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June
E. Johnson
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“I didn't know a lot about racism. I didn't
know White folks hated Black folks so bad. You know, we washed
their children’s behinds, we cleaned their clothes,
we cleaned their houses, we did everything for them…
But once the movement came in, and I got a chance to get a
touch of it for myself, it was quite clear, that we were in
a real, real, real bad struggle.”
June Johnson was only 14 years old when she joined SNCC,
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and got involved
with the Civil Rights movement. Even a girl of this young
age was not immune from the brutality suffered by Civil Rights
workers. When she and Fannie Lou Hamer among others were returning
from a training session in North Carolina, they were arrested
when they tried to integrate a lunch counter. She was jailed
and brutally beaten. June remains an outspoken proponent of
Civil Rights and works as a program monitor for the District
of Columbia in the department of Early Childhood Development. |
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland
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“Now if whites were going to riot when
black students were going to white schools, what were they
going to do if a white student went to a black school?”
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland was raised in Virginia, but played
an important part in the Mississippi Civil Rights movement
when she applied to the black Tougaloo College. She felt integration
should not be left solely to the black students. On arrival
in Mississippi, she was arrested for her Civil Rights activities,
and spent the summer at Hines County jail. She was an active
SNCC
member and participated in the first sit-in at the Jackson
Woolworth’s. What started out as a peaceful demonstration,
erupted into mob violence. When someone grabbed Joan by her
hair and dragged her through the hostile crowd toward the
exit, she managed to break free and rejoin the sit-in. This
incident was a catalyst for the student Civil Rights movement
in Jackson. She now teaches Civil Rights History to her elementary
school students in Arlington, Virginia. |
Constance
Iona Slaughter-Harvey
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“I had to step on my toes in order to
be seen for our class picture. The guys did not want me in
their picture because that was breaking a barrier.”
Constance Iona Slaughter-Harvey became the first African American
woman to graduate from the University of Mississippi’s
Law School and to integrate the Mississippi Bar Association.
She faced prejudice and discrimination from the all-white,
all-male law students.  She
went on to become Assistant Secretary of State in Mississippi
and also was appointed to the Presidential Scholars Commission
by President Carter. A successful attorney she now runs her
own law firm specializing in civil rights cases.
Her daughter, Constance Olivia Slaughter-Harvey, wants to
carry on the torch. She says, “I'm going to be a judge
and that's because I want to make sure that what my mother
has fought for...will not be in vain.” |
L.C.
Dorsey-Young, D.S.W.
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“The four girls that I brought into this
world and two sons can stand on my shoulders and the shoulders
of my contemporaries to reach higher than their grandmothers
ever dreamed...”
L.C. Dorsey started life as a sharecropper
where at a young age experienced and understood the unfairness
of the system. During the Civil Rights movement she was an
activist with Head
Start and she devoted her life to building economic independence
in oppressed black communities of the Mississippi Delta. Her
years of work with the prison system in the state led her
to write many articles and the book COLD STEEL, an exposé
about life in Parchman, Mississippi’s state penitentiary.
She received her Master’s degree in Social Work from
Stony Brook University in New York and is a Professor at Mississippi
Valley State University. |
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"It
was less risky for the women to be in positions of high profile.
We were less likely to lose our lives."
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