Much of the national memorialization of the civil rights movement maintains a “great man” version of history.
Women regularly appear in tributes to the movement, but a clear sense of their leadership, lives and organizing efforts is often missing.
Raised in Minnesota and a graduate of Hamline University, Hedgeman worked for the YWCA and then the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. In 1954, she became the first Black woman to hold a cabinet position in New York City government, before taking a job with the National Council of Churches. That role led to her inclusion on the march organizing committee, the only woman on it.
Hedgeman organized to make the sizeable presence of white Protestants a reality. This was not a given; white Christian support of civil rights had been limited up to this point and needed to be shamed, cultivated and brought out. Height later observed: “Clearly there was a low tolerance level for anyone raising the questions about the women’s participation.”I have been increasingly perturbed over the blatant disparity between the major role which Negro women have played and are playing in the crucial grass-roots levels of our struggle and the minor role of leadership they have been assigned in the national policy-making decisions. . . . The time has come to say to you quite candidly, Mr.
Hedgeman continued to object within the committee, asserting the march should really be called “Rosa Parks Day,” since Parks had started it all. Yet all their criticisms were treated as demands for inappropriate recognition, at odds with the spirit of the event. March organizers worried about how to pick one woman to speak, even though Hedgeman had offered to caucus and come up with a selection.
Cambridge Movement leader Gloria Richardson recalled that gendered treatment began even before the event started. The NAACP had called her beforehand, instructing her to not wear jeans but instead a hat, gloves and a dress. Richardson did not appreciate the dress code requirements and scoured the Eastern Shore of Maryland till she found a jean skirt.
This upheaval in Cambridge led U.S. attorney general Robert Kennedy to convene a meeting with Richardson and other political figures in Cambridge. Richardson was able to negotiate an historic agreement, the “Treaty of Cambridge,” with him, which included implementation of federally funded job training, acceleration of public-housing construction, school desegregation and an amendment to the city charter prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations.
Dorothy Height later surmised that the more-feisty SNCC students got speaking roles even when no woman did: “They knew that the women were not going to turn over the Lincoln Memorial, but the students might.” “Uh, who else? Will the…” [Someone behind him says: “Rosa Parks.”] “Miss Rosa Parks… will they all stand.”
“They did this,” Richardson believed, “because Lena Horne had had Rosa Parks by the hand and had been taking her to satellite broadcasts, saying, ‘This is who started the civil rights movement, not Martin Luther King. This is the woman you need to interview.’” After the rally, no women were part of a delegation of 10 leaders who met with President Kennedy. Dorothy Height observed, “I’ve never seen a more immovable force. We could not get women’s participation taken seriously.”
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