Review: Freedom's Daughters
Editorial Review - Kirkus ReviewsA celebration of largely forgotten players in the African-American struggle for civil rights. Freelance journalist Olson, coauthor of The Murrow Boys (1996), profiles a score or so of the women who spearheaded major advances in the civil-rights movement. They include Pauli Murray, whose 1944 sit-in at a lunch counter in Washington, D.C., inspired many other such demonstrations during the next two decades; Mary Church Terrell, whose determined activism over many years finally led, in 1953, to the collapse of segregation in the nation's capital; and Jo Ann Robinson, who organized the 1956 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. Some of Olson's heroines are better known than these, most notably Eleanor Roosevelt, whom Pauli Murray credited with bringing the civil-rights movement to the attention of not only her husband but also subsequent presidents, especially Kennedy. Olson connects these biographical sketches by tracing commonalities and recurrent themes, observing that the two major episodes in the struggle for black freedom and equality, one launched in the early 1800s and the other in the early 1960s, gave rise to parallel movements for women's rights. African-American women, she adds, sometimes found themselves torn between supporting a civil-rights movement in which their contributions were consistently overlooked and throwing themselves wholly into feminism. Olson notes that these women's stories were sometimes distorted by male civil-rights leaders; Martin Luther King Jr., for example, carefully portrayed Rosa Parks as an uncomplaining woman prompted by one injustice too many to refuse to move to the back of an Alabama bus, when she had in fact "been a committed civil rights activist in the 1940s, a staunch member of the NAACP with a history of rebellion against the casual cruelties of white bus drivers." Giving credit where it is long overdue, Olson makes a welcome addition to civil-rights literature.
Review: Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970
User Review - Eddy Allen - GoodreadsIn this groundbreaking and absorbing book, credit finally goes where credit is due -- to the bold women who were crucial to the success of the civil rights movement. From the Montgomery bus boycott to ... Read full review
Review: Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970
User Review - Kara Merry - GoodreadsGreat book-amazing journalistic style. Read full review
Review: Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970
User Review - ben - Goodreadsamanda sent this book my way for my bday (i think) because I was venting to her about how minimized the african american women were by black leaders during the civil rights movement. i kept reading ... Read full review
Review: Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970
User Review - GoodreadsWonderfuly researched and skillfully written, the stories of the women, white and black, of the civil rights movement, who were often there long before the nationally known "leaders" showed up. Fascinating.
Review: Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970
User Review - Chris - GoodreadsBook focuses more on the contributions of white women to the civil rights movement, than I expected, but still a pretty solid work. Read full review
Review: Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970
User Review - Holly - GoodreadsWhat amazing women!! It's a shame MLK gets disproportionate credit for the actual organizing and dirty work during the Civil Rights Movement that was greatly done by women. In my 1960s history class ... Read full review
Review: Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970
User Review - Kit - GoodreadsSomething I'd like to see all of my daughters (step, -in-law, grand, and ...) read. Particularly if you'd like to know about the early civil rights and feminist movements. Read full review
