All right. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Were at the point in the semester we have been looking at the long history of africanamericans since the civil war. Weve looked at the long struggle for what historian Hasan Jeffries called freedom rights, right . Weve been looking at this quest for economic, social, and political selfdetermination, for educational access and equity. And were looking at this long quest for the full realization of freedom and citizenship. And so were getting to the point in the semester where were talking about the Civil Rights Movement. Weve been looking at that for a couple of sessions now. And the interesting thing about teaching the Civil Rights Movement is that its perhaps the era that most americans think they know the most about, right . Weve talked a little bit about this, and well talk more about this. Just because folks think that they can quote a few sentences from Martin Luther kings speech in washington or know a little bit about rosa parks civil disobedience on the bus and have some sense and even have some visual images in our mind, right, of people being brutalized by fire hoses and dogs, theres a real kind of visual narrative that comes to all this. We often think that we know a lot about this movement. So one of the challenges for those of us that are learning the movement and connecting it to this much longer history of black activism is that theres almost a point at which we have to unlearn some stuff before we have to learn some stuff, right. And thats what our reading for today, Charles Paynes a view from the trenches is helping us do. If you have that on your computer or on your handout, i think itll be a good idea for us to look at it. One of the main things that were going to do, our main point today is to look at what Charles Payne calls the master narrative of the movement. And what were going to do is begin to establish and look at what some of the major tropes and issues are in terms of what this master narrative is. Think a little bit about why this master narrative has endured and what kind of purpose it serves for us even five, six decades since the height of the Civil Rights Movement. But more importantly, were going to kind of reassemble the narrative or recensor the narrative, moving away from this master narrative to a narrative thats much more inclusive, a narrative that is going to center, in our case today, black women in the Civil Rights Movement. So before we do that, lets talk about what payne calls the master narrative of the movement. So what is the master narrative of the movement . What are some of the components that Charles Payne is getting us to think about, about what the master narrative when we think of the Civil Rights Movement . What are some of those components . Yeah. Hes really focusing on well, kind of like the mainstream idea is the national movement. The march in washington, Martin Luther king, the more popular ideas. Payne is kind of asking us to and like look at the local struggle, specifically like more local communities, what they did for the movement. Right. So one major component of this master narrative is a focus on the civil rights narrative from a National Perspective and not a local one. Good. Any other components . Yeah . Its also a very noncomplicated narrative. Theres a sympathetic federal government and everyone kind of comes to the conclusion that racism is wrong at the same time. Uhhuh, right. So theres a sympathetic government. And almost a very it minimizes the intensity of struggle, and it minimizes the intensity of opposition to the movement, right . Theres a way that through this master narrative of the movement, which has really been passed down in terms of how the movement was remembered, theres a way of kind of erasing the real opposition to it, right. There are these images of, yeah, there were a few bad folks in a particular place and a few bad Police Chiefs and things like that. But not really understanding that while not everyone was out there with fire hoses and police dogs, there still was a great deal of opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. What are some other components of the master narrative . Yeah . He explains how they say that it was reduced more to a protest as opposed to activism. Anybody want to help me with that . What does that mean . Protest versus activism. Those two things sound very similar to me. What is the difference between sort of simplifying the master narrative to be about protest but not activism. Yeah . I think when the Civil Rights Movement is overly simplified, sometimes in Elementary School classrooms and stuff like that, its kind of viewed as a bunch of people coming together at the right place at the right time kind of, as opposed to a long struggle that ended up with like people getting more rights or desegregation. Yeah, this idea of protest or mass protest, i like the way you put t a bunch of people who happened to show up in the right place at the right time, as opposed to very Strategic Planning that went into even the big events but also just the small, local, Grassroots Level work. There was a great deal of strategizing, of organizing, and it was not as simple as it seemed, where it just sort of happened. Right. Any other components to the way that we understand the civil rights through the master narrative . Yeah . He talks about how they concentrate on the mid1950s and 1960s, not what happened earlier. He kind of underplays it and says what happened earlier is just as important as what happened during that time period. Uhhuh, absolutely. A major component of the master narrative of what we think of as a Civil Rights Movement really has these very neat bookends. It essentially starts with the brown versus board of education case or maybe rosa parks act of civil disobedience in montgomery, and it ends either at the Voting Rights act in 1965 or certainly with the death of Martin Luther king in 1968. And while that is a moment of intensification in the social movement that is what we think of as the Civil Rights Movement, it completely ignores what weve been learning about in class so far, that long history of black activism before. And then it also gives a sense that the issues that people were fighting for in the Civil Rights Movement sort of magically end with the passing of certain legislation and that theres no need for things to go forward, right . So that becomes part of it. Any other things that we missed here with the master narrative . Its a big narrative. All the examples were showing, its showing how deep and pervasive this is. Yeah . People tend to forget the efforts of ordinary people and the struggles that local communities went through during the movement. Yeah, absolutely. Theres so much of an emphasis on leaders, particularly male leaders, particularly even we could even