Mary King Research Articles

MOW to NOW: Black Feminism Resets the Chronology of the Founding of Modern Feminism

736 Feminist Studies 44, no. 3. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Carol Giardina MOW to NOW: Black Feminism Resets the Chronology of the Founding of Modern Feminism The first meeting of feminist protest in the 1960s was called to order by Dorothy Height, the president of the 800,000-member National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), in Washington, DC, on August 29, 1963. It was the day after the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (MOW).1 “We could hardly believe that after all we were doing in the Civil Rights Movement,” Height recalls, “the women came to feel that they were getting a kind of runaround” as they sought and were denied fair representation in the march because of their sex.2 “I was determined,” she said in her 2003 memoir, “to bring wise women together to learn and gather strength from the experience.”3 As “women talked freely of their concern about women’s participation,” Height observed, “we began to realize that if we did not . . . demand our rights, we were not going to get them. The women became much more aware and much more aggressive in facing up to sexism in our dealings with 1. Dorothy Height, Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 146. 2. Dorothy Height, “We Wanted the Voice of a Woman to Be Heard,” in Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement, ed. Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 88. 3. Height, Open Wide, 146. Carol Giardina 737 the male leadership in the movement.”4 “That moment,” Height recalled, “was vital to awakening the women’s movement.”5 Black women’s fight for representation in the MOW appears narrowly framed in scholarly literature as a specific and isolated reaction to the sexism of male MOW planners. I argue, however, that the campaign of feminist protest meetings surrounding the MOW—and the political lessons that emerged—was a starting point in the chronology of the rebirth years of feminist upheaval in the 1960s. Why? Because the lessons of that campaign provided the crucial conceptual model of an “NAACP for women” that would be consciously and purposely adopted by the newly forming National Organization for Women (NOW). Together with Height, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, the only woman on the MOW planning committee, and longtime co-conspirator Pauli Murray, who spearheaded the MOW protests, were critical actors in NOW’s formation and brought the model to NOW’s more well-known white organizers. This model, and the Black women who developed it, opened the trajectory that led to NOW’s establishment in 1966, the first feminist organization of the decade. Black scholar activist Bernice Johnson Reagon called the Civil Rights Movement the “borning” struggle of its time.6 By the early 1960s, the impact of this phase of civil rights mobilization was felt nationwide from lunch counters in small towns to Congress and the Supreme Court. Since at least the 1955–1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, many thousands of African American women had been protesting, organizing, staging sit-ins and jail-ins, writing treatises, and giving speeches for Black civil rights. Although some white women did participate in the Civil Rights Movement, there were far fewer of them than African American women. Because of African American women’s collective confrontation with white supremacy, more of them were positioned to grasp the systemic nature of male supremacy and the need to fight it collectively. They understood sexism sooner than most white women because they 4. Height, “We Wanted the Voice,” 88–89. 5. Height, Open Wide, 145. 6. Mary King, Casey Hayden, Jean Wheeler Smith, Joyce Ladner, Prathia Hall, Kathie Sarachild, Michael Thelwell, and Bernice Johnson Reagon, “SNCC Women and the Stirrings of Feminism,” in A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC, ed. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 150. 738 Carol Giardina had already learned the operations of power and exploitation. They were best prepared to challenge female oppression, as were the white women who participated in the Civil Rights Movement. After all, if the established order could be pushed back when it...

MOW to NOW: Black Feminism Resets the Chronology of the Founding of Modern Feminism

