When Turbulent Times Call: Four African American Women Who Changed Their World

• In Event: Nevertheless, She Persisted

Short Description

Watergate. Lynching. Segregated busing. Withholding education from Black children. Turbulent times are the womb of leadership. They are the circumstances that launched four African American women into the forefront of change: Barbara Jordan, Ida B. Wells, Jo Ann Robinson, and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Detailed Abstract

Watergate . . . lynching . . . segregated busing . . . withholding education from black children. Turbulent times are the womb of leadership. They are, as Abigail Adams stated, the qualities, which "wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman" (Adams, 1780). They are the opportunities that launched four African American women into the forefront of change: Barbara Jordan, Ida B. Wells, Jo Ann Robinson, and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Watergate and the Fate of Our Constitution
The tumultuous sixties and seventies eroded the confidence of Americans in its government and leaders. The deaths of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy demonstrated the country could not protect its leaders. The lies of government officials related to Vietnam, the secret bombing of Cambodia and finally Watergate furthered Americans' distrust (Mendelsohn, 2000, p. 9).
It was into this arena of chaos that Barbara Jordan entered as a new kind of leader -- black, female, with a sharp intellect, strategic legislative ability, and a willingness to work within the system. Jordan began her political journey during the sixties when she was elected to the Texas Senate. There she led utilizing her intelligence, oration, and most of all her "ability to fit in with the 'old boys' club" (Notable women, 2000, p. 295).
When in 1972, Jordan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and placed on the powerful Judiciary Committee of Congress, no one guessed the critical role she would play. On July 25, 1974, Jordan addressed the Judiciary Committee on national television on the possible impeachment of President Nixon.
She began, "I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to . . . the destruction of the Constitution." She concluded stating that if President Nixon's actions were not grounds for impeachment, "then perhaps that eighteenth-century Constitution should be abandoned to a twentieth-century paper shredder" (Mendelsohn, 2000, p. 148-149). President Nixon resigned August 8, 1974.

Lynching and the Disregard of Justice for Blacks
Ida B. Wells was a woman with a pen who as a "truth-telling journalist" (Schiff, 2005, p. 17) fought injustice during the post-Reconstruction era. Wells grew up familiar with hardship. In a yellow fever epidemic, her parents died leaving her at 16 responsible for raising her siblings. Her writing career took off when she documented in Living Way, her experience of being thrown off a train when she refused to move from the first class seat she purchased into the "Negro car," and her subsequent victorious lawsuit, which was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Her focus on lynching began when her friend's husband, Thomas Moss, and two business associates were pulled from prison and lynched by a mob in Memphis in 1892, and no one was punished for the murders. Wells wrote, "This is what opened my eyes to what lynching really was. An excuse to get rid of Negroes" (Schiff, 2005, p. 19). Wells documented numerous lynchings through the years. In 1909 she travelled to Cairo, Illinois and reported on the last lynching in the U.S. Her factual work on lynching encouraged the Governor of Illinois to make a proclamation, which stated that lynch laws had no place in Illinois (Wells, 1970, p. 319).

Segregated Busing and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Jo Ann Robinson's leadership grew out of her personal trauma during the days of Jim Crow. As a middle-class college professor with a car, Robinson was unaccustomed to riding the buses. One Christmas, she chose to ride the bus so she did not have to park at the airport. When she boarded the bus, there were only two passengers: a white woman in row three, and a black man at the back. Robinson paid her money, sat in row five, closed her eyes, and relaxed. Suddenly she was jarred from her reverie by the bus driver yelling and pulling back his hand as though to strike her because Robinson had sat in the "white" section. Robinson quickly escaped, but never recovered. "It was then that I made up . . . my mind that whatever I could add to that organization that would help to bring that practice [segregation] down, I would do it" (Robinson, 1987, p. xiii-xiv).
Robinson's decision eventually allowed her to lead 50,000 blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, by caring, inspiring, and persuading them to boycott the bus-line for their stated and shared rights. "More than any other individual, . . . it was Robinson who organized the Montgomery bus boycott" (Brinkley, 2000), which helped launch the civil rights movement and proved "that ordinary people" could make the difference (Burns, 1997, p. 33).

No Education for Children of "Color"
Mary McLeod Bethune grew up following the Civil War with a deep wound in her soul because black children were denied the privilege of education. Fortunately for Bethune, a school for "colored" children was opened nearby when she was eight. Bethune was chosen for the family to attend school with the understanding that every Sunday she would share what she learned (Newsome, 1992). After further education, Bethune applied to become a missionary to Africa, but was told there was "no opening for a Negro in Africa." Bethune determined to use her gifts and education to reach Africans here in the United States (Hanson, 2003).
With new focus, Bethune secured various teaching jobs and dreamed of building a school for girls, which was accomplished in 1904. Bethune's school allowed her to fulfill her dream of racial advancement. The school later merged and became Bethune-Cookman College (Newsome, 1992, p. 17).

Summary
Turbulent times create the "leadership moments" (Useem, 1998) when individuals are given a choice: 1) sit on the sidelines in silence; or 2) take up the cause and lead. For four black women, leadership, built on their personal experiences and their response to turbulent times, was their choice; and they changed their world. In the midst of today's turbulence, the question is: Who will choose to take today's opportunities and change their world?

Participant

• Rita Carver, University of Phoenix