Date of Award
Spring 5-2015
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
History
Department
History
Major Professor
Nikki Brown
Second Advisor
Connie Atkinson
Third Advisor
Mary Mitchell
Abstract
This paper examines the experiences of rural black women in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement by examining correspondence of the grassroots anti-poverty organization the Box Project. The Box Project, founded in 1962 by white Vermont resident and radical activist Virginia Naeve, provided direct relief to black families living in Mississippi but also opened positive and clandestine lines of communication between southern black women and outsiders, most often white women. The efforts of the Box Project have been largely left out of the dialogue surrounding Civil Rights, which has often been dominated by leading figures, major events and national organizations. This paper seeks to understand the discreet but effective ways in which some black women, though constrained by motherhood, abject poverty, and rural isolation participated in the Civil Rights Movement, and how black and white women worked together to chip away at the foundations of inequality that Jim Crow produced.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Walker, Pamela N., ""Pray for Me and My Kids": Correspondence between Rural Black Women and White Northern Women During the Civil Rights Movement" (2015). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1999.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1999
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.