simplify. Theres so much of an emphasis on Martin Luther king and the men that surround him that it really makes it and the people who are in these marches and in these pictures become nameless and faceless without really demonstrating the very active role that ordinary citizens, ordinary people in local communities were doing to try to make things better. Any other stuff . I think weve got a lot of things. Yeah . The first sentence says the relationship between racism in the south was oppressive. It kind of limits it to the south and doesnt bring into account things were happening in the north too and was just as bad. Yeah, it not only narrows the chronology of what we think of as the Civil Rights Movement but the geography of it. Right. It becomes just a focus on what is happening in the south, as if racial inequality only existed in the south and as if the kind of fighting against racial inequality is only limited in the south, right . So again, these are all part of this much bigger narrative, what payne is calling this master narrative of the movement. Theres some truth to some of the things that are in there, right . There is something important about montgomery. There was something important about Martin Luther king. If we just sort of think about the movement and only remember it in these very narrow terms, were going to lose more than we actually learn. So i want us all to think a little bit about why we think the Civil Rights Movement has been remembered in this way. Right. And it is not something that i think is a very narrow depiction. If you look even just recently, we talked about this, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther kings assassination was just commemorated in april, and we talked about the ways that the memory of that is sort of playing into these master narratives, the way that policymakers play into it, the way that educational institutions often play into it. Why do you think that is . What do you think is at stake in the way that we remember the Civil Rights Movement . Well, you kind of already touched on this before, when you said, well, i guess king talks about it, about how they tend to look, people tend to look at the Civil Rights Movement as a large scale traffic event, and kind of like oh, that one police chief did something bad or those people in the south did something bad, but they dont really want to accept the fact that this was a daytoday constant like piece of life for people, and i guess i think like personally, that stems from a lack of wanting to take responsibility, like white people dont want to accept the facts that they have part of it and the lack of responsibility makes the narrative change. I think that point about day to day, every day, both experiences, of racial inequality, but also every day acts of resistance against it. Its something that gets missed out. That there is a place for large scale events. There is a place for mass protests. But we cant do that at the expense of thinking about how peoples lives were impacted by racial inequality and by activism on a daytoday basis. Anyone else on why we think the civil rights narrative has often been depicted in these particular ways. To go off of what she said, i feel like america has this overall sense of not wanting to seem like the bad guy, just going off a broad overall representation. America was known for being the place of freedom and the American Dream so for them to take responsibility on the backs bad things that happened up until the Civil Rights Movement and up until today, they always want to look at the Positive Side of the story, and it is so great we are celebrating Martin Luther king who not began, but was a big person in this change, but in reality they dont look at all of the negative sides of what americans did back then and what theyre doing right now. Think about the context, this idea of perception becomes really important, and think about the context in which the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement is happening in the 1950s. What was the larger geopolitical context that was happening that made the notion of how americans are being presented become even more dire . Anybody remember that context . That wider context . The cold war. The cold war. The cold war and the way that it framed this narrative of good versus evil. Where the United States was supposed to and wanting to come out looking more positive than the soviet union for example, that this question about american perception isnt nearly about people wanting to feel good about themselves, and the narratives we portray, but also has very real geopolitical and Foreign Policy implications. Americas perception impacts americas role in being a superpower. Right. So all of these things, and that doesnt end with the cold war. It continues. And so this is part of why that narrative sort of developed the way it does, and why it continues to develop. And so what our key question, that we want to look at for today, and begin to examine, is how does censoring the civil rights activism of black women disrupt and change this master narrative of the Civil Rights Movement . So we begin and we establish some of the contours of this master narrative. We thought through a bit about why the master narrative may have developed wait it does and the kinds of utility that it functions for people, so now we want to try to see if look at the movement from a different perspective, does that begin to provide some insight for us into thinking about the master narrative and ultimately thinking about the Civil Rights Movement differently . And so before we do that, i want us to think a bit about and this is something that will require us to think a little bit back over some of the things that we have learned so far, some of the things that weve read and talked about in class, but i want us to think a little bit about what were some of the unique ways that black women, both in the north and the south, experienced the perils and challenges of segregation and Racial Discrimination. So if were looking at this moment of the 1950s and even sort of broadening it out, to really this period during segregation, i want us to think about some of the ways that gender and Racial Discrimination and oppression intersect to give black women both in the north and the south, a different experience of the period of segregation. And when im trying to get us to think about that, im not trying to get what some scholars call an oppression olympics and black women had it better or worse or black men had it better or worse, thats not a very useful thing to do, what we can address that they experienced it differently, that there were some issues because of the way gender is constructed and experienced, ways that africanamerican women are experiencing this period of segregation differently than black men are. And i want us, when