Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780820347301)

In Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi, Tiyi M. Morris provides the first comprehensive examination of the Jackson, Mississippi-based women's organization Womanpower Unlimited. Founded in 1961 by Clarie Collins Harvey, the organization was created initially to provide aid to the Freedom Riders who were unjustly arrested and then tortured in Mississippi jails. Womanpower Unlimited expanded its activism to include programs such as voter registration drives, youth education, and participation in Women Strike for Peace. Womanpower Unlimited proved to be not only a significant organization with regard to civil rights activism in Mississippi but also a spearhead movement for revitalizing black women's social and political activism in the state.

Womanpower Unlimited elucidates the role that the group played in sustaining the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Consistent with the recent scholarship that emphasizes the necessity of a bottom-up analysis for attaining a more comprehensive narrative of the civil rights movement, this work broadens our understanding of movement history in general by examining the roles of "local people" as well as the leadership women provided. Additionally, it contributes to a better understanding of how the movement developed in Mississippi by examining some of the lesserknown women upon whom activists, both inside and outside of the state, relied. Black women, and Womanpower specifically, were central to movement successes in Mississippi; and Womanpower's humanist agenda resulted in its having the most diverse agenda of a Mississippi-based civil rights organization.

Author: Tiyi M. Morris
ISBN-10: 0820347302
ISBN-13: 9780820347301
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Language: English
Published: 02/15/2015
Pages: 264
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2015