Women who led the Mississippi movement

Who were the best-known women leaders?

Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine and Victoria Gray are the three women most often named together, because they stood as the Freedom Democrats' contestants in the 1965 challenge to Mississippi's congressmen. Devine led the Canton movement under CORE; Gray built the Hattiesburg movement and ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964. Unita Blackwell organized Issaquena County, went to Atlantic City as an MFDP delegate and in 1976 became Mississippi's first Black woman mayor. Read their profiles: Annie Devine, Victoria Gray Adams and Unita Blackwell.

Who shaped the movement from behind the scenes?

Ella Baker, who organized the 1960 conference that founded SNCC and gave the keynote at the MFDP's state convention in August 1964, influenced how the Mississippi movement worked more than almost anyone. She urged young organizers to build up local leadership instead of leading from the top. Teachers in the citizenship schools, such as Annell Ponder of SCLC, who was beaten in Winona with Hamer, carried that approach into Delta churches. See the citizenship schools.

Which young women took part?

Teenagers and college students were often on the front lines. June Johnson of Greenwood joined at fifteen and was beaten in Winona. Euvester Simpson shared Hamer's cell there. Dorie and Joyce Ladner, sisters from near Hattiesburg, worked with SNCC and introduced Lawrence Guyot to the organization. See June Johnson.

What about local women in Ruleville?

Movement work in towns like Ruleville depended on women who fed, housed and protected organizers. Mary Tucker, a leader of the Sunflower County movement and a founding trustee of William Chapel, took Hamer in after her eviction in 1962, and night riders shot into her house that September. Most such women are known only from local memory and oral histories, which is why archives like the Library of Congress Civil Rights History Project matter.