we think about these challenges, to not just think about the ways that africanamerican women are experiencing segregation, just visavis their relationship to whites, but also how internal dooims within black communities are also constraining black women, in ways that perhaps black men are not, right . Constraining black w ways that perhaps black men are not, right . So think about our readings that weve had so far. Think about the memoir, coming of age in mississippi, that weve been reading, to think about life in the rural south, and in the Civil Rights Movement. Think even about the film that we saw about the murder of emmett till and the role that mamie till plays. Can you think about something about the montgomery bus boycott that we had earlier. So what are some of the different ways that black women are experiencing segregation than black men are . Because i think that will help us think about what kind of activism black women begin to engage in. So what are some differences . Can we think of anything . Olivia . One of the things when youre talking about ann rudy, her mom was forced to leave the kids at home and she had the pressure of carrying on the domestic duties for her own family but had to leave the family to go work and so that unfairly situated her. Absolutely. This idea that black women are responsible in many cases, particularly about the gender norms of this time, of caring for their homes in particular ways, caring for children, but also having the very real constraints of the economic injustice and the economic disenfranchisement that black families have and just being able to negotiate their economic duties with their duties at home, for child bearing and child care does put some particular strains on black women in segregation. What else . I wanted to add to what we were talking about yesterday, well, two days ago, i mean, when we were talking about how the bus boycott actually started. Black women were usually Domestic Workers in white homes, so the towns werent really adjacent, but they were pretty far in distance. So they would have to take busses to go over there. So they would be mistreated and like kind of taunted and just harassed almost from it and sometimes like they would miss work because like the bus driver just wouldnt take them, and so it just increased like the problems that was going on. Absolutely. The very limited economic and labor options that black women had which for, you know, the majority of the time of segregation were black women working in Domestic Service in the homes of whites, and because of what we know about residential segregation patterns, black communities and White Communities were not adjacent to one another, just as you said, and were often across town. Black women were usually the ones within communities that were using Public Transportation more. Because of that, theyre the ones who are experiencing the brutality, the violence, the indignities of riding these segregated buses and being harassed by bus drivers and being harassed by other patrons, and so theyre experiencing segregation in their every day life in a different way or a more intense way than men on are on transportation just because theyre using it more often. Any other examples . Just going off of that actually, i was thinking about the particular vulnerability that black women were in because they were in white homes. So you know, we talked about like the Sexual Violence that they faced, especially from like white men who were in those homes and its just like because theyre kind of so close, like directly working in the homes of their aggressors that that kind of opens the door for more subtle but also more obvious forms of harassment, violence. Yes, right. These kinds of labor conditions, youre absolutely right are putting black women in a very vulnerable place that theyre working in these very intimate environments, where any kind of accusation around sexual abuse or Sexual Assault, because of the power dynamic, theyre not going to be taken seriously, and i think that this point raises a larger point of something weve been talking and thinking about this semester as well, really even going back to the period right after reconstruction, where were talking about how sexualized violence in the form of rape and Sexual Assault becomes a tool in the arsenal of violence, right . That whites are using to keep africanamericans in fear and intimidated. This extra dimension that violence is a part of that, but when were talking about black womens experiences, the threat of sexualized violence becomes even more intensified. This is not sort of juggling who had it better or worse but that is an area that we need to think about more explicitly if were censuring black women with that, right, and thinking about the Civil Rights Movement as a battle to deal with issues of Sexual Violence. I know we think now in our 21st century around the me too movement and questions about Sexual Harassment and violence, but what weve seen through the life of people like ricci taylor and others is that black women were centering the issue of sexualized violence during the Civil Rights Movement. It is often very absent from the master narrative but its there. We talked about the last time how rosa parks herself was someone who was going through the deep south getting narratives from black women who had been assaulted. And trying to think about ways to mobilize against that, right . So this issue of sexualized violence is very important. Any other ways that black womens experiences may have impacted them . We have the segregation, the residential patterns, we also can think about the ways that black womens behavior was often policed in ways that black mens behavior was not. And how that policing of behavior, about what it meant to be a proper woman, impacted who black communities were willing to rally behind. The example of claudette coven a young woman who was pregnant and unmarried who did the very same thing that rosa parks did, but because she was seen as someone who had a past that would not look good to a greater public, people did not rally behind her. Again, this is something that black women faced in ways that were different. And then of course, one of the things the master narrative reminds us is just how much male power and leadership was valorized in the movement in ways that obscured and ignored the very real work that black women had been doing. So media tension, for example, would always be drawn to the men of the movement as theyre doing work, the Martin Luther king and others, but would not necessarily go to women like ella baker who was a longtime activist who helped to nurture and birth the student movement. Or diane nash who was a leader in the sitin movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who held leadership positions. Women like dorothy height, who