Week 5: Worksheet (Answer each question with 4-6 sentences)
Barbara Collins Bowie was born in 1947 in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson was the place where over one hundred freedom riders were jailed and the city where the organization “Womanpower Unlimited” was founded (Tiyi Morris reading). In this clip, Collins Bowie talks about her experiences growing up during segregation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3XX3Pi2QMQ [Watch time: 11:47]
What points were most shocking to you about how African Americans during segregation? Where there aspects of how segregation affected the lives of African Americans that you weren’t aware of before?
Why is it important to hear these first-hand accounts of racism in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s (the civil rights movement era), such as Collins Bowie’s?
The following clip shows Moses Newson, a Black journalist who covered the freedom rides for Black-owned newspapers, recounting his experience of joining the rides and traveling in a bus with the freedom riders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxe9dJoZ-AQ [Watch time: 6:53]
Hearing Newson recount his experiences, what is particularly striking to you? What examples does he name of how white Southerners tried to intimidate the Black and white civil rights activists?
The following clip is a panel discussion with historians who focus on various aspects of the country’s civil rights history. The panel was part of the Mississippi Book Festival, which was held in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2015. Tiyi Morris, whose chapter of her book Womanpower Unlimited: The Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi you read for this week, is one of the panelists. She discusses the book as well as her research methods.
The video is 1 hour long, however, I only want you to watch the following excerpts (which are the ones that focus on Morris and her research):
From beginning of video to minute 3:22
From minute 6:00 – minute 12:35
From minute 41:50 – minute 44:00
https://www.c-span.org/video/?327594-4/mississippi-book-festival-panel-discussion-civil-rights-history
Why is scholarship like Tiyi Morris’ essential to our understanding of American history/Black women’s history? Why is it important to learn about local organizations that Black women founded during the civil rights era, instead of just learning about national and more well-known organizations, such as Dr. Martin Luther King’s organization, the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)?
How did Tiyi Morris approach her research to the topic? What kind of primary sources was she able to use?