High Heels on the Ground
High Heels on the Ground
The Power of Personal Witness, 1964
This chapter examines the first summer of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)-sponsored civil rights organization Wednesdays in Mississippi (WIMS). WIMS brought down forty-eight black and white, Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic women from northern and Midwestern cities to personally witness and provide support for the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, sponsored by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). WIMS relied on a behind-the-scenes approach that did not publicly challenge segregation, but sought to quietly reason with local women to support civil rights activists fighting for voting rights and desegregation of schools, businesses, and other facilities. Although the strategy of personal witness proved limited, WIMS helped connect NCNW to local black activists in Mississippi who advocated for more direct action protests and planted the seeds for a later change of NCNW's direction.
Keywords: National Council of Negro Women, NCNW, Freedom Summer, Wednesdays in Mississippi, Personal witness, Polly Cowan, Interracial women, Interfaith women, Dorothy Height, Council of Federated Organizations
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