was the head of the National Council of negro women who wanted to have a voice. So the master narrative and the way that men were seen as being the only ones who had something to say, and garnering the media attention, obscured women from these particular narratives. And so i think it is important for us to think about the ways that physical violence, Sexual Violence, black womens roles as mothers, in the movement, black womens economic and labor constraints, how all of those things in their everyday life helped to propel them toward activism that looks different than much of the activism thats in the master narrative. So what were going to do now is begin to look at our readings and look at some specific examples of black womens activism. Were going to look at ann moody and her memoir coming of age in mississippi and then were also going to look at a chapter that you all read from my book, beauty shop politics, we will look at chapter five, which is talking about the Civil Rights Movement. So i want us to start with moody actually i want to start with a place where the work and research that ive done intersects with ann moodys. And i dont know if you caught it, but i open up the chapter in my book referring to an experience that ann moody had while she was in a sitin. And ill just read very briefly from an excerpt of it. If you want to follow along in moody, it is on page 293 in this edition of it. And so this is after moody was in a sitin that turned violent. And she says, before we were taken back to campus i wanted to get my hair washed. It was stiff with dried mustard, ketchup and sugar. I stopped in at a beauty shop across the street from the naacp office. I didnt have on any shoes because i had lost them when i was dragged across the floor at woolworths. My stockings were sticking to my legs from the mustard that had dried on them. The hairdresser took one look at me and said my land, you were in that sitin . Yes, i answered. Do you have time to wash my hair and style it . Right away she said, and she meant right away. There were three other ladies already waiting, but they seemed glad to let me go ahead of them. The hairdresser was real nice. She even took off my stockings and washed my legs while my hair was drying. And i remember when i was working on this book project, i thought this was such a powerful scene and a powerful moment to get us to think about black women within the Civil Rights Movement. Here we have ann moody whose body is literally embattled, right . She was on the front lines at a sitin movement trying to get africanamericans better access and equal access to a woolworth lunch counter and she gets ketchup and mustard and spat upon and racial epithets hurled at her and all of those things, and the first place that she decides to go is sort of a bizarre place and maybe even a foolish place to a beauty shop. She knew that she could get her hair washed there. Right . And we understand that, right . Like she literally has stuff caked in her hair, she feels filthy, she didnt even have her shoes because she had to run away from what was happening in the woolworth. But i think the way that she describes her treatment once she gets into the salon is something that can help us think about black women and black womens roles and the importance of institutions that are sort of owned by and run by black women in sustaining women like moody who were on the front lines of the movement. She knew that in the beauty shop it would be a safe place, it would be a refuge for her, a place she could not only have her hair washed but the way that she talks about the gentle pampering by the beautician and even the way that she refers to how the other women who were in the shop let her go ahead of them, shows that it also was a place where in many ways she could have her soul restored. And i think that thats something that we need to think about a lot as were reading memoiring and seeing film and even when youre watching those old news reels of people on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. And we think of them as kind of nameless, faceless people, in a black and white photo, without fully considering the psychological toll and damage that these kinds of things are putting not just on their bodies but also on their minds and spirit, so the beauty shop becomes a place of refuge for her. And i use that as an introduction to get us to think about how the beauty shop wasnt just a place of refuge but also became a place where activism itself could be planned and could be enacted. And so i want us to talk about that a little bit. But i thought it might be useful to just, since you have the weird and maybe unwelcome opportunity where for the first time this semester you actually have the author of one of your pieces in front of you, who also is your professor, so that could get a little weird, but were all cool now, so you all can ask me anything and feel free to use the strategies of critique that i have been training you with all semester on my own work, nothing would make me happier than that. But i thought it might be useful to talk a little bit about how i kind of stumbled into this work on beauticians and the Civil Rights Movement, right . It is sort of an odd thing. It is something i never envisioned doing. It almost doesnt even make sense except once i got into the sources. So as a graduate student, i was really interested in black womens activism, just sort of in a general sense, and i was reading everything i could get my hands on about the topic and i also began to do archival work and learning and that process of learning as research as youre researching a topic and i began to notice something sort of weird but interesting, that many of the women who were mentioned in both primary and secondary sources, particularly those who were sources that were looking at local and Grass Roots Community organizing and activism, that many of the women had a similar occupation. They were beauticians. And i didnt really think much of it at first and i kind of looked at it, all right, thats kind of interesting, maybe not, im looking for the real story, im looking for the story that seems juicier, that seemed more important. But then i began to think about it even more and this question about the master narrative, thinking about how it can impact even the way that we read and understand our sources, when were doing research, i was also at the time reading an article by an historian named Darlene Clark hine called the age of madam cj walker. As many of you know madam cj walker was a black beauty pioneer from the early 20th century. She creates this Beauty Company and this Beauty Industry that literally employs thousands and thousands of women, she has a factory, she is selling products all over the african diaspora, and one of the pioneers of the black Beauty Industry. In the article