Women leaders were in many ways the unsung heroes in the Civil Rights Movement, but they were critical to its success.
Women you’ll meet in this episode include:
- Sarah and Angelina Grimke, abolitionists who became feminists when they faced barriers to speaking in public;
- Keller Bumgardner Barron, a leader in the League of Women Voters and the Equal Rights Amendment Coalition of S.C.;
- Eunice “Tootsie” Holland, a leader in the National Organization for Women and the ERA Coalition of S.C.;
- Jean Toal, S.C. state Representative and first woman Chief Justice of the S.C. Supreme Court;
- Constance Myers, Professor of History at the University of South Carolina;
- Victoria Eslinger, employment attorney, whose lawsuit against the S.C. Clerk of the Senate opened the Senate Page program to women;
- Marianna Davis, whose own activism was inspired by her mother, Secretary in the Orangeburg NAACP;
- Septima Poinsett Clark, who developed the Freedom School to help African Americans overcome Jim Crow laws preventing them from registering to vote;
- Victoria DeLee, who made a case for federal registrars to ensure that African Americans were registered to vote in Dorchester County;
- Alice Spearman Wright, Executive Director of the S.C. Council on Human Relations;
- Modjeska Simkins, leader in the Civil Rights Movement;
- Henrie Monteith Treadwell, niece of Modjeska Simkins who re-integrated the University of South Carolina in 1963; and
- Gloria Blackwell Rackley, leader in the Orangeburg Freedom Movement who worked to integrate the local hospital.