Martha Prescod Norman Noonan Martha Prescod Norman Noonan is noteworthy for her work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the Civil Rights Movement. Noonan’s most notable achievements include raising money for SNCC, canvassing votes with the Albany Project, working on the Alabama Project, and contributing to Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Account by Women in SNCC.
Biographical Information Martha Prescod Norman Noonan was born on February 25, 1945 in Providence, Rhode Island to a family of activists (Civil Rights History Project). Noonan’s father, who is of West-Indian descent, was involved in efforts for Pan-West Indian Unity (Civil Rights History Project). Both of her parents were members of the
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At the University of Michigan, Noonan attended a luncheon talk by Curtis Hayes, a worker for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which was a student-run civil rights organization (Noonan 484). Meeting Hayes, who was almost the same age as her, inspired Noonan to join the Movement (Noonan 484). Soon after, Tom Hayden, who had just returned from a Freedom Ride in Georgia, spoke with Noonan about his experiences and further inspired, as well as encouraged, Noonan to work with the Movement (Noonan 484). In 1962, Noonan attended a joint SNCC and Students for a Democratic Society (which she was a member of at the time) conference, where she spoke with various SNCC workers (Noonan 484). These conversations convinced Noonan of the logic and practicality of their organization’s vision, and the members’ welcoming spirit convinced Noonan to join SNCC’s work with the Southern Freedom Movement (Noonan 485). After her freshman year at the University of Michigan, Noonan told her parents she wanted to drop-out of school to work in Mississippi as a full-time civil rights organizer (Noonan 485). Her parents strongly feared for her safety and, since she was still underage, her parents insisted she take summer classes in Detroit and find a civil rights activity closer to home (Noonan 485). That summer, Noonan took classes taught by local radicals, Seymour Faber and George Rawick, who
Jane Addams is recognized as a social and political pioneer for women in America. In her biography, which later revealed her experiences in Hull House, she demonstrates her altruistic personality, which nurtured the poor and pushed for social reforms. Although many of Addams ideas were considered radical for her time, she provided women with a socially acceptable way to participate in both political and social change. She defied the prototypical middle class women by integrating the line that separated private and political life. Within these walls of the settlement house, Addams redefined the idea of ?separate spheres,? and with relentless determination, she
Sojourner Truth once remarked, in reply to an allusion to the late Horace Greeley, "You call him a self-made man; well, I am a self-made woman” (Gilbert, v). This quote digs deeper into the leadership of what Sojourner Truth’s journey was all about. Truth’s greatest commitments for women’s suffrage stood alongside of her remark to Greely. No woman was just to be a housewife or slave to her own family, but to be able to enjoy the world as man did. Sojourner Truth was an important figure in American History because she helped create a pathway for the ideas of feminism and the justices of racial equality.
In her early years, Shirley Chisholm was separated from her parents and lived in the Barbados. Through this experience, she was able to prove her willpower by being a studious student in school despite the hardship she faced of being away from her parents. This determination benefited her when she came back home to the racist and misogynistic United States at ten years old. Her exceptional grade statuses helped her graduate at the top of her class and earn a scholarship to college so that she could pursue her dream as a school teacher. After she became a teacher, she was content with her position; but after observing lower wages, verbal assaults such as a woman being asked, “Do you type?” when given an interview, and many other discrepancies that blacks and women endured, she became more alert in the brutal society around her and turned to politics.
In her time in the SNCC, Anne canvassed in the Delta to try and get blacks to register to vote. While canvassing, she faced discrimination from not only whites, but African Americans too. The blacks in the Delta turn Anne away because they have heard stories of what the whites will do if you claim to be involved in the SNCC. Through working with the SNCC, Anne Moody realized that by joining the movement, she was about to be a part of a big change.
Washington D.C. Daughter of Dr. William S. Lofton who was a well known black dentist and
In the first presentation, I noticed an event called the Greensboro Sit-ins. This was a single event that sparked a nationwide movement and flood of support for the civil rights movement and the issue of business owners withholding service from those who were not white. On February 1st, 1960, 4 students of the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at a whites-only lunch table, requested service, and were then denied and asked to leave. When they left, they went to tell campus leaders what had happened and as a result gained people that wanted to participate in the sit-in. It is said that “the next morning twenty-nine neatly dressed male and female [NCATSU] students sat at the Woolworth’s lunch counter,” the same counter where those first four students sat (NorthCarolinaHistory.org). After this happened, protests occurred each week and hundreds of students were showing up at Woolworth’s. Following this, more and more students from around the US were staging sit ins at segregated lunch counters as a form of non-violent protest against discrimination.