that she wrote, she poses an interesting question and she says, why is it that we think of the early 20th century as the able of booker t. Washington and we studied washington and him as an educational leader, as sort of was considered the top black leader of his day. And one of the things that hine says is what would happen, right, this is almost a question very similar to what Charles Payne is trying to get us to do about rethinking the master narrative of the movement, she says, what would happen if we centered the experience of madam cj walker in that moment, and called it the age of madam cj walker, instead of calling it the age of booker t. Washington. What might we learn from doing that. I took that to heart and i then said okay, if i center the experiences of these black beauticians in the movement, how will that change what we know or what we think we know about the Civil Rights Movement . And thats essentially where the project ended up going. And where the research ended up taking me. And so even once i got into it, the things that were happening among black beauticians in the 1950s, and 60s, were particularly interesting to me. Because we see everyone, right, all the key people who are part of our master narrative of the Civil Rights Movement, people like Martin Luther king talking about black beauticians as being central to the Civil Rights Movement. So that even shows us even when were following the people who are part of the master narrative, when theyre saying things and doing things that dont fit into our master narrative, we ignore them, right . I was shocked to find, in 1957, king sort of that, you know, at the beginning of his kind of ascendancy as a black leader is addressing a National Group of black beautician, right . On a topic called, the role of beauticians in the contemporary struggle for freedom. This is king, right . Completely missing from the narrative. We see leaders in the democratic party, making statements like, if you get a beautician engaged into your candidates campaign, then you found a gem, because they can make all of these things happen, right . So these are people who are central to our ideas about the movement, but theyre talking about women and theyre talking about activism in ways that really arent legible to us, so we often kind of, researchers have often left them out, and made them marginalized. So i wanted us to think about this, right . The article has a lot of, the chapter, i should say, has a lot of evidence of the work that black beauticians were doing, and what they were doing in beauty shops and were going to talk about some of that. But just sort of as youve read it, why do you think black beauticians were so effective as activists and grass roots leaders . What was unique about their position and what they had access to that made the kind of activism that we will talk about in a minute possible . On page 119 of the reading, you talk about a beautician who, the police chief comes to her place work and is trying to intimidate her into, or interrogate her husbands manager into firing her husband, all types of things, and she is like afforded the ability to kind of talk back to him, because as like a Small Business owner, as a business owner, she like has that economic like free will, basically, like she can, she doesnt have to worry about her employer firing her for saying something unsavory, she has the freedom to speak her mind, and i think that is powerful in that type of social movement. The example she raised, vera piggy, her and her husband, were very active in mississippi, in the naacp, in Voter Registration movement, and they get hauled in, the police chief is going after them, and he keeps threatening her husband, and saying, were going to get you fired, were going to get you fired, and vera as a beautician, as a business owner, who owned her own business, and think about, it, too, not just owning her own business but who were the clients in her business . Who were her clients . Other black women. Other black women, right . Even her manufacturing, this is at the time when black women, beauty manufacturer, who were supplying her products, all their stuff so she wasnt there was no one the police chief could go to and say fire her, because she owned her own business. She was economically autonomous. And so that positioned her and other beauticians well to be able to take risks, because they did not have to fear retribution. Because women and men would lose their jobs all the time if their civil rights activity was found out. So thats definitely a big reason. What are some other reasons . Yes . You mentioned how one of the politicians said that the aim to mobilize beauticians because theyre like missionaries and everyone they come in contact with, they make voting as important to them as god, so their proximity to their customers and other people in their community really allowed them to be like missionaries and spread the word and spread activism. Yeah. This is really, any of us who have ever been to a beauty salon or have, particularly those who may have a longterm kind of relationship with one particular stylist, there is a certain kind of intimacy and bond that develops between a hair stylist and their client. And there often develops a kind of trust between them. And so beauticians had a great deal of credibility. So that when they are sort of spreading the good news about voting and Voter Registration and civil rights activities, their clients are very receptive to it in ways that maybe if someone else told them this, they would not be as receptive. So that kind of intimacy and bond and relationship that they have is also part of what is building that. What else . Any other ways, why beauticians may have been well suited for this kind of civil rights work . I was like, just like the physical act of sitting in a chair and having something sharp close to your head, youre kind of like in a vulnerable position. Like someone cutting their hair, like. It is worse than scissors. A hot flaming a comb dipped in flames coming behind your head, right. You have to trust this person who has these materials. Theres already kind of a sense of vulnerability, and i think in that, it comes like, like you said, there is like a form of trust, but also like that relationship is important kind of like this person is taking care of you and in that way like makes people feel a lot more comfortable, especially in an environment where you where like being comfortable wasnt something that was common for black women. They were working in homes that were obviously uncomfortable, even when they went home, they had other duties and this was kind of a safe space for them to go and be taken care of, so that kind of fostered the trust in the relationship and then when that person is telling you, like, about these, like you said before, civil