Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement

This paper presents a reflection on the book Freedom’s Daughters by Lynne Olson, which revolves around the central theme of freedom, women empowerment, the rights of black women and their role in the civil rights movement. The book uncovers the stories of the “unsung heroines” and provides enough considerations to all the tensions of gender and race which both the white and the black women faced in their struggle for equality.

Running head: FREEDOM’S DAUGHTERS
Freedom’s Daughters
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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If Americans are asked to name the most significant female leader of civil rights
movement then most of them are likely to take the name of Rosa Parks first, whose objection
and refusal to leave her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus in the year 1955 (Thornton
2014). Beside from her, they are also likely to relate the civil rights movement with the male
leaders of its like Jr. Martin Luther King. However, in this paper I am going to present my
reflection on a book called “Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights
Movement from 1830 to 1870” by Lynne Olson that I read most recently and which is
revolving around the central theme of freedom, women empowerment, the rights of black
women and their role.
Lynne Olson, in the introduction of her book- “Freedom’s Daughters”, have noted
that the women at those times were completely not allowed to take part in the prominent
events of the ones of the pinnacle events of the movement of March of Washington that was
held in the year 1963 (Cooperman et al. 2016). There was no women who addressed the
crowd and also none was there to meet with the President Kennedy. I was completely
surprised to know that. How could an event be organised and successfully completed without
any presence of women? The introduction itself was enough to depict the real image of the
condition of the women during those times. I also found that despite of their exclusion from
most of the public events related to civil rights movement, both the white and black have
served without any sort of recognition as a backbone of the struggles for the racial equality
prevailing in United States. In this book, Lynne has uncovered the stories of these “unsung
heroines” and has also provided enough number of considerations to all the tensions of
gender and race which both the white and the black women in their struggle for equality
(Hawkman, Andrea and Antonio 2017). I have also found a division made by her at the same
time. I must say, the book has indeed presented a vivid examples of the white and black
female activists perfectly as they all depict the delicate balance in between the fighting for the

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gender and racial equality, which the black women maintained all through the civil rights
movement.
It is also to state that Lynne has made three key assertions in the prologue of the book
and that has guided her discussion all through the rest of her book. Firstly, she has argued that
the involvement of the women in the struggle for racial equality has begun way before the
Civil War, which is quite true as I have heard about the same in many other journal and
novels like Reconstructing Sexual Equality by Christine Littleton and Beyond the pale: White
women, racism, and history by Vron Ware (Littleton 2018; Ware 2015). However, after
reading this book, I have learnt that the efforts of the free black women and the slaves have
contributed to the activism of the women in civil rights movement. Lynne has also asserted
that at each and every turn, the women who did fight for the civil rights have well-balanced
their roles as the activities as mothers ad wives and with the same, they have also developed a
complex relationships with all the men who were engaged in the very movement. I have also
learnt about the fact that the black woman were perceived as a figure of Jezebel (Katz et al.
2018). Jezebel refers to an over sexualised image of the black womanhood that were
reinforced by the rejections and objectifications of the early owners of slaves who had raped
them. Lastly, Lynne has argued about the fact that the different complexities of race and
gender have created tensions among the white and black women who used to work for the
civil rights and that, at times, have impeded the progress of the movement as because the
black and the white women were forced to choose one among siding with the back men for
the issue of racial equality and the white women for gender equality.
Moreover, the stories of the “unsung heroines” who took part in the civil movements
that Lynne makes use of support her main arguments are one of the strongest aspects of her
work. She has weaved all her main arguments through each and every women that she has
introduced in the book. Like, for example, she has used the stories of Ida Mae “Cat” Holland

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and Laura McGhee, the two very poor women belonging from Mississippi, Greenwood, in
order to illustrate the efforts and hardships which the female activists have faced in the matter
of balancing their roles and activism as mothers and the subordinates to the men
(Berkenkotter 2014).
However, I also want to state that there are some weaknesses that I find in this book
and the greatest of all does not lie on the fact that the argument of Lynne and the support of
her thesis but rather in the process of documentation of all her sources. She has used a wide
variety of both primary and the secondary sources in order to defend her arguments and she
depends greatly on the interviews as well as the first-hand accounts of the women’s activism
in the already published works. Lynne has also drawn from many other prominent historians
of civil rights like Howell Raines and Bayard Rustin (Glaser 2018). Although it is clear that
she has conducted through the researches in the engagement of the women in civil rights
movement, but has failed to document the different sources of her in a way which is easily
accessible to the readers and the historians. She has cited her works in Endnotes section at the
concluding part of the book and instead of using the subscripts in her texts, she has quoted a
part of one sentence in the section of endnotes and then has detailed the sources right from
where the information or the quote came. Such a format has made it very difficult for me and
I think for the other readers too to match the evidences and the sources together in a proper
manner. However, notwithstanding the fact. I would also like to mention that this book has
the potential to serve as a one of the valuable resources for the educators and the historians as
because of the fact that it has presented a detailed discussions of the women who have
worked behind the scenes in order to achieve the equality of both the women and the African
women. With the same, I must appreciate the writing style and the ability of storytelling of
Olson that have made this book accessible to the common public in a manner that many of
the historical works are not. The most powerful of all is the thorough discussions made by

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Olson about the forces of the gender and race that are often divided the involved women in
the civil rights movement and have impeded the progress of the equal rights.
Hence, I can say that the main arguments that have set up the rest of the book as a
story is not only on the theme of racial tension, which has defined the civil rights movement
but also of the class and gender tensions which are frequently ignored while evaluating the
failures and the successes of the struggles for racial equality. Lynne has placed her works
properly within the context of 1960s and 1950s at the time when the issues of race could be
rarely separated from the issues of gender and class. However, the net result of this book is a
true appreciation for how far the equal rights have progressed in that century after Civil War.
The main thing that I have realised after giving the book a read is that I am a free in true
terms only when all the human beings, both men and women are equally free.

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References:
Berkenkotter, Carol. "Rhetorical Archaeology." Rhetoric in American Anthropology:
Gender, Genre, and Science (2014): 175.
Cooperman, Rosalyn, Melina Patterson, and Jess Rigelhaupt. "Teaching Race and
Revolution: Doing Justice to Women’s Roles in the Struggle for Civil Rights." PS: Political
Science & Politics 49, no. 3 (2016): 558-561.
Hawkman, Andrea M., and Antonio J. Castro. "The Long Civil Rights Movement: Expanding
Black History in the Social Studies Classroom." Social Education 81, no. 1 (2017): 28-32.
Glaser, Jennifer. "Art Spiegelman and the Caricature Archive." Redrawing the Historical
Past: History, Memory, and Multiethnic Graphic Novels (2018): 294.
Katz, Jennifer, Christine Merrilees, Jillian LaRose, and Claire Edgington. "White Female
Bystanders’ Responses to a Black Woman at Risk for Sexual Assault: Associations With
Attitudes About Sexism and Racial Injustice." Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment &
Trauma 27, no. 4 (2018): 444-459.
Littleton, Christine A. "Reconstructing Sexual Equality [1987]." In Feminist legal theory, pp.
35-56.
Thornton III, J. Mills. "Challenge and Response in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–
1956." Alabama Review 67, no. 1 (2014): 40-112.
Ware, Vron. Beyond the pale: White women, racism, and history. Verso Books, 2015.