Mamie Till-Mobley chose to have an open-casket funeral for her son, Emmet, a sweet-faced child of 14 who had been tortured, shot in the face, tied at the throat by barbed wire to a heavy fan and thrown into a Mississippi river. The 1955 trial for the accused White men acquitted them. Decades later, the White woman who accused Emmett of whistling at her recanted her story. Seeing Emmett’s body, destroyed in an act of racist rage set into motion by a lie, rightfully turned stomachs and hardened a collective resolve.
Navigating this world as a Black woman – parent or otherwise – takes tenacity, grit and the ability to envision a future that dares to hope. Often, the photos that show people on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement feature men. But look more closely at the photos of the era, and there we are: Black women. Leading. Katie G. Cannon. Mary McLeod Bethune. Vera Swann, Thelma D. Adair, Melva Costen. Churchwomen who hoped, prayed and worked.
In the February 2025 issue of the Outlook focused on civil rights, Hunter Farrell reviews AnnMarie Mingo’s book, Have You Got Good Religion? Black Women’s Faith, Courage and Moral Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement, and its first-person accounts of Black churchwomen who led the Civil Rights Movement from their marginalized locations. Mingo writes, “(These Black Churchwomen) understand faith as an anchor and guide for radical resistance of any system or structure that limits human flourishing … When White Christians, including women, did all they could to reinforce the construction of White superiority that saw Black life as disposable during the periods of enslavement, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, Black women knew the religion these White Christians embraced was not good.”