rights, and voting and all of that, kind of like more inclined to listen. So they have like a specific just a role, like that is interesting not only a physical position that theyre in but just like they have a unique kind of on your shoulder. You are going to trust them. And thats why that example of ann moody going to the salon i think really underscores that. That she was so embattled and really in a low place, but knew that that was a place, one of the few places that she could be cared for. And so that also continues to develop trust in that as well. This goes back to what you were saying earlier about how womens behavior toward police, in certain ways, and i would say this would be black beauticians were really important to the movement because of the presentability of their clients. I think dr. King in your chapter says something about look like youre going to church when youre going to participate in these activist movements and the beauty parlors is where you go for that. Yes, there is a way that in self presentation was a really effective strategy within the movement, right. Again, going back to our earlier points about the master narrative and this idea that it was just these kind of mass protests, and people would just kind of show up and things would happen, they were instructed, when showing up at rallies and marches and movements and sitins, on the specifics of down to how to dress, and that instruction about dress neatly and modestly as if youre going to church was about that. It was about coming to if you look when we look at images and videos and stills of the Civil Rights Movement and you see how the College Students are dressed going to a woolworth counter where like ann moody they are going to leave with their clothes ruined, with their hair a mess, all of that, but that was a strategy of looking a particular way. And part of that was getting the medias attention of looking at these very welldressed, wellgroomed, wellbehaved black people on thes the front lines getting brutalized, right . And youre absolutely right. That that part of that process of getting there, at least for women at this particular time, was about a particular kind of hair grooming that happened in black beauty shops. And so literally black beauticians are preparing people for the front lines in that way as well. What about the beauty shops, we talked a bit about beauticians, and the role that they play that made it very easy for them to become civil rights leaders and activists, but what about the space of the beauty shop . One of the ways, one of the reasons why they also were very effective is that they had ownership, literally, of a space, an institutional space. And we cant underestimate the importance of institutional space. And i know you all are my very 21st century young College Students where i think sometimes we dont appreciate how important physical space is because so much of what we do is in this kind of digital world, but the ability to get people and to have a space to get people in the same room and to be together and be protected is important. And so what are some of the other ways that a beauty shop in particular would serve to be a powerful Political Institution . To foster a safe space for women to discuss issues on civil rights and also maybe discuss more extreme issues on civil rights, such as they didnt always agree, it said in here, on page 103, that they didnt always agree with ministers or the people who were often seen in a positive light in the Civil Rights Movement and they could discuss their discrepancies and problems that they had with them and different points of views on how to be a part of the Civil Rights Movement. Absolutely. The beauty shop space, the black women owned space where women are, it was different than the church environment, right, where black women may not have been the ones who were in leadership positions to be able to direct the conversations that were going on there. And also, and this is something to think about as well, think about for those who were in opposition to civil rights, churches were very much on their radar and we know that because they bombed churches, they attacked churches. They firebombed the homes of black ministers and people who were connected to it. That was a very kind of visible institution. And so youre absolutely right, that the beauty shop, as this kind of alternative space, allowed for conversations of a more radical sort about the Civil Rights Movement, because they were completely under the radar, and one of the things i always say, is that, you know, for just about every black person or ally who was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, there is an fbi file on them. Thats just fact. This is not i mean fbi was monitoring, you know, the tapes on Martin Luther king, all of that. I mean everything, from leaders up top to the grass roots leaders. There are fbi files that you can look and see on them. I have not been able to find an fbi file on a beautician, even though these beauticians were involved in much of the same work, in some cases even more radical work than those who were being surveilled. When they do appear, sometimes for example, Bernice Robinson who is in the article, which we will talk about in a moment, her cousin appears in the record, in the fbi records, as she is some identified in the article as some unidentified woman, right . And so there is a way that because the beauty shop is viewed as frivolous, where, whats happening there, a bunch of women in there gossiping, thats our perception of what happens in beauty shops, kind of diminishing of that, they were able to flourish as political sites because they were perceived as not doing anything important and they used that disadvantage to their advantage. And so in the way that churches and other kinds of institutions were on the radar, beauty shops were able to slip under them. They were underestimated. And that worked to their advantage. So lets talk about what was actually happening in these shops. And think about them within this larger context of the Civil Rights Movement or the black freedom struggle. And again, going back to our point about the master narrative, that if were focusing on the master narrative, it seemed as though the most important thing was about getting laws changed and getting laws changed is important. But when we look at the activism of black beauticians, in particular, we begin to see a much more complex and much more nuanced story about what the Civil Rights Movement was about to people every day. What are some of the issues, some of the concerns that black beauticians tackled from their position as beauticians, and from their space as beauty shops . Any examples . We can look at, you know, even the women in the chapter, Bernice Robinson, ruby blackburn, we talked a little bit about vera piggy, what are