Explorations in Black Leadership

Co-Directed by Phyllis Leffler & Julian Bond

Wednesdays in Mississippi

Dorothy Height and National Council of Negro women members travelled to Selma, Alabama in 1963 to witness the discrimination and abuse faced by African American women and children in the South, particularly by law enforcement. This led to Wednesdays in Mississippi in March of 1964, when Height and others held a conference in Atlanta to address the safety of female civil rights workers. With Polly Cowan, Height then worked to organize two teams of northern women to travel South to make and maintain relationships with women in southern civil rights activism. The program lasted two years, creating interracial networks of white and black church women to support SNCC workers in voter registration projects. See also Cowan, Polly.