Black women held significant roles as leaders and organizers in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The efforts of JoAnn Robinson, Ella Baker, and Fannie Lou Hamer make clear that Black women helped to secure equal rights for African Americans in varied ways.

Robinson, a professor at Alabama State College, served as president of the Women’s Political Council (WPC). The WPC began in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1946 to tackle the challenges African Americans faced in the city. In 1953, the WPC collected hundreds of complaints from Black residents who had endured mistreatment on Montgomery’s segregated buses. One year later, on behalf of the WPC, Robinson wrote a letter to the mayor threatening a boycott. Despite her efforts, the mistreatment continued.

When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955—for refusing to move to the back of the bus—Robinson seized the opportunity. The night of Parks’s arrest, Robinson printed out 35,000 fliers announcing a citywide bus boycott. The boycott began on December 5, 1955. The next afternoon she and others in the WPC handed out these fliers to residents. They also volunteered to participate in a carpool system to help those in need of a ride to work.

Robinson and her allies kept the boycott running. They raised funds to help carpool drivers provide an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 rides per day. They stood up against the intimidation tactics including bombings, arrests, and daily harassment. On November 13, 1956, the US Supreme Court issued its ruling in Browder v. Gayle. This upheld a lower court’s ruling, striking down Alabama’s statute requiring racially segregated seating on buses. After 382 days, the boycott ended on December 20, 1956. The city exhausted its legal challenges, and the Supreme Court’s decision was put into effect.

Robinson’s emphasis on local leadership and community organizing was shared by Ella Baker. With decades of experience as an activist and organizer, Baker was recruited to help build the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta in 1957. However, she grew dissatisfied with the SCLC’s vision of centralized (male) leadership. She advocated welcoming leaders of diverse backgrounds. She fought for leadership across age, gender, class, or education.

After college students started a national sit-in movement in February 1960, Baker saw an opportunity to expand the movement. She called a conference at Shaw University in April 1960, inviting those who had organized the sit-ins. At the gathering, she encouraged the young activists to start a new civil rights organization. They went on to establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) based on Baker’s vision.

SNCC reached people in their communities and encouraged leaders from all backgrounds. They expanded throughout the US South, and in August 1962, the group recruited 44-year-old Fannie Lou Hamer. A disabled Black sharecropper with a sixth-grade education, Hamer did not resemble many of the other civil rights leaders at the time. Yet she would become one of the most influential activists in the movement. As the organization’s oldest field secretary, Hamer electrified audiences. She delivered passionate speeches and helped others register to vote.

This work was dangerous. In June 1963, Hamer was brutally assaulted in Winona, Mississippi. But she did not give up. She shared her experiences before a national audience at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Her speech helped to compel President Lyndon B. Johnson to introduce the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Together, the stories of JoAnn Robinson, Ella Baker, and Fannie Lou Hamer exemplify how Black women maintained significant leadership and organizing positions in the Civil Rights Movement.