some of the things that were important to them, the issues that were . Voting registration mainly, especially robinson who offered to take in Voter Registration cards to her house, so the whites in the neighborhood wouldnt know who was registering and then she became a teacher to teach people, how do read the information. Bernice robinson really had this salon and influence in really powerful ways like you outlined. I love it. One, as an observer of her salon, and i talk about it in the article, in the chapter, called her salon a center for all sorts of subversive activity. Which i love. Thinking about a beauty salon and some of the things that you are talking about, that she allowed her home to be a repository for people who wanted, for example, to join membership in the naacp, which after we, after the brown v board of Education Court case which we talked about last class was illegal, remember i talked about how many states made membership in the naacp illegal . South carolina was one of them. So if any black person wanted to join the naacp, they could be fined or arrested for that. So what many women would do would be to have their mail from the naacp sent to Bernice Robinsons home, because again, one of the frontline attacks on africanamericans was to try to fire them from their jobs, was to try to intimidate their employers to fire them if they were known to be engaged in civil rights activity and they would send them to robinsons salon and she said in the piece i didnt have to worry about losing my job because for the same reason she had that economic autonomy. And she also used her salon as a school. She turned it into a citizenship education school. Where she not only taught ways to try to help africanamericans register to vote, which was always a very tricky and complicated thing, even if you could actually read the paragraph, then the registrar would say, no, you didnt read it properly or things like that. But what she did is she used that as a really, as a way to educate people in her community more generally. So she opens up citizenship education to teach basic literacy skill, basic math skills, basic accounting skills, things that people in her community needed. Very practical things. And this is something that i think marks the work of black beauticians in the south. Is that while they were interested in things like voting and changing laws, they were also interested in things like basic nutrition and health, which is part of what Bernice Robinson does when she gathers a group of black beauticians to support the building of a tent city in fayette county, tennessee, for sharecroppers who were evicted off their land for engaging in activism, she wanted to provide not just a home for them, but places where they and their family could get nutrition, health care, child care, very nuts and bolts practical needs. Or ruby parks blackburn of atlanta, who used her position as a beautician to advocate for getting bus Service Extended into black neighborhoods. And was an early advocate of what we think about as combatting environmental racism, which is this practice of companies and corporations dumping chemicals in communities of color and so she was an early advocate for that. So again, just thinking about how these beauticians are working to deal with very nuts and bolts things. When we center their experiences, it disrupts the master narrative for us because it is forcing us to think about the Civil Rights Movement beyond the national. Its forcing us to think about not just the sympathetic governments response but how africanamericans are organizing on grass roots levels to try to make their day to day lives better. It also gets us to rethink the goals of the Civil Rights Movement. Their emphasis on meeting pressing and practical needs for those who are most vulnerable in their communities was actually very much at the heart of what we think of as a Civil Rights Movement. In fact, i would say that was the heart of the movement. Yes, law and all those things are to protect that, but i think the master narrative does not allow for us to think about the ways the goals of the movement were about meeting these pressing and practical needs particularly for those who are most vulnerable in black communities. Also the work of black beauticians in the movement disrupt this idea of spontaneous protest because they were creative, they were innovative and they were strategic. All things that were very important. And it also gets us to rethink the role and the importance of the media in the Civil Rights Movement, which was something that was very important. And we see organizations and leaders skillfully using the media, but part of what made beauticians so successful was the fact they flew underneath the radar, that they were not the ones most prominent out there in front of the Television Screen and recognizable. It was their anonymity actually that actually made their activism successful. And they also remind us that theres no real easy wins in the black freedom struggle, right, that if we focus on checking off some laws and some bills then its easy to look at this movement as something there were clear winners and clear losers. The issues that they are advocating for are a constant reminder to us that much of what they started is still left unfinished. And so my hope is as we look at the role of black beauticians and sort of think about them and think about the activism of black women in general as a way of disrupting the master narrative it will cause us to think about the Civil Rights Movement differently. But i also hope that it causes us, and, you know, this is always my thing about this class its important for us to study the past for the past sake, absolutely. Im a historian. I believe in that. But also because the way we remember the Civil Rights Movement actually tells us more about ourselves of the 21st century than it does what was actually happening in the 21st century. I hope when we look back at people like anne moody and women like those black beauticians that it would actually inspire us and challenge us to look for new possibilities in the every day to make an impact, right . To look at these personal and Community Spaces that are often overlooked and think about how they could possibly become a part of larger struggles to make our world better. And so really their creativity, their use of what was at hand, their willingness to look at their limitations but use it as a positive is something that i think we can all aspire to when we think about freedom struggles. So any other final questions or comments about beauticians . What were some of the things you learned or may have surprised you most about it . Im sure most of you have never seen a civil rights text that centers them so was there anything that surprised you or shocked you or anything you found encouraging or