The March on Washington on 28 August 1963 was the greatest demonstration for civil rights in US history. There was a token ‘Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom’ and singers Marian Anderson and Mahalia Jackson entertained the crowds with their music, but all ten of the leading speakers at the event were men. Even today, the roles of leaders like A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson are well known to students of the civil rights movement in the USA, but the number of women who were involved in the movement is often less well covered in textbooks. Yet this is not because few women were involved in campaigning for civil rights — on the contrary, women carried out vital work without which the movement could not have made the progress it did.
1 Why do you think that Fannie Peck’s ‘Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work’ campaign was so successful?
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