The situation for African American women in terms of wage differential was worse, but it was more expected that they would work, even if in low-paid work and domestic service.
- Economic discrimination was even more linked in the South with political discrimination, as states did their utmost to prevent African
- Americans qualifying to vote and made them the subject of discriminatory laws going back to the 1890s.
- However, there was significant African American female participation in civil rights movements.
- The most famous are Rosa Parks, who initiated the protest in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 and Elizabeth Eckford at Little Rock
- in 1957.
- African American women took a leading part in the grass-roots organisations that worked for civil rights, especially Ella Baker.
Behind these were many determined and courageous campaigners.
- Other African American women had been arrested in Montgomery for riding in white seats in buses even before the NAACP chose to publicise the Rosa Parks case (one, Claudette Colvin, was a teenager who was pregnant by a married man at the time, whereas Rosa Parks was a ‘respectable’ older woman who was already active in the NAACP).
The Rosa Parks Police Photograph
- Lightskinned, respectable, old woman.
Public opinion, AA’s would be outraged.
- In the north, sympathetic to her, very meek, not a troublemaker- swayed possibly to the civil rights movement.
- As a woman, less threatening, mild-mannered, she isn’t threatening white people but rather asking for equality. More likely to garner public sympathy. A conservative figure in the civil rights movement.