problematic . The thing that surprises me is you said there arent many files on the beauticians themselves. I guess im wondering how they never caught on especially when people are sending mail to the salons and its like an open secret i guess among the black population. Was it just because they were so removed from black life thats why they didnt see things happening. Im going to pose that to everyone else. Reading what you read why do you think they were so successful at flying under the radar when theres all this activity going on thats documented and i was able to find as a researcher 50 years later. It wasnt hidden. It was sort of hidden in plain sight, but why do you think it was so hidden . Why do you think that was so effect intensive. I think that the black woman is typically undervalued and undermined even within our own communities sometimes, so much so that, you know, you see a lot of men come to the front when it seems to civil rights activism. And it was rumored that some of those men were misogynist, so i dont know if maybe like other people or the majority of americans that viewed our movement and looked at the men at the front and just thought, okay, well, those are probably the people who are advocating, who are putting the pieces of the puzzle together. You dont really see too many women in the front of the Civil Rights Movement with the exception of like the black Panther Movement where you saw them push more women to the front. I think its a representation how some black men and black women kind of viewed each other as well to the point where thats how the public perceived it as women not playing as much of a role in it as they did. Possible. Any other thoughts on that, of why sort of this extensive history of activism was hidden from public in a lot of ways . Id say just because some jobs are just often ignored when it comes to political activism. So when anyone would hear, hey, something is going on in that beauty parlor they would immediately zone out. Which i think is powerful. The spaces that seem the most frivolous can actually have the potential to have some of the most radical potential in it for the very reason because they are so easily dismissed, right . You might even think to a certain extent not a perfect parallel but a similar one when we think about social media as something we all probably waste too much of our time on and all of that but also has been used to great effect by organizations like black lives matter, like by groups who are rallying like the students in parkland, florida, and students around the country who are rallying on behalf of gun control and other things or the me too hashtag. There are ways that even the most frivolous can actually serve a potential. So i think thats something whenever i think about this research it constantly kind of challenges me to think about that. You know, for the things important to me that i want to see change what spaces even those that may be dismissed that i might be able to use to effectively make that change. Well take one more comment. Thats basically what i was just going to say, which kind of makes me love it even more it the fact it was so easily dismissed and theyre like oh, theyre frivolous women and they cant control anything really, and theyre kind of like easily dismissed and they kind of like took that they took that opportunity of them being dismissed to make it even more powerful, being sort of incognito, making this political change. I think its kind of like so beneficial on so many levels for it being beneficial to the individual like thats a place for black women to feel safe and kind of like recharge, i guess, in their Political Climate bubble. So like on a national scale, the policy they were able to effect. I dont know. I also think maybe a cultural difference may have contributed a little bit because speaking from just my own personal experience i dont think the average white person places like a super high importance on a barbershop. Like i could go to any theres like five barbershops in my town and i have no allegiance to one barbershop and i think a lot of people wouldnt necessarily understand the way you have to care for your hair and stuff is different, so i think a lot of people maybe didnt understand either how much time someone might spend in a barbershop or like the importance of your allegiance to a particular barbershop might play and how that could play a role so people could easily overlook that, i think. I think youre right. The cultural differences are very important in this. One, in terms of how much is getting done in a beauty shop. Part of why it was so effective is that there was a captive audience that was there for a long time. That often the hairstyling and all that would take most of your day or half of your day, so people are in there for a long time building that. And also i think part of the cultural difference as to why in black communities barbershops and beauty shops even perhaps still to this day have a different kind of currency is about thinking about some of the same things we saw in this article about black space and hidd hidden space, right. Thinking about when you are within a society and culture where youre not dominating that the places where you get to gather arent conventional and take on an even greater importance. I think one of the things to think about is how beauty shops and even barbershops the interesting thing about barbershops is that they were surveilled by the fbi and often informants were sent into those spaces looking for things. And sometimes they find stuff, but i always say if they send them to beauty shops they would have had a bigger and much better report to write. But, again, thinking of the components of difference that we have to assume some thing is happening there and some thing is not. When we think about the Civil Rights Movement that looking at the real example of black beauticians helps us to unravel this master narrative. And as we continue for the rest of the semester Going Forward to the contemporary period we can think about how some of what was started in this period is unfinished and that people continue to take up this battle but also gets us to think about when we encounter narratives about the Civil Rights Movement in our public spaces, in our diskdi diskdi discourse, in our Public Policy this has equipped us with more tools to dismantel ale and picky at it. Today House Speaker nancy pelosi holds a News Conference to discuss negotiations over the next Coronavirus Relief bill. Live coverage begins at 10 45 eastern on cspan. Today members of the spacex crew dragon will hold a News Conference from the International Space station to discuss their planned return to earth on august 2 nd. Thats streaming live 10 45 a. M. Eastern on our website cspan. Org. 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