Honoring Women of the Civil Rights Era/ Nonviolent Tradition

This month, we honor some (by no means all!) of the wonderful women of the civil rights era who have changed our lives through both their brilliant ideas and writings and their bold actions. Their contributions continue to have local, national, and international impact on the movement against exploitation and oppression. 

The work of radical and revolutionary women in the US has and continues to be repressed through state legislation, executive actions, and efforts by state boards of education to ban or omit critical perspectives of US history. (See: Demobilizing knowledge in American schools: censoring critical perspectives | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications). Even when movements are recognized, the role of the most marginalized groups within these movements, particularly women, are rarely highlighted. The civil rights movement era is no exception. The women of the nonviolent tradition have made extraordinary contributions both behind the scenes and, at times, leading the charge. 

Ella Baker

Ella Baker, 1964, Photo by Danny Lyon from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, 12

Ella Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia. She moved to North Carolina with her grandparents after her family fled racial violence targeting Black workers and became actively involved in resisting injustices while a student at Shaw University. In 1931, she joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL), a network of Black cooperatives, a black anarchist consumers’ and workers’ cooperatives across the country, aiming to end capitalism. Baker later became the organization's first national director, where she traveled across the country to meet with different chapters and promote the organization’s efforts.

She was active in several other efforts, including teaching in the education program of the Works Progress Administration, protests against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and other grassroots movements in New York City. In 1938, Baker joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as an assistant field secretary and later became a director of branches. 

Baker preferred to uplift grassroots efforts and group-based leadership instead of a single, charismatic leader or top-down leadership, which was demonstrated by her consistent efforts to empower and organize the most marginalized portions of society to take organized action. Baker worked with Bayard Rustin to create by-laws and strategy for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference but her commitment to grassroots empowerment created tension between herself and other leaders in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during her time in the organization. She continued her work in grassroots organizing and famously brought together student activists, facilitating the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She continued to advise SNCC and mentored many revolutionaries such as John Lewis and Kwame Ture (previously Stokely Carmichael). In 1964, Baker helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as an alternative to the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party. Baker supported the Puerto Rican independence movement and, internationally, she spoke out against apartheid South Africa. She allied with a number of women's groups, including the Third World Women's Alliance and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Ella Baker passed on December 13, 1986, her 83rd birthday.

Dorothy Cotton

Dorothy Cotton, Photo from the Dorothy Cotton Institute via The Kansas City Star

Dorothy Cotton was born on June 9, 1930, in Goldsboro, North Carolina. She and her three sisters were raised by their father, a tobacco factory worker. She attended Shaw University before transferring to Virginia State University, where she majored in English and paid her tuition by working multiple jobs, including as a housekeeper for the university president. She later earned a master’s degree in speech therapy from Boston University.

Cotton became active in organizing while at Virginia State. After joining a local church led by Wyatt Tee Walker, then regional NAACP director, she began teaching children how to conduct picket campaigns and direct actions at his request. When Martin Luther King Jr. invited Walker to Atlanta to help form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Walker brought Cotton along, beginning her decades-long work with Dr. King.

At the SCLC, Cotton started as Walker’s administrative assistant, later becoming an educational consultant and then education director of the Citizenship Education Program, which is written about in her book, If Your Back's Not Bent: The Role of the Citizenship Education Program in the Civil Rights Movement. She taught literacy, citizenship, and nonviolent protest tactics, and worked to register voters across the South. Like Ella Baker, she believed that mass movements are built from the grassroots up, not by individual leaders. She continued this work with the SCLC until 1972.

After leaving the SCLC, Cotton directed a federal Child Development program in Birmingham, served as vice president for field operations at the King Center in Atlanta, and later became director of student activities at Cornell University. Upon her retirement in 1991, she founded the Dorothy Cotton Institute to advance global human rights as an affiliate of Cornell. Most notably, the institute organized a historic delegation of mostly veterans of the black freedom struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s that traveled to Palestine. 

Dorothy Cotton passed away in 2018.

Claudette Colvin

Claudette Colvin at age 15, Public Domain Via Catholic Review

Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. She attended Booker T. Washington School in Montgomery, a segregated school for Black students. From a young age, Claudette was aware of the injustices of segregation and famously challenged its policies at just 15 years old. On March 2, 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks' more widely known act, Claudette refused to give up her seat to a white passenger while riding a city bus home from school. She later recalled: “I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other saying, ‘Sit down girl!’ I was glued to my seat.” She was arrested, convicted of violating segregation laws and assaulting officers, and sentenced to probation.

Despite her courage, Claudette’s act remained largely unknown, especially compared to Rosa Parks’ similar protest later that year. The NAACP considered using her case to challenge segregation but ultimately decided against it, concerned that her age and status as an expectant mother would distract from the legal issues. However, Colvin, along with three other Black women, later challenged Montgomery’s bus segregation in court and won a case that ultimately ruled the system unconstitutional.

Decades later, with support from civil rights leaders, Claudette successfully petitioned to have her juvenile records expunged, stating, “Having my records expunged will mean something to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. And it will mean something for other Black children.”

Claudette Colvin worked as a nurse aide in New York City until her retirement in 2004. She passed away in January 2026. Though her name remains lesser known, the impact of her actions continues to resonate.

Here at On Earth Peace, our trainings highlight the spectacular women who contributed to the Kingian Nonviolence tradition alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To learn more about our trainings, please reach out to us at [email protected] 

Sources

Baker, Ella Josephine | The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

Censorship of Critical Perspectives in American Schools: : Policy Briefs: Education Policy: Center for Evaluation and Education Policy: School of Education: Indiana University Bloomington

Claudette Colvin: Biography, Civil Rights, Bus Boycott, Death

Claudette Colvin: The spark before Rosa Parks - Catholic Review

Demobilizing knowledge in American schools: censoring critical perspectives | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Dorothy Cotton, June 9, 1930 - June 10, 2018 | The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

Dorothy Cotton, Southern Activist born - African American Registry

In memoriam through June 15: Dorothy Cotton, Neal Boyd | Kansas City Star

The SCLC and the Birth of SNCC | Civil Rights Women Leaders of the Carolinas

Remembering Dorothy Cotton, freedom educator | openDemocracy

Who Was Ella Baker? - Ella Baker Center for Human Rights