex parte Mary Hamilton. Ala.Sup.Ct.,7 Div. 621). In 1963, two years after FREEDOM RIDERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES and as the Civil Rights Movement continued to escalate to an ever higher stage, N&LC published a Marxist-Humanist statement to mark the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. It showed, first, that throughout its history, the Black masses in motion had put American civilization on trial--the title it was given--and second, past history is inseparable from history in the making. When I saw Mary Hamilton again, many years later at a CORE convention in Chicago in 1999, she was excited to learn that N&LC was working on a new kind of Marxist-Humanist statement on the Black dimension that would speak to AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL, not simply by updating its conclusions, but by re-creating its dialectical methodology in light of the struggles, contradictions and questions facing us today. She was looking forward to participating in the discussion around it, but never lived to see DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES come off the press. She succumbed over a year ago to the cancer she had been battling for seven years. Yet she lives on vibrantly in the battles she fought and recorded as a Freedom Rider and in the history she helped to shape that remains for all of us as the true history of American civilization on trial. |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