736 Feminist Studies 44, no. 3. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Carol Giardina MOW to NOW: Black Feminism Resets the Chronology of the Founding of Modern Feminism The first meeting of feminist protest in the 1960s was called to order by Dorothy Height, the president of the 800,000-member National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), in Washington, DC, on August 29, 1963. It was the day after the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (MOW).1 “We could hardly believe that after all we were doing in the Civil Rights Movement,” Height recalls, “the women came to feel that they were getting a kind of runaround” as they sought and were denied fair representation in the march because of their sex.2 “I was determined,” she said in her 2003 memoir, “to bring wise women together to learn and gather strength from the experience.”3 As “women talked freely of their concern about women’s participation,” Height observed, “we began to realize that if we did not . . . demand our rights, we were not going to get them. The women became much more aware and much more aggressive in facing up to sexism in our dealings with 1. Dorothy Height, Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 146. 2. Dorothy Height, “We Wanted the Voice of a Woman to Be Heard,” in Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement, ed. Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 88. 3. Height, Open Wide, 146. Carol Giardina 737 the male leadership in the movement.”4 “That moment,” Height recalled, “was vital to awakening the women’s movement.”5 Black women’s fight for representation in the MOW appears narrowly framed in scholarly literature as a specific and isolated reaction to the sexism of male MOW planners. I argue, however, that the campaign of feminist protest meetings surrounding the MOW—and the political lessons that emerged—was a starting point in the chronology of the rebirth years of feminist upheaval in the 1960s. Why? Because the lessons of that campaign provided the crucial conceptual model of an “NAACP for women” that would be consciously and purposely adopted by the newly forming National Organization for Women (NOW). Together with Height, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, the only woman on the MOW planning committee, and longtime co-conspirator Pauli Murray, who spearheaded the MOW protests, were critical actors in NOW’s formation and brought the model to NOW’s more well-known white organizers. This model, and the Black women who developed it, opened the trajectory that led to NOW’s establishment in 1966, the first feminist organization of the decade. Black scholar activist Bernice Johnson Reagon called the Civil Rights Movement the “borning” struggle of its time.6 By the early 1960s, the impact of this phase of civil rights mobilization was felt nationwide from lunch counters in small towns to Congress and the Supreme Court. Since at least the 1955–1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, many thousands of African American women had been protesting, organizing, staging sit-ins and jail-ins, writing treatises, and giving speeches for Black civil rights. Although some white women did participate in the Civil Rights Movement, there were far fewer of them than African American women. Because of African American women’s collective confrontation with white supremacy, more of them were positioned to grasp the systemic nature of male supremacy and the need to fight it collectively. They understood sexism sooner than most white women because they 4. Height, “We Wanted the Voice,” 88–89. 5. Height, Open Wide, 145. 6. Mary King, Casey Hayden, Jean Wheeler Smith, Joyce Ladner, Prathia Hall, Kathie Sarachild, Michael Thelwell, and Bernice Johnson Reagon, “SNCC Women and the Stirrings of Feminism,” in A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC, ed. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 150. 738 Carol Giardina had already learned the operations of power and exploitation. They were best prepared to challenge female oppression, as were the white women who participated in the Civil Rights Movement. After all, if the established order could be pushed back when it...

Bastards: A Memoirby Mary Anna King; New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, 248 pages

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessBastards: A MemoirM. M. Naveen, M.D.M. M. NaveenSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:3 Oct 2016https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.671010AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail by Mary Anna King; New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, 248 pagesBastards is a funny, entertaining, and bittersweet story of longing for human connectedness. It is a young woman’s account of her chaotic life journey to find an identity and her place in the world. Mary King is the second oldest of seven children who were born to a set of parents who were “great at making babies, but not so great at holding on to them.” Along with her older and only brother, Jacob, Mary lives through the birth and subsequent loss of five younger sisters who were all given away by her mother and adopted separately, by four different families. Mary leads a fractured life—one that is marked by sibling disruption and displacement. Mary herself is eventually adopted by her grandfather and his wife, Mimi. Despite a new name and a new family, Mary is haunted by the loss of her mother and another loss in the family. Not until Mary is in college does the first of her long lost sisters get in touch with her. Then, one by one, Mary and her siblings reunite to reform a family. The book concludes with Mary and her sisters preparing to be bridesmaids at their brother’s wedding, and Mary remarks, “It didn’t matter how we had gotten here, what had gone right or wrong in our lives. In that moment, we were a world unto ourselves. We were complete.”This book describes our universal drive to know where we come from—whether we are part of a stable family unit or live a confusing life like Mary’s, in which she was both a daughter and a sister to her own mother. Bastards puts into perspective the challenges faced by adopted children to create a family out of virtually just their imagination. Although it painfully reminds us of the truth that there “cannot be winners without losers,” it demonstrates the power of hope and attachment. It illustrates the importance of empathy and forgiveness. It defines love as not just an intensely held affection for another person, but as a need—a thing that is required in the course of development.Bastards is a must read for anyone who has been involved with the process of adoption. For clinicians, it provides a view into the spectrum of emotions that adoption can influence a child to experience, even years after the fact. It is a firsthand illustration of the importance of family.Dr. Naveen is with the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore.The reviewer reports no financial relationships with commercial interests. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 67Issue 10 October 01, 2016Pages e15-e15 Metrics PDF download History Published online 3 October 2016 Published in print 1 October 2016

Process industries: Mitigating the fouling menace

Fouling or the undesired accumulation of solid material on a surface is an increasingly prevalent and challenging problem in processing plants across many industries. Advanced analysis for fouling mitigation and separation technology selection can assist, explain Scott Williams, Mary King and David B. Engel of Nexo Solutions.

"Almost Eliza": Genre, Racialization, and Reading Mary King as the Mixed-Race Heroine of William G. Allen's The American Prejudice Against Color

"Almost Eliza": Genre, Racialization, and Reading Mary King as the Mixed-Race Heroine of William G. Allen's The American Prejudice Against Color

Revisiting the Second Wave

Abstract This interview between Professor Mary King and Elizabeth Jacobs took place at the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford University, during the course of 2004 and 2005. Mary King's work as Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies for the United Nations takes her to all corners of the globe. On this occasion she had returned to the United Kingdom to present a research paper at the international conference “The United States and Global Human Rights” held at Oxford University. The timing of the interview was made pertinent by this context and by the fact that it was almost forty years to the day after the main subject of the interview—the position paper by Mary King and Casey Hayden titled “Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo”—first appeared at the SNCC retreat in Waveland, Mississippi in the fall of 1964. The paper was later published in the April 1966 issue of the pacifist and transatlantic War Resisters League Liberation magazine, and became a key text of second-wave feminism.

