More Heroines

“I didn’t know a lot about racism. I didn’t know White folks hated Black folks so bad. You know, we washed their children’s behinds, we cleaned their clothes, we cleaned their houses, we did everything for them… But once the movement came in, and I got a chance to get a touch of it for myself, it was quite clear, that we were in a real, real, real bad struggle.”June Johnson was only 14 years old when she joined SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and got involved with the Civil Rights movement. Even a girl of this young age was not immune from the brutality suffered by Civil Rights workers. When she and Fannie Lou Hamer among others were returning from a training session in North Carolina, they were arrested when they tried to integrate a lunch counter. She was jailed and brutally beaten. June remains an outspoken proponent of Civil Rights and works as a program monitor for the District of Columbia in the department of Early Childhood Development.

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

“Now if whites were going to riot when black students were going to white schools, what were they going to do if a white student went to a black school?”Joan Trumpauer Mulholland was raised in Virginia, but played an important part in the Mississippi Civil Rights movement when she applied to the black Tougaloo College. She felt integration should not be left solely to the black students. On arrival in Mississippi, she was arrested for her Civil Rights activities, and spent the summer at Hines County jail. She was an active SNCC member and participated in the first sit-in at the Jackson Woolworth’s. What started out as a peaceful demonstration, erupted into mob violence. When someone grabbed Joan by her hair and dragged her through the hostile crowd toward the exit, she managed to break free and rejoin the sit-in. This incident was a catalyst for the student Civil Rights movement in Jackson. She now teaches Civil Rights History to her elementary school students in Arlington, Virginia.

Constance Iona Slaughter-Harvey

“I had to step on my toes in order to be seen for our class picture. The guys did not want me in their picture because that was breaking a barrier.”Constance Iona Slaughter-Harvey became the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Mississippi’s Law School and to integrate the Mississippi Bar Association. She faced prejudice and discrimination from the all-white, all-male law students. She went on to become Assistant Secretary of State in Mississippi and also was appointed to the Presidential Scholars Commission by President Carter. A successful attorney she now runs her own law firm specializing in civil rights cases. Her daughter, Constance Olivia Slaughter-Harvey, wants to carry on the torch. She says, “I’m going to be a judge and that’s because I want to make sure that what my mother has fought for…will not be in vain.”

L.C. Dorsey-Young, D.S.W.

“The four girls that I brought into this world and two sons can stand on my shoulders and the shoulders of my contemporaries to reach higher than their grandmothers ever dreamed…”L.C. Dorsey started life as a sharecropper where at a young age experienced and understood the unfairness of the system. During the Civil Rights movement she was an activist with Head Start and she devoted her life to building economic independence in oppressed black communities of the Mississippi Delta. Her years of work with the prison system in the state led her to write many articles and the book COLD STEEL, an exposé about life in Parchman, Mississippi’s state penitentiary. She received her Master’s degree in Social Work from Stony Brook University in New York and is a Professor at Mississippi Valley State University.

Winson Hudson “Fighting is an everyday thing…don’t never rest” (from her autobiography Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter)Winson Hudson first tried to register to vote in 1937, and was one of the first to succeed twenty five years later. At one attempt, she pushed through a crowd of men cursing and blocking the registrar’s door. While she filled out the application, a man gave her a card with two big red eyes on it saying, “The eyes of the Klan are upon you. You have been identified by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” They later firebombed her home for her protest activities. Despite the setbacks, she continued her activism throughout her life. She and her sister Dovie joined forces with Medgar Evers and established a county branch of the NAACP and later pushed for the first desegregation lawsuit. She was honored with the NAACP’s Freedom Award for Outstanding Community Service and the Second Congressional District Unsung Hero Award. Winifred Green “Once my mother said to me, ‘What did we do wrong?’ I remember saying to her, ‘Granny taught me, ‘Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight,’ and I didn’t know that she didn’t really mean black people.’”Winifred Green grew up in a middle class family in Jackson, Mississippi, where she worshipped at an all white church. But when she was fourteen, she attended a mixed-race national convention of the Episcopal Church and realized that segregation was wrong. She became politically active at Milsaps College in 1962 where she organized Mississippians for Public Education. This group of women effectively protested the Legislature’s attempts to close the public schools to avoid integration. She traveled throughout the South recruiting Civil Rights activists and worked with Mae Bertha Carter’s family whose desegregation story is also featured in the documentary. She’s won numerous awards for her efforts and still strives “to see that children get an education that equips them to be productive citizens in the 21st century.” Betty Pearson “I certainly didn’t plan to right any wrongs, but there comes a point of no return where you have to do what is right or feel bad about yourself the rest of your life.”Betty Pearson never planned on being an activist but found herself compelled to act in the face of injustice. At Ole Miss in the mid-1940s, Pearson encouraged the black women who ran the college laundry to demand better pay and working conditions or go on strike. They asked her to represent them in negotiations with the University administration. She did it reluctantly but the strike was a success. In 1955, she was an eyewitness at the Emmett Till trial where 2 men were accused of murdering a 14 year old black boy for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Despite the mounting evidence, she knew the accused white men would never be convicted. This case became the springboard of the Mississippi Civil Rights movement. Pearson later served on the advisory committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. She joined the NAACP and worked toward school desegregation.