I learned how Ida B. Wells-Barnett started her life. Born as a slave, orphaned at 16, she became a teacher to support her surviving brothers and sisters. With the difficult circumstances brought upon her, it took an amazing amount of determination for her to fight for black civil rights and women’s rights in the 19th century. In a more civilized age, it’s harder to witness the courage she represented for the disadvantaged.
The word activist or feminist, it invokes a picture in the mind of a person who is strong, resilient, and unafraid to stand up for what they believe in. Martha P. Cotera does not fulfill this picture at first glance, but she has done great work with the Chicano Movement and the Chicana Feminist Movement. More than you would think could come out of a librarian.
On Easter weekend in 1960, as a college student, Bond wound up as a pioneering member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The committee which grasped on all the
Throughout a life that stretched from slavery into her civil rights movement, Anna Julia Cooper defended the rights of all people to dignity, education, and respect. As an educated, competent, independent woman, she faced the double challenge of being African American and female in a society that was deeply racist and sexist, but with confidence and elegance, she challenged society’s assumptions about her. Her life was dedicated to the education of all people, but especially to taking care of the minds of black girls. “Throughout her activist adherence to her ideals, she provided an example of individual excellence rendered incandescent by service to the human community” (Berson, 1994).
Through these organizations, Anne had become actively involved in the civil rights movement. She soon realized, though, that there were a lot of preconditions that were needed to achieve significant social change in the black community. Many of the projects Anne worked on, lacked support from the black community. She did not realize how much she would be harassed by the white people because she was fighting the rights of black people. The main preconditions for social change in the 1950s and 1960s, was getting the black community to support the various projects SNCC and the NAACP were working on. The black people they were fighting for did not always like the projects that Anne, and the other young people in SNCC, had been doing. Many black people tended to ignore the efforts of the SNCC because they were afraid of change. It took a lot of work to convince the black community to support the various projects the young people of SNCC were doing. An example of a project that the black community supported extensively, was Freedom Summer. This project would not have been successful if the black community did not support this. The Freedom Summer project proved to be a success because the black community went out and voted. This proved to the federal government, that black people were interested in gaining voting rights. Anne Moody had thought about joining the National Association for the
Martha Graham was one of the most influential figures in American modern dance, and her techniques and styles are still practiced today. She became widely known throughout all ages and decades. Her first debut was in the 1920's. As time went on, she became more experienced and wiser in the modern dance field. Martha Graham, whose style was considered controversial, became one of the finest choreographers and dancers in the dance world.
Another significant transformation took place in the Civil Rights Movement in terms of its strategies. In analyzing this facet of the movement, we notice a great shift from nonviolent demonstration to forward, forceful action. Specifically, at the start of the Civil Rights Movement, lunch counter sit-ins were evident throughout the nation, as were Freedom Riders. Starting in Greensboro, North Carolina at a luncheonette called Woolworths, young black citizens would seat
Her work experience and historical knowledge is clear, and her historical facts and figures can be checked using the many primary and secondary sources she sites in her bibliography. However, she does tend to focus on minute details of the lives of the women she discusses that are of lesser importance than their achievement or political lives, such as the explanation of Felton’s husband’s career and political viewpoints. However, her narrative gives insight into the differing values of white and black women at the time and what was seen to be acceptable for a woman, and a woman of color, to say and do, as well as the consequences they faced for defying racism, male-dominance and widespread
One of the most elements of the book is the evolution of the organization called SNCC. SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) was founded in conjunction with the lunch counter sit0ins that originated in Greensboro, North Carolina in February 1960. SNCC activists were known to practice slow, tedious and patient voter registration drives in the most dangerous parts of the South. However, they seldom received credit for their efforts on a national level. Despite their lack of national attention, SNCC activists often managed to annoy white federal officials and black civil rights leaders. SNCC attracted radicals from the Revolutionary Action Movement, black nationalists from the North and a host of other mavericks. From its humble beginnings, SNCC was a peaceful group that used nonviolent methods to seek racial equality. Over the course of time, SNCC became more assertive in their methods of demanding racial equality and