Capturing democracy: Black women activists and the struggle for equal rights, 1920s–1970s

Courtney L Thompson, Purdue University

Abstract

The concept of democracy has served routinely as the topic of intense public and private debate, the catalyst for organized and spontaneous resistance, and the basis of sustained national and international conflict. Seldom have materializations of democracy evaded some degree of scrutiny. For Black women activists, the fight for democracy proved to be a constant struggle. In their quest for equal rights, Black women activists demonstrated a critical awareness of the chasm between democracy as pledged and democracy as practiced; as a consequence, the legacy of many Black women activists is typified by their tireless efforts to actualize democratic ideals. Within the scope of this dissertation, I investigate Black women's social activism in the United States, and I argue that from the standpoint of Black women activists working to affect change in their lives, communities, and throughout the nation, democracy remained an unfinished system or, as Rosa Parks aptly stated, "work to be done." Using Black women's ongoing struggles against race, gender, and class inequalities as a lens, this project traces and interrogates the democratic process as it continues to unfold. As an interpretive lens, Black women's delineations of their activist lives in their autobiographies and oral histories offer a glimpse of U.S. democracy from a point of view traditionally relegated to the periphery. As a consequence, in the past Black women's voices and by extension their stories have routinely gone unheeded. Yet, in Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form Priscilla Wald maintains, "Untold stories press for a hearing" and, true to form, in the context of this study, the stories that Black women activists tell, which I construe as signifying a collective challenge to the "official story" regarding democracy, can be heard. More simply, this study grants Black women the authority to speak their truths by centering and thereby legitimizing their life stories, and it uses these stories as a basis for thinking about democracy as a gradual process.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Patton, Purdue University.

Subject Area

African American Studies|Black history|Womens studies|American literature

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