An Inter‐Racial Love Story in Fact and Fiction: William and Mary King Allen's Marriage and Louisa May Alcott's Tale, ‘M.L.’

An Inter‐Racial Love Story in Fact and Fiction: William and Mary King Allen's Marriage and Louisa May Alcott's Tale, ‘M.L.’

Book Review: Handbook of Neurologic Investigations in Children, by John Stephenson and Mary King. Published in 1989 by Butter-worth, Stoneham, MA, 244 pages, $70.00

Book Review: Handbook of Neurologic Investigations in Children, by John Stephenson and Mary King. Published in 1989 by Butter-worth, Stoneham, MA, 244 pages, $70.00

Report to Parents on the Study of the Aboriginal Secondary Grants Scheme

In Volume 4 No. 4, we published extracts from “Access to Education: An Evaluation of the Aboriginal Secondary Grants Scheme”. In this issue I have included the report on the evaluation which I wrote for the Aboriginal and Islander parents who participated in the evaluation program; all participating parents were posted a copy. I believe it is important for them to know the results of the research to which they contributed and which, indeed, would not have been possible without their willing co-operation. In this report to parents I have indicated the extent to which the recommendations have been implemented by the Australian Government …B.H.W.In 1974, the Government asked me if I would find out how well the Aboriginal Secondary Grants Scheme was working, how the children were getting on, and how the parents felt about it. They also asked me to make any recommendations about the Scheme that I thought would make it better.I worked with a group of people on this because we needed to talk to Aboriginal and Islander secondary students and their parents all round Australia. The map on the back page shows the towns that we visited. In our group, there were Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people who talked to the students and their parents. The Aboriginal people were Mrs Mary King, Mrs Alice Stephan, Mrs Rita Huggins, Mrs Belle McLeod, Miss Marie Callope, Miss Edwina Merrypor and Miss Sue Chilly. The non-Aboriginal people were Mrs Pat Garcia, Mr Bob Lingard, Mr Richard Guy, Mrs Alice Fry, Mrs Marilyn Redlich, Mrs Jan Lord and myself.

MARY KING

Medical Journal of AustraliaVolume 2, Issue 3 p. 134-134 Obituary MARY KING First published: 01 July 1967 https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1967.tb73927.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume2, Issue3July 1967Pages 134-134 RelatedInformation

New books

EUROPE Historical Geography on a Regional Basis. Vol. II.—Europe. By Ernest W. Dann, B.A. (Oxon.). London : J. M. Dent and Co., 1908. Price 2s. 6d. Pentland Walks, with their Literary and Historical Associations. Compiled and Edited by Robert Cochrane. Edinburgh : Andrew Elliot, 1908. Price 1s. Russia's New Era. By R. G. Barrett, F.R.G.S., Editor of The Financier and Bullionist. Published at its Office in London, 1908. Price 6s. Valladolid, Oviedo, Segovia, Zamora, Avila, and Zaragoza : An Historical and Descriptive Account. By Albert F. Calvert. With 413 Illustrations. London and New York : John Lane and Company, 1908. Chateau and Country Life in France. By Mary King Waddington. London : Smith, Elder and Co., 1908. Price 10s. 6d. net. AFRICA Pleasure and Problem in South Africa. By Cecil Harmsworth, M.P. With 24 Illustrations reproduced from Photographs. London : John Lane, 1908. Price 5s. net. AMERICA The Falls of Niagara : Their Evolution and Varying Relations to the Great Lakes; Characteristics of the Power, and the Effects of its Diversion. By Joseph William Wintheop Spencer, M.A., Ph.D., F.G.S. Canada : Department of Mines, Geological Survey Branch. GENERAL A Rational Geography. By Ernest Young. Part III. London : George Philip and Son, Limited, 1908. Price 1s. 6d. Applied Geography : A Preliminary Sketch. By J. Scott Keltie, LL.D. Second Edition. London : G. Philip and Son, 1908. Price 2s. 6d. Commercial Geography. By Henry Gannett, Carl L. Garrison, and Edwin J. Houston. New York : American Book Company. London : George Philip and Son, 1908. Price 6s.

Note by James Peddie, Esq., C.E., F.S.A. Scot., respecting a Sculptured Stone found in taking down a house at the foot of Mary King's Close, Edinburgh

Note by James Peddie, Esq., C.E., F.S.A. Scot., respecting a Sculptured Stone found in taking down a house at the foot of Mary King's Close, Edinburgh