Bettye Collier-Thomas:Women Crucial to Civil Rights Movement

ASU hosted Bettye Collier-Thomas, a nationally recognized civil rights scholar and researcher, for its fifth event of the Lecture-Concert Series on Tuesday.

Her lecture, titled "The Nexus: Women, Religion, Race and Civil Rights," examined the often overlooked role of black women in the struggle for civil rights and equality throughout American history.

"Historians now define the period from 1954 (the year of the Brown v. Board of Education decision) to 1965 as the Modern Civil Rights Movement," Collier-Thomas said. "The African-American struggle for freedom and civil rights began long before Brown and is a central part of U.S. history."

Collier-Thomas said many men, both black and white, have been recognized and honored for their contributions in the civil rights struggle, but black women and their organizations have been largely ignored in the chronicles of history.

She said early religious coalitions such as the National Association of Colored Women, founded in 1896, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909, were instrumental in the struggle for civil rights.

Groups like these allowed black women to work together toward women's rights and allowed them to speak as one and address the issues facing both women and black people. The web they created also allowed communications between various black communities to spread from one end of country in a very short period of time.