Wednesdays in Mississippi was an activist group during the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

during the 1960s. Northern women of different races and faiths traveled to

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

to develop relationships with their southern peers and to create bridges of understanding across regional, racial, and class lines. By opening communications across societal boundaries, Wednesday’s Women sought to end violence and to cushion the transition towards racial integration.

Background

In the spring of 1964 Dorothy I. Height, President of the

National Council of Negro Women The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1935 with the mission to advance the opportunities and the quality of life for African-American women, their families, and communities. Mary McLeod Bethune, the f ...

(NCNW), working with NCNW volunteer Polly Spiegel Cowan, came up with the idea of sending weekly teams of northern women to Mississippi. The teams were

interracial Interracial topics include: * Interracial marriage, marriage between two people of different races ** Interracial marriage in the United States *** 2009 Louisiana interracial marriage incident * Interracial adoption, placing a child of one raci ...

and

interfaith Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions (i.e. "faiths") and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels. It is ...

. They would leave for Mississippi on a Tuesday and return on a Thursday. They were there all day on Wednesday, the program was known as "Wednesdays in Mississippi." Competent, well connected, and educated, these women worked with Freedom Summer and the

Freedom Schools Freedom Schools were temporary, alternative, and free schools for African Americans mostly in the South. They were originally part of a nationwide effort during the Civil Rights Movement to organize African Americans to achieve social, political and ...

. In 1964, Height and Cowan brought Doris Wilson and Susie Goodwillie into Wednesdays in Mississippi to direct the project from

Jackson, Mississippi Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the capital of and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, along with Raymond. The city had a population of 153,701 at t ...

. The black women from the north visited with black women from the south; the white women from the north reached out to white women in the south. The women from the north went home with a fresh commitment to social and racial justice. In 1965 they came again, this time on a more professional level, speaking teacher to teacher and social worker to social worker. In 1966 Wednesdays in Mississippi became Workshops in Mississippi, an ongoing effort to help black women and families, and

poor white Poor White is a sociocultural classification used to describe economically disadvantaged Whites in the English-speaking world, especially White Americans with low incomes. In the United States, Poor White (or Poor Whites of the South for ...

women and families, achieve economic self-betterment. In 2020, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Sun'n'Sands Motel in Jackson as one of America's most endangered historic places, because of its connection to the Wednesdays in Mississippi movement.

Goals

The women of Wednesdays in Mississippi had many goals: * racial justice; * inter-racial, inter-regional, and inter-faith communications; * working across racial and religious boundaries, opening the closed society of Mississippi; * supporting the freedom schools and

voter registration In electoral systems, voter registration (or enrollment) is the requirement that a person otherwise eligible to vote must register (or enroll) on an electoral roll, which is usually a prerequisite for being entitled or permitted to vote. The r ...

; * helping poor women in Mississippi learn how to help themselves, how to achieve economic self-sufficiency. They taught poor women how to survive in a society where the cotton economy had collapsed for poor tenants and laborers, and where a viable new economic structure not yet developed; * and expanding the horizons and commitments of the northern women.

Collections

Archival records related to Wednesdays in Mississippi reside at the

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia is a research library that specializes in American history and literature, history of Virginia and the southeastern United States, the history of the Universit ...

at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...

as well as at the National Archives for Black Women's History.

References

External links

Wednesdays in Mississippi
at the University of Houston
''Wednesdays in Mississippi'' documentary film
{{Civil rights movement African-American history of Mississippi History of African